Cogito Ergo Sum — How to trade with certainty when surrounded by a whirlpool of doubt.

Cogito Ergo Sum. What Am I?

…a Thinking Being?

That is precisely what one famous 17th Century philosopher, Rene Descartes believed, but how did he arrive there?

As the thinking man himself explained:

“In order to determine whether we can know anything with certainty, we first have to doubt everything we know”

Of course, Descartes couldn’t rely on his “senses”. They were misleading. A straight stick can look bent in water or objects in the distance can look smaller than in reality and so on. He even experienced the feeling of waking up during a dream and pondered, “What if I am still dreaming now?”

However, being the mathematician he was, surely Descartes knew that 2+3=5, even in a dream-like state, and that no extra-terrestrial being could be playing tricks on his mind…somehow tripping him up, causing him to make fatal errors (2+3=4 and so forth). Nonetheless, leaning into this thought for a moment, if by chance some evil-minded demon were to be the puppeteer of his thoughts, where would that leave him?

As a consequence, there would be nothing he could be sure of. Just an endless death spiral of doubt and despair.

Whether such a manipulative being existed in the ether, the one thing it could not do is deceive Descartes of his own existence. Every thought, as inaccurate as it may be, proved he existed as a thinking being.

…

Herein lies the key principle for all of us trading the markets. More precisely, it's the Crypto-currency market, but the laws of supply & demand do not discriminate. The ability to think, proves YOU exist as a “Thinking Being” in this market.

We started this journey as a Copy-Trading community. The term itself leads to all sorts of mind-bending experiences of confidence when “number- goes-up”, but ultimately 5-stages of grief when markets correct.

One of our community members, Hakan, recently told me that;

First of all, I don’t think cryptocurrencies are a scam…but what feels scammy with crypto is that the price actions of an asset are often irrelevant to the reasons why you bought it, and they just happen randomly.

Basically anything that could make you think the price will go up can let you down. So, I suggest not to completely count on and believe your motives and instead buy what you think will do well and only hope it will turn out good for you. If you do strictly hold onto your reasons, you will get more upset if they fail you.

I think this neatly sums up the trader's conundrum. I certainly agree that trading/investing based on your senses can lead to despair if the trades turn against you. What can often look like a great investment, can turn out to be a stable coin, until the moment you give up on it and sell it to a new believer. Or worse, you hold it to zero. After all, the senses are an optical illusion as Descartes told us earlier.

However, the ability to believe, or to place your trust in someone else, is the single most powerful tool in your trading arsenal. Rather than hope, you must have utter conviction and strident determination that when you place that buy/sell order it is YOU that now exists in this market of buyers and sellers. No halfway houses here. No manipulators of your mind. These are your thoughts. Your beliefs. Congratulations. You exist now.

So go forth a conqueror and win great victories!