gosu

Where have I gotten personal? I have no problem with Rande and if my posts gain him more clients, that would hardly displease me. His touting his services here makes this site more fun to visit. I do recognize he has to put food on the table and a wife to support, and we all know he's incapable of extracting what he needs from the market. Of course I don't give him a free pass for saying he doesn't trade. That's the whole point! Most trading vendors have to tap dance around actual trading performance questions and he has found a way to hold himself out as a trading guru without getting such questions from people like you. I find that quite ingenious to be honest. With regard to asking questions to further the discussion, maybe you haven't noticed that I have been asking questions. They all relate to the statements he makes about how to trade. Usually my questions go unanswered, I suppose for the reason he has no actual experience to draw from and has not thought through carefully the drivel he puts forth about trading. This is a message board. If you can't handle needling someone about such things here, then you've got problems. In any case, you are mistaken if you think I am here to gain "credibility" or save people from gurus. If my posts are too much for your sensitivities, the solution is to put me on ignore, which is the same advice I gave to zdo. To help in that regard, I do say upfront that my posts are bullshit so you won't be missing anything by not reading them.

Amigo, I hope for your sake you were in a drunken stupor when you wrote that rambling pile of stink that you won't remember when you sober up. If you actually believe what you wrote, you will be chasing your tail for a long while.

I commend you for picking the right person to man the punch bowl. His enthusiasm for your teachings is obvious and even before he began your course he was recommending it to others. "He seemed a good prospect" indeed. "Killing Rande" is something your Kool Aid stirrer made up. I do not think I am "killing" you or even bashing you by any means. Let me know which of my questions that I posed to you were "value judgments of [your] being" and I'll be sure to retract them and apologize. The truth is I do not know you from Adam. For all I know you are probably a good husband, father, member of your church, etc. None of that is relevant to anything here. You hold yourself out as a guru of trading. I think you know a lot about your field but I know you know little about trading. What you post about trading is bullshit in my opinion. Nothing wrong with that. This is the internet; we are all free to bullshit as much as we like. I like to bullshit about trading too. Usually after a day of trading it helps me unwind a bit. I find it better to bullshit with other bullshitters. Sometimes that looks like "killing" to a person who is protective of your guru status. Nothing personal.

When I quote the person in my post, you can take that to mean that my question refers to what the person said in his post. You've been on this site a lot longer than I have so I'm sure you know that's how it works. Thus, I'm not sure if you're splitting hairs or just careless in your reading. I intend the meaning of "self-awareness" to be the same as the meaning of "awareness of self" in the post I quoted. The exact quote is "It is the lack of awareness of self that gets traders in trouble." If it helps you, just substitute "awareness of self" for "self-awareness" in my questions.

No one is killing Rande here. You need to step away from being his lap dog to see that though. Thanks for your suggestion to start another thread, but I'm not here to attract an audience and I don't care enough about what's going on here to do that. Go back to stirring the KOOL-aid, you're doing fine.

How much self-awareness does a person need to avoid trouble in the markets? If a person knows all about orphans, rulers and warriors, and whether or not they are in shadow form, does it mean he has self-awareness? More to the point, can a person extract from the markets without self-awareness? In any case, I like how you admit that your 4-week course is too short and lacks "a powerful tool" you use only with your individual clients. I think that is called the "upsell" in marketing parlance. I'm sure if you offered it to zdo for free he would become your bosom buddy for life, or at least your ultimate shill. The "pmai" is it? To awaken the inner heroes? I think a pack of Yu Gi Oh cards does the same. I see the kids having a lot of fun with them after school at the local McDonald's.

Stevie that's about the most sensible thing I've read from your posts. It almost makes up for your calling Corzine a "winner" for blowing up MF Global.

What do you think they feared that they were disabled? Maybe they just liked to gamble and got a thrill out of it.

No, I would not characterize it as "deer in the headlights" type fear because a few of these people met their margin calls so they could stay with their position. More likely, it was ignorance combined with a lack of fear - a deadly combination.

LOL...Winners do not run a company into the ground by taking outsized bets in an attempt to turn it into something else. You are right about it not being too big to fail, but it's plain the idea was to eventually get the company into too big to fail territory, which is the obvious strategy now for any large financial institution. No, he didn't elect himself to be CEO, just like he didn't elect himself to be governor of New Jersey, just like Geithner didn't elect himself to be president of the NY Fed and now Treasury Secretary, which is the position Corzine seemed to be headed for until this blow up. None of these guys "elect" themselves for their positions because that's not how the game works. Not even dictators "elect" themselves for their positions. They have to play the game. It's called cronyism.

It is very fortunate this guy was not put in charge of running a country or a state where he could have really done some serious . . . oh, wait, never mind.

By your definition of "value investing," the public or people who buy stock for an IRA are not value investing. People who need IRAs know shit about the value of a business they think they are buying into much less pay lower for it. Despite what is taught in high school classrooms that shares of a public company represent partial ownership in its blah blah blah, unless you own enough shares to control or influence control, stock in a public company is a speculative instrument.

I share your viewpoint that fear or uneasiness can actually be useful in trading. With regard to impulse trades, I put this in the category of deciding to take action without going through the preceding steps of gathering a complete data set and then analyzing it. Often it is an action based off one indication and amounts to nothing more than a hunch. I do not dismiss hunches but I've found it is better to follow the routine of gathering data and analyzing and only then deciding and taking action. In any case, perhaps this is beyond the scope of this thread as dealing with fear in trading seems to be the primary focus. I wonder, however, if any minds would be changed if people who actually trade came forward and stated that fear is not the primary culprit of their losses? I've witnessed a few blow outs and I can report that not one of the traders showed any fear; in fact it was completely the opposite, as they were very calm while holding onto losing trades day after day until the margin call arrived. One guy I remember seemed to just give up and resigned himself to either get the margin call or be proven correct on the trade. He just sat in front of his screens day after day calmly watching his position without taking any action. I think a bit of fear would have helped him take the loss.

Fear is just not the overriding emotion in trading that it's made out to be in this thread. How can "fear of pulling the trigger" enter the mind of a person who has experienced pulling the trigger 10,000 times? The two states of mind to avoid are: (1) thinking oneself a genius, which leads to usurping the market's role; and (2) complacency, which leads to inattention and lack of diligence when action is required. Both states of mind can lead to longer-duration losses that really do a lot of damage to a trader's account and mental health.

Hi Rande, you did guess right that my prior career was as an attorney, but not as a prosecutor or even as a litigator. I have never cross examined anyone or taken part in any trial. I spent most of my time at my desk in a fancy office making rich multinationals even richer by gaming the tax code. Regardless, I do know how to think and read critically. Moreover, I value truth and knowing very much, far more than money, and perhaps that is why I persisted in trading during the difficult times. If you feel yourself on the heat seat because of my questions, it is because you have put yourself there. You encouraged me to ask. No doubt you know that my questions are not typical of the ones you encounter from your customers. I do know just a little bit about discretionary trading. Regarding your father's history, I have no comments about that and frankly consider it irrelevant to anything I asked. You are the one who brought it up and now dishonestly attribute to me the view that your parents had a good time. I do not care to get caught up in your drama. If you want to discuss trading, then discuss trading. However, don't expect softball questions from a person who has traveled a much different path--one of actual trading--from the one you are selling as an expert of something other than trading. If you can't take the heat, don't invite it.

Because of MF Global's bankruptcy, volume is abnormally low. CNBC reporting traders getting locked out of their accounts. Feels like the day before a major holiday. Looks like I'll be going out for a nice long breakfast at Hof's Hut.

Hi Rande, after reading your reply 3 times I still don't know if you were responsive to my questions. Regarding my first question, it seems to me you are saying that trading is unique in that self-deception is much more rooted out than in other activities because in trading there is a lot of pain associated with self-delusion. I infer the pain you focus on is from the loss of money. My question was, what if the money part were removed from trading? Would this make it too different from the real thing to be considered trading? Then let's say we call it an arcade video game played just for fun and name it "Follow the Leader." The game comes with no instructions; yet it's a popular game and there are lots of people playing it. However, you see that almost all of them suck. Even so, do you think someone can learn to get really good at it without delving into all the emotional baggage he may be carrying from outside the arcade? If your answer is "yes" then there's nothing unique about learning how to get good at the game of Follow the Leader. Again, this leaves aside the question of whether the removal of the money aspect makes the game too far removed from the real thing. With regard to my second question, you went into psychoanalyzing your dad you portray as a gambler who lacked "internal discipline," whatever that means. You say he "blew" $500,000 (in 1945 money) on "euphoric high living." I don't know what you mean by "euphoric high living," and I don't see what's so bad about living large if one can afford to if that's what you meant, but there is obvious resentment on your part. In any case, that's all interesting but not responsive to what I was asking. My question was, do you think there are people who call themselves "traders" and describe what they are doing as "trading" who are in fact just gambling? And by "gambling" I don't mean your definition of a "real addiction to euphoria" but just the simple case of someone who doesn't play with much knowledge or skill and expects to win in a skill game. The analogy I used was poker. The fact that you turned away a "professional gambler" (whatever that means) because you believed he couldn't tell the difference between gambling and trading tells me that you do see a distinction between the two. So let's just take that additional step and consider the people who call themselves "traders" or "professional traders" and whether they are indeed just gambling regardless of what they call themselves. How can you tell that the "traders" in your course aren't just merely gambling (showing little skill or knowledge about the game), which would explain much of the failure they've experienced?

Why is trading unique in your OPINION? And I do emphasize the opinion part. Is it because of the money component? If so, then would your opinion change were only prizes or bragging rights involved, like say for a video game high score? As a kid I grew up in the golden age of arcades and spent a large part of my teen years playing video games. I've traded electronically for almost 13 years now and I can't think of a better way of describing it than as a video game. The point is I don't think learning to trade is that much different than learning other things that require knowledge, skill, and experience. Are you sure the world of pain and suffering you are seeing is unique to trading? Because it sure sounds like you are describing the domain of GAMBLING. Do you acknowledge that there are people who call themselves "traders" and describe what they do as "trading" but really they are just gambling in the markets? Would your current beliefs about the efficacy of your approach be the same if the people taking your course were failed poker players? Would you agree that even though poker has a skill component, most people are unsuited to pursue it full-time and are purely gambling?

I appreciate that you appreciate my questions. I posted them here rather than in the other thread to avoid distracting actual course participants who want to discuss what they are learning. Regarding your reply to question 1, I do not know how you might observe this. I thought perhaps you took a survey or a lot of your customers approached you with this complaint. I was prepared to ask a follow up question which now has no point. Regarding question 2, your reply is fair enough. I share your viewpoint that breathing and relaxing are important. My point was that they don't address underlying causes and you evidently believe that as well. As you stated, you will get to what you see as the causes soon enough.

You lost me. I'm not aware I was offering advice. From your other thread: A couple of questions for the professional advice giver: 1. How does a person who doesn't trade know "in trading, what we have avoided so well comes to stalk us"? What is the basis for this statement? It is obviously not from your own experience. 2. Breathing and relaxation while trading are well and good. But aren't the problems of not breathing and not relaxing mere symptoms and not causes of poor performance? Why is the person not breathing and not relaxing? Could it be because his emotions are telling him he is unsure what's going on?

Rande, thanks for your concern. But really it's not necessary. I like to keep moving forward. Avoiding side trips is important in that regard. In any case, I am not building your world. I merely made a comment regarding your statement that your course was "zero risk" to take because it was free, that it reminded me of unsound advice I had heard. Consider it just my opinion; my opinion cannot build anything.

Not that it's important, but I wouldn't be so sure you hold the title here for the biggest buyer of crap. I do not spend time on regret. Not all side trips are avoidable and maybe some are even necessary. However, what I see now is that there are a lot more of them. For me they are easy to avoid; I know how to do things better than when I first began. But that is mostly a personal benefit. In my dealings with others, I would not endorse or recommend anything that I have not used to good effect. Obviously our viewpoints differ on this.

Your reference to $750 "value" being offered for free and "zero risk" to attend reminds me of the advice I heard in a $3000 week-long course. One of the mornings was designated for a field trip to a local Starbucks and then to a bookstore in the same mall that had a prominent display of trading books. We gathered around the "trainer" holding our free lattes as he held up some books and told us which books were "must haves." He also continued that there is no such thing as a "bad" trading book because if you get just one idea that helps your trading it would be worth the price of the book. It sounded reasonable at the time and I saw people nodding in agreement. Of course, eventually I learned the truth that the one good idea isn't the problem but the many crappy ideas I might pick up. If it was possible for a beginner to filter the myths from the truths, learning to trade would be fairly straightforward. But we know that's not possible. Sometimes the free stuff ends up costing the most.

LMAO I think Bob was referring to the original series from the '70s. I remember counting down the days until the first episode aired on ABC. It as a 2-hour special, which was a big deal during those days. I was 11 or 12 at the time and I was riveted to the TV on every episode. I haven't seen the remake as I watch very little TV. I do enjoy American Greed when I happen to catch it on CNBC. Speaking of a great TV series, The Six Million Dollar Man was great when it came out, before it got really wacky toward the end of its run. Even the intro was great: http://youtu.be/QHGSxE7n6rE

I realize there is a lot of money up for grabs in trading "education" but have you considered taking a small amount of money, say $10,000, and opening a futures account to test out your beliefs? You must have all the beliefs you say are necessary to trade, so all you need is a methodology which I recall you saying can be picked up in a classroom. My guess is you would struggle mightily. However, it might be a good exercise for you as I'm sure it would "awaken the observer of thoughts, beliefs, and biases to new perspectives."