All good points and feel free to write as much as you want as, at least in my case, I am thoroughly enjoying your thought provoking posts.
1. Here are a few thoughts on this one:
- I would say that trading is different from health care and the like in that health care is a necessity, where trading is an option one can pursue if they wish to and stay away from if they wish to.
- Much of the challenge that draw's people to trading is the fact that they are in essence playing against other people in the market, so trading profitably gives one a similar sense of accomplishment to playing a sport successfully.
- While many corporations have decided to treat their customers like competitors, trying to suck as much out of them as possible with little regard to their well being, over the long term I believe that this is a losing business model.
This is one of the reasons why I am especially excited about the internet, as the power that the information available online empowers the consumer, and is therefore speeding up the process of killing off the bad companies and promoting the good companies. Over the long term I truly believe that, even with things such as health care that are very messed up now, companies who pursue honest business practices that put the interests of the consumer first will end up the most profitable.
- With sites such as this one I believe the same holds, in that sites who honestly try to help people learn, provide information and bring people together in a way that is truly beneficial to the largest number of people, and put the interests of their users first, will in the long run be much more profitable than sites that try to suck people in and get as much out of them as possible before tossing them aside.
2. No I do not think that this is what neophyte traders need, and I have done my best to help structure this community in a way that this is not what we try to do. As Jack Schwagger wrote in Market Wizards, the one common trait that he found among all the traders he interviewed, was that they had developed a strategy that fit their own unique personality.
I think this is true even with the Informed System project as more than anything I see the value here in showing people some of the different steps we are going through to try and develop this system will be of benefit to traders as they work to develop there own.
If there are things that we can do to better the site in this regard I am all ears so fire away.
3. As Bill Gates points out in his speech to the World Economic Forum Below, while Adam Smith did point this out in Wealth of Nations, he also opened his first book (The Theory of Moral Sentiments), with the following statement:
"how selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."
Bill Gates Speech on Creative Capitalism
In addition to enjoying what I do which is very important to me, I also believe that the most benefit will come (whether that is defined as profit, self satisfaction or whatever) from doing business in an honest and ethical way. For me even if this were not the case, any pleasure that I would receive from the profits that would come from a business that did not do this, would be more than offset by guilt.
For a more detailed response as to why I do this and how I stand to benefit see
http://www.informedtrades.com/26958-why-do-you-do.html[/url] ]this post, which is also included in my
personal profile, for anyone who is interested in learning more about me.
Hope that helps. If there are any other thoughts on this one feel free to comment as always.
Best Regards,
Dave