There is a story about Pablo Picasso that haunts anyone trying to achieve something rare. As the legend goes, his mother told him, “If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.”
Picasso’s response was the ultimate rejection of the standard path: “Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.”
He didn’t become a “great painter.” He became a category of one. We love these stories. We idolize the singularity of the elite performer. But we rarely talk about the price of that singularity. We preach “work-life balance” and “moderation” while simultaneously worshiping men and women who treated moderation like a virus.
The uncomfortable truth is that the elite in any field are, by definition, unbalanced. You cannot reach the edges of the bell curve by staying in the middle.
The Mathematics of the Impossible: Tom Brady
Consider Tom Brady. It is easy to hate him—the Tuck Rule, Deflategate, the endless winning. But strip away the narrative and look at the cold, hard math of what he did.
There are 32 starting quarterback jobs in the NFL. To get one of those jobs, you have to beat out roughly a million high school players. Only about 7% of those play in the NCAA. Of the draft-eligible college players, only about 1.6% get drafted. Most of those who do get drafted—men who were legends in their hometowns, gods on their college campuses—never start a single game. They end up on practice squads, battered and forgotten.
Winning one Super Bowl is the statistical equivalent of a lightning strike. Winning two puts you in the Hall of Fame. Before Brady, the ceiling of human potential was considered to be four wins, a record held by Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw. That number seemed untouchable, a monument to perfection.
Brady won seven.
He didn’t just break the curve; he broke the model. And what was the cost? After achieving more than every other active quarterback combined, with nothing left to prove, he chose to blow up his marriage to a Brazilian supermodel and the mother of his children for one more season.
Was it reasonable? No. Was it necessary for who he was? Absolutely.
The Cowboy Who Ruined Country Music: Garth Brooks
Or look at Garth Brooks. We all have that friend who can sing. You probably know someone right now who plays a great guitar, maybe even toured in a band for a while. They are talented, but nobody outside of your circle has ever heard of them. We tell ourselves that fame is about looks or connections.
Then along comes a guy from a modest Oklahoma family. He isn’t the best singer; he has good range, but he’s no Pavarotti. He isn’t the best guitar player—not by a long shot. While he is a capable songwriter, his biggest smashes were often written by others.
And yet, in the 1990s, he became a force of nature. He didn’t just sell records; he moved units like they were water. According to the RIAA, he is the best-selling solo album artist in the United States, ahead of Elvis, ahead of Michael Jackson. The only act that has sold more albums than him is The Beatles.
My dad will tell you Garth Brooks ruined country music. But even the purists have to respect the ferocity of his drive. In 1996, at Fan Fair in Nashville, Garth Brooks sat down to sign autographs. He didn’t sign for two hours. He didn’t sign for four. He sat in that chair, without a break, for 23 straight hours.
Imagine the physical toll. Imagine the mental exhaustion. Imagine the moment, perhaps in the 15th hour, where a “reasonable” person would say, “I’ve done enough. They’ll understand.” He didn’t. He stayed until the last person was seen.
He, too, paid the price. He blew up a marriage on his way to the stars. But he also found the exit ramp—stepping away for years to raise his daughters before the machine ate him alive.
The Trader’s Dilemma: The 5%
The difference between us and them is that Brady and Brooks were attempting the impossible. They were trying to be the 1 in a million. Maybe closer to 1 in a billion.
As traders, we have it easier. We aren’t trying to do the impossible. We are just trying to do the unreasonable.
We are told that 95% of traders fail. That is a success rate of 1 in 20. Even if you subscribe to the bleaker statistics—that 98% fail—that is still 1 in 50. Compared to the NFL or the Billboard charts, those odds are a gift.
But to be that 1 in 50, you still have to defy human nature. When a trader takes three losses in a row, the “reasonable” voice screams: Stop. The system is broken. You are losing money. The reasonable man adapts to the pain and quits.
The elite trader views their career as a Monte Carlo simulation. This is a concept I learned by reading Taleb. In any endeavor with an element of randomness there are many possible outcomes. For example, let’s imagine your strategy produces a 55% win rate, with winners being 1.1 times larger than the losers. That sounds very predictable, but the real world of trading is messy. Yes, you may win 55 trades out of 100 over the long haul, but you may lose 3 in a row. Maybe 4. Maybe 5.
With a Monte Carlo simulation you simulate many runs. Using some sort of random number generator, you determine many paths. I coded one, but my favorite is one I built in Excel. Using a simple formula, I can input the win percentage, the percent gained on each winner, the percent lost on each loser. The first cell in the row is the starting balance. The second cell a random number, using the built in function. Then the third cell in the row is the first cell either increased or decreased appropriately, depending on the random number. Then I extended this pattern for 100 trades to the right. That is one path, one possible outcome of 100 trades. Then I copied that down 100 rows.
The last column in each row told the final story – what was the final balance? With the figures above – pretty much all the paths show growth. A few lost, but none went bust.
An unreasonable person knows that in a grid of 10,000 possibilities, three red squares in a row are just variance. They are noise. To persist through that noise requires a mindset that looks insane to the outside observer. You have to be unreasonable enough to trust the math more than your own bleeding ego.
The Price of Entry
If you are pursuing a quiet, normal life, then balance is a virtue. But if you are chasing an outlier result—whether it’s an online business that retires you or a trading system that defies the odds—accept the cost.
Accept that for a season, you will be the unreasonable man. Accept that others will look at your persistence and call it obsession.
When the world tells you that failure is certain, and the market hands you a loss, it is reasonable to give up. The successful few are those who look at the wreckage, iterate the checklist, and find a way.
Don’t lose your soul in the process. Don’t forget why you started. But do not apologize for the imbalance. It is simply the price of admission.
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. I have just spent the last thousand words arguing that I am, by definition, an unreasonable man. Consequently, treating this blog post as sound financial guidance would be a highly questionable decision on your part. Please consult a “reasonable” professional for that.
