(Mis)Information in the Mainstream and FX Media

[Jim]

One of the BBC's business reporters has tried out a trading simulator recently. Here's the article he wrote about his experience, posted on the BBC website earlier today:

Market trading: How hard can it be?

Here's some selected quotes from his article, and my take on them:

Market traders have to be good on the psychological side

True

You need to be someone who can accept that you aren't going to make money every day, and not let the result of one trade affect your decision-making on the next.

True

Traders have to be on top of new economic data or other news releases, and how the markets could react.

False - Except in the sense that as a newbie short term trader it's a good idea to be flat when the news is released.

You need to know about politics, economics, even the weather.

False

Markets are often irrational. In real life, things don't happen as they say they should do in text books.

True

If you are an intra-day trader, you earn every pound you make, because you go through such a roller coaster psychologically.

False - If you're using a system you have confidence in, especially if it's automated!

It's really important to be humble. As soon as you think you're untouchable, the market will take you down.

True

[Mintaka]

Especially the two skills are very, very important: to be humble and to be very patience. I think these two skills occur rarely by humans, in general. Most of humans are selfish, and selfish people are not humble! That explains why they are so many losers and so few winners.

[Jim]

Hi Mintaka,

Especially the two skills are very, very important: to be humble and to be very patience.

Whilst this is true, you might consider tempering your humility in the face of the market with a certain arrogance in the face of propaganda from the forex industry and others. I've added another quotation that touches on this aspect of trading to our selection of favourite quotes about becoming a better trader.

Jim

[Mintaka]

Jim, your quotation is excellent. I knew it for a long time but I have never spotted even a tiny suggestion about being arrogant! It is more about not trusting anybody and anything what I call wisdom. And I am not talking about being paranoid but being wise. If you have to trust somebody than better trust yourself at the end. You can only be disappointed in yourself. In case you are addicted to blaming sth on sb it will make very simple for you, you only have yourself to blame.
Being sceptical is very sensible but as soon as you start to believe that you are superior to everybody else you become a dickhead. Some humans are very proud about being a dickhead.

[Jim]

Hi Mintaka,

Jim, your quotation is excellent. I knew it for a long time but I have never spotted even a tiny suggestion about being arrogant!

OK - I'll rephrase things slightly. sed -i "s/a certain arrogance/wisdom/g"

You might consider tempering your humility in the face of the market with wisdom in the face of propaganda from the forex industry and others.

Cheers,

Jim