Speculation is gambling, stripped of its disguise. Win once, and you’ll want to win a second time, a third. And each time, the bet almost always gets bigger — that’s greed — never the tidy fantasy of banking your profits and risking only the principal.
And when the losses run deep — the gains given back, the principal gone — it only stirs the greediest part of us: at the very least, I have to win back what I lost. To start gambling is to set foot on a road with no way back.
So if I were to call a stock’s short-term move right and walk away up 50%, I’d only push further down that road. The end is ruin, without exception. Human nature decides this, not intelligence — if anything, the smarter you think you are, the worse off you’ll be.
And remember: a single fire is enough to destroy a forest that took years to grow.
Newton could calculate the orbits of the heavens, but never the greed of the human heart.
I can read a gambler’s life clearly enough — yet sometimes I can’t understand why, in my own, I play such baffling hands!
Oh, to be human! Oh, this life! Let the unexpected come down on me like hail! Let it wake me! Let me feel the magnificent suffering of being alive!