Fooling Yourself – A Trading Journey

The Entry Points

This week’s roundup of incompetent clowns has a much more positive tone to it, with a great song by Tommy Shaw. “Fooling Yourself” is generally an upbeat song about dealing with setbacks, but looking on the bright side – taking control of one’s life. What does this have to do with markets? Everything actually. Markets are very, very, very difficult. They are 100% about risk and probabilities. Many people can never grasp the reality (and learn the appropriate strategies to deal with things), that on any trade/investment they can be wrong and will lose money. They just can’t admit they blew it, and then will sit with losers (I’ve done it, and learned quickly) – do that a few times in a row, and anyone will become “gun-shy”. So after totally losing confidence. then they turn to a GURU SCAM ARTIST (GSA) for their wisdom. Big mistake. Or there are other folks who realize upfront that this stuff is extremely confusing (it certainly is). So then they turn to a GSA for their wisdom. Big mistake. Or there are other good people out there who don’t have a lot of money, but are just concerned about how to “protect themselves and their families”. So then they turn to a GSA for their wisdom. Big mistake. Or there’s another group who may have some wealth to protect, but don’t actually want to deal with markets themselves. You get the point.

There are two things all GSAs have in common – A) they know zero about how to make money in markets, B) but they know a ton about how to suck money/scam/scare/market/entice. And they also know all the words and catchphrases to get the people to believe they (the GSAs) will take care of them (the people). GSAs know how to talk about QE2, OPEC pronouncements, Gold Cartels, manipulations, stock market bubbles, P/E ratios, Fed policy, money printing, Director Comey, Chinese demand, moving averages, Hillary Clinton, climate change – and they sound brilliant. And most of them are. But brilliance gets us nowhere in markets, only hard work and toughness gets us anywhere.  As a trader who has to deal with the consequences of my mistakes, it’s irritating to witness how the incompetent clowns never actually have to deal with any consequences of their own for their consistent horrible advice. When I make a mistake – I lose money – that is my consequence.

And we constantly see the GSAs screw up at the exact worst times, of course while still sucking fees/sales. Like telling people to buy PMs right before the November election. Back then the internet was filled with scare tactics by the PM crowd, telling people to load up on gold because “the election would cause prices to soar!” Yet, at the exact same time, on November 1st, 2016, for free, I wrote a post saying – right now, is a lousy time to be buying PMs, gold trading above $1305 and I’ll be selling/likely shorting, and I do believe we are heading lower first, before we head much higher.” 

The GSAs can never understand markets, because losing money is how we grow as traders and investors, it’s how we learn to rely on ourselves, it’s how we learn to take control. But GSAs don’t lose their own money in markets, those who listen to them usually do, and don’t actually learn a darn thing from the losses. The journey to good trading is a struggle – it’s unpleasant, difficult, confusing and challenging. Yet it can be done, and it’s then very rewarding in many ways. But most people don’t want “to go there”. They want to rely on someone who sounds brilliant, who writes brilliant books with brilliant titles and goes on brilliant book tours followed by brilliant seminars, and gives brilliant CNBC interviews. And these brilliant people have taken total control of their own brilliant lives, financially and in other ways. But they could care less if their followers, subscribers, readers, and clients do the same.

Thank you Tommy Shaw and Styx:

And now for the GSAs:

First up – why is this guy a regular on CNBC? He’s constantly blowing it – buying at the exact worst times, and shorting at the exact worst times. Once again I’ll repeat – we’re all wrong at times about markets, but if you’re going to be wrong, do not continually do it at the absolute worst times. Like this one on 12/14/16, shorting TLT at the exact low – arrow on the chart. This was at a time when TLT was retesting its 3 selling climaxes, with signs of strength, and giving effort vs result indications. But he was busy “adjusting his (totally useless) moving averages”. Amazing.

The rest below:

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