Quote from mali:
First of all, let me excuse myself; but I gotta say so.
Yeah, it's exciting, it's challenging, I have to admit that but we create nothing, no job for other peoples (except for broker), no value for the society.
The money we made is the money that the other people lose.
Ask 100 peoples outside of the trading field, probably 90 would say that they got no respect for a trader. I remember that I have never heard or read of anything in the newspaper or in the news about respects for the traders.
In the Jack D. Schwager's books, he have interviewed about 45 traders. There are a lot of them whom he calls "legendary". What the heck ? Legendary is not that easy to find.
I fundamentally disagree.
Of course we create jobs.
In the educational sector (books, publishing, websites), Finance Sites, Finance Forums (i.e. EliteTrader), Brokerage, Charting Software companies, Technology (who makes the monitors, computers etc?), Telecommunication (how do you get data? Got broadband?), just to name a few.
Besides, we create jobs in the trading finance industry itself - It's us that make the trading harder for the pro's, thus causes them to have to employ more people to deal with the information, statistics, programming etc etc etc. More jobs here.
But, whether we create jobs doesn't really matter so much. The point is that we are the jobs, and we're doing something useful!
What really is so great about semi-pro Traders:
-We provide liquidity to the market, thus make it tradable
-We create market sufficiency / a constantly updated market view
-We take money from the "rich" whenever we can. We are the robin hood's of the finance world...
By the way, you may argue that the rich take from us, but this is naive, and not true unless you're a losing trader. If you understand the basic concepts of finance, then you will realize that the big "rich" players are Dreadnoughts while we are one-man Rapier Interceptors. Them Dready's can move a lot of volume, but we can move very fast - Thus catch very small moves. If you're any good at trading, you can navigate between the laser turrets just before their fire hits you, then close in further, so you're out of their immediate fire-angle and move in between their small lining bays, controlling your speed precisely at 500-800 clicks/s and watching you don't hit the walls (this is: shadowing the pro), then follow the direction, then fire full-hole forwards while you're zooming down the bay (picking up packets, you're following the direction of the Dreadnought now, remember), then you see your position in the bay relative to the cosmic map changing, realize the whole thing is changing. Now you start unloading, firing missiles (i.e packets of stock), then hold your breath and pull up 90 degrees, igniting your afterburners. Now the turrets have you back in range, so you fly a fishing hook at 190 degrees (unload your last packets crossing the market without getting stopped out). The turrets are starting to predict your flight route again, so you do a full stop to 0 clicks, turn on the spot, ignite afterburners again and fire full-power on the neutron cannon while closing in again (reverse position now).
Do this long enough, and you will wear down the Dreadnought.
This is who we are. The pro's see us as parasites, nothing else.
This should say enough about how useful we are to society.
Since we're taking money off the big players and distributing it more evenly than they ever would, we're giving something to the society.
The late establishment of uptick rules in stocks and the new PDT rules just underline that "parasite" attitude...
If you still don't get the concept, then look at this: As a small Trader like us, it's quite possible to make returns of 100%, 150%, 200% etc per annum.
If you've got a large managed fund, that's not possible. Even the best funds can't make 50%. The difference is just size. They aren't very mobile. So if we're making 100%, and they're making 50% if that, then, from a missionary point of view, who is taking from whom and who is doing a "useful" job in the markets?
This is based on the "law of diminishing returns". It's unfortunate for the big players/banks, etc but it adds that little bit of fairness to society.
Most people don't understand this law at all. They have been told by their parents or whoever "The more you have, the more you can make..."
This is complete nonsense. If you, as a trader, can turn $100k into $1m in 3 years, then I'll say "nice". But if, in the same amount of time, you can turn $500m into $1bn and prove it to me, then I will give up my job, worship you and give you all my money to trade.
All this is something I said to myself when I started to learn trading: "Whenever I lose money, I'm supporting the evil empire - So I will not trade with real money until I'm good enough to fight this empire with the most effective weapons..."
I think this is largely unseen or underestimated by most people. Traders are portrayed as ruthless, scary people, it's all very "Wall Street" and we're all like "Gordon Gecko"... But yeah. It's good to know better. And you as a Trader certainly should!
Think about it, or change your profession.
We are Jedi, the rebels taking out the Sith and their Destroyers.
We are on a mission. We are missionaries!
Traders, Ooray!
~The Scientist
PS: I used to play in Wing Commander and other Space/Flight Combat competitions once... And kicked everybody's ass
