1951
2010
Times sure have changed haven’t they? I found the above ad from 1951 declaring the revolutionary “page gage” from typewriter manufacturer Smith-Corona. The ad boasts that the page gage alone “saves retyping hundreds of pages a month…saving stationery, time, and tempers.” And, according to the ad “only Smith-Corona has it.” WOW! Fast forward sixty years and we now have the IPAD, touted as the “most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device.”
Technology has changed but one thing hasn’t…human nature. We are all wowed by the new, the revolutionary, the latest must have that can save us time, money, and make our lives more enjoyable, less cluttered. We crave the latest gadget now just like a previous generation that craved the “page gage”.
Traders crave the latest “must have” indicator, or trading system, or trade alert software, or platform that can make trading easier, more profitable, less time consuming. You see the ads everywhere touting the easy, money making trading systems luring in those who crave the easy at the expense of the obvious. What novice traders fail to realize, oftentimes when it is too late, is that trading is not made up of computerized dots and dashes and lines and graphs. Stock trading is made up of people just like you and me. People who are greedy, fearful, cynical, happy, sad, etc. People who want to buy; people who want to sell.
The sooner we realize that successful stock trading is less about an indicator and more about the emotions behind the ebb and flow of prices, the sooner we will be able to use the indicator to our advantage. The indicator is worthless without knowing how to put that same indicator or strategy to proper use. The technology behind the revolutionary 1951 Smith-Corona typewriter certainly would not make the text on the page any better. The number one novel in 1951 was “From Here to Eternity” by James Jones and I am willing to bet that Jones’ novel was number one because of the content and its ability to create an emotional response from its readers, not because of the instrument used to produce it, Smith-Corona or not!
Today’s highly touted gadgets, be it the IPAD, IPHONE, GPS, BLACKBERRY, FLIP ULTRAHD, etc. will only make life more enjoyable when used properly and not at the expense of basic human interaction. Remember this the next time you sit down for dinner with family and friends and your ringtones, vibrations, and texting is interrupted by actual one on one conversation! Remember this the next time you are in front of your trading monitor and you are not listening to the market… because your indicator is texting you.
