Risk Free Profit

[SOCRATES]

I personally think that sports arbitrage has to be approached in the same manner as trading for a living. I don’t think that it as simple as ‘earning a little bit of extra cash’. Obviously this is the message that companies advertising arbitrage services need to get across – their main selling points are the apparent ‘ease of earning easy money’. The reality is that it is not easy and the methods which are preached are full of potential pitfalls. I personally feel that the arbitrage services are no different to the people who peddle services which claim to predict easy profits within the markers. If people are so good at calling the markets then why do they mess about with their $99 per month subscription services ? Likewise, if there is plenty of room to make sports arbitrage bets then why do these companies not take advantage of their own information ? The fact that these two groups of people act in a certain way shows that they know where the real risk and the real rewards lie.

Steve.

You are absolutely correct in what you say, and I commend you for your clarity of expression.

If you add to this all these "systems" that purport to take the brainwork out of trading and offer signals and other nonsenses, plus the amount ot drivel that is published and discussed, it is no wonder that nearly everybody ends up being terribly confused.

This in part is the underlying reason why it is that so many people keep on asking so many questions, some of them silly and some not so silly, but, when the truth, in all its honest brutality freely offered, is presented to them, this is much more than they can allow themselves to accept, to my utter dismay and disbelief, and that of my peers.

 

[stevespray]

Evening Soc,

They dont allow themselves to accept it because you are removing a dream. The dream that it is possible to get something for nothing is one of the hardest barriers to get over. This doesnt just apply to the markets or sports betting, it applies to many aspects of life as a whole.

Steve.

 

[SOCRATES]

Bingo ! Well said, stevespray. But you see, it is the moral duty of those of us who know to help those who are unaware. Being unaware or uninformed is not being stupid. Being stupid is a persistent affliction that besets many people who are unwilling or unable to think for themselves when the facts are presented.

Not being aware or being uninformed is the consequence of lacking information. This is a very different proposition altogether. None of us are born knowing, we all have to learn.

Some of us have to be made to learn. Some of us have to be forced to learn. Some of us have to be dragged kicking and screaming to be made to learn. Some of us never learn despite whatever efforts are applied.

It is much more comfortable to seek refuge in the pursuit of a dream.

Therefore I agree with you completely.

It never ceases to amaze me to observe how it is that people stand in queues waiting to throw money at the lottery, or in gambling rooms in casinos, how it is that people have an uncontrolled avarice in compulsively pulling at slot machines or acquiring gambling chips only to see the stakes evaporate again and again and again.

Now, not to learn from that, for example, now that in my view, now that is real stupidity, it is the element of stupidity that is part of the dream that cannot be reliably be expected to materialise, but yet they persist, and I cannot understand why they persist.

Every trader ought to visit a casino at least once, not to play, but to witness these weaknesses in the human psyche, at close quarters, for himself.