I don’t build companies anymore. I may go back someday. When I found myself with time on my hands, I decided to learn a new skill. Now. I trade gold on the financial markets.
When I first made that shift, I was terrible at it. Worse than most. Because I came in wired like an entrepreneur—obsessed with control, allergic to surrender. In business, that mindset serves you. You see what isn’t there yet, and you make it happen. You bend the world until it fits your plan.
But markets don’t bend. Gold doesn’t care about your plans. It doesn’t care who you are. The market humbles everyone eventually.
Even back when I built companies, though, I never lied to myself about the numbers. You could spin the story, but the math still had to work. That was the line between ambition and delusion.
And that’s where Donald Trump went off the rails.
Trump was never really in the real estate business. His true product was himself—the myth, the name, the attention. The buildings and casinos were just props in a lifelong campaign for validation. When your ego is the business, you can’t afford to face reality.
That’s why he’d make a terrible trader.
When the world doesn’t fit his story, he simply changes the story. When a recent jobs report came in weak, he fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and called the numbers “phony.” When intelligence briefings on the Iran strikes contradicted his claim that America had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, he dismissed the analysts and replaced them with loyalists. Each time, he traded truth for ego protection.
It’s the same reason his casinos collapsed. The Taj Mahal was financed with nearly $700 million in junk bonds at 14% interest—a structure that guaranteed failure unless fantasy-level profits rolled in. When the math didn’t work, he doubled down instead of cutting losses. That’s not risk-taking. That’s denial.
In trading, denial kills faster than bad luck. You can’t fire the chart. You can’t rebrand a losing position as “fake news.” You take the loss, you adapt, you move on.
When I started trading gold, I had to unlearn my old wiring—the instinct to fix what’s outside my control. The market doesn’t reward force; it rewards alignment. You win when you stop fighting the tape and start listening to it.
Trump never learned that lesson. He can’t. His entire existence depends on never admitting he’s wrong. He’s trapped inside the one product he can’t afford to discount: himself.
That’s why he was a bad businessman.
It’s why he’d be a disastrous trader.
And it’s why he’s a dangerous president.
Because on the world stage—where power, pride, and perception collide—his refusal to face reality doesn’t just cost him money. It costs nations time, credibility, and lives.
In the end, the markets always find the truth. So does history.
And the truth always settles the account.
Mike McCready 