This may be the perfect audio clip to capture the work I’ve put in since February 27 — six weeks of back-to-back 100-hour weeks.
It started that Friday afternoon, February 27. President Trump’s plane was leaving Washington, headed for Florida — apparently without the press corps. And it hit me: he had approved a military attack against Iran.
Like many of you, since returning from the year-end holidays, I had been working diligently — in my case, improving premium publications and moving them to the new Ghost platform. My bandwidth was stretched. I was already 50% in cash, because the market had entered what I call the ‘Distribution Zone.’
But the thought of a war with Iran? That was too much. Iran is no Venezuela. Along with US-backed Israel, Iran is one of the most powerful nations in the Middle East. Its culture — one of the world’s oldest and strongest — is rooted in religion. In my mind, Iran is not a country to go to war with based on presidential bombast and bravado.
So I quickly folded my cards. I decided to spend the next month or two — what I knew would be a period of chaos — putting my affairs in order. That meant working on databases, decision systems, report creation, continuing to process the information subscribers expected, and writing what I call general-purpose articles to keep subscriber interest.
I’m not a young person at this point in my life, but I put in the work — about 600 hours in six weeks. Close friends emailed me saying things like, ‘I can’t believe you work so hard.’
I have to admit, many of those 600 hours were not the kind of work I usually enjoy — the kind I do because I love the markets. There were days of frustration, learning concepts like Python and JSON — things I have zero interest in. And fighting with AI platforms that refuse to do accurate data processing because AI loves hallucinations, calling it ‘creative support.’
But in the end, I made it. The systems are built. As soon as my associate pulls together the Ghost landing page, I’ll be a happy camper. In fact, I plan to stop right now — enjoy watching the remaining holes of the Masters golf tournament, and spend the rest of the day doing absolutely nothing.