Dear TurtleTrader:
A little anecdote you might find interesting:
On 15 November I received a call from a very aggressive sales broker from a firm called Windsor, located in Spain. He said that there was a unique buying opportunity arising in the Yen. I politely declined to entertain his little sales pitch. He mistook my reluctance to cough up US$10,000 to buy the Yen as an inability to do so and flatly told me that I was wasting his time (this call came during my dinner).
I don't know how he got my number but I don't like advice or abuse from people I don't know - so I decided to argue with him. I won't go into the detail (it was convoluted, contradictory, and wrong-headed, something about the US dollar rising and taking the Yen with it) but I went and called up the March Yen chart on the computer to put some context around his argument. That was all the convincing I needed and hung up on the man.
Upon reflection, I suspect that, in using the words 'unique' and 'once in a lifetime', he was being truthful - it would have been something that you only did once, since following his advice would have washed you out of the market. In any event, I shorted the Yen about a week later (not purely out of spite, it was trending nicely lower) and have to assume that at least some portion of my gain is the result of snake-oil salesmen like those at Windsor. Therefore, I suppose we all must thank the bucket shops, magic box alchemists, and the like for making it easier to transfer money from gullible people to disciplined Trend Followers.
Cheers,
Robert L.
Hong Kong
Editor's Note: The above note was submitted from a client of TurtleTrader's. The point Robert makes is that all of the get-rich-quick-schemes actually help Trend Followers to make money. In actuality the losses of the people trying to get rich quick go directly to the winners of those trading as Trend Followers. It's called a zero-sum game.
