Speaker A
Welcome, everyone. This is the first video in a series on philosophy, in which I will explain why we even need to study this at all. The short answer to this question is: you need to study philosophy in order to understand everything else. Even Grandpa Lenin used to say that it is impossible to understand Marxism without understanding Hegel's dialectics. Over the years, I have come to the same conclusion as Grandpa Lenin, only regarding everything else. As for what philosophy actually is, yes, with precise definitions—something you won't find in any textbooks—we will talk about that in the next video. I would like to dedicate this one specifically to the goals. Why are we studying this? I am often asked about trading, since the majority of people on this channel are traders. "Alexey, recommend something for us to read on trading." "Recommend what to read on economics," and so on. Well, those who remember the videos I filmed a few years ago and what I wrote in my articles know the point boiled down to this: you need to study trading, in principle, by starting with economics textbooks. Later, I reached the point where I started saying that, damn, you actually need to start studying economics with textbooks on logic. Why did I come to this conclusion? Because so many people, when looking at certain economic problems, speak in such clichés, without understanding the essence of these phenomena, that it’s just a nightmare. For example, look at the topic of the previous video on this channel regarding why crises of overproduction don't exist in the form everyone thinks they do. Now, look. After that, my concept evolved even further. I realized that even studying logic alone is not enough. That is not enough for people. People need to study philosophy as a whole, because, indeed, without studying certain things in dialectics, you won't understand Marxism, you won't understand trading approaches, and so on. And why did I decide to film these videos right now? Look at my public account since the beginning of this year and how it's performing. I had 20 profitable sessions out of twenty. Why did I open a public account? Viewers of this channel know perfectly well, because last autumn I provided my analysis. My account was behaving in exactly the same way, that is, the returns were growing, but at the same time, for the majority—well, let's not say the majority, but for the majority of the loud-mouthed people who liked to leave comments—it seemed that something here was being said incorrectly, even though the end result was positive, people simply didn't believe it. Ultimately, I shared a public account and posted a link for everyone to see for themselves that, yes, the balance is indeed growing. And this is despite how our market has behaved since the beginning of the year. Look, it’s been growing and falling just the same. But that didn't affect the account at all. Even though I was bearish. Why? Because everything I said led to certain conclusions; global positioning means that being a bear doesn't mean shorting with 10x leverage and getting wiped out. It means avoiding long-term investments. It means spending some time on the sidelines, waiting for short entries, and so on. That is exactly how global, profitable traders, the big players, trade. That is, in fact, how I trade the market as well. And you can see the results it leads to. But even seeing the final result, many people still don't understand why that is. And why don't they understand? Because they draw the wrong conclusions from the analysis I provide. Why is that? Because not everyone has the same level of mental processing power. And as you know, I very often talk about IQ levels on this channel. So, what is very important to understand is that IQ is something—you know, people who have already taken these tests and then do them by analogy end up with higher scores. Meaning, the tests show a higher IQ. What does that tell us? That, in reality, everyone's capabilities are roughly the same. But everyone's mental processing apparatus is tuned differently. And an IQ level isn't—let's put it this way—if you don't understand something, or someone else doesn't, it doesn't mean that person was born inferior, or that they are some kind of fool. No, that person is just someone who hasn't sufficiently developed their mental apparatus. So, why do we need to study psychology and philosophy? To develop our mental apparatus. And now, I will give you a couple of examples of how this works. Examples from real life—because philosophy relates not only to trading, it relates to how we live our lives in general, to the actions we take in response to external conditions, to how we communicate with others, to our family relationships, and so on. Here is a simple example. A few years ago, a simple philosophical idea could be heard from every screen. It sounded something like this in the words of various Hollywood screenwriters. Usually, the phrase went something like this: a warrior does not worry about what he cannot change or influence. I’ve personally heard this phrase in Hollywood movies, spoken by American Indians, Vikings, and so on. And so on. It was a cliché that many screenwriters used. And just from interacting on social media and my blog, I’ve seen many people running around with this idea like a chicken with its head cut off, not even really understanding where they got it from. But the idea is correct, isn't it? You shouldn't worry about things you cannot influence. And when people realize this, it affects their psychological state, although this idea is directly related to philosophy; how exactly, we will explain further in this series of videos. Now look, many people suffer because they constantly ask themselves: "What if?" And so on. As soon as they realize that they shouldn't do this, that it’s not worth it, their suffering in life decreases. Many people find their relationships improving, whether in the family, with friends, and so on, when they understand a few simple philosophical concepts. There is folk wisdom and jokes on this topic—like, if you have an unhappy marriage, you’ll become a philosopher, and so on. All of this has a solid foundation. Now, watch this. How does all this affect, for instance, trading? Well, first of all, a very significant part of proper trading lies precisely in the right psychology. Why do people even lose money in the market? This has been established by numerous scientific experiments. It means that most people are more inclined to take risks to keep what they have and take fewer risks to gain something new. What does this lead to in the market? It leads to people taking small profits and holding onto massive losses. This is exactly the core of the losing strategy for the majority of people failing in the market. Now let's think, where does such a psychological state come from? Why do people do it exactly this way? The whole issue lies in our evolutionary development; humans haven't always been like this. Yes, we have thousands of generations of ancestors. And back at the level of a, let's say, ape, all of a person's resources basically came down to food. Humans had nothing else. They only had some grub, a stick that wasn't worth much, and so on. But you have to understand, food in the wild is a matter of survival. So, if you lost an asset, you could literally die. It was a matter of life and death. In such a scenario, taking, yes, some high-risk actions is normal, because the alternative is death. Here, you need to take full risks, yes, in many cases. And all this was reinforced by evolutionary selection. Likewise, when we talk not about an asset, but, for example, about family relationships, there are, roughly speaking, groups of ancient people with children, right? And which groups continue their lineage? Those who protect their children. Children are perceived psychologically as an asset that must be protected, even with high risk, even at the cost of one's o
