Reflections of Day Trading

Today I made a little over $250 day trading. This made me realize how my perception of money has been changed over the course of my life. When I was in junior high and high school I measured how expensive things were by how many weeks worth of lunch money it took to buy a video game, when I was working the 8-5 and sometimes six I judged prices by how many hours of work it took to pay them.

Now that I'm day trading I judge how expensive things are by how much money they're going to cost me in the long run. Take for example a typical weekend outing: Arcade, $20, a couple beers, take on another $10, food, that's another $10, gas, that's about $5. So, we have a typical night out costing around $45, for the sake of this post we'll round to $50.

Assuming I keep up my 25% a month return (unlikely) that means my 50 dollar outing will have cost me about $450 bucks by next tax season. When I see figures like these in print or think about them it makes me want to penny pinch and scrouge my way out of things like wedding shower gifts and rent money. But then I remember life isn't worth living if you don't spend a dime of your money on things you want.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is "in the long run, we are all dead."

Yes, I'm a fan of Keynesian economics...to a certain extent.