The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

I learned it the hard way in March 2020.
VIX at 85, SPY bleeding 12 % a day, every model screaming “oversold.”
I bought the exact bottom—on 25× leverage—because math.
Three circuit-breakers later I was a forced seller at the actual bottom.
The market laughed, printed a V, and left me holding a margin-call postcard that read:
“Wish you were here.”

Keynes didn’t write that line to be clever.
He wrote it after watching geniuses with perfect theses get carried out on stretchers while the tape kept printing lower—day after day after bloody day.

Irrationality isn’t a glitch.
It’s the operating system.

I met a quant last year who backtested a mean-reversion system to 99.7 % confidence.
Live capital: $3.2 million.
Drawdown path: -41 % in 18 trading hours.
He called me from the parking garage at 4 a.m., voice shaking:
“It’s not supposed to gap that much.”
I sent him the Keynes quote.
He sent back a screenshot of his liquidation email.

We all carry the same delusion:
that our stop-loss is a force field,
that our risk model has met every dragon,
that the market owes us a fair fight.

It doesn’t.
It owes us nothing.
It will stay irrational until your broker’s algo decides your collateral is now its collateral.

I keep the evidence in a fireproof box:

• A 2008 Lehman badge (bought the dip).
• A 2021 AMC ticket stub at $72 (diamond hands).
• A 2025 printout of an AI future contract that wicked 38 % in eleven minutes (this time it’s different).

Same box.
New ashes.

Now I trade like a man who’s been bankrupt in spirit if not in fact:

• Position size so small the drawdown feels like a papercut.
• A printed Keynes quote taped inside every platform window.
• A rule written in the same blood-red Sharpie:
  “You are not the market’s therapist.”

Because the tape doesn’t care about your thesis.
It only cares how long you can pay the light bill while it proves you wrong.

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