Trading in A Culture of Lies

My girlfriend Jen and I were recently discussing our culture and how
filled it is with lies. Little lies, bigs lies, it has become so hard to
tell what is truth and what is a lie. Politicians, businesses, parents,
governmentsŠ they all lie, all the time.

One of the primary places we find these lies is in the whole marketing
communications industry. That industry is built for one goal: to
convince someone to do something that they might not otherwise want to
do. There are books that tell you how to do this more effectively,
entire conferences on the subject, and many many experts who will tell
you how to do this better.

It turns out that the most effective way to sell is to lie. Tell people
that they will get more sex, or sex with hotter partners, that they will
have more friends, that they will feel better, that they will improve
their lives, that they will get richŠ If only they buy your product.

Iıll leave the social ramifications of this to a future post on my other
blog but for here I want to talk about why this is dangerous for
traders.

Traders cannot afford to believe lies. The market forces you to confront
truth. If you do not force yourself to confront your own weakness and
the marketıs inherent unknowability you will fail over the long run.

The reason our culture of lies is relevant to traders is that it frames
the psychological starting point for new traders. They often come to
trading with a lot of misconceptions. Many of these are fed by the
parasites and leeches in our industry who are always trying to sell you
something using lies. Some of the most bold-faced lies are told by those
selling books, courses, and seminars on trading.

Traders often believe that: making money is easy, trading can be done
without work, trading experts are experts (not salesmen), etc. You must
rid yourself of these lies before you can be consistently successful.
You must learn to see beyond the bullshit.

This is one of the reasons that I have been suggesting from the
beginning that traders need to find their own truth and trade for their
own reasons. This is why they must do their own research. Otherwise how
will they know enough to trust their own judgement?

In a world full of lies, the trader who knows the truth and trusts his
own judgement will prevail.

Curtis Faith
2007