Featured Trades: (THE HARSH REALITIES OF TRADING)
3) It's Harder Than it Looks. A recent piece at the underground website, Zero Hedge, by one 'pivotfarm' resonated with me in explaining how hard it actually is making money in the market (click here for the link). It looks deceptively easy from the outside. You buy a share, watch it go up under its own power, and sell for a profit. How hard is that? This is why the securities industry has such a long history of attracting those interested in shirking hard work, aspiring to get rich quick. If you do encounter those with new found fortunes, they usually stole it. You want to run a mile from managers touting perfect track records, as they are usually fake. The reality is a little bit harsher. The author lists the great lengths that the pros go to insure success, including endless education, iron clad self discipline, and independence of thought. He refers to New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell's insight that if you look behind the scenes, success can usually be explained by unbelievable hard work (click here for my 'Evening With Malcolm Gladwell' ). I draw these simple analogies for potential traders. Just because you like listening to music on your car radio doesn't mean that you can compose Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, reading the Sunday papers doesn't bestow on you the gift to write Tolstoy's War and Peace, and watching weekend movies doesn't turn you into Steven Spielberg.
Potential Trading Wizards?