Are All Traders Useless Morons?

No! I'm smarter than the others and can dominate the market!

The thinking probably all. But the truth is, Forex market is manipulated. Have you set your own trading strategy accordingly too ?

Yes...

There goes 3 minutes I will never get back. When it comes to finding important stories to report, I would say the media sucks... just as much - or more - than we all suck at trading.

^^^ I agree with the post above (deano)

... The answer to the question is... an overwhelming and resounding NO!

Media (and especially Bloomberg): could you have chosen a more WORTHLESS headline???

Just to be clear, traders are some of the smartest people I know.

That is specifically to differentiate between economists, fund/portfolio managers, bankers, speculators, and everything and anything in between.

When your own money is on the line, you dont f* around with it in the ways that these other guys do.

As a trader myself, normally I would expect a little more respect from the media, but Bloomberg... geeeezz, I should have known better ;D

The suckiest thing is that we're reading this news. We all suck!

As always, it is a matter of definition. If 100% return sucks - I'll be that sucker any time!

Typical Barry Ritholtz...pure fantasy mixed with negativity. First the fantasy:

"If you had picked the best stock to buy every day you could have turned $1,000 into $264 billion by mid December...."

Let's see....wouldn't that make you the richest man in the world, & achieved in less than a year?....mmmmmmh.

More fantasy:

"...That is a 26.4 billion percent return. Did you even get a 1 billion percent return? How about 1 million percent? 1000%? 100%? If you did not hit a 100% return then you did not get even 4/10 millionths of what was out there..."

100 % return would most likely put you in the top 1% of all "investors". Good "Traders" can make more than that, of course, because they trade short term.

Now the negativity:

“We Are All Useless Morons that Suck” Well, at least, Greg Harmon includes himself, and that much we could agree with! ;^D

If you're going to call all "traders" (he really means "investors") morons because of low returns (less than 100% ;^), why not start by telling us YOUR returns?

That's where the rubber meets the road, pal. Who care what everyone else's returns are?

They obviously can't tell the difference between a "trader" & an "investor" or financial "advisor"!

Move along....nothing to see here....

I gather that the author of this article is little more than a pompous idiot, accepting the premise of his article to be a truth. He emulates what is wrong in the world today; too many "haves" (he has a job which pays well, and many don't even have jobs) are self-centered and have no cares for others. In this case, without care and intelligent thought, he casts all traders as grist for the mill. And all for the lowly purpose of creating more of his worthless product to place before the public.

Yes, all markets (forex included) are manipulated. The market makers are the hub for this manipulation, always aiming to make that final push high or low so they can accumulate positions of profit by hitting stops and triggering wrong side pending orders. When was the last time a market maker hit the news as being a bad trader that went broke? Think about it. They have all the information and computer facilities to know what is where, how to go get it, and especially.....when it is the right time to do it.

Traders, most of them, lose money before they learn how to make money, before they learn about this manipulation and how to best deal with it. Staying in the game to get better at it is a monumental achievement of traders, and one that I imagine that judgmental, self-serving author could never himself accomplish.

-tah

The article is about traders and trading and the challenges and the reality of trading the unpredictable market. Yet, in the entire article, there is zero mention and almost minimal reference to this thing call "RISK".

If "RISK" is not on your mind constantly when you engage the market, I am not too sure you know your parameters. Focusing solely on the returns (outperform peers etc) as is the case in this article, without any reference to "RISK" parameters is like looking at those Billionaires and dreaming of becoming one without a clear knowledge of the struggle each of them have gone through and the risk that they have taken to reach their financial status.

Traders are paid for their risk taking (calculated risk for the good traders). Fundamentally, there is nothing more than that in trading. All the whistles and bells (and other 'distractions') you see spoken in any trading seminars and articles boil down to this eventually.

This is almost similar to gambling (as many people like to equate trader to gambler). The fundamental difference between the two lies in the trader able to calculate his risk and position himself in a risk-calculated way to exploit the odds in his favor. In gambling, the risk is defined in the game and you do not have a choice to place yourself in a favorable odds position because that place is already taken up by the casino banker. In other words, a trader can choose and only play that set of cards that seems favorable to him at the start (he can and should walk away if the set of cards dealt to him at start is bad) whereas the gambler has no choice but to play every set of cards dealt to him, including bad set of cards. That is the difference and that is why trader is not a gambler. They are operating in a whole world of difference in terms of RISK parameters. Failure to see that will make you a trader behaving like a gambler.

Arrogant prick. He knows he is a moron, but that still does not stop him from attempts at looking smarter than the rest.

He he he!

Well, said! ;^D

Good to hear from you again, Grin!

Back on thread I can't see why so many saw their arse over this article. There really are a lot of defensive posters about lately, perhaps relates to the choppy conditions we've experienced since late December. Anyhow I thought the article was a decent read, doesn't relate too much to FX trading but a bit of fun none the less and he makes some very valid points.