Burning Man and Silicon Valley

Dear Traders,

I am off to Burning Man, one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Black Rock City, a desert unlike any other: a vast, dried lakebed strong enough to build anything on and covered with a layer of dust soft enough to make you dusty. The sunrises are magical, where you can’t quite tell where the heavens end and our universe begins.

This is my fifth burn. Every year, Burning Man has changed me in many ways. It’s more than just a party or camping; it’s a celebration of a lifestyle and the 10 Principles. It’s supposed to be hard and challenging.

The person you’ve been following here has built a lot of Burning Man into his personality. Radical self-expression, radical self-reliance, and gifting are among the biggest influences. When I saw that the Burning Man community is all about gifting, I decided to make more of my courses, webinars, and books free as gifts to everyone. It turned out to be better for me, even in business. Self-reliance has helped me climb and survive the world’s biggest mountains, and radical inclusion has helped me form friendships with almost everyone I encounter on my journey.

For the past 15 years, Burning Man has been inextricably linked to the culture of Silicon Valley. In the mid-2010s, the wealthiest of the tech world were often spotted out on the playa, having revelatory experiences in the dust and partying together.

People often ask me why we go there to build a city for one week and spend so much time, energy, and resources. Just for a party? In 2014, Elon Musk told a reporter that Burning Man “is Silicon Valley,” adding, “If you haven’t been, you just don’t get it.” Tyler Winklevoss described his time there as “a spiritual experience.” Mark Zuckerberg helicoptered in for a day to serve grilled cheese sandwiches. In 2018, after she was indicted, Elizabeth Holmes journeyed to the desert and burned a tribute to the now-disgraced Theranos. Sam Altman gave a talk about AI at the festival in 2022.

Fun fact: the first Google Doodle was an out-of-office message on August 30, 1998, showing the founders were away in the desert that week. It was just two years after Larry Page and Serguéi Brin had built a search engine in a Stanford dorm room, and less than a week before Google would officially incorporate as a company. Google was so young then that it still had a Yahoo!-style exclamation mark as part of its logo.

For now, I camp with great friends at Discothèque Pancake, where we offer music and pancake breakfasts as our gift to the community!

Tomorrow Aiman has a Strategy & TradeBook Webinar at 5:00 pm ET.

In his webinar, Aiman will share his insights on identifying the prime moments to sell or short at the day’s high or buy at the lowest point. He will also cover different types of parabolic reversals and walk you through the criteria needed for high-reward trades with precision. Make sure to join his webinar and learn from one of the best reversal traders and refine your trading strategy.

All strategy webinars are available to Elite or Diamond members. If you like to attend these webinars and learn specific strategies that work for other traders, make sure to take advantage of our Diamond membership.

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To your success,

Andrew Aziz