Sometimes I think that trading is a very bad job

Quote from swoop[TR]:

In your view, a trader is merely a person who goes to the casino every day to try to win some money. It's shear entertainment but nothing is created.

In reality, traders make the price of your orange juice relatively stable by creating liquidity and by taking risk. Traders create inflows of capital when it is needed badly. If you took out all the traders, there would be no economic trade which would mean, no one would create anything since there would be no one to sell and buy a product, except maybe end users.
Everyone is a trader. Whether you create a potery and sell it (trade it against money) or build computers in mass. At some point, you will have to trade it against something, that something can be money, it can be steel, it can be microprocs.

Traders, therefore, facilitate the exchange of goods. They are a crucial part of the economy. If Dell sells you a computer and you pay Dell, how much of the money you pay goes directly to Michael Dell? Depends on the situation, but a small part of it goes directly in his pockets. How does that make you feel about zero sum game? He took your money and put it in his pocket. Yes, he created a product but does that make it any different than risking $20,000 in order to get some of that residual ? In the end there will always be a loser and winner. You have to come to grasp with that.
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I would pay Dell because he created an effective way to supply PCs.
Risk money of one trader is just sucked by another trader in the same group.
 
Quote from SmoothTraderFX:

I dunno.

Well, you can name many things on how useful the trader is for the soricety, but I still cannot agree.

The most of the economy is not zero sum. They can cooperate and grow with the mutual reaction.
Let's limit the trading to the futures trading or currency trading because stock is not zero-sum.
I see no mutual prosper in this. I kick someone's ass, or my ass is kicked.
Whatever you say, do you who says a trader contirubtes think you 'offer' or 'create'' or 'entertain' to others?
At least to me, the answer is No. Defintely No.
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Disagree! Of course the economy is zero sum! Entirely!

The reason you think it's not is probably because you're not counting the amount of time invested into growth. You think that economy grows out of "cooperation and mutual reaction". This is not the case. The reason economy grows because more and more people are putting more and more time into it. If you followed the very true Wall Street adage "Time is Money", then you would count all this time invested in $ terms as well...

Now, with this time paid for in $-terms in an appropriate way, there would be a zero-sum game. But this doesn't happen on the paper, because nobody writes down on the papers when people get exploited for their work etc, which happens everywhere you go, all the time.

Have you looked at what would happen if all money in the world was evenly, distributed? In fact, we would all be quite well off, and a little better every year, due to the advance of technology.
But this advance, in reality, is used by more powerful people, who exercise power to take money from you.

This is not cooperative. This is zero-sum. Money is distributed in an uneven way. If I believed your attitude, then everybody would have a "fair chance". This is just not the case.

You look at Futures or whatever you're Trading as something more zero-sum than everyday business. It isn't.

When Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis met Homo Sapiens Sapiens, they agreed to exchange a bunch of fish for a bunch of meat. Either of them would have had to work harder, expended more energy, lost in the deal. Sapiens Sapiens survived and Neanderthalensis didn't. Sapiens somehow got a better deal. They were smarter about where they went and how.

This very day of the exchange between these hairy creatures, Day Trading was born. Since then, nothing has changed.

Whether you're trading in Bicycles, Coffee, Coffee Futures or Index Futures doesn't make a fart of a difference. It's all Trading at the end of the day.


~The Scientist :cool:
 
Quote from Scientist:



Disagree! Of course the economy is zero sum! Entirely!

The reason you think it's not is probably because you're not counting the amount of time invested into growth. You think that economy grows out of "cooperation and mutual reaction". This is not the case. The reason economy grows because more and more people are putting more and more time into it. If you followed the very true Wall Street adage "Time is Money", then you would count all this time invested in $ terms as well...

Now, with this time paid for in $-terms in an appropriate way, there would be a zero-sum game. But this doesn't happen on the paper, because nobody writes down on the papers when people get exploited for their work etc, which happens everywhere you go, all the time.

Have you looked at what would happen if all money in the world was evenly, distributed? In fact, we would all be quite well off, and a little better every year, due to the advance of technology.
But this advance, in reality, is used by more powerful people, who exercise power to take money from you.

This is not cooperative. This is zero-sum. Money is distributed in an uneven way. If I believed your attitude, then everybody would have a "fair chance". This is just not the case.

You look at Futures or whatever you're Trading as something more zero-sum than everyday business. It isn't.

When Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis met Homo Sapiens Sapiens, they agreed to exchange a bunch of fish for a bunch of meat. Either of them would have had to work harder, expended more energy, lost in the deal. Sapiens Sapiens survived and Neanderthalensis didn't. Sapiens somehow got a better deal. They were smarter about where they went and how.

This very day of the exchange between these hairy creatures, Day Trading was born. Since then, nothing has changed.

Whether you're trading in Bicycles, Coffee, Coffee Futures or Index Futures doesn't make a fart of a difference. It's all Trading at the end of the day.


~The Scientist :cool:
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Well, you focus only on $$, amount of the money.
Ironicaly, your handle name is scientist.
Human being live much longer than Neanderthaleansis or the earlier folks of Homo Sapiens, our ancestor generation.
Why is that? Science has contributed. We have good Medicine and Medical technology.
We can communicate between remoted contiries like this. or a several hours of flight would carry us to meet each other.
You call this zero-sum? No, we are now very much progressed, and many 'real job' or blood contributed to attain this achievement.
And, sorry, trading that is my way to live won't never be in this line.
I humbly segregate my method to earn money that is trading and my contribution to the society that is other than trading.
 
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.
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Hmmm...

I don't know what kind'uv trader you are nor what you do with your money...

Here's my personal experience.

Where I live we get a lot of snow...I pay a teenage kid down the street to keep my driveway and walkway clear of snow eventhough I'm in great physical health and can do it myself or go out and buy one of those cool snow plowers like the kid has.

The kid also does this for other families in the neighborhood:

1. A Judge and his family
2. A Doctor and her family
3. A Contract Home Inspector and his family
4. A Pharmacy Marketing Rep and her family
5. Many other families whom occupation I don't know about.

I asked him this past winter what does he do with the money he's making (we pay him nicely)...he said he was saving it up for college so that he can go to an american university...

Therefore, everybody in the neighborhood (including me and my family) are helping this kid go to college.

(His mom wants him to stay here for college but he wants to go to the U.S. to be closer to his dad...even if it means he'll have to come up with the extra dough himself)

He also has a monopoly on other jobs in the neighborhood...grass cutting, lawn care and other miscellaneous stuff.

Who knows...maybe he'll get a business degree...open up a business that employs many individuals.

By the way, I'm a fulltime futures trader...I support my family, I pay taxes, I give tips when I eat at restaurants et cetera...

I pay for things just like a guy/gal that's a CPA, Doctor, Lawyer, Pharmacist, Student, Teacher, Delivery Driver, Postal Worker, Government Employee, Cable Installer, Artist, Newspaper Photographer, Assembly Line Worker, Nanny et cetera...

Geeesh...some of us in my neighborhood talk to each other sometimes...we don't have conversations like...

i wish I was a judge...how's trading going...what was the biggest house you ever inspected...who was the last person you operated on...

we actually talk about our kids, who just had a newborn, talk about a neighbor that's sick and how can we help, the teenager that had an unsupervised party without his parents permission while they were away for the weekend celebrating their anniversary, petition to get a small park widen to incorporate a children playground, alerting the police about late night drinking by underage kids behind the church...

Simply...trading is a job just like any other job when you see what it provides.

It's a self-employeed job just like any other self-employeed job such as the Contract Home Inspector.

Further...if you'll open your eyes just a tiny little bit...

you'll see that there are other important things going on in life around you that probably make better conversation with the neighbors on the street that make not get reported in the newspaper nor on the local 6pm TV news.

NihabaAshi
 
Quote from SmoothTraderFX:



Well, you focus only on $$, amount of the money.
Ironicaly, your handle name is scientist.
Human being live much longer than Neanderthaleansis or the earlier folks of Homo Sapiens, our ancestor generation.
Why is that? Science has contributed. We have good medicins and method. We can communicate between remoted contiries like this. or a several hours of flight bring to us to meet each other.
You call this zero-sum? No, we are now very much progressed, and many 'real job' or blood contributed to attain this achievement.
And, sorry, trading that is my way to live won't never contribute this line.
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I say it again: Trading is Trading. What you trade in makes no difference.

Science is exactly the reason why the zero-sum game doesn't work in everybody's advantage, including that of Neanderthalensis.

Science has created advantage. This advantage logically creates disadvantage for those on the other side of the deal.

You're talking of "progress". You're mixing up advance with advantage. Science is created for advantage, not advance.

"Advance" or "Progress" is something that is completely relative. You may say we have a better life today then 500 years ago, and I may say the opposite. Both of us could prove our point if need be. I would argue that in the last 100 years, we have made no progress at all, from an environmental and life quality point of view. In fact, we went backwards.

Science is nothing but the means to get a competitive edge over others.

Telecommunication and Flight were, like most other large "advances" of science and technology, initially created for the purpose of war. I know, because my Grandfather created one of the first functional aeroplanes ever, brought large advances to the aviation industry and founded the first Airline to serve Western Australia. He wrote about it in his books, and he said, 50 years later, looking at Jet Fighters and Bombers, similarly to Albert Einstein, that if he had known how much destruction his research would bring, he'd done something else with his life.

Medicine has, in a large sense, done the same thing. Medicine you see as something great in your limited view of the world.
The reality is that Medicine has done nothing but bring the balance of life on this planet into disarray by immunizing us against death and disease. While you think that's great, from a "mother earth" point of view, it isn't. We're suffering immense overpopulation and it is almost necessary for us to reduce our population or this planet will burn. This overpopulation can no longer be sustained, said even the Dalai Lama - World Advocate of Peace, equality and compassion...

So yeah, the only point in which you're right is that blood contributed to all these achievements.

Regarding "real job" - What the F^%^ do you mean? What is a "real job" then by your definition???

A "job" generally means trading time for money. It's a trade, just like you buying e-mini futures.

Unless you can give me some valid counter-arguments now, I assume that your point of view is nothing but an empty hull of preoccupation shaped by whatever paradigms society has exposed you to.

Keep it coming, buddy. But you should know who you're taking on before you go on. I hope you come up with something nice.


Sincerely,
~The Scientist
 
Quote from mali:

.. 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.
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you need to resolve the conflict between what you believe and what you want, Mark Douglas, Ruth Barons Roosevelt and Brett N. Steenbarger should help. The bottom line, is other's need take priority before yours.
 
i doubt that somebody who thinks trading is a bad job can ever be consistently profitable.

maybe it's got something to do with religion - like "i'm so guilty - i am and was a bad bad boy - so i have to donate ..." (or whatever - i don't care about religion).

but anyway - great post scientist - medicine and so on ...

and do you think pharma industry invents new pills because they wanna help all the poor sick people? yeah - of course ...
 
Not only is trading the best job in the world it is the most benevolent. We go to work expecting a few dollars of ours to end up in someone else`s pocket.
Beginning with my forefathers the glorious ancient Greeks trading sheep and wine up into the year 2003 trading index futures online. We carry on the legacy of capitalism and free trade.
Hey wait a minute isn't trading the oldest occupation? :D
 
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