24/08/2026
Sat down with one of my mentees, Daniel, and we got into something every trader needs to hear.
There are different types of businesses. Cash cow — rental properties, transportation, the tenant pays you every month, predictable. Growth business — you put the profit back in, you are playing a long game, think Amazon, think CSOT. Lifestyle business — it exists to fund how you live, not to build wealth. High risk, high reward — oil, mining, ventures where the risk is real but so is the payoff.
Trading is none of these.
Trading is a speculative business.
Speculation means you do not know what will happen. You are making an educated guess based on probability, not a guarantee based on a system that pays out monthly like a tenant.
So Daniel asked me the question everyone eventually asks — if we don’t know what will happen, how is this different from gambling?
Here is the difference. You stop gambling the moment you remove yourself from the outcome and trust a system that has been tested and proven over time. A cash cow business tells you what to expect by the end of the month. A growth business tells you not to expect anything for years. A speculative business tells you — you can do everything right and still not know if today, tomorrow, or next month brings profit.
That is not a flaw in trading. That is the nature of the category it belongs to.
The real problem is not the business. It is that most retail traders have placed trading in the wrong category inside their own mind.
You are treating a speculative business like a cash cow. Expecting Monday to Friday income like a landlord expects rent. And when it does not show up on schedule, you panic, you force trades, you sabotage what could have worked if you had just understood what kind of business you were actually in.
Know your category. Then trade like you actually understand it.