# What a 35-Year-Old Me Wants to Tell 28-Year-Old Me

**Be More Daring**

Have the courage to walk in the direction you want to go. As long as you can convince yourself, don't worry about external judgment and commentary.

I graduated with a PhD in engineering at 28. My senior classmates went to the US for academia, returned to China for academia, joined industry, pivoted to coding or AI. Only I completely switched careers to pursue finance and stock trading.

Looking back years later, I realized it wasn't coincidence but the inevitable result of personality. I'm an INTP. On Zhihu's INTP career planning threads, they're all filled with traders and speculators. We're smart and lazy—we won't waste a single unnecessary ounce of effort. So work only involves things 100% related to making money.

I'm a lazy learner who learned slowly. It took three or four years to master the technology of making money. I went through one bankruptcy before developing the right mindset. Now I only manage capital for others, not risking my own money.

Using your own money for concentrated trading is reckless behavior. A trader's risk tolerance differs from a capitalist's. Managing hundreds of millions or billions? That's just a number—I can treat it purely as science. But if it's my own money, I'd be up at midnight watching it. How could I have any brainpower to work properly the next day?

So don't do things you're not good at. Integrate resources—everyone does what they're best at and fight collectively.

These past years my life has been exciting and fulfilling. I haven't wasted my time on earth. I'm proud of the bold choice I made at 28.

What I want to convey: I made this career choice by not discussing it—I just did it. Never discuss major decisions; discussing only leads to disaster.

My father is a civil servant. To him, being a civil servant is the best career in the world. He constantly urged me to take the civil service exam. Every call: "You're already 35, if you don't take it now, you'll miss your chance." I never discussed it with him—I just switched careers directly. Ask me how it went, and everything went smoothly.

My aunt, uncle, and younger sister were all worried sick, fearing I'd be laid off, unemployed, unable to find work, starving on the streets. My uncle was heartbroken, hugging my father while drinking, saying: "This kid really ruined a good hand of cards. 985 undergrad, US PhD, couldn't pass the civil service exam, didn't make it as a university professor. Like driftwood without roots, just muddling through in private enterprises, didn't even start a family."

If I had breathed a word to my uncle back then, I wouldn't be where I am now.

People are different. Believe in your choices. Especially when your choice differs from most people's—be even more resolute. Because the world's nature is: most people lose, a small portion wins.

Everyone thinks they're not in a casino, but everyone is in one. Over five thousand years of human development, here we are with 6 billion people, and some still starve, some are forced to sell their bodies. Is it inadequate productive capacity? Capacity has always been sufficient. It's just that players have different skill levels.

20% of players harvest 80% as crops. No one in the world gambles not; some are just better at gambling than others.

And as a Chinese person, really don't carry ideological stamps, thinking "I can only do this, I can't touch that." Nonsense. China is vast—whatever you do, you'll find plenty of like-minded people everywhere, from all corners. Just boldly go.

Never limit yourself to your family or let elders' decisions determine yours. They're just a smaller version of Laos.

Also, AI significantly boosts work efficiency—use it more. Cursor, Claude, Codex—collectively called 3C, pick any one. We're in an AI revolution, so learn to use AI.

Stock trading differs from most industries: no textbooks, massive information asymmetry. Ordinary people struggle to enter. Information asymmetry is how the world should be. The past thirty years of test-prep education created an illusion: that all necessary conditions are given during exams; we just rearrange them.

The real world never works that way. Different problem-solvers face different conditions. Ordinary traders won't research high-frequency trading, won't calculate fee-inclusive fluctuations, won't categorize user behavior—why? They lack access to this information. So they only solve from "what I have" rather than "what's the right answer."

The correct approach is: first ignore what you have, build the strategy, then find corresponding resources. Test-prep education can't cultivate this ability.

AI is the encyclopedia. Trading strategies barely get discussed; discussion just becomes mystical things like Chan theory, turtle trading—ridiculous. AI tells you: trading is a science. There are 6 immutable alpha sources; 2 face intense competition. In coming times, AI will drastically change trading tools. Programmed trading difficulty keeps dropping. More traders will use AI. Many purely statistical strategies face obsolescence.

Finally, one sentence for 28-year-old me:

Don't fear choosing wrong; fear not daring to choose. Don't fear loneliness; fear following the crowd. Don't fear slowness; fear staying put. Life isn't an exam; there's no standard answer. You only need to answer to yourself.