Markets await GDP, Jobs, and Earnings
Enjoy
Forward
Alls I will say is, I think and hope you will dearly enjoy my writing tonight. Make sure to read the full reflection tonight, your soul desperately needs it.
With PCE, GDP, Corporate Profits, as well as earnings like COST 0.00%↑ DELL 0.00%↑ ZS 0.00%↑ MRVL 0.00%↑ all just due on Thursday, we have a jam packed week ahead to make plenty of cash and celebrate on a shortened week.
I think liquidity so far is giving us all the answers we need to determine how the market will decide to interpret the data. Additionally, PCE as I show lower is pretty much already known.
Subscription Discounts
If you aren’t already taking advantage of the student discount I really encourage students to do it. I want education to be accessible and for my stack to be less than your Netflix Subscription.
Student Special:
Thank you, deeply and truly, for supporting this stack and this community. We’ve been on a long journey with many great adventures, and I hope this stack has helped you grow not only as a trader, but as a person. That you have found some meaning in life and learned a little more along the way.
If you have learned even just 1 thing from here, I hope you also consider sharing the substack, RTing its posts, and just hitting the like button when you read it, because that allows for our tribe to continue to grow and for more people to get in on the wiz biz :) My goal for the substack this year is to grow it to 2,000 subs, and we currently stand at 1,300 tribe members strong!
Again, thank you! What an incredible honor it is to get to teach and be with you all each day. Here’s to another year of torching the markets!
I also take serious pride in this being an affordable educational site. I am adding a veteran discount on top of adding student discounts to subscriptions.
Refer a Friend and Receive Discounts off your subscription
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If you enjoy the stack, make sure to like this post, restack, retweet, subscribe to the tribe. It goes a long way and I think 95% of those that upgrade will say they’ve seen their trading improve incredibly. But enough of the biz, let’s get down to wiz.
Reflection
Marcus Aurelius and Meditations: A Summary
Someone that is a slow burn of a role model into your adult life usually turns out to be Marcus Aurelius.
As you grow and age, you get more and more saddled with life. Things get complicated, life keeps moving and life is full of other life that are constantly up to their own devices. You are constantly uncertain of your place. You may admonish in moments of reflection whether you are on the right path. It’s hard, it can be really hard. If you are the least bit self-aware, you have dreams of what you want to do and who you want to be. You hope that people will remember your life. You realize that your life is both very short and at the same time very long.
As Shakespeare once wrote: “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow creeps at this petty pace”
You would think that someone like Marcus would not be filled with doubt, with strife, with internal dialogue of how he is unsatisfied with how he has done. Yet, he was the Roman Emperor, the literal center of the human universe for his time. The really nice thing about him is he shows us that even if all of our dreams were to come true, we will still be faced with the same struggles as when they weren’t true. Often times, the dreams only amplify the intensity of our struggle. Like the saying goes “money only makes who you are a lot louder.”
If you had an addictive personality before money, you will have one after it. It is your character and steeling yourself into the best person you can be for yourself that will truly change the day. Marcus reassures us of all of this.
A Brief Summary:
Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) was the Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD. Despite his position of power, he is remembered more for his philosophy than his military conquests. He was a follower of Stoicism, a philosophy that emphasized reason, virtue, and living in harmony with nature.
Meditations is a collection of personal writings by Marcus Aurelius. It wasn't intended for publication, but rather served as a journal for his own self-improvement. Written in Koine Greek, the 12 books of Meditations offer insights on a variety of topics, including:
Living a virtuous life: Aurelius emphasizes qualities like courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance.
Dealing with emotions: The book offers guidance on managing negative emotions and maintaining a calm and rational mind.
Finding happiness: Aurelius emphasizes finding fulfillment from within, rather than relying on external circumstances.
Facing adversity: Meditations offers advice on dealing with challenges, setbacks, and death.
Deep Thoughts to Chew on:
Focus on the Present Moment: Aurelius emphasizes the importance of focusing on the present moment, the only time we truly have control over. He writes in his Meditations, "You have to live life for yourself, and stop incorporating yourself into the life of others, as if you filled some gap in their existence. Live for yourself." By focusing on the present, we can appreciate the small joys and avoid getting caught up in anxieties about the past or future.
Minimize External Dependence: Stoicism teaches the importance of finding happiness and fulfillment from within, rather than relying on external circumstances or possessions. This aligns with the concept of slow living, where we focus on appreciating what we have and avoid the constant chase for more. Aurelius reminds himself, "Our life is what our thoughts make it."
Mindfulness and Self-Awareness: Stoic practices like meditation and journaling encourage mindfulness and self-awareness. By understanding our emotions and thought patterns, we can make more conscious choices and avoid being ruled by reactivity. This aligns with slowing down and managing our emotions to live a more intentional life.
Virtue over Pleasure: Stoicism emphasizes living a virtuous life, focusing on qualities like wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. This can involve slowing down to make considered choices that align with your values, rather than being swayed by fleeting desires. Aurelius writes, "Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."
I was going to end the reflection there, but then I took some shrooms. :)
Often times, I feel like I fall through life in some odd slumber. Way too focused, in a trance, missing out on life. Is that what life is supposed to be? It can’t be this long trance. Sometimes I’ll snap out of it, look around and see how lovely my life is but I am still missing it in the present. We chose to hang something up in our family room a few months ago…actually it was a year ago. I remember in that moment being so focused in on getting it done, and then it passed.
What is that? I feel melancholy honestly for my own life passing as much as I feel melancholy for seeing you all grow, and my own kids grow. I was reading something weird last night as I normally do, and then it led to something funnier I was doing this afternoon, which I am laughing about right now actually.
Actually now I am laughing about a whole bunch of things, because my kid came running in sat on my lap and said lets go play a soccer game. Then he told me he will shoot me if I keep writing (he is holding a nerf gun)…I got shot. Which is funny because Gwen told him to get me to play, but earlier Gwen told me I needed to not be so inconsistent with you all. (LOL)
At this rate, I am not sure if we’re going to make it to the markets section tonight.
…Perhaps that’s ok, perhaps I can just talk business amongst us gentlemen and gentleladies in the wiz charts chat tomorrow. Well let’s continue, shall we?
My god, I know what I was reading last night, it was the tall nords. It’s this apparent race of aliens, they have a history of being located in the dry desert of Nevada.