If It's All About making Money?

[RUDEBOY]

Your detracting into RISK management and you you dont even know it. OK, if i said to you that if you know your market(s) you should not go wrong that much, if at all. what would you say?

 

[counter_violent]

How is Sept 11th related to trading, may I ask ?

With respect, you are kidding me !!!

 

[RUDEBOY]

I'm a big believer in that it's never the markets fault ,its yours. Socs you know where i'm coming from, if this is true why so many losing trades( this statement applies to everybody, not just you)

 

[SOCRATES]

Last comment~ I am not kidding you. Do you imply that skilled traders caused Sept 11th to occur so that they could profit from all this misery? Is that what you are implying ?

Let me have your reply tomorrow.

Goodnight.

 

[RUDEBOY]

The last post was not to be insulting to any body, but to show that trading is gambling...Think about it!

 

[RUDEBOY]

Farenheit 911, have you seen it.

 

[counter_violent]

Last comment~ I am not kidding you. Do you imply that skilled traders caused Sept 11th to occur so that they could profit from all this misery? Is that what you are implying ?

Of course that's not what i'm implying.

Whilst the world watched the unfolding events of sept 11th, there would have been plenty who decided to jump on the shorting band waggon in the almost certain knowledge that a week later they could drive away in the new mercedes etc.

This is an extreme example I know, but the whole idea of trading the zero sum game is dog eat dog.

I'm interested to hear how " morality" and "trading" go together.

regards counter

 

[axthree]

FWIW, I believe that a pure trader needs to be "amoral". After all, the market is.
Look at the effects of "Black Wednesday", which lasted for years. Dissapearing jobs, negative equity, Portfolio values decimated, pension funds bleeding.
Simply because a number of speculators saw an opportunity and jumped on board.
In the words of Elisa Doolitle's father. "Morals? I can't afford them".

 

[wisestguy]

socrates,

you got it wrong again . I was agreeing with you , and my laughter was directed AT the gamblers.

------------------------------------------------------------


to the others,

no , not even a very skilled poker player is the same as a top trader with good RC.

why ? as a poker player , you still depend on the luck of the draw . in trading the luck element viz market conditions are much less.

one can analyse and research the market . you have an unlimited amount of material and tools to help you on that . that makes a large difference . would you jump into the market without looking at a chart or some numbers or at the market fundamentals or some sort of pre trade anlaysis ?

only a fool would .

whereas in poker , market conditions are essentially random and dependent on what joebloggs dealer deals out to you.

also there is a minimum stake - a min. stop loss if you like in poker , but in trading you can have it whatever size you want.

in the long run that too makes a big difference .

also the size of the max. pot in poker is limited to the max size of each bet and the number of raises you can have . in the market it is not.

still 2 different animals , and skilled trading with good RC is still superior for making money in my book.

 

[TheBramble]

It's interesting that the Trading v Gambling issue rears up again.

In reality it matters little what each of us assign to each as its 'meaning'.

And the terms, for all practical purposes, have nothing to do with probability or expectation or hope.

Is Frugi gambling or trading when he plays poker (exceptionally well!)? Clearly he's gambling - there is no exchange of goods, services, products whatever.

When Frugi goes Long an Index is he trading or gambling? He's trading.

The real issue is one of having an edge. Not 'believing' you have an edge - but actually, demonstrably having one.

There are many traders (I am sure) who believe they have an edge, but don't. Are they gamblers?

There are many horse-racing punters who do have an edge - are they gamblers?

If you're not consistently beating probabilistic odds of winning over a long period of time, you are simply losing, whatever vehicle you use to test your skills.

Doesn't matter whether you call it gambling or trading, use the financial markets or the betting shop - you're still just losing.

Actually having the edge takes all the gambling, guesswork and discussion on semantics out of it.

 

[Bigbusiness]

wisestguy,

If you go to Vegas and sit at a 'no-limit' cash table, you can bet all of your money at any time. There is no limit to your potential profits, as every time a person leaves the table, another one will sit down. You can also lose all the money you have at the table on any hand, if you have less than other players. I think the best cash no-limit poker players have a huge advantage over traders. They can sit at a table with players that don't have the same skills as them and they can observe the other players to see if they give clues about the strength of their hands. They store lots of information about each player and they remember how each player plays when they have strong and weak hands. It isn't about the luck of the deal, as most times it is what your opponent thinks your cards are that is more important than what they actually are. It is also about knowing how your opponent reacts and bets when they have particular hands and knowing if they are likely to continue if they have a decision that could cost them all their money. I have noticed that some of the top poker players are former traders. While there are only a few players that make it to the top, I think they are every bit as skilled as a top trader.

 

[wisestguy]

rubbish .

I've played poker many times and I can tell you straight out that luck plays A BIG part .

you not seriously trying to say that a game based on the strength of a hand which is RANDOMLY ( you understand this word yeah ? ) dealt out is not based on LUCK ?

if you are dealt not 1 single pair all night then not even a saint could win .

HAHAHA.

I think you are trying to justify gambling . news flash , I don't give a damn whether it is credible or not .

so the real questions are , and I'd like you to answer :

1) are you a gambler , yes or no ?

2 ) how do you use the markets , as a gambling tool or as a trading one ?

and please if you don't the difference by now , I feel sorry for you . also I must state , I don't care how anyone plays the market (gambling or otherwise ) but I expect them to be honest about it.

 

[bulldozer]

Its a combination of many things:

1, Luck! on what cards you recieve.

2. Its also BLUFF sometimes a crap hand can beat a good hand.

3. The strength of your holding[money] If i was sitting with a stash of a Million on my seat and the other players are only holding less than a tenth, I have a great advantage over the other players, Fear and sycology plays a big part.

4. Normaly the player with the deeper pockets comes out on top, because he can also hold crap hands longer than the others.

By the way I'm NOT a poker player! Its just what I think.

 

[SOCRATES]

Last comment~ I am not kidding you. Do you imply that skilled traders caused Sept 11th to occur so that they could profit from all this misery? Is that what you are implying ?

Of course that's not what i'm implying.

Whilst the world watched the unfolding events of sept 11th, there would have been plenty who decided to jump on the shorting band waggon in the almost certain knowledge that a week later they could drive away in the new mercedes etc.

This is an extreme example I know, but the whole idea of trading the zero sum game is dog eat dog.

I'm interested to hear how " morality" and "trading" go together.

regards counter

Morality applies to trading because trading involves commitment. To take only one example,when a client telephones a broker and gives an order to buy or sell, the broker follows his client's instructions which are incidentally only verbal, why ? This is because both broker and client have to act within a framework of trust in each other. This trust is encapsulated within a framework of morality. Without morality there cannot exist trust.
The fact that trust cannot exist without morality is a very important concept.

For this reason in society laws have to be passed to ensure as practicably as possible that the public will be obligated to act within boundaries that exclude unreason, unreasonable behaviour, and that which by association is immoral. If society were allowed to persist in acting unreasonably and immorally it would not last very long. Everything would descend into chaos.Chaos in trading cannot be allowed.

If risk of chaos existed in trading then if everytime the client wished to buy or sell something he would be expected for example to (a) appear in person (b) provide documents proving identity (c) expected to hand over the instructions in writing, all of this subject to the fear that the client might be trading for fun, to mess up the broker, to cause disruption by welching on deals made and by making a general nuisance of himself, like in ordinary life we encounter graffiti, hackers, and other nuisances. The presence of chaos or the risk of chaos would make trading unworkable because it would destroy trust and hence the framework of morality in which it is encapsulated.

Let us now turn our attention to Sept 11th. This was an act of dreadful inhumanity, an act that shocked everybody. The purpose of terrorism is to shock and frighten indiscriminately. The object is to destroy trust. It is immoral.

An event of this kind is qoing to create a panic. In htis panic lots of thing are going to happen.
One of the things that will happen is that prices will plummet, this is because confidence will be shaken.

It would be immoral to hope a catastrophe like this would happen regularly in order to profit from it, or to cause it to depress prices. But prices were already falling in a weak market.
The panic caused prices to fall even further, very fast. The skilled trader who is already short sees prices plummetting. His objective has to do with the behaviour of the price, and not to agreeing with the cause that drives the decline. It would be immoral for the trader to agree with the cause or to gloat over the misery of the result, because this would be a rejoicing of a breakdown in trust as well. For this reason trading and immorality are not linked at all.

This is because there is linkage between morality and reason, in the same way that linkage exists between immorality and unreason. Amorality is excluded from this, because it occupies neutral ground.

 

[SOCRATES]

Farenheit 911, have you seen it.

No, I know there has been a lot of commentary about this film, but I myself have not seen it.
Worth watching ? If so I will rent a video on my return, I am off tomorrow AM for twelve days.

 

[bulldozer]

Soc,

Well put together, enjoyed ur comments.

However, all of what you said comes down to plain common sense i believe.

 

[Bigbusiness]

rubbish .

I've played poker many times and I can tell you straight out that luck plays A BIG part .

you not seriously trying to say that a game based on the strength of a hand which is RANDOMLY ( you understand this word yeah ? ) dealt out is not based on LUCK ?

if you are dealt not 1 single pair all night then not even a saint could win .

HAHAHA.

I think you are trying to justify gambling . news flash , I don't give a damn whether it is credible or not .

so the real questions are , and I'd like you to answer :

1) are you a gambler , yes or no ?

2 ) how do you use the markets , as a gambling tool or as a trading one ?

and please if you don't the difference by now , I feel sorry for you . also I must state , I don't care how anyone plays the market (gambling or otherwise ) but I expect them to be honest about it.

Over a large period of time, a professional poker player will be dealt hundreds of thousands of hands. So while there might be times when they are dealt a string of poor hands and times when they are dealt a string of good hands, this will even out.

Those that win are able to extract the most money when they have a good run of cards or find some poor players. They are also able to avoid losing too much when they are having a bad run of cards or they do not have a chance of winning a pot. I see that as a skill and I don't think luck is the major factor.

I was also talking about a specific type of poker game, the no-limit cash game. When playing in a tournament, there is a lot of luck involved but the best players still make more money in the long run than ther poor players. With no-limit cash games, there are players that win nearly all the time and luck doesn't seem to be a major factor.

 

[wisestguy]

you are predictable , I knew you would not answer . so I take it you ARE a gambler and that's how you treat the markets . hey , whatever turns you on .

the issue is still HOW ONE TREATS THE MARKETS , NOT LABELS.

to answer you:


how long is the long term ? can your pockets take it when you go on a LONG barren run ?

also you cannot always avoid losing by abstaining , will be times when you are pipped at the post .

final round , show hands , you got 3 of a kind , opponent has a straight , big big pot ,you're BF'ed , you played a good game but you still lucked out .

this can be repeated x times a night , plus the times when you sit out = big losing night.

in 50 nights this could happen say x20 or x30 or x35 , net net over 50 nights you still lose and probably by a big amount , which you sometimes cannot control , skill or not . 3 of a kind still has to see a possible bluff on a straight.

unless you assume unlimited capital which is bull , coz you might have gone bust already , as happens a lot . that's why it is called gambling .

as opposed to trading , where once you have a winner , then all that is left is how much you win , not depedent on showdowns , bluffs etc .

 

[SOCRATES]

Soc,

Well put together, enjoyed ur comments.

However, all of what you said comes down to plain common sense i believe.

Yes, that's right, you don't have to be a genius you know you have to have common sense.
But the common sense you have to apply is specific, focused and targeted common sense.
In this regard, the type of common sense you have to apply is of a different strain to the one used in ordinary life.Because it it a different strain, it seems unfamiliar, or unnecessary when you first encounter it.

This particular strain of common sense has to be mastered before anyone can succeed.
To master anything requires effort, and a willingness to strive for it. What happens is that
generally this striving is not perceived as necessary, the end result is that those that do not
strive, do not succeed.

Additionally, there are all sorts of distractions in the path of the the aspirant, that it is very easy to become misdirected from the path that must be followed.

To a lot of people what I say appears to be so much outside mainstream, they think it is arcane, off the wall, or even that I am making jokes or making fun of them or ridiculing them or whatever. I assure you it is not the case. I can understand to a certain extent why this is so.

It is because what is being presented is not what is expected according to frames of reference which happen to be the wrong ones. No one can be expected to have the correct frame of reference to start with, but my posture remains that to incessantly argue over what is obvious and patently provable is silly., daft.

Kind Regards As Usual.

 

[SOCRATES]

you are predictable , I knew you would not answer . so I take it you ARE a gambler and that's how you treat the markets . hey , whatever turns you on .

the issue is still HOW ONE TREATS THE MARKETS , NOT LABELS.

to answer you:


how long is the long term ? can your pockets take it when you go on a LONG barren run ?

also you cannot always avoid losing by abstaining , will be times when you are pipped at the post .

final round , show hands , you got 3 of a kind , opponent has a straight , big big pot ,you're BF'ed , you played a good game but you still lucked out .

this can be repeated x times a night , plus the times when you sit out = big losing night.

in 50 nights this could happen say x20 or x30 or x35 , net net over 50 nights you still lose and probably by a big amount , which you sometimes cannot control , skill or not . 3 of a kind still has to see a possible bluff on a straight.

unless you assume unlimited capital which is bull , coz you might have gone bust already , as happens a lot . that's why it is called gambling .

as opposed to trading , where once you have a winner , then all that is left is how much you win , not depedent on showdowns , bluffs etc .

Listen Wisestguy,

What Bigbusiness says in his post above is perfectly correct. He talks about skill, about acquiring an edge, about maximising that edge and skill, about abstaining when conditions are not right, and about the potential without preimposed limit that a really big cash game can offer.So why are you arguing with him ? It seems to me that you are arguing for the sake of arguing. This is not favourable to constructive discussion. We none of us who are serious about this topic are interested in destructive arguments for the sake of them.

We are only interested in discussing constructively not arguing destructively.

I would respectfully suggest to you that you remain silent rather than argue for the sake of it and disrupt the flow of this discussion, until or if you can contribute in a constructive manner like all the other members whose attention is now on this discussion.

Kind Regards.