Wisdom on Multiple Timeframes

Last week, I wrote about wisdom and cynicism. TLDR - you can’t have both. 

Today, I’m writing about wisdom and time.

My friend Brian wrote the book on multiple timeframe technical analysis for traders. Here’s a photo of my copy…

The gist is - identify trend alignment across the long, intermediate, and short-terms in order to find the best trade ideas, manage risk, and zoom in on precise entries & exit points.

When you find trends aligned across time frames, you’ve got an actionable setup.

Time frame alignment is a powerful concept.

I love it as an approach to trading, and also as an approach for living.

If you can align life goals for the long term and the present then you’ve got actionable wisdom.

Some people sacrifice the present to plan for their future while others sacrifice their future to indulge their present.

Maybe we’ve saved a little but we really want to take a big trip with the family, so we book it and blow more than we allocated.

Or, we spend our lives saving like crazy for the future but we wind up never living for today.

This idea that we must prioritize one time frame over another is a false paradox. 

Let me explain how…

One critical difference between technical analysis on multiple timeframes and wisdom on multiple timeframes is control.

In trading, we can look for aligned setups all day long but it is up to the market to provide them so sometimes we must be patient and wait for them. As much as we would love to, we simply can not control price behavior.

In life, we can choose our path. 

We make decisions and behave in ways that increase our chances of positive outcomes. We can set our priorities and frame how we see the world, and so we are free to align our present and our future.

We don’t need to choose between sacrificing our present for our future or sacrificing our future for our present. 

That right there is the false paradox!

We can get exercise we enjoy. We don’t have to run marathons or deadlift if we don’t like it. Maybe we love tennis or cycling. We can remember what we loved to do when we were kids and do that. 

So we have fun now and improve our long-term health prospects simultaneously.

Wisdom on Multiple Time Frames Aligned!

We can decide to eat healthy delicious foods every single day, foods that we enjoy that are super high quality, but that also improve the probability that we will remain healthy longer.

Beef is delicious. Eggs are delicious. Berries are delicious. Fish is delish.

We can eat these for our long term wellbeing and prepare them with love for our enjoyment now. 

Wisdom on Multiple Time Frames Aligned!