Stock Trading Slime

I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of different stock trading experts during my fifteen year career as a stock trader. Most are great, but as with any profession, there are those that really give it a bad name. Unfortunately, they are the ones that can burn a new investor and turn them off from a fantastic pursuit for life. In the hopes of warning you away for some of the slime before you go through what I did, here are a few of my experiences, and a couple suggestions for avoiding the encounters yourself.

I’ll never forget my worst experience with a stock trading service, the ultimate in slime and an incident that changed my life. It, finally, taught me the important lesson that some people are just in it for themselves, regardless of who they hurt along the way. It also made clear to me that I would have to be different than that, and cemented my personal creed that if a business opportunity requires me to hurt someone else, I just pass it up.

This service, like many others, provided a daily listing of recommended stocks to buy or sell short each day. And, like many others, they had impressive statistics to prove that, in most cases, the stocks they chose would do what they said they would. I was impressed, and said sign me up!

If you are dealing with a reputable stock trading service, it can be a great way to find profitable stocks on a consistent basis. But, unlike those credible services, this had a different goal that I was not aware of at the start. Turns out, the key management personnel of the service were recommending stocks to their subscriber group for the sole purpose of controlling the prices for their own gain.

To illustrate, the owners of this service would buy IBM stock through their account. The next step was to recommend that the entire subscriber group buy IBM. All 3000 + subscribers started purchasing IBM, and the stock price would increase from the activity. When the slime was satisfied that the price had increased enough for them to make the profit they desired, they would cash in.

I must admit I was shocked to learn that the stock trading service was manipulating its subscribers to manage their own trades. Their objective wasn’t the success of the subscriber base as promised, but rather to make their own money and run. That is just wrong, and it was insult to injury that we were paying the slime subscription fees on top of it.

Now true, most stock trading services would never conduct business in that manner. But many do act in an equally slimy manner by trying to convince the new trader that stock trading is much too dangerous to do alone. They work hard to convince you that in order to be profitable trading stocks you must subscribe to their expensive service and let them do all the work for you.

True, stock trading is complicated at first, until you have found a system that is right for you. But anyone who tells you that you can never learn enough to handle it yourself at some point, is just trying to milk you for the monthly fees. These systems are typically pretty generic and don’t take into consideration your personal risk tolerance or trading preferences.

I know that some investors don’t want to bother trading stock on their own, and are content to buy into a monthly service to tell them what to trade. That is fine, and the return is usually adequate enough to keep these folks happy. However, my experience is that if you can find a process that works for you and structure it around your personal risk tolerance level, you will be more satisfied with the trading experience and will realize better profitability over the long run.

You will have to do some probing to find a resource to help you get on your feet without controlling your trades. Slime free resources are available, however, and you will be happy with the outcome as their goal will be to help you help yourself become successful at stock trading. From a successful day trader to a future one, I am sure you will be pleased the results of finding and working with a reputable resource.