Feb

17

The search for happiness has a Heisenbergian aspect: the more certain you are about what you want, the less happy you will be attaining it. It seems to happen unexpectedly, and often only in hindsight.

There is also an "aspergian" aspect: like Viktor Frankl's "The doors of happiness open outward". I take this to mean searching and engaging with the world (rather than perpetual introspection), but it could also be the joy in helping others (as risky as it may be).

In markets it is very hard to find happiness, and it is probably foolish to look there. A good source of unhappiness, however, is limit orders. You place them with great hope and the market runs away and leaves you behind. Or you get filled and then it takes you way down. Or you're overjoyed to finally get out with a modest profit, only to find you sold too soon and missed the big one*.

*Holding losers long and selling winners short: the hardest thing not to do.

Sushil Kedia adds:

Happiness is life. It has a unique property. The conditional probability of happiness is a certainty if you have a happy nature else it is zero for every other variable.

Anything contingent on an outcome (event) or a property (belongings) is not happiness. Happiness is unconditional. Happiness is an absolute.

Happiness is neither a milestone nor the journey of life. Happiness is the fuel of life. By this assumption or understanding one can see pain is not the opposite of happiness. Pain is only a signal asking us to change something.

On a lighter note, obviously no one normally seeks happiness from a mistress. In Markets, you come for taking what you have come to take and not search happiness, since happiness is within. 

Ken Drees writes: 

"You never see the stock called Happiness quoted on the exchange."

"It is better to desire the things we have than have the things we desire".

-Henry Van Dyke


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3 Comments so far

  1. Steve on February 13, 2016 8:20 pm

    Another way to look at it, one could consider they are “happy” with the mere fact the market will be open for business. One is not always “happy”, but the markets are regularly open.

  2. Anonymous on February 16, 2016 4:17 pm

    You need to look for an anchor of stability to seek out contentment in the market is to welcome disaster because most of it is chaotic. For example focus on science, math, programming and keep the financial markets as unemotional as possible and focus on your anchor.

  3. Hernan on February 18, 2016 11:39 am

    I commend the web mistress for her scintillating image selection.

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