| What
Wall
Street
Won't
Tell
You
If you
could convince a professional that anyone could do his or
her job, you may soon be out of favor. Certain professions
such as tax accountants and attorneys, to name a few, rely
on the complexity and confusion of their field for their livelihood.
"...while
GarsWorld is certainly not popular with the masters
of Wall Street, it is very popular with regular
people."
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It is no different on Wall
Street. For over 200 years, reliable access to financial information
has been restricted to an elite group of insiders, floor traders,
large broker-age firms and professional money managers. In
his fictionalized autobiography, the cycle of the market was
described by the legendary Jesse Livermore to be one in which
“…the insiders, who buy low and drive prices high, will then
sell to the public at the market top, and when the prices
decline, the cycle begins all over again.”
Not much has changed since
Livermore’s comments 80 years ago---except for one significant
event: The advent of the Internet. For the first time in its
history, the financial markets can be accessed with the click
of the mouse. What used to be the exclusive domain of the
commission-driven broker, the floor trader and the wealthy
insider is now potentially available to any housewife with
a modem and an E*Trade account.
But as old habits are hard
to break, so do aging monopolies have difficulty adjusting
to their inevitable dissolve. At last, the professional trader,
the money manager, the insider and the broker alike are each
facing the fact that anyone with a PC and half a mind can
do their job. What are they to do?
The last line of defense amongst
the “professionals” is enforced ignorance and the insistence
on the complexity and “danger” of financial markets if you
wing it without them. They will be quick to tell you horror
stories of trading, and how it is equated to gambling and
other social ills, and that the proper way to invest is to
buy and hold indefinitely (on their recommendations, of course).
What none
of these professionals ever tell you is that they are usually
the first ones to dump their portfolios the moment the market
goes south, yet they insist that you should simply ride it
out for the “long run.” Many of them even tell you to invest
more as your stocks decline (they have fancy names for it
like “buying opportunity” and “averaging down”). So went the
market in 2000 and 2001, as millions of unwitting public lost
billions, all the while being urged to keep on buying---all
the while the professionals were selling their shares. It
never occurred to the public, being taught that the “proper”
strategy was to buy and hold, that if the market continued
to decline, then someone had to be selling an awful lot of
stock. The profes-sionals were doing the selling, the same
pied pipers who led the public underwater.
So what is it that Wall Street
doesn’t want you to know? They don’t want you to know how
to trade. More specifically, they don’t want you to find out
that the truly big money is made by traders, not “investors.”
That is how it has been for time immemorial. They only tell
you to buy (and hold), because it is the “professional’s”
best interest that you do so. It’s strange, because “investing,”
taught in this fashion, is the most dangerous strategy of
all: Make a bet, stick with it come hell or high water, and
if it doesn’t go your way, you lose everything.
Lately, the “trading club
elite” has even extended beyond Wall Street. New groups of
professional “day traders” have formed all around the country.
While these groups are not directly connected to the older
generation of professionals, their message and intent is the
same, that trading is wrought with danger, and that you need
at least $100,000 and extensive training to even think about
it. Naturally, they can provide expensive seminars and other
services, but the message is identical to the one being given
for 200 years: “Unless you are among the wealthy and elite,
stay out of our profession.”
GarsWorld is dedicated to
dispelling age-old myths about the market, to show you that
anyone with the will and half of a mind can trade for profit,
and that it can be done with minimal risk with relatively
small stakes.
And, while GarsWorld is certainly
not popular with the masters of Wall Street, it is very popular
with regular people. All it takes is a minor commitment, a
desire to make money on stocks, and above all, the willingness
to learn new things. That’s what we are about, and we invite
you to take that first step of the journey in trading for
income!
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