Confessions Of An ADHD Trader - The FOMO Files

We have all at one time or another experienced the Fear Of Missing Out or FOMO as it is more commonly referred to, and you don't even have to trade in crypto to go through the emotion of FOMO it just helps.

It is easy to think of FOMO as a simple single thing you feel when you could have got something but now the opportunity has seemingly gone and it hurts.

Maybe you were wanting to buy that TV in the Black Friday sales, but you didn't get paid till a week later and now its back up to $500 and you could have got it for $150 if only you'd had the money at the right time.

Or perhaps there was a crypto that someone told you about, or you researched yourself and made a mental note to buy some. Then something happens and for whatever reason you don't make the purchase, next thing you know the coin is trending on Twitter and there are thousands of excited tweets from people who have greatly benefitted from the pump.

FOMO.

The feeling is made much worse if you, like me, have any kind of Attention Deficit tendencies. For a person with ADHD life is one long spiralling series of FOMO incidents.

The very nature of my type of ADD means that I can hyper focus on a task for a given amount of time, and then, poof! It's gone, and I'm onto the next thing.

When the next thing is another writing project or DIY job around the house, FOMO doesn't really come into it. That simply takes the form of later regret for not finishing a task.

However when the next thing is another crypto or NFT, then FOMO hits hard, because you're reminded of your lack of focus by the fact that the bloody thing is now mooning and everyone who bought in at the right time is making like a bandit.

The FUD/FOMO Conjecture

Why is FOMO bad? Because it leads to Fear Uncertainty & Doubt FUD.

So why is FUD bad?

Because it will lead to you buying and selling crypto like a maniac. You'll become a paper-handed wreck, buying something for a dollar one minute and selling it for fifty cents the next.

So how do you avoid this self destructive spiral that will see you frittering away your cash on meme coins and rugged NFTs?

First we have to realise why we're Fudding or Fomoing, after that we can see what particular flavour of FUD or FOMO we're ingesting.

Tilt FOMO

In poker it is said that when somebody makes a string of insanely bad bets, they are on tilt.

Tilt doesn't just happen out of the blue, it is usually triggered when a player is bluffed out of a large pot of money. Say for instance they have two Kings and there is an Ace on the deck. Their opponent, through their cunning and guile make the player think that they have the other Ace.

The player folds, and the opponent smiles and shows him that they were bluffing all the time! This triggers tilt mode and the player will start making decisions that steadily get worse and worse, until they have lost all of their money.

If you average out the human race, you'll find that we are naturally cautious. Most people do not gamble, the majority of us do not trade stocks, shares or crypto.

We see examples of this natural caution when the average person in the street finally starts noticing all those Bitcoin ads and asks one of their crypto friends how to buy some.

The friend then goes onto buy some Bitcoin and is very happy when they see it go up in value. Then, even though you've warned them that Bitcoin and crypto in general can have really massive swings in a single day, and not to panic if they wake up and Bitcoin is ten or twenty percent less than the day before, your friend still panics.

I've had it, and if you're reading this and into crypto, I'm sure you're sitting there nodding your head in agreement.

One particular friend I'm thinking about bought some Bitcoin and Ether just around when the 2018 bull run came to an end and he just couldn't handle it. My friend ended up selling for around a 30% loss even though I told him he should just leave it, as the long term prospects for Bitcoin were good.

But no, he Fudded and sold. Now of course, Bitcoin is roughly six times higher than when he sold.

As far as my friend's concerned it's no drama and he will never buy crypto again because he is built like most people, he is extremely adverse to risk.

However to someone like myself, and maybe you as well, seeing a crypto bounce back higher than when we sold it, is like a red FOMO rag to a bull.

Because when you sell after a crypto drops rapidly and you then watch it bounce back up, you are now primed to think you have been too cautious. You tell yourself that if you had just left your Bitcoin alone you would have several hundred thousand dollars worth by now.

Which of course is true.

This galling fact, like the poker player who has been bluffed, triggers off your tilt FOMO and thus you find something really risky, either something that is way overpriced or a clearly crappy project and throw loads of money into that, only to see it fall deeper and deeper into the red.

Essentially, you got tilted.

You Got Burned FOMO

I remember buying a coin called Einsteinium, two of them for $160 each and I kid you not, the only reason for getting that coin was because of my admiration for Albert Einstein. Go figure.

Anyway, predictably the coin turned out to be a piece of dung that had been lightly sprayed with the cheap gold glitter spray you get from the pound shop (thrift store). It's not even good spray, it's more brown than gold, but somehow you missed that at the time and picked it up anyway.

So over the course of three weeks I sat there and watched Einsteinium steadily drop to zero.

Each day the coin was worth a little less and I would tell myself a little lie, that it was going to go back up and ultimately be worth thousands.

Then one day I logged into my Bittrex account and Einsteinium had been delisted.

BURNED!

This scenario is the exact opposite of tilt FOMO. In that instance you lost money because you were too cautious, in this case it was over zealousness that led to you losing out.

So now when the next thing that sounds a bit gimmicky comes out, you studiously ignore it.

Then suddenly you see that stupid meme coin trying to twine you out of your hard earned cash, is now,

GOING TO THE FUCKING MOON!

What?

Why didn't you buy some of that Shiba Inu or Magic Drug Doge or whatever it was?

Now you have YGB FOMO, so when the next silly meme coin comes out, you buy billions of the fuckers. Because there is no way on this green Earth, that you're going to miss out again.

NO WAY!!

Trending FOMO

This one is probably the easiest for anyone either in, or outside the crypto world to understand.

Trending FOMO triggers the feeling in us that we just don't want to miss out on the thing that everyone seems to be getting into at the moment.

This is concentrated liquid FOMO, distilled down to its purest form.

In normal folk trending FOMO may manifest itself in a very different way.

Perhaps you know someone who split up with a partner, claiming they were completely unsuitable. Then that person sees the ex with someone else and before you know it they're back together again going through the same destructive routine that split them up in the first place!

This is trending FOMO.

A toddler gets bored of its favourite toy, then sees another kid come and be absolutely mesmerised by the little fluffy thing.

Now the toddler screams the house down until he gets it back.

'Come on, you have to share little Timmy.'

That's trending FOMO.

NFTs anyone?

Conclusion: No FOMO No Go

The irony is of course, that FOMO drives the gambler forward.

There are so many good things that I wouldn't have done in my life if it wasn't for FOMO I'd acquired in some way or another.

In fact the night me and my wife finally got together, another guy had been talking to her all night and I'd been trying to get in there with her.

After a while she stopped talking to the guy (she told me later he was trying to chat her up) and when I saw her on the dancefloor my FOMO kicked in big time and I just found myself going towards her and the rest as they say, is history.

So in the future when you feel your FOMO levels rise, try and identify why you're feeling it, examine and if necessary, embrace it.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU EXPERIENCED FOMO? WHAT WAS THE WORST CASE OF FOMO YOU'VE EVER HAD AND WHAT DID IT CAUSE YOU TO DO?

AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!