I Was Built for Risk

I had to learn everything else

Jan 09, 2026

I want to tell this story carefully, because language matters, and time changes how we understand things. But this is how it was explained to me when I was young, and it shaped the way I see myself to this day.

When I was riding bikes as a kid, an older rider once pulled me aside, then said something like: “Have you ever heard of retard strength? You’ve got retard confidence.”

What he meant wasn’t intelligence. It was fearlessness. Blind belief. The kind of confidence that doesn’t calculate consequences before acting.

And honestly? I don’t think that part of me ever changed.

I don’t want to be the guy sitting here telling you how great my returns are this year. They are great, and I’m proud of the work. But none of it was overnight. None of it was luck. And all of it traces back to who I was long before I ever opened a trading account.

I was a wild child.

I’ve always been incapable of doing things I don’t want to do. Truly incapable. That’s not rebellion for rebellion’s sake—it’s wiring. My mother understood that better than anyone. And just to clear up any confusion: I was incredibly lucky. I had an amazing mother who adopted me and raised me with unconditional belief. She passed away. I also have an amazing birth mother who is still alive. I bring up mothers often because I was blessed with two.

My (who raised me) mom always told me, “You can do anything you put your mind to.”
Then she added the part people leave out: “But you can’t do anything you don’t want to do.”

That’s the truth.

So when I should’ve been in class paying attention, I was writing down tricks I wanted to land on my bike. Every variation. Every line. Every risk. Somewhere in my head, I had this strange belief that I wouldn’t live past 25. I don’t know why. And I almost did. Obsessive thoughts have a way of becoming real if you let them sit long enough.

All I wanted to do was ride bikes and play music.

I put a double kick pedal on my drum set and played heavy metal like my life depended on it. I rode my bike with the same reckless abandon. No brakes. No hesitation. No limits. I loved it. I never felt constrained by fear.

I still don’t.

But here’s the part no one talks about.

What happens when you bring that mentality into trading?

You know how to take risk.
You’re not afraid to lose.
You can get hurt and come back the next day.

But managing risk?
Doing nothing?
Putting on a position and letting the market breathe?

You are not equipped for that.
At least, I wasn’t.

I had the balls. I had the pain tolerance. I had the ability to heal. What I didn’t have was patience. So of course I jumped straight into options. Why not make the hardest game even harder?

I blew up an account.
Then another one.

But something important stayed intact: I wasn’t afraid to keep going.

The first time a trader made me feel like my past actually mattered (as a trader) was when he said, “Because of riding, you heal quickly. You can take the next trade. You’ll be a great trader.”

That changed how I viewed myself.

Sometimes the biggest shift isn’t learning a new strategy—it’s realizing that what you thought was a flaw is actually raw material. You don’t erase who you are. You refine it.

That’s when the real work started.

I didn’t choose a strategy because it sounded good. I didn’t copy someone else’s playbook. I backtested everything. This was back when you had to do it manually. Spreadsheets. Years of data. Painfully slow.

What I found surprised me.

A macro filter.
Correlation awareness.
Long term trend systems.

They worked better than almost everything else. Not cleaner. Not flashier. Just better.

And they were the opposite of my personality.

This approach required doing less. Waiting more. Letting positions work. Accepting boredom. Accepting uncertainty. Accepting that the edge comes from discipline, not adrenaline.

The guy you see now—the calm one, the patient one, the system-driven one—was built through years of frustration and failure. He didn’t replace the reckless kid. He learned how to harness him.

Trading didn’t change who I was. It forced me to grow up around my own edges.

If there’s one thing I want you to take from this, it’s this: trading is not about fixing yourself. It’s about understanding yourself deeply enough to build a process that keeps you alive long enough to win.

This is a journey. Not a scoreboard. Not a destination. Not a personality contest.

As the quote goes from Winnie the Pooh:

“Life is a journey to be experienced, not a problem to be solved.”

That applies to trading more than most people realize.

This week’s Holy Macro Show: