Can knowing too much about finance hurt your trading?

[trader_arb]

Quote from Deadwood:

I'm going to go way out on the limb here and take a wild assed guess that your not a millionarie trader.

Is anyone on this board?

 

[Deadwood]

Quote from trader_arb:

Is anyone on this board?

yes

 

[Rodney King]

Quote from Nattdog:

those 'piss poor' phd types are making a hell of a lot more than most here... and more importantly, their earnings stream is more valuable because it is more certain and steady, ie their p/e ratio as an individual would be much higher.

Perhaps. But quant knowledge that's very product-specific has a half-life on Wall St. Such quants are hot when the product they model is either 1) new and loaded with vig (sellside) or 2) believed to be tradeable with an edge (buyside). But when the product matures or edge disappears the quant is in a pinch -- his specific knowledge is devalued. Nassim talks about this in his first (best?) book, "Dynamic Hedging."

 

[youngtrader]

I heard Sadists make the best trader. I have heard that the best traders are the guys that really want to stick it to people. That you don't really need to know much but crowd phycology and that actually being really smart will hurt you. The guy that said this traded in the swiss pit in the 1980s dont know where he is now.