Why I Like The Stock Market—Reason #3
I like the stock market because it’s unlike a traditional job. For the time being, for me, I still very much have to work. So, while my investing activities happen to run parallel to my employment activities, I get, instead of some longing to discontinue the job I am not so perfectly suited for, a chance to constantly compare the one to the other. I get to make them foes while I sit back and watch. And when I do this sitting and watching I often discover that the polarity that defines any comparison I try to make between them reinforces the belief that the track that I think I am on is the correct, or better track. In other words, I like what I see.
In a traditional job, one typically has a system. You start with some function that is your set of responsibilities and you manage your activities, orchestrate your energies to accomplish those things you are tasked with. Any dynamism enters only when the responsibilities themselves change or when (from my experience) you try new directions to old destinations. You try to spice things up a bit. Besides that, so long as the responsibilities do not change by large degrees, any newness you might experience will come, at first, from your “getting good at your game.” Once you’ve done that though, things start to stiffen up. Normally, this wouldn’t be a significant problem. This should indicate that you are ready to take on those bigger responsibilities. The problem for me though, now as it has always been, is that this procedure never wants to move as fast as I do.
After that initial spasm, you’re back off to the plains. None of this is true with the stock market though. That’s why I like her so much, I do believe. It is this activity that offers me a constant exercise of the limitations of all prior acts. It is the traditional job equivalent of an endless supply of new responsibilities. Now we’re talking. And what makes things even better is that the compensation is perfectly commensurate with that escalation. You get rewarded directly and proportionately with your ability to perform. But unlike “performing” being defined strictly by a different set of responsibilities, i.e., getting rewarded for trying your hand at a new system, “performing” now becomes quite literal. Performing switches places with what we have known it to be. Now you can be part prophet. You get paid for exhibiting foresight.
And when it’s all said and done, you can enjoy appropriate pay and constant challenge. That has to be close to about the best possible outcome.