**Poker taught me a lie that I later brought into trading.**
When you start with $100 and win $300, your brain doesn’t feel like you have $400.
It feels like those **$300 are “winnings.”**
Casino money.
Money you can risk.
And that’s where the trap begins.
Because if you then lose those $300, psychologically, it doesn’t feel like you lost $300.
It feels like **someone stole something that was already yours.**
So you try to win it back.
You raise the stakes.
You play a hand you’d normally fold.
And if it goes well, you feel like a genius again.
If it goes badly, you need another hand.
With trading, I realized I was doing exactly the same thing.
One trade made me $200.
Then those $200 stopped feeling like real money in my head.
They were **“winnings to risk again.”**
Until one day you look at your account and ask yourself:
**How the fuck did I go from winning to being completely wiped out?**
The answer is pretty uncomfortable:
I never stopped gambling.
I just changed what I called it.
In poker, I called it *“playing another hand.”*
In trading, I called it *“looking for another opportunity.”*
The platform changed.
The charts changed.
The words changed.
**But my brain was doing exactly the same thing.**
And maybe this is the most dangerous part of all:
You don’t have to be bad at making decisions to lose a ton of money.
Sometimes all it takes is **not knowing when to stop making decisions.** like what happened to me with $QNT o $BTW
That’s where I really lost.
When you start with $100 and win $300, your brain doesn’t feel like you have $400.
It feels like those **$300 are “winnings.”**
Casino money.
Money you can risk.
And that’s where the trap begins.
Because if you then lose those $300, psychologically, it doesn’t feel like you lost $300.
It feels like **someone stole something that was already yours.**
So you try to win it back.
You raise the stakes.
You play a hand you’d normally fold.
And if it goes well, you feel like a genius again.
If it goes badly, you need another hand.
With trading, I realized I was doing exactly the same thing.
One trade made me $200.
Then those $200 stopped feeling like real money in my head.
They were **“winnings to risk again.”**
Until one day you look at your account and ask yourself:
**How the fuck did I go from winning to being completely wiped out?**
The answer is pretty uncomfortable:
I never stopped gambling.
I just changed what I called it.
In poker, I called it *“playing another hand.”*
In trading, I called it *“looking for another opportunity.”*
The platform changed.
The charts changed.
The words changed.
**But my brain was doing exactly the same thing.**
And maybe this is the most dangerous part of all:
You don’t have to be bad at making decisions to lose a ton of money.
Sometimes all it takes is **not knowing when to stop making decisions.** like what happened to me with $QNT o $BTW
That’s where I really lost.