[Non]Musings on Vendors

I am not sure exactly what to make of trading system/software vendors, but I believe some understanding of them is essential to long-term trading success.*

Some great discussion about vendors is seen in online trading/investment forums. People debate different angles back and forth. I like to borrow commentary from forums and you have seen this several times. Earlier, I was reviewing a blog idea chock-full of forum excerpts that had 2,800 words. That’s almost an entire month of blogging for me! You probably don’t want to read that much and I don’t really want to type it. I tend to get negative and pessimistic when things start to reek of scam.

I do believe vendors have a place and I think everyone should come to some meaningful understanding on the topic. This isn’t about me getting on my “high horse” and “preaching the gospel.” If I don’t claim to have the answers and if I don’t try to indoctrinate you with them then it’s less work for me aside from being the wrong thing to do.

Today, therefore, I will not try to make a definitive case about vendors one way or another except to say you should know what they are. You should be aware that they exist. You should be able to identify them and I would encourage you to do some thinking on how they fit into the whole landscape of trading and the financial industry. For this reason, I am categorizing this post under “Financial Literacy.”

When I take an inventory of my overall thoughts and feelings, I come up with a few things:

• I know I am an oddity in terms of trading as a business—having replaced my full-time income and surviving eight years and counting: all things for which I am extremely grateful.
• I have a strong suspicion that something is wrong with the financial world.
• I have a strong suspicion many people working Finance do not have a good understanding about how money is made in the markets because they sell what they are told rather than trade.
• I know many trading clichés exist and most times, I can make just as good a case for the converse.
• I have found a great response to 95% of the tweets, posts, and other statements about the markets is “do you have any data to support that?”
• While so many people like to talk about winners, I prefer discussing losers. Talking to people besides myself is probably more enjoyable because they would rather involve celebratory concepts like “financial freedom,” “endless vacation,” “living in Maui,” and “eternal victory.” While these are great marketing anchors to bring people into the game, I am not sure they are reflective of reality.
• When I talk about my losers I sometimes get bitter and angry. While losers aren’t usually pleasant to see, I do believe them to be more important than winners with regard to trading as a whole.
• If I were to teach others then it would be more a scientific approach to the markets and an understanding of the fallacies and buried mines lying in wait than it would be lessons about successful set-ups and claims about how to generate profits. Avoiding losses and generating profits are synthetically equivalent.

The impetus for this post was EZ Color Trading featured on Season 8 of Dragons Den. In the end, only about half of is about vendors. I have therefore edited the title.*

Interestingly, when I browsed over to the EZ Color website, I got “404 Not Found.” This vendor apparently no longer exists.

* — This was originally written in November 2016, but the draft was never completed. Seeing
       more recent blog posts (some linked) with overlapping content is very refreshing.