Who are the idiots buying bonds for 1% interest?

[bone]

Yep. Your even seeing serious redemptions out of traditional 'alpha-generating' accounts like quant funds.

Trillions of dollars stuffed in the proverbial mattress pad.

 

[Ghost of Cutten]

Quote from The Big D:

Yeah, something smells here. We have the following facts:

1) bone claims 18 consecutive profitable years which is substantially better than most industry heavyweights
2) bone clearly is in favor of trading OPM and in fact claims his strategies are good for attracting it (thereby implying although not stating he's good at attracting it)
3) the markets we're discussing are some of the biggest and most liquid in the world. You can move huge size in T-bonds, index futures, and oil.
4) bone is interested in selling 4 or 5 figure training

If you take 1) and 2) as assumptions and combine with 3), it's very difficult to see why bone isn't trading huge size for someone and doing so profitably. But if he is, 4) makes no sense.

Why is it difficult to imagine someone not wanting to trade huge size for someone? That claim has a whole load of assumptions behind it, one or more of which need not be true. For example, someone might not like working for others; someone might not like the bureaucracy and regulatory burden of working for a fund or running one themselves; someone might prefer earning X by a relaxing method (e.g. teaching/training) rather than 10X by a stressful method; someone might be motivated by goals other than maximising income; someone, particularly a person who has achieved financial independence, might be more interested in preserving capital and producing low-risk income, than taking large risks and potentially losing their savings.

No one is solely motivated by money.

It's equally unjustified to assume that because someone earns an income, that they need it. Warren Buffett doesn't need an income, but he still bills Berkshire for a salary each year. Ditto for many rich individuals. A perfectly valid reason to charge for work is because you can, and people are happy to pay for it.

 

[Ghost of Cutten]

Quote from The Big D:

Man, you've already lost. You can choose to explain yourself or just go away, but either way you're done

Usually in a debate, resorting to personal attacks is a sign of losing, not winning, the argument on the basis of the facts.

 

[The Big D]

Quote from Ghost of Cutten:

Usually in a debate, resorting to personal attacks is a sign of losing, not winning, the argument on the basis of the facts.

Except that the only argument bone can offer is an appeal to his experience. And that experience is, shall we say, in question. Once you appeal to your own experience and/or wisdom, you ARE part of the argument.

 

[The Big D]

Quote from Ghost of Cutten:
No one is solely motivated by money

Yeah, right. He's some sort of spread-touting philanthropist

That's not gonna make the smell go away. Nice try though.

 

[Ghost of Cutten]

Quote from The Big D:

Yeah, right. He's some sort of spread-touting philanthropist

Another flawed assumption. Valuing something else more than money (e.g. time, freedom, pleasure etc) requires no philanthropy. If you offered me 10 million a year to be an accountant or toilet cleaner, or to become celibate, I would say no, for entirely selfish reasons.

 

[The Big D]

Quote from Ghost of Cutten:

Another flawed assumption. Valuing something else more than money (e.g. time, freedom, pleasure etc) requires no philanthropy. If you offered me 10 million a year to be an accountant or toilet cleaner, or to become celibate, I would say no, for entirely selfish reasons.

None of this has anything to do with the question of why a supposedly successful trader is willing to charge so little for his "expertise". If you believe he's offering a bargain out of the kindness of his heart, fine, take his course. Personally, I suspect a lot has gone wrong with his career and he needs the money. And I suspect the things that went wrong in his career are closely related to his poor attitude and questionable analysis in this thread.

 

[Ghost of Cutten]

Quote from The Big D:

None of this has anything to do with the question of why a supposedly successful trader is willing to charge so little for his "expertise". If you believe he's offering a bargain out of the kindness of his heart, fine, take his course. Personally, I suspect a lot has gone wrong with his career and he needs the money. And I suspect the things that went wrong in his career are closely related to his poor attitude and questionable analysis in this thread.

It has everything to do with it - you claimed that the sole possible reason for him teaching was that he could not trade profitably - on the premise that if he could trade profitably, he would be doing so for bigger size and making a lot more than from his teaching. This assumes that money is the sole factor influencing his behaviour.

I countered that he could in fact be getting other benefits from teaching, such as time, freedom, pleasure, lower stress, lower risk etc, that more than compensated for the higher income that could be gained from only trading (on bigger size).

If he is getting sufficient benefit from these or other factors, then that is an entirely understandable and rational reason to do less trading and more teaching. Therefore, the mere fact of him teaching for pay does not mean that he is unprofitable.

 

[The Big D]

Quote from Ghost of Cutten:

It has everything to do with it - you claimed that the sole possible reason for him teaching was that he could not trade profitably

Nope - never said that. In fact, I began my argument by assuming the exact opposite.

Try re-reading what I actually said.

 

[Martinghoul]

For the record (as mentioned before in another thread), I believe bone is perfectly legit. While I am not one of his clients and I haven't done any due diligence, what he says and how he says it suggests to me that his background and track record are, in fact, as he states.