It is hard to invest. We are always buying too late or selling too early.

I do it as my career so my motto is to do it for ‘Profits and Joy’. I try to get behind smart people with great memories doing simple things in meaty trends, work hard and cheer for the best outcomes. I am always going to worry, but with great meds and a great support system in place, the worrying is contained. If you can focus on one thing in your investing life to help maximize profits and joy…’contain the worrying’.

I have stopped talking to the markets and stocks. In 1999 I used to talk to CNBC and yell at my TV. That was dumb. I quit that by 2001 and CNBC for good by 2004. The TV is an idiot box on it’s best day.

I don’t blame Bernanke, the SEC, Moody’s, the FED, patent trolls or the NSA for my investing losses or mistakes. I look at these asshats the same way Jon Stewart looks at politics. Governments are as dumb as the TV that politicians hope to see themselves on! If I could game how dumb or the timing of their dumbness, I would be rich. These institutions we hate are just getting bigger, meaner, sloppier and dumber than ever…they will overreach and there will be blood, but good luck timing it.

I never thought I would be using the internet to talk about stocks and markets because the message boards of the late 90’s were crazy on their best days. I was too cynical to enjoy them for what they were.

But in 2005 I discovered blogging. Specifically Blogger ($GOOG) and WordPress inspired me to keep a journal and I chose to do so for investing. Other than ‘contain the worrying’, the next best advice I could give a budding investor would be to ‘write shit down’.

YouTube inspired me in 2006 to the point where I created Wallstrip.

The social web connected it and leveraged it all up in my eyes…a perfect storm of communication platforms, text, voice, video 24/7/365, always on, free and everywhere. Twitter inspired me to create Stocktwits and I left the luxury of CBS to give it my best effort.

It’s now almost 9 years later since I started my blog and all the same legacy media that I was sure would be disrupted is as strong and as lunatic as ever. CNBC has awful ratings, but the reach is large and the profits continue to flow to them from the easy legacy cable deals…serenity now!

The FED – it’s just waiting to print money in 3D and on a 3D printer…serenity now!

The SEC – it’s finally catching up to a few scams from the 1990’s…..serenity now!

As for my boring, mostly static stock lists that I worked on in solitude before 2005…they have never been more alive and shared and discussed as today. Tomorrow it will just multiply. I have not backtested my lists as I believe in looking forward, but I do continue to tweak, share and trust them. They were built on simple and solid principles. I believe this is my edge. I have memories and scars and shame and doubts, but its part of being an individual. The system would not work if stocks, markets and bankers had memories…every new deal would be treated as an eventual fail.

So remember:

1. Spare no expense or time to ‘contain the worrying’.

2. Keep a journal to become a better investor.

3. Keep it simple with your strategy.