Portfolio Review: The Market Owes You Nothing
The phrase I’ve told clients more than any other over the years is this:
the market is not a magic money machine.
People don’t like hearing that.
They come in wide eyed, convinced that if they hire the right firm or the right trader, they’ll make 1% a day, every day, with zero drawdowns, zero pain, and zero uncertainty.
They want to skip the suffering and go straight to the success story.
But that’s not how this game works.
That’s not how life works.
Let me say it the way it really feels when you’ve lived through it:
That ain’t the way it fucking works.
The Illusion Everyone Starts With
When you first start trading, you know nothing — but you don’t realize how little you know.
You think if you just buy the right stock, wait twenty minutes, you’ll make money.
You think if you follow the guy on TV or mimic the influencer on Twitter, you’ll make money.
And when it doesn’t work, you change the story.
You tell yourself, “I’ll just hold it longer.”
You went from being a “trader” to an “investor” in a matter of days.
You buy The Intelligent Investor, highlight some quotes about value, and convince yourself you’re Buffett now, just temporarily down on your masterpiece.
That loop of hope, denial, and reinvention is where everyone starts.
And if you’re lucky, one day, you kill off that version of yourself.
You stop trying to be someone else.
You stop pretending this is supposed to be easy.
Because the game of trading isn’t about beating the market.
It’s about beating yourself.
The Hard Truth
Here’s the truth no one wants to say out loud:
You are the only thing standing between your account going up or going down.
Not the Fed.
Not the news.
Not some big bad hedge fund.
Just you.
And before you can win, you have to let go of a dangerous illusion…
the belief that the market owes you something.
Because it doesn’t.
Hell, while we’re at it, the world doesn’t owe you anything either.
Not fairness. Not comfort. Not a straight path.
The sooner you let that sink in, the faster you start becoming dangerous.
Bad Hands, Better Perspective
I didn’t start with much.
I’m mixed, adopted, injured, and a former addict.
I wasn’t the smartest kid in school. I wasn’t even close.
For a long time, I thought life had dealt me a bad hand.
But somewhere along the way, that story flipped.
Now, I’m grateful for every scar and setback I ever got handed.
My strength didn’t come from privilege, it came from endurance.
From surviving shit that should’ve broken me.
From finding purpose in the pain instead of running from it.
After all the failures, embarrassments, and near implosions, what’s left is solid.
Unshakable.
The Grind Before the Growth
When I was five, I couldn’t even hit a ball off a tee.
Later, I was one of the best athletes on every team I played for.
When I felt like an outcast, I got a bike from a councilman named Paul.
That bike became my lifeline — a vehicle for freedom, for focus, for purpose.
I did everything I ever wrote in those old school notebooks on that bike.
Then came addiction.
That was my real bear market.
The kind that doesn’t show up in a chart.
But I got clean at twenty five.
And I made that story public, not because I wanted sympathy, but because I hoped maybe one person would see it and think, “If he can turn it around, maybe I can too.”
Then came trading — and the pain started all over again.
I was terrible.
I blew up accounts.
I stayed awake entire nights watching positions move against me by fractions of a percent, feeling like my life depended on every tick.
And for someone who doesn’t really cry, I had nights on the bathroom floor — sobbing like a kid.
Not because I lost money.
Because I felt lost in myself.
But those nights changed me.
They stripped away the ego, the illusion, the entitlement.
They forced me to rebuild.
And since then, I’ve outperformed the market for almost a decade.
Not because I got smarter.
Because I got humble.
Failure Is the Forge
Here’s what people miss:
Failure isn’t the opposite of success. It’s the furnace that shapes it.
Every blown account, every missed trade, every sleepless night — that’s tuition.
That’s the cost of learning the truth behind the numbers.
There’s a quote from Nietzsche that always hits me:
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
Trading — hell, living — will test your “why.”
If you’re just here for money or validation, you’ll quit the first time you bleed.
But if your “why” is growth, mastery, freedom — you’ll find a way to keep going, no matter how many times you fall.
The market doesn’t care about your excuses.
But it does reward the ones who stay.
The Real Edge
Everyone wants an edge.
They think it’s a model, a signal, an indicator, or a secret newsletter.
But your real edge isn’t any of that.
Your edge is your ability to endure failure without losing identity.
Your edge is staying calm while everyone else is losing their mind.
It’s letting go when the world tells you to grip tighter.
It’s realizing the market isn’t personal — but your growth in it is.
At some point, you stop asking, “Why me?”
And you start saying, “Because of me.”
That’s the shift.
That’s when it all changes.
Failures stop being walls and start becoming weights.
You use them to get stronger, while everyone else hides from them.
Final Thought
I’ve learned more from my worst years than my best ones.
Because the truth is simple:
Failures are just temporary hurdles on the way to your goals.
Use your failures as leverage.
Use your pain as positioning.
Because the world — and the market — will never stop testing you.
But if you can learn to take the hit, adapt, and keep going…
you’ll be unbeatable.
Because you’ll finally understand:
The market owes you nothing.
But it’ll give you everything —
once you stop expecting it to.