The live market is the best teacher, and the tuition makes Pepperdine look like a Dollar Tree. I have decades of emotional scars, hard lessons, and just enough perspective to find it all darkly pleasurable. You've been warned.
You pass a construction site and think copper prices. You see a coffee shop line and think consumer spending. Your kid is talking and a chart pattern is still running in your head. Your phone buzzes. You glance at it before you can stop yourself. Your kid notices.
Most traders get their first warning after a big loss. But the trade that does the most damage usually comes before that. It comes wrapped in a green number, a faster heartbeat, and a thought you probably shouldn't have trusted. Maybe I'm actually good at this.
You tell yourself you're just going to check real quick. That's the lie. A look at how the market quietly moves in with you — and what it starts doing to your head.