Lurking a bit on Twitter lately and it seems like everyone's getting it wrong.

L

Laissez Faire

I'm not very active on Twitter, but decided to check it out a bit over the last few days. I follow only a few people, but it seems like I'm flooded by random posts related to trading and the impression I'm getting is that people (amateurs and professisonals alike) are all over the place. Many are looking for the next major leg down while an equal amount are looking for the next rally higher. Mostly each group appears to be looking for clues to support their thesis and ignoring evidence to the contrary.

In summary, everyone appears to be guessing and nobody seems to be getting it right. At least consistently, which is what it's all about.

Reminds me of when Nicolas Darvas became a full time trader with an office on Wall Street and was subject to all type of rumors and chatter being close to the action and saw a huge decrease in performance by actually listening to people's opinions. I don't remember the exact story, but I think he dropped the office and went back to what he was doing originally which was merely following and trading the market with comlete disregard for news, chatter and rumors.

If anyone can recommend someone that would be interesting to follow on Twitter, by all means come with your recommendation, but personally I think I will stop reading it and if at all I will limit it to weekend reading.
 
Laissez Faire said:
Reminds me of when Nicolas Darvas became a full time trader with an office on Wall Street and was subject to all type of rumors and chatter being close to the action and saw a huge decrease in performance by actually listening to people's opinions. I don't remember the exact story, but I think he dropped the office and went back to what he was doing originally which was merely following and trading the market with comlete disregard for news, chatter and rumors.
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This is something I have heard from experienced traders over the years, and also found to be true myself.

The caveat is that one does want to keep a finger on the pulse of the market(s) traded to an extent, in terms of sentiment, positioning, and expectations. However, consuming a live random stream of consciousness from other traders (especially short-term traders) has no value whatsoever, and is just a source of noise, distraction, and second-guessing. This is true even if the other traders are profitable, which most aren't.
 
Laissez Faire said:
I'm not very active on Twitter, but decided to check it out a bit over the last few days. I follow only a few people, but it seems like I'm flooded by random posts related to trading and the impression I'm getting is that people (amateurs and professisonals alike) are all over the place. Many are looking for the next major leg down while an equal amount are looking for the next rally higher. Mostly each group appears to be looking for clues to support their thesis and ignoring evidence to the contrary.

In summary, everyone appears to be guessing and nobody seems to be getting it right. At least consistently, which is what it's all about.

Reminds me of when Nicolas Darvas became a full time trader with an office on Wall Street and was subject to all type of rumors and chatter being close to the action and saw a huge decrease in performance by actually listening to people's opinions. I don't remember the exact story, but I think he dropped the office and went back to what he was doing originally which was merely following and trading the market with comlete disregard for news, chatter and rumors.

If anyone can recommend someone that would be interesting to follow on Twitter, by all means come with your recommendation, but personally I think I will stop reading it and if at all I will limit it to weekend reading.
More...
That Darvas story sounds right from what I remember. The amazing thing about Darvas was he made most of his money from the days when he was a Ballet dancer and trading based on weekly Barrons prices he got while he was mainly a dancer in Asia.
 
nitrene said:
That Darvas story sounds right from what I remember. The amazing thing about Darvas was he made most of his money from the days when he was a Ballet dancer and trading based on weekly Barrons prices he got while he was mainly a dancer in Asia.
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Sounds more fun than staring at charts all day long... :)
 
Laissez Faire said:
I'm not very active on Twitter, but decided to check it out a bit over the last few days. I follow only a few people, but it seems like I'm flooded by random posts related to trading and the impression I'm getting is that people (amateurs and professisonals alike) are all over the place. Many are looking for the next major leg down while an equal amount are looking for the next rally higher. Mostly each group appears to be looking for clues to support their thesis and ignoring evidence to the contrary.

In summary, everyone appears to be guessing and nobody seems to be getting it right. At least consistently, which is what it's all about.

Reminds me of when Nicolas Darvas became a full time trader with an office on Wall Street and was subject to all type of rumors and chatter being close to the action and saw a huge decrease in performance by actually listening to people's opinions. I don't remember the exact story, but I think he dropped the office and went back to what he was doing originally which was merely following and trading the market with comlete disregard for news, chatter and rumors.

If anyone can recommend someone that would be interesting to follow on Twitter, by all means come with your recommendation, but personally I think I will stop reading it and if at all I will limit it to weekend reading.
More...

Twitter is just like your username: Laissez Faire so you get all kinds of opinions, ideas, observations, all over the place, everything everywhere all at once and everybody thinks they are a guru. LOL

So needless to say, I don't follow anyone on Twitter nor can I recommend anyone to follow on there especially for financial advice. Hell, I don't even follow Twitter at all. Way too confusing for me. You never know which message is for which or to whom and etc.
 
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