It's Time To Lighten Up

With stocks sitting at all-time highs, most would expect this post’s title to be about the market…maybe alluding to reasons why it’s time to raise cash or take a more active approach to managing your portfolio.

But alas, this post has little to do with markets and a lot to do with me.

Over the years I’ve been told to various degrees that I may be taking life a bit too seriously. That I can even be a bit neurotic at times. And if I’m honest I’ve always known that, but I’m finally at a point where I’m seeing that this way of being is holding me back more than it is helping me.

Let me explain…

Without getting into two much detail, over the last few weeks I had an experience with a family member that really drove home the following lessons:

The first is that everyone is responsible for themselves.

We all know the phrase “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” But a lot of us don’t truly live in a way that reflects belief in that, especially when it comes to people we love and want to see live a “good/happy” life. After all, nobody wants to see the people around them unnecessarily suffer.

For me, the environment I was raised in forced me to grow up quickly and often put the needs of the “greater good” ahead of my own. It also engrained a level of seriousness in me that made me a pretty tough person to be around at times.

The instability of my environment created deep anxieties around making the “right” choice to avoid anything that would make a bad situation any worse. It prevented me from taking any sorts of perceived risk or stepping out of my comfort zone to develop as a person or a professional.

Ultimately, personal responsibility has been the driving force of how I’ve tried to live my life. But unfortunately, I’ve realized it’s been misplaced.

Instead of recognizing that the only person I’m truly responsible for is myself and eventually my wife/children, I’ve felt a deep-rooted sense of responsibility (or dare I say fiduciary duty) for those around me.

At the macro level, that caused me to waste a lot of time, energy, money, and other resources on people and organizations and situations that nobody had directly asked me to try and fix. Instead, I perceived a problem and went into “fix it” mode as I did when I was younger. At the micro level, it looks like me “not taking up space” in the world, minimizing my own existence to improve others’ experiences.

Now don’t get me wrong, these qualities are not all bad. A lot of the reason I’ve been able to have decent success so far in my personal and professional life is because of this seriousness with which I approach life.

But at this point, I’ve escaped all of the immediate danger from my younger years and have created a situation where my biggest danger is actually myself. I overthink everything to the point where I feel this constant pressure in my chest, my mind is regularly racing, and every decision (no matter how trivial) feels like the biggest thing in the world.

It’s trapped me in a prison of my own mind that I need to escape from. In order to do so, I am working to accept that I can only control my own behavior and the way I respond to the world around me, not anything or anyone else.

The second lesson is that there is no right way to live a life, only choices.

I’ve searched a lot of places for the perfect answer to questions big and small, everything from the meaning of life to where to eat in midtown when I come into the office for work. I’ve read the work of (and interacted with) many people that are successful or look like they’ve figured it all out who didn’t have all the answers either. It turns out made a ton of mistakes along the way and kept going until they got where they were headed.

Yet I’ve realized that for much of my life I’ve avoided making any meaningful choices because of my fear of making the “wrong” choice. And unfortunately it’s all been for nothing because it turns out there’s no such thing as a “right” answer after all, just many options you have to pick from and how you adjust along the way.

I guess it’s better I’m truly learning this at 29 before I’ve stacked up too many regrets and missed opportunities.

While freeing, the scary part about all this is that it’s now all on me. My job now is to identify what matters to me (and only me) in this game we call “life” and move towards those things. And if I’m in the same spot a 6, 12, 24 months from now, it’s not going to be anyone’s fault but my own (nor is it their responsibility).

Good results. Bad results. No results. It’s on me. I’ll have to live with that.

I’m also hoping these realizations and mindset shift will help me in my work too.

One of my biggest reservations about the finance industry is that I view a significant portion of the work done as pointless, especially on Wall Street. And by pointless I mean it creates more value for the firms doing the work than for the end client or customer.

If you need evidence of this, just look at some of the incentive structures that persist today despite not having the customer’s best interest in mind. … I mean why the fiduciary standard isn’t applied across the board is just one example of the ridiculousness of it all.

Combine that with the media business which is equally as screwed up, though focused on attention rather than dollars, and you’ve got the industry that I live in…

And that conflict is something I’ve still not fully figured out how to manage internally to be honest.

The data shows the vast majority of people are best served by a simple, low-cost investment plan that allows them to think about markets and their money as little as possible. Even professionals working in finance doing the exact opposite of that know this information.

But that’s not the audience the industry I’m working in serves. We’re serving the people who have made a decision to actively monitor markets and manage a portion of their investments or trades or speculative bets (whatever you want to call it). And they’re in search of information to help them on that journey.

That’s where I come in.

I, for whatever reason, also have caught the financial market bug. The further I try to move away from it, the more I’m pulled right back in. It stimulates me intellectually, I enjoy the work I do, and helps me earn a living to support myself and my family. That’s literally the privilege most people spend the vast majority of their life seeking out.

Whether or not it “adds [significant] value” to the world is up for debate. But honestly, I’m not even sure that should be a material factor in my decision. Most jobs are just that…jobs. And the other thing is, who am I to be the judge of what people find valuable or not? It’s not up to me and never will be.

All I know is I’ve spent the last decade trying to run away from something that I enjoy because I feel “it’s not that important.” And all that point of view has done for me is cause a lot of mental anguish and waste a lot of time…helping nobody in the process.

So…I’m going to start thinking less and prioritizing myself and the things I value more.

As long as I continue to do my work in an honest way, with good intentions, and deliver value to whatever audience I’m serving then I can look myself in the mirror with a straight face and sleep soundly at night. Because again, I’m only in control of the work I put out into the world, not how people react to it or use it.

— quick aside here. I wrote most of this last night to get it off my brain and had a great discussion with my best friend this morning, which helped a lot. Two things he said really resonated with me. —

The first is that while the work I do has influence on people, I don’t have control over their actions. We all have certain levels of influence on the world around us, but none of us can fully take control of anything except ourselves.

The second is that my anxiety/fears around the work I do shows that I care. Recognizing your responsibility in having an audience is the first step in serving them well. But holding on too tightly to trying to “control” the outcome for anyone, just holds you back from doing your best work.

While I can’t flip a switch overnight and get myself to immediately act on these new beliefs, I’ll be attempting to embrace these perspectives as I go about my day to day.

So what does all this mean in practice?

Well, I’m going to start having fun with the markets again…beginning with publishing my own blog again here and trading some of my own capital.

I’ll also be working on some new projects at Stocktwits that will allow me to loosen my tie a bit and dive into the degeneracy and ridiculousness of markets, which is part of what our audience wants anyway.

And in my personal life, I’ll reallocate the time and resources I spent on others back into my own health, relationships, hobbies, etc. Trusting my gut/instincts to do more of what feels right for me instead of endlessly analyzing/optimizing.

Because at the end of the day, all of this is just not that serious…

I’ll be back next week with a market-related post and a cleaned up format for this newsletter. Catch you on the streams until then. ~ Bruni

P.S. if you’ve read this far, here are a few charts that stood out to me this week.

Uranium stocks breaking out to 10-year highs amid while metals and mining stocks remain red-hot. Gold, silver, copper, and other metals are roaring higher, with uranium stocks now resolving their consolidation to the upside.

Putting aside where stocks head in the short-term, it’s hard to argue with the strength in equities as an asset class longer-term. Even the worst country ETFs in the world, like Italy, are making multi-year/decade highs. Mamma Mia, how can you argue with the demand taking place across the globe?

And the crypto space looks ready to make its next run, with Etherum holding above 2,850 and breaking its downtrend line. As long as that level holds, I think its YTD highs are the next stop.

***Until I take time to add a proper disclaimer, just know this information is for informational and entertainment purposes only is not intended as any form of advice (investment or otherwise).***