Don't Fool Yourself, WCOME Will Become WCOMQ This Year
Q: Nothing about Hamby personally, who may simply be what you say he is in this regard (although he does occasionally come up with worthwhile comments in other regards), but this whole "trading is gambling" cow manure, spread by so many, is designed to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, to make it so.
A:
No, trading is not gambling. At least no more so than trying to
run a grocery store is. Successful trading can be done, and in
theory, works by offering a service to investors (essentially
acting ans an intermediary between investors), and extracting a
small portion of the investor's profits as payment. An investor
expecting to make 5
10 years from buying a stock is quite willing to give up a hundred
or so in order that he does not have to wait arround for the exact
moment when some other investor needs to sell that stock. The
investor's time is valuable, and it could be better spent on other
things, so he pays for the convenience of trading when he wants
by paying a bit more and having a trader fill his order.
This means however, that trading, like running a grocery store,
is real work. It takes time, analysis and skill to determine what
exactly what prices to bid and ask.
In addition to the money they make from providing this service
to investors, traders often make money from newbie wannabees who
think that trading is a no-work path to riches, or that it is
nothing more than gambling. In boom markets like recent years,
there are a lot of these, and serious traders make a lot of money.
This in turn attracts more sheep to be fleeced.
No. Trading is a legitmate way to make money. It is true that
some people think that they can get away with scalping, but they
usually don't last long. Planning on too big a markup gets
them into trouble, either they get underpriced by traders that
have more realistic pricing, or stray into market manipulation
and eventually catch the eye of the regulators.