Robert, I am glad you did, it is hard to resist. I think we have to find a middle ground between two extremes.
(1) On the one hand, there IS abuse. I read about the way some of the people trade in the articles I posted and I think UGH. I have friends who claim to have brokers who clearly violate margin requirements (as did Hillary Clinton's commodities account, if anyone remembers; I do not recall anyone mentioning THAT recently), do not do enough training, etc., etc. All of us should have problems with these kind of issues, including the ridiculous trading environment which Jenna described. (I had our family Corgi with me sometimes this week by contrast, a trader and his dog!)
(2) On the other hand, there is clearly a dramatic revolution which has taken place, and part of what is going on is the resistance of the elite to the growth of real democracy. Sometimes I read comments which are right up to the line, if not over the line, of being like the Luddites.
At some point you just want to shout and say give me a break. There are tools and news sources available which make it POSSIBLE for a wide variety of people to make money TRADING (not investing). There is a rich variety among such people, in terms of their styles, backgrounds, and approaches, but they are not anything like those described in the Washington Post article. I wonder if Jerry Knight knows any such people, and I cannot resist detecting more than a hint of schadenfreude when Ms. Morgenson of the N.Y. times says when the day-trading phenomenon ends -- and end it will...
All traders are not "daytraders"--this is a wide, diverse and complex phenomenon, and lumping us all together into some monolithic category to take pot shots at is not going to help anything. Merrill Lynch real was/is threatened by what is taking place.
I for one say if this revolution means things like thestreet.com and Jenna's Market Gems thread there really is some GOOD here too. I see far, far too few articles pointing this out, especially recently.
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