Money Is Just Money, They Are Not Evil

Interesting conversation with some friends earlier this week who somehow have this perception that some money is evil. In particular, money made from investing, trading and even making a loan to others for interest is bad money. Very glad to hear the different point of view from them. It may be a surprise to many that why I have friends who think that way since I am kind of working in the financial industry. Well, many of friends are academics including these ones. Welcome to my world of academia mixed with financial industry professionals.

Odd Reasons Why Some Money Is Evil

My friends argue that money made from trading and extending all the way to the profits made in the banking industry as a whole is evil. The point of view is that since money made from these means are easy and does not contribute to the society, people involved in making money this way are doing more harm to the society than what they contribute. It is a very strong accusation against many people. It is also very judgmental without thinking deeply.

People who invest their money in businesses and those who actively trade all kinds of financial instruments have the same goal – to make a profit. The reality is that profiting from trading or investing in businesses is very hard. It takes a lot of skills and expertise to be able to make money through financial speculations. If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it, isn’t it?

Modern society is built on specialization of its workforce. Everyone contribute to the society by paying their share of the taxes. As long as the person is following the rules of the game set by the society to earn a living, no one has the right to judge how this person lives.

If success in trading is branded as evil, the same can be called out on the amount of money made by basketball stars or famous criminal lawyers.

If people working in the financial industry is branded as not contributing to the society, novelists and actors are some careers that have attracted similar judgmental comments.

Judgment Against Money and Success

The conversation brought back memories about some of the firm traders I worked with. They often struggle yet stay profitable most of the time. They are not star performers as they could not take their games to the next level. One of the reasons why they cannot achieve better performance is that they have these ideas like the money made by the famous traders are obscene and their peers in the firm who are consistently profitable are just lucky.

As oppose to focus on the reasons why someone else is doing better with their trading and pay the respect that these people deserve, these non-performing traders have very strong judgmental feelings against the more successful traders. They also have this mental picture of making a lot of money is the equivalent of being obnoxious. Combining the two judgmental thoughts, they have already hardwired their brains to not perform in trading.

You cannot hate or feel disgust of what you want to become. Your mind will simply do all kinds of funny (and not so funny) things to sabotage your conscious efforts.

Some people can teach themselves to slowly thinking otherwise once they are told that their judgmental perspective is wrong. Others, however, need training to drop their prejudice against other people in general before they can learn to separate the emotions they have associated with the more successful traders. In short, one can learn to admire and respect the trading skill of a great trader and separate the disapproval of their lifestyles or behaviours outside of trading.

To be successful in trading, you have to want to become successful in the first place. And to do that, you cannot hold the view that money is somehow evil. You must also learn to admire those who make it as successful traders because only then will you be able to pay enough attention to learn the secrets of their success.

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