YouTube video (uploaded by Josh Trent, Mar 12, 2024) featuring a former Wall Street trader recounting his career and life transition: he moved from trading to prioritizing family after a divorce and gaining majority custody of his children around 2017–2018, and left Wall Street in 2019. He describes trading as rhythm-based, likening it to drumming and magic when producing large profits, but ultimately advocates "investing in yourself" rather than picking stocks for most people. The clip ends with a channel host directing viewers to related videos and asking them to follow.
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At some point, I left my dream of being a drum professional, drummer and a magician, and I went into this trading kind of world. And I thought I left that behind. But ultimately, when I was a trader, what made me a good trader was tapping into the rhythm of the market. I could just feel the beat in the same way I was feeling the drumbeat. I could just feel the pulse, like, inside of me. And when I would make millions of dollars just like literally out of thin air, I'm not creating anything. It was just like an idea in my head and I can make millions of dollars. It was like magic to me. I had that same kind of aha moment. And so Fast forward to 2019 when I leave the Wall street world. And to answer your question, I had just gone through my. My divorce. You know, I had my kids now, majority custody most of the time. And I couldn't just justify, you know, you know, leaving my kids at home with a nanny after having been awarded to have them more time than not. That's rare. Yeah. Why did that. I know I'm interrupting you. Sorry. Yeah. And it's important. That's very rare that a father would get custody. It was, it was rare and it was, it was sort of the extreme circumstances that were going on. You know, my ex wife had gone through some severe postpartum depression, had a lot of different manifestations that, you know, are probably. Honestly, I've shared them before, but I've. I've learned actually now to. I want to respect her. Her privacy a little bit because, you know, I have deep love for her as a person, but she went through some very challenging times that were very scary for all of us. And it ended up with me having, you know, the majority of the custody, always with the goal to get back to a place where we were, would share the time ultimately, because that's. Ultimately was my dream for that. I mean, yeah, but that was the way it was in 27, 17, 18 when this happened. And I just couldn't justify anymore being in an office in Greenwich, Connecticut, or working all day at home while my kids are with nanny after nanny after nanny and not with their mother. I'm like, well, this was my path. I have to live up to this and be more present at the same time. I just didn't feel the pull anymore. I absolutely loved trading like I was. I just got so high from it. It was like, so exciting to me. Why? I don't know, just the competitiveness, the freedom of it, the creativity. You know, when you're a trader, you're almost like a star athlete. Like, you don't. Nobody cares what time you show up, Nobody cares what time you leave. Nobody cares if you wear something eccentric, if you drive a sports car to work and you leave it out front. Like you just like, if you're, if you're like a top trader, you're like the top stud athlete and people give you complete freedom and you just, you just have this account and you, you literally have to answer to nothing but creating profit. And if you do that, you live a very beautiful life. You get paid really well, you have lots of freedom. It's intense. It's like, but it's got that like sport competitiveness to it. I had a partner who is the meteorologist I mentioned who was a partner with me for 15 years. And we just were like, had this great relationship and it was very, very exciting. But it hit a point where like, my focus wasn't there anymore. I wanted to be meditating or doing tai chi or exercising or banging a drum or being with my kids. Yeah. And I had so much respect for the level of intensity it takes to be good at that. You know, people come up to me all the time and they say, oh, you know, I got $10,000. What should I invest in? Should I invest in this stock or that stock or this? And I said, look, you realize what you're talking about? Like, would you walk into a hospital and just say, I'm going to perform brain surgery today. Or step onto a court with Steph Curry and try to beat him on a one on one. You're dealing with people that are fighting for fractions of a millisecond with tens and hundreds of millions of dollars of computer resources and edges and systematic approaches and code and research. And you're just going to take your hard earned money and just throw it into something that you know nothing about? Like, come on, give me a break. You know, I always encourage them to go back to saying, like, investing in yourself is the best thing that you can do because it's the only thing you ultimately know and can control and you can have real exponential returns.
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