Why trading can make you a worse person

Trading is addictive. We all know it is. More specifically, making money from trading is an addiction, and because of this addiction, people begin to stop worrying about the world around them. In fact, in some cases, they want the world to fall apart around them.

If someone has gone long on soybeans, for example, and supply suddenly rockets, they may wish for there to be a long drought in which supply suddenly falls far below the normal value. This may endanger millions of farmers’ livelihoods, but what do they care about? Their position.

It inherently lies in the fact that trading is an individual activity, and while reading Market Wizards, I have found that the author only reinforces this point by saying that if you integrate other people into your trading, you will fail. Hence, there is the competitive nature of traders.

Trading so deeply engrosses you that you do not care about the real world implications of price fluctuations, and as such, it could be said that it promotes apathy to those less fortunate. Isn’t that what we perceive as a bad person?