I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Friday Flash, I share an epiphany or aha moment from the past week.
In his most recent newsletter, imperfectionist Oliver Burkeman writes:
Do what you want
If you’re overwhelmed by the feeling that the world is falling apart – or just overwhelmed by your to-do list, or stuck in any kind of rut – there’s a solid chance you’d benefit from reorienting your life in the direction of what you actually want to be doing with it, instead of how you think you ought to be living it.
I’ve been doing that ever since I left my AI/ML engineering career in April of 2024. It’s yet to land me in a stable place though I’ve tried many fun things, met new people, and produced many works of art.
What I want to do right now
The latest thing I want to do is to figure out who I am as a trader and investor, and use that to better manage my money. I did well with my portfolio last year — as did most people with money in the stock market — but this year will likely prove more challenging. “Beta” — what you earn by simply being in the broad market, e.g. via an S&P 500 fund or a total world stock market fund — might be negative or flat across 2026. It is so far. I’m not content to accept that.
I’m still up on the year, but barely. I have my non-retirement account in about 75% cash and the rest in positions doing well given the geopolitical chaos. I have an asset manager managing my larger retirement account, but I did direct him to sell out 20% of every position, leaving me about 30% in cash, and the rest in a diversified portfolio.
Buy-and-hold investing is recommended by many financial commentators but I learned in 2022 that it didn’t work for me. As noted in the tweet below, “trading needs to fit personality.”
Lately my main focus has been on learning to swing trade, or rather developing my own version of something along those lines, buying investments for shorter-time periods in an attempt to capture upswings, and then selling out quickly to immediately (within a month or two) capture gains. Instead of buy-and-holding a diversified portfolio, I’m instead finding investments that look good from both an extrinsic and chart-based perspective. For example, I recently established a very small position in the Investco Agriculture Commodity Strategy No K-1 ETF ($PDBA). It’s price and volume chart looks strong. And, it’s a good bet that in the coming months, we’re going to see an increase in agricultural commodity prices, due to fertilizer shortages, increases in input costs like gas or diesel.
Quinn Thompson, of the Forward Guidance podcast, explains why agricultural commodities are a screaming buy:
- Wheat, corn, sugar, soybeans and all agricultural commodities have traded well following the start of the Iran war.
- Unlike oil where developed countries have strategic reserves and the ability to restart production at any time, agricultural commodities have particular seasons dictated by weather. We are approaching the spring peak for fertilizer demand in March to May where 50-75% of annual fertilizer is applied just before or during planting. This is why it’s a problem that ~1/3 of the world’s seaborne fertilizer trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz and for individual types like Urea and Sulfur, its closer to 50%….
- Food prices tend to follow oil prices….
- There is another key element to price action and the long thesis that most aren’t connecting the dots to.
- Farm bankruptcies are accelerating as they face the most severe gap between their production costs (seeds, fertilizer and fuel) relative to market prices received for their crops (corn, soybeans, etc.)….
- The financial squeeze is severe as the volume of new farm operating loans rose nearly 40% in Q4 and over 20% in 2025. This comes at a time when total US farm operations have been in a secular decline for multiple decades. There is no relief in sight….
- The US farming industry is in a recession, full stop, and the only way out is higher prices for their agricultural production….
- So to put it all together, you have a massive supply shortage induced price spike in two key agricultural inputs (fuel and fertilizer) on the doorstep of peak spring planting season while farmers are in one of the worst agricultural recessions ever faced. Food is also not like oil where as prices go up people can fly and drive less as demand can be more elastic. It’s behind oxygen and water as the most bare necessities with inelastic demand.
In general, investing in a choppy declining market like we are seeing right now is difficult and potentially dangerous. That’s why I’m mostly in cash. But this could keep going for months or even years, if it’s anything like the oil shock and inflation run of the seventies. So I want to figure out how to trade successfully in the current environment, not just wait for smoother sailing.
Speaking of sailing, those of you old enough to have watched The Love Boat will enjoy this old Far Side cartoon.
On being a homebody
I’ve always been a homebody. I love to be at home more than anywhere else, except maybe on the ski slopes, and this last season didn’t offer good snow for that. Focusing on managing and trading my investments as my main hobby or even profession allows me to be at home all the time. What joy!
I signed up for an in-person Schwab technical analysis and options workshop scheduled for today and tomorrow in Aurora, Colorado but I decided I’ll stay home and watch the on-demand videos instead. That’s what I want to do, after all. By going in person I might meet others interested in this topic but honestly, I have enough solid relationships in my life that I’m not looking to add any more.
My inner critic says, “Anne, you need to get out of the house more.”
But Burkeman says that going against your inner critic and instead doing what you want might be exactly the right thing to do:
And if your immediate response to that idea is that you’re not in a position to do what you want; or that it would be immoral even to think in such terms, at a time like this; or that I must be blinded by privilege even to suggest it… then I’m afraid it’s even more likely you could benefit from doing what you want. Sorry. That’s just how the superego – or inner critic, or inner judge, or whatever you want to call it – works. I don’t make the rules.
He says, borrowing Freud’s terminology of the superego as inner judge, “a superego-dominated existence becomes clenched and lifeless, a life lived anxiously focused on the future, waiting to find out whether or not you made the grade.”
What is the opposite of clenched and lifeless? Relaxed and joyful, perhaps. That’s how I want to live. I may be working my way towards a situation that is exactly that. It’s not at all what I expected, to stay out of the workforce, to use my technical skills not to build software but instead in support of investing and trading and managing my money, to spend most of my days blissfully at home with my cats and dog.