Matt Clinton

Founder, Seneca Analytics & Seneca Trading Academy

For most traders, the journey begins with the dream of traveling the world on a luxury yacht, making money trading stocks while laying on a hammock drinking cocktails. My story is the opposite, my journey to becoming a trader started on a hammock, at the back of a yacht, drinking a cocktail.

Given my experiences, I could wow with stories about the things that I saw whilst sailing across the South Atlantic ocean or the magic I experienced while exploring the entire length of the South and East African coastlines. I could tell you what it felt like to show a 6-year-old rural Tanzanian boy a picture that I had taken of him, only to realize he was seeing himself for the first time. I could write about the mixture of confusion and fear when being boarded in Northern Mozambique by a group of men wielding rusty AK47’s and zero comprehension of the English language. Or about the 3 separate occasions along this journey when I genuinely feared for my life, the above not being one of them.

I’m sure all of these would make for entertaining reading but I don’t want to waste your time. Here’s some advice, instead of reading about those things just go out and do them. It’s easier than you think and the story will be far better if it's your own. But be forewarned, if you are looking to escape your current reality in the hopes of finding nirvana on the other side I can tell you first hand that you're looking in the wrong place. To paraphrase Seneca, my favorite Stoic philosopher - "You won’t find happiness on those distant shores, dear friend, because you will still be the same person you were when you left.” 

Early on in my travels, I landed a job that involved sailing from Cape Town to the Caribbean on a brand new 44ft Catamaran. 39 days of sunshine, fresh sea air, and the freshest fish imaginable. A once in a lifetime adventure and a dream job by anyone’s standards. But after about a week at sea, once the initial excitement had worn off, I found myself hopelessly depressed.

To explain, let me tell you who I was when I left. I spent the first 25 years of my life living a sheltered existence 6 hours from the nearest beach. I had started my own business at the age of 21 and by my 23rd birthday had managed to grow it to a respectable size before landing what promised to be a game-changing contract. After 7 months of mind-numbing work in the pursuit of riches, I was approaching the payday of a 7 figure project which was sure to earn me the title of ‘Young Success’ as well as the deposit for my very own home. I had become best friends with a girl that I had convinced myself to be my soul mate and had a wider group of friends which would better be described as family.  Everything was on track and I was, at last, on the precipice of happiness. 

Fast forward, for what felt like 10 minutes, to me repeatedly punching the steering wheel of my (the bank’s) car with tears running down my face and the unique feeling of hopelessness reserved only for the entrepreneur seized by the dark, futureless sinkhole of debt-without-income. After many empty promises of imminent payment by my client, I had arrived at their offices only to discover empty desks, a rental agreement found to be signed under a false name, and no possible way of tracking them. The title of ‘Young Success' had turned to ‘Complete And Utter Failure’ and, to top it all off, the girl I had fallen so deeply in love with had decided my other best friend was a better fit for her. My life was well and truly fucked. 

Victim mentality took hold and I spent the next 6-months, or 2 years - I can’t really remember because time, along with everything else, had lost all meaning - laying on the couch either escaping into multiple reruns of Top Gear, posting song lyrics on Facebook or begging the universe to send an out of control bus through my mothers living room wall, ending the vapid nothingness that had become my existence. 

To be clear, at that point I wasn’t sad. I wished I was sad. I was numb. It had been many months since I had felt anything at all. I can tell you with complete sincerity that I no longer wanted to live but was too selfless to kill myself. It would take the next 5 years for me to realize that, back then, I never actually deserved the success or the girl, and that losing everything was the best thing that ever happened to me. 

This experience would be the catalyst behind not only a journey to different corners of the world but, more importantly, to the different corners of my mind. It would give me a taste of freedom that would eventually lead me to the weird and wonderful world of the global markets. And, eventually, it would teach me four key life lessons:

1. Mastering a skill, like trading, is one of the hardest and most foundational keys to a happy life.

2. The journey to mastery is more about the life lessons that it brings than the acquisition of the skill itself.

3. That the purpose of life is to share what we learn along the way.

4. All of the negative things that have and will happen to us have a profound seed of beauty in them, but it is up to us to nurture that seed and help it grow - true power lies in taking complete responsibility for the circumstances of our lives.

That, I hope, is a journey worth writing about.