For the past few years, I have worried about confusing favorable conditions with skill. I made that mistake myself.
A good market can flatter a weak decision. My own expensive trading experiment is the example I can explain here.
When conditions change, I want to know which parts of my work still create value.
The Trading Boom
COVID created a generation of people who believed anyone could get rich trading stocks.
WallStreetBets. Discord groups. Screenshots of gains.
The message was clear: you don't need to build anything. Just trade. Just time the market. Just follow the right people.
I know people who lost hundreds of thousands this way. They don't talk about it. Losses aren't content.
I lost $300,000 myself.
Editorial update, October 11, 2026: The original title was "The Doors Are Closing for Low-Agency People." My $300,000 loss is an author account; the underlying trading and expense records are not supplied here. "Agency" in this essay is an informal reflection on decisions, not a validated measure of someone's worth or future prospects.
Not from trading directly — from building a quant team.
Developers, algorithms, backtesting systems. Complex, technical, and honestly a little ego-driven.
"I'm not just trading, I'm building custom algorithms." Cool story. Expensive story.
We made trades. We ran models. At the end of it, I had less money and less time than when I started. The complexity didn't help. It just made the failure slower and more expensive.
Here is what I learned for myself: I prefer building a business I understand to trying to profit from a trading system I cannot justify.
It does not have to be a glamorous business. I want useful work I can understand and keep improving.
Trading put me against participants with better data, speed or capital. In my own experiment, the complexity did not produce the advantage I hoped for.
The Scam Consultants
I saw another version of this in Canada's immigration boom.
Between 2021 and 2023, millions of people came to Canada. And a whole industry popped up to "help" them — immigration consultants.
Canadian paid immigration representation is regulated. It can be provided by authorized lawyers or paralegals, Quebec notaries, and consultants in good standing with the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants. Being able to fill out a form is not the same as being authorized to give paid advice.
My encounters do not establish how prevalent dishonest practice was across that profession.
My concern was about people I met who sold services to vulnerable clients, made promises I could not verify and quoted $40,000-$50,000 per client. That is my account of those encounters, not a finding that an entire profession is dishonest.
Editorial update, October 11, 2026: The quoted $40,000-$50,000 fees are from my account of encounters; contracts, invoices, disciplinary decisions and program-specific approval data are unavailable here. They do not establish the prevalence of misconduct. IRCC explains authorized paid representatives and states that using a representative does not guarantee approval.
I cannot support the claim that government approved almost everyone from the evidence in this essay. Approval outcomes depend on the program and application, not merely the surrounding boom.
Changes in policy can make an application route harder. The original broad claims about lawsuits, disbarments and collapsing practices are not backed by identified cases here.
Changing conditions do not prove that every adviser who struggles was incompetent all along. The question is what work and promises can actually be defended.
The Pattern
The useful connection for me is the risk of mistaking a favorable market for a durable advantage. My own loss is evidence about my decision, not a population-wide diagnosis.
A boom can make it easy to look like an expert before the quality of the work is tested.
That can tempt someone to mistake the tide for their own swimming ability. It does not make every participant deceptive.
Then the tide goes out.
I see this pattern everywhere now:
- Polymarket — "I made $50K predicting elections." Cool. How's your model doing when the obvious bets are gone?
- House flipping — worked when rates were low and inventory was tight. Now?
- Sports betting — the new "anyone can do it." Same story, different wrapper.
- Dropshipping, Amazon FBA, crypto arbitrage — every year there's a new version of "get rich without being good at anything."
That is the risk I am trying to notice: benefiting from temporary conditions while overestimating my own skill. It is not a formula that describes everyone in those markets.
Why the Doors Are Closing
Two things are happening at once.
First, conditions can change.
Rates, immigration policies and financing conditions move on different timelines. My January concern is not a current measurement that easy money has ended everywhere.
Second, AI changes some task costs.
AI can assist with forms and basic research. That does not establish that a professional role is obsolete or that a generated answer meets its legal and quality obligations.
A fast output is not proof that the job is done correctly, or that the worker has no future.
AI filling out a form does not establish eligibility or authorize paid immigration advice.
The traders who followed Discord signals? AI can parse signals faster.
The middlemen who existed because information was hard to find? Information isn't hard to find anymore.
Luck can help a decision succeed. I want to know what remains when that favorable condition changes.
What Survives
High agency.
The ability to figure things out when the playbook doesn't exist.
The ability to adapt when conditions change.
The ability to create value that isn't dependent on a temporary market inefficiency.
Adaptation and useful work can improve a business's options. They do not guarantee surviving a downturn.
The work still needs customers, resources and circumstances in which it can succeed.
This isn't a "mindset" thing. It's a capability thing.
Can you solve problems that don't have clear answers?
Can you build something when no one's handing you a template?
Can you keep going when the market stops rewarding mediocrity?
Those are useful questions to explore, not a test that guarantees you will be fine.
Difficulty with those questions is a reason to examine support and constraints, not a verdict that the doors are closing on you.
The Honest Question
I ask myself this regularly: Am I actually good at this, or am I just in a good market?
It's an uncomfortable question. Most people don't ask it because the answer might be "you're not that good, you're just lucky."
But the people who ask it — and answer honestly — are the ones who prepare for when luck runs out.
I've been lucky. I've also been unlucky. I've lost $300K on a quant team that produced nothing. I've made money on businesses that worked despite my mistakes.
The difference now is that I try to examine which parts came from my work and which came from the market.
I can still confuse luck with skill. That is why I want evidence of what my work contributes instead of relying on confidence.
The question I want to keep asking is what I can defend about the decision when conditions change.