Slow and Steady Wins the Race

FOMO, or the Fear of Missing Out, is one of trading’s deadliest sins.

It’s a sin that every trader has been guilty of in the past. The reason FOMO is so deadly is because it involves both fear and greed.

Fear and greed…

They’re two of the most powerful emotions that drive our behavior. And the line between the two can get blurry very quickly for traders.

FOMO is when you’re afraid of missing out on a huge opportunity. And then it’s greed that takes over completely.

Before you know it, you’ve chased a trade that you know you don’t really have any business being in.

Case in point… just look at the most recent debacle involving GameStop.

Chasing Fast Money in Trading

GameStop, of course, became the posterchild of meme stocks during the 2021 market melt-up.

The stock rallied over 2,400% during January 2021. And then the bubble popped. GameStop ended up selling off over 90% since then.

But from Friday, May 10 to Tuesday, May 14, the GameStop frenzy briefly came back in full force.

The stock rallied nearly 300%… with many excited traders buying the stock at higher and higher prices.

You can guess what’s happened next… As of Friday, May 24, GameStop has given back all those gains, selling off over 70% in the process.

How many traders bought the stock near its absolute peak? I have no idea… But I’ll wager that it was quite a few.

Of course, we all want fast money. Indeed, sometimes the markets offer sensible opportunities that happen to pay out quickly.

For example, the latest trade I’ve issued my Currency Trader subscribers was on May 7. It was a buy alert on the Australian dollar. A week later, we were out of the trade for a tidy profit.

But these kinds of opportunities don’t come around every day.

And you don’t need them to in order to make a fortune from the markets.

Slow and Steady Is the Way to Go

The truth is that it really is slow and steady that wins the race.

Let’s say you make a modest 2% or 3% gain on your trading account at the end of the month. Of course, that’s not going to be enough to secure your nest egg.

But if you can consistently repeat a 3% monthly gain, you’ll end the year up around 30% (accounting for a few inevitable losses).

And if you can consistently repeat a 25–30% yearly gain, you’ll be amongst the ranks of the truly elite traders in the world.

Think about it this way… if you can consistently end the year up around 25%, you’ll double your entire trading account in just a few years.

And in the process, your performance would rival the best hedge funds of all time. For example, Citadel, one of the best and most consistent funds in the world, has seen its performance range between 15% and 38% over the last 5 years.

To be clear, I don’t think it’s completely fair to benchmark your trading against a hedge fund.

In many ways, it’s much more difficult for a hedge fund with billions of dollars under management to generate the huge returns an individual trader can.

But it just goes to show that the most talented trading teams in the world are happy with what many FOMO traders would consider fairly mediocre results.

If you want to try and make millions of dollars overnight in trading, just know that’s the equivalent of buying a lottery ticket.

But if you want to build real and lasting wealth, then it’s slow and steady trading that will get you there.

Happy trading,

Imre Gams
Analyst, Market Minute