Part I - The Awakening

At last, you have some money set aside. You are ready to pursue your lifetime dream of creating wealth (without too much hard work) and of achieving happiness, free from financial worries.

Financial freedom! No more bosses! No more mounting bills! No more debts! You are going to Trade your way into the upper echelons of society. Stocks, Options, FOREX!

All you need to do now, is buy some books. Buy a course. Buy a program. Learn about going Long and Short, Puts, Calls, Points, Pips, Candles, EMAs, Bollinger Bands, RSI, MACD, Support & Resistance. Write a Trading Plan. Plan your Trade, Trade your Plan. Buy Low, Sell High. Buy high, Sell Higher. Buy and Hold. Buy a black box Trading System - hey, just "buy" if the lights are green, "sell" if the arrows are red. The guy on TV said it's easy - he made $15k in a day! Even better - buy an Automatic Trading System and let it trade, instead of you. Hell, write an automatic trading system - why not? Get a broker. Open an account. Paper trade. Live trade. Buy more books, more software and more indicators. Buy more courses. Design your own trading system and hey, why not - automate it! Join user groups, trading support groups, discussion forums and chat rooms. Subscribe to trading newsletters, news feeds, charting websites - delayed & real time. Read blogs, watch videos. Aha! - free Charting & Trading software! Wow, those guys are amazing! How kind of them! Hey - look - even a Trading Competition - let's enter it! Tweak, test, back test, forward test, retest. Analyze, theorize, hypothesize.

Each new item, each new tiny flake of uncovered knowledge promises to lead you closer to snaring that elusive dream, but somehow ... the dream always flits away before you, faster than the countless tools at your disposal for snagging it. Must be something you're doing wrong! More research. Wait, what's this? - Trading Psychology - volumes written about it, wow - I knew it - it's all my fault - you press on, delving deeper and deeper into the mysteries of the Markets and the Human Mind. Visualize, minimize, memorize, harmonize, diet, exercise and dehumanize. Pray, chant and incant. Psycho-cyberneticize.

Some tough years later, your money runs out, shortly after you make this shocking discovery:

The Markets are Random and Unpredictable!

With time and experience, you started to realize: Hey, wait a minute - these famous traders who claim to have amassed untold wealth have never actually presented any evidence to support their claims. Hey, wait another minute - these peddlers of books, training programs and automatic trading systems somehow convinced you that it's not their systems, not their information that's faulty - it's really your unresolved personal issues and lack of discipline causing their wonderful systems and training to fail!

What happened? You bloody idiot! You incompetent nincompoop! You LOOOOSEEEER! How could you do this?! All that hard work. All those days, week, months - nay, years - of study and work. All those nights of poring over charts, books, manuals, programming code, videos, web sites, newsletters, magazines, getting ever closer to the secret! All that MONEY!

What did you do wrong? Not much - in fact, just one thing:

You became a target. A target for the vast army of thousands upon thousands of marketers, advertisers, dealers, brokers, webmeisters, trainers, teachers, mentors, gurus, columnists, writers, authors, legendary traders, "wizards", experts, media moguls, pundits, prognosticators, analysts, talking heads, chart providers, software developers, bankers, financial advisers and prophets, all with just one thing on their agenda - parting you with your money.

Don't feel bad. There are multitudes just like you.

Have you ever met anyone who irrefutably demonstrated a "winning strategy", backed by hard evidence (e.g. a certified brokerage statement of their trading account)? No.

Have you ever met anyone who retired by trading? No.

Have you ever met anyone who knows someone, who knows someone, who has? Yes.

Believe this: The only person (other than you) who wants you to make money trading, is your spouse. Everyone else wants to take it away from you, with their:

• Brokerage fees


• Margin calls


• Commissions


• Spreads


• Interest


• Trading rules


• Withdrawal fees


• Money transfer fees


• Currency conversion fees


• Taxes


• Maintenance fees


• Upgrade fees


• Subscription fees


• Membership fees


• Data feed fees


• Mentoring fees (isn't "mentoring" supposed to be free?)


• Training fees


• Consulting fees


• Conference fees

Want to be a Trader? Beware - you are setting yourself up to be a Target instead! Sure, a lot of people are making money from trading - but are they Traders?

In fact, trading is nothing more than gambling, despite all the clamour and noise to the contrary. Some people possibly do make lots of money trading - just as other people might make lots of money gambling. All it means is that they got lucky. That's all it means.

Every trading system works some of the time - even random selection. Yes, you too could get really lucky and apply the right system at the right time and get out with your winnings before they become losses, but ... if you don't ... don't be surprised. More importantly, don't be hard on yourself, either. After all, you were only tossing a coin (and, to boot, one that has more than two sides)!

Good Luck. You'll need it.

Happy trading!
BullsEye
~ Tossing the Three Sided Coin ~