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Rowling has said she created the word "Muggle" from "mug", an English term for someone who is easily fooled. She added the "-gle" to make it sound less demeaning and more "cuddly".
The word "muggle" or "muggles" is now used in various contexts in which its meaning is similar to the sense in which it appears in the Harry Potter series of books. Generally speaking, it is used by members of a group to describe those outside the group, comparable to "civilian" as used by military personnel.
The longstanding separation between the wizarding and Muggle worlds in the Harry Potter universe has led many wizards to advocate keeping the two apart. This view has in turn led to a minority of wizards seeing Muggles (and wizards of pure Muggle parentage) as untrustworthy, foolish, or, in extreme cases, racially inferior. The common practice of wizards marrying Muggles is viewed by such extremists as miscegenation, and they instead advocate maintaining a so-called "purity of blood."
I've heard this to be true as well, but how can we know if individual traders provide
a significant increase of liquidity?
If one looks at the ES, how can it be determined how many contracts are traded
by guys and gals trading from home with small accounts over a one month period, let's say?
(To me, small means <$1,000,000).
This is off-topic but I found it accidentally when looking up this stuff:
Another area of concern relates to flash trading. Flash trading is where certain market participants are allowed to see incoming orders to buy or sell securities very slightly earlier than the general market participants, typically 30 milliseconds, in exchange for a fee. According to some sources, the programs can inspect major orders as they come in and use that information to profit.[4] Currently, the majority of exchanges either do not offer flash trading, or have discontinued it, although the exchange Direct Edge currently does offer it to participants. Direct Edge's response to this is the data that flash trading reduces market impact, increases average size of executed orders, reduces trading latency, and provides additional liquidity.
Guys you should be proudly saying I'm a "trader" or a "day trader" or a "speculator" with your head high up and if you are not it means you are not proud of what you are doing and you will not succeed in this business. If you are not it means you are on the edge of not making it in this business and quitting all together. First your mental appetite has to be satisfied by doing something you are proud of doing, than only you can succeed at it. Later you will be proudly announcing to the world that you are a trader.
I had an idea about what I was going to say as a speculator, I would openly say to another person: I'm a speculator, so remember next time you are at the gas station buying gas who was dipping hands in this gasoline, yes I was driving the price up when you paid a high prices for gas, but I was pulling it down too when the gas was cheep
No, I pay a dentist, and he or she earns a salary, because I unfortunately require the specific service that dentist offers. The fact that other people make money supplying both of us with goods etc doesn't change the fact that I'm not providing a social service through my trading.
I agree that it is honest work, and in many ways I find it more honest than the rhetoric surrounding working in university environment, let alone in corporations.
I also agree that the salaries some professions get seem absurdly out of proportion to their social worth, but the fact is that performers of all kinds are paid because people think it worth paying to see them.
Yes, liquidity is the argument for social utility. This is certainly true, and in equities you can even get paid for providing liquidity. But really, if all the retail traders on futures.io (formerly BMT) suddenly stopped trading tomorrow, would the markets suddenly stutter and grind to a halt? I'm sure some professionals would notice a decline in their profits, but I doubt if the producers, commercials and big speculators (who are the ones providing significant liquidity) would notice much of anything.
Of course, one could argue that retail traders are like the plankton (or is it krill?) at the bottom of the food chain, but I doubt if many here would want to see their group in that light.
Mind you, I've occasionally used that argument myself to explain the social function of trading - no one ever understood well enough to ask whether my own trading actually made the slightest difference.
I just found this thread today, and think it is interesting to read about others experiences and thoughts.
I have not been sure how the negative aspect of trading in connection to other people is in other countries or continents are, but I have thought and still somewhat suspect that it is pretty in the extreme here in Norway where I live. It is known that people here not living in a box gets pretty fed up after some years and finally move abroad. The innovative ground breaking type is nooot very common here. In many areas there are a big difference compared to other countries. Though a bit off point today, and off course without the "you should not stick out" communist conformity march mentality which became strong here in Norway in the nineteen thirties, people in the really old days moved to Iceland. Where at that time beside of Paris, one of the two large universities in Europe was founded. Which is something excluded from our school history books off course. To foreigners people in Norway might seem very nice, but there are strong negative forces amongst people to hold each other down. In fact especially in the eastern inland. My experience of it is like having a bunch of 120 to 180 pound annoying leeches attached around your body trying to drag you down.
On the positive side my experience regarding trading is that people who know me and others have respectfully just said that they do not believe in trading, and a few have gotten interested. On the outer negative side my experience has not been that nice. In fact there has been two, who I now would call "psychos", who literally actively tried to break up my family with kids. Because they are convinced that it can not be done, I therefore had to be shamelessly living on my partners income. A somewhat traumatic experience actually. So hence, partially, the reason for my posting signature
What I tell people today is that I do Market Analysis, which off course sounds very important, right? So now people say ooh. And when they ask which school I have gone to, I tell them that I found out that to be competitive it was smarter to do the things that people with general education have to do afterwards anyway right away. This passes very well and I do not have the feeling of telling a lie.
Thanks,
Laurus
“If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything.” - Hsin Hsin Ming
I just saw this thread. People ask me all the time what I do. I tell them I day trade stocks.Most people can relate to that, but the average person has never heard of futures so why bore them with the details.And sadly the few that question me, money of course, and I tell them of the futures , they think I can give them a secret that will enable them to trade futures and get rich.Sad!! When I tell them it is not that easy of course they lose interest.
Great thread Big Mike. I just discovered it after the link you posted in a trading journal.
Repeating what I posted there:
I haven't said I was trading except to one or two people. Most extended family and friends I've heard who tried years before had failed at trading(investing?). And took hits during the dot com bust and the 2003-4? crash. Of if they got profitable they may be keeping quiet about it. Kind of worried about letting people know actually. Being equated to a "gambler" with no benefit to the economy or society even as a retail trader providing "liquidity".
But if you look at the stats, there are exponentially more retail traders than ever worldwide in the last fifteen years, and in the U.S numbering in the tens of millions alone. Like every other other neighbor could be trading at least part time in the privacy of their home and you would never know it. Having worked in IT, I'd seen plenty of workstations where people hid small toolbars and gadgets/windows showing their stocks they would check on throughout the day , or even trade, including the boss' computer!
But even with all the retail trading, I wonder if retail trading is really insignificant to the big money. Al Brooks seemed to think so. He said it was big money HFT computers vs. other big money computers now. Maybe retail traders are good fodder material for pumpers , scam newsletters, yahoo finance stock msg boards, and stock pick shows like Cramer.
But I agree with the original post. I fear it's mostly a negative response. A lot of people bought into the investing of the 90's dot com and are still sore about it, then lost their 401ks due to the 2007-9 housing loan crisis. It's not a "real job".
Have a read of "The Speed Traders - Edgar Perez". It's an excellent read about HFT and it explains how little money is actually in HFT, even for the bigs boys. Lots of money being spent on tech, profits are actually quite small compared to outlay but statisics make the profit more reliable than most other forms of trading.