Trading hamster bites the dust

There’s no shortage of serious news stories at the moment, and I’m afraid we’re going to look at one more: the sad passing of Mr Goxx, the cryptocurrency-trading hamster, who died due to unknown causes last week.

Mr Goxx, real name Max, began trading in June after his owners joked that he could make smarter investing decisions than the average crypto buyer.

Goxx worked from home, buying and selling digital currencies from his fully furnished, state-of-the-art office in an undisclosed location in Germany.

The tiny trader would first run on a wheel to pick which one of some 30 digital currencies to trade. After selection he would run through a 'buy' or 'sell' tunnel that triggered a trade movement.

Goxx rose to fame when its bitcoin portfolio gained 24% in a single day, beating the S&P 500 and Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway over the same period.

What does this show? That in markets brimming with volatility, even furry traders can get rich (sometimes).

The problem is that life isn’t a small snapshot like this.

If you’re going to live until age 2, then the highs, lows, risks, wins, exhilaration, thrills and spills of investing in crypto don’t matter. Mr Goxx ended his financial career on a high.

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But when you’re a human, aiming to retire at a specific window, the rules are a bit different.

If we re-run the hamster experiment a 100 times, not many would break even, never mind beat Warren B.

And that’s the difference. Life isn’t about the snapshot or being the lucky fool, it’s having a plan locked in that’ll hit the mark if you ran it 100 times, not just 4. Maybe that’s the message the crypto punters are missing?