There’s a study in psychology that always cracks me up. Researchers put people in front of a slot machine with a fake “stop” button. The button wasn’t wired to anything — pure placebo. But players mashed it like their life depended on it, convinced it gave them control.
Markets are full of stop buttons that don’t actually stop the machine. We love levers, dashboards, and little tricks that make us feel in control:
- Stop-loss orders (great until liquidity evaporates and you get filled at prices you didn’t imagine).
- Over-hedging (layering puts and shorts until your portfolio is more like an overstuffed closet than a strategy).
- Dashboard obsession (watching 17 monitors doesn’t give you foresight; it just increases your odds of carpal tunnel).
The truth? Control in markets is always partial. You can steer position sizing, risk tolerance, and time horizon. But you can’t steer macro shocks, regulation shifts, or the butterfly wings of global liquidity.
The irony is, the most disciplined investors don’t seek total control. They build systems that accept chaos — portfolios resilient enough that a missed button press doesn’t wreck them.
So here’s your reminder: next time you reach for the illusionary wheel, ask yourself — am I steering the car, or the slot machine?
🔗 On the psychology of control illusions
🔗 Stop-loss orders and their pitfalls
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