Wise Advice for Investors and Traders on "Experts"

[Garpal Gumnut]

There are hundreds of thousands of words written every day on what one should invest in. What you read does have an effect on your decision making. Marketers of financial products know this as do amateur stock pickers. This post is advice on the latter, amateur stock pickers, some of whom post on ASF. For reasons known only to themselves and their medical/mental health advisers they boldly spruick stock picks.

Avoid them.

They often have some ulterior motive associated with a deficient personality. Markers to be wary of are

• Posting in bold and in capitals like this AHOY
• Being dismissive of other posters
• Being thin skinned and blocking other posters who disagree
• Engendering negative emotions in other members of a forum
• Picking arguments for arguments sake
• Being absolutely sure of their positions

Often your own experience is better than any stock pickers. Trust your gut, it is often better than other poster's opinions. Use your own expertise, e.g if you work in retail look at some retail stocks. See how your workplace runs compared to listed retail companies. Are supermarket or hardware staff rude and hassled with few people going through and buying. This is basic fundamental analysis.

If you read a poster's chart which is absolutely sure of a stock or commodity's future projection beware. Do a short course or buy a book on charting. The basics of charting are all you need. The more complicated a chart is the less likely it is to predict the future. And remember no chart can predict the future, only provide a likelihood, just like your fundamental assessment of a business if you are a retail worker.

This is not beginner's advice. It is just common sense advice for those on forums and trying to work out the nuts and bolts of stock investing, and the preparation in reading advice of forum posters on sites such as Aussie Stock Forums. It can be daunting but it is worthwhile, to separate the wheat from the Seaweed.

gg

 

[Dona Ferentes]

to which I would add, take with a pinch of salt anyone who refers to such amateur stockpickers, gifted, lucky or otherwise, as sheep, and has an embedded link to another, usually their own, website / vanity project.

Now, it is well documented that 'sheep' is a term used in boiler rooms and other equivalents of modern slavery by the operators as a general descriptor of their prey, the vulnerable, confused, deluded or greedy, whom they look upon as a source of plunder, to be fleeced or fed to the wolves.

 

[eskys]

to which I would add, take with a pinch of salt anyone who refers to such amateur stockpickers, gifted, lucky or otherwise, as sheep, and has an embedded link to another, usually their own, website / vanity project.

Now, it is well documented that 'sheep' is a term used in boiler rooms and other equivalents of modern slavery by the operators as a general descriptor of their prey, the vulnerable, confused, deluded or greedy, whom they look upon as a source of plunder, to be fleeced or fed to the wolves.

Labelling,derogative nouns, adjectives aren't the best form of communication. But alas, some grew up with what we were taught....so it's now our job to re educate ourselves. Our brain waves were pieced together by environment and to a some extent, genetics. Ask any neonatologist and he will tell you that what we learn from a baby to the age of 5 are crucial stages of our lives....teach a kid the wrong thing, he learns the wrong thing. But we don't have to stay that way...we can unlearn in our sunset years