Much (or little) is often made on ET of those deranged and highly annoying individuals who manifest, or create, multiple aliases with the appearance of multiple personalities. Such posters give me little pause because I deal with them daily in my private trading therapy practice. What vexes me no end is that seemingly intelligent and accomplished individuals think so little of themselves, and ultimately of us here, that they create the opposite of multiple personalities: the conjoined personality. Wherein they contrive collectively to create the illusion that a single prolific poster is an ubertrader. Capable of creating and trading a system so complex that no single normal person could hope to comprehend it and profit from its enormous potential. This creates intense frustration for those who attempt to understand it, so that they submissively seek the tutelage and guidance of the superhuman conjoined personality guru. There is an element of smug contempt for ET here in the practice's similarity to the 1969 literary hoax "Naked Came the Stranger." I believe that one reason the multiple personality posters are so obvious is that they unintentionally share stylistic compositional similarities. Whereas the conjoined personality poster goes largely unremarked because the conspirators endeavor to emulate a single style, perhaps that of the most senior amongst them. So we detect multiple aliases by their similarities, and the conjoined alias by its differences. Such differences arise, I believe, because the multiple authors may not be co-located, may be of two or more genders, and may not be aware of the wild embellishments other authors have made to the pseudo-history of the putative guru. So what practical use can we glean from this insight? Perhaps to be suspicious of the motives of highly prolific, long-running posters. Or imposters.
Now let us suppose, as an amusing untellectual exercise, that we wish to create such a Frankenstein's Trading Monster. Because there will inevitably be posting inconsistencies, we must strive to have the same look and feel in every post, so as not to give the game away, as it is great good giggling pissing our pants fun to fool ET. So let's say we decide that all our posts will consist of two line paragraphs with no more than two sentences. We wish to distract from the specifics of style and content as much as possible, so we will ocasionally mispel a word or trnaspose a lettre. This puts annoyence foremost and suspcion second. Frankie, as we shall call him, must be so old that he predates the internet. Thus he is untraceable and we may make up anything about his life we wish. To support the illusion of immense antiquitous wisdom, we will use language which sounds archaic to contemporary youthful ears. Long strung-out sentences further the illusion that Frankie is intelligent and you are stupid because you can't keep up with his brilliant stream of consiousness musings about the nature of the markets and how you can use his insights to achieve fabulous wealth which you can use for the betterment of society which wil bring you more happiness than the obscene wealth alone will because otherwise you would just waste it on mere baubles and symbols of status so it is best to live inconspicuously in some godforsaken spot like Frankie does.
Now as to content, the language of trading has been with us for centuries, and was well codified in the 1930's. So what do we have to say that is new? Nothing, truth to tell. So to be relevant we must reinvent trading. "Up" becomes "right." "Down" becomes "left." "Velocity" becomes "pace." A "scrubbed trade" becomes a "wash." Absence of a signal becomes a signal in itself. A "congestion" becomes a "lateral." Using a totally new vocabulary thoughly confuses the typical ET reader, let us call him N. Eweby, leading him continually to ask the superguru for clarification, and giving the superguru endless opportunity to put the supplicant down. To add to the aura of superiority, we permit some inconsistencies to creep in: Frankie: "The 6-3-2 Stoch is the best tuning." N. Eweby: "But you posted yesterday that you use the 5-3-2?" Frankie: "Do try harder to keep up. It depends on the circumstances as to pace and volume pattern and participation." N. Eweby: "Uh, OK, but what is participation?" Frankie: "Google it."
Additionally, we cannily use the "Choosy Mothers Choose Jif" approach. Frankie's method is not comprehensible to most. Only those of superior intellect and/or moral virtue can benefit from it: "Eighteen out of twenty people who read my posts will consider it nonsense and pass it by." "Most people are incapable of learning the parameters and following the discipline required." "If you are not a well-balanced and self-effacing individual you will never achieve the potential of my system." N. Eweby thinks to himself, "I am such an admirable person! I can succeed at trading if I apprentice myself to Frankie!"
Ummm. Now to compose our inaugural post: Hello, ET. My name is Frankie Stein. I was invited here by (name a moderator who is usually asleep at the wheel and won't notice we used his name). I have been on the Aethernet leading trading discussion groups for many years, and just now became aware of this place. If you google me you will find that the Atomic Energy Commission tried unsuccessfuly over twenty times in the late '60's to declare me toxically radioactive. They were jealous because of my prominent position in the Nixon administration as author of controversial proposed environmental regulations. Well, I am just an amateur who trades thousands of ES cars a day in scores of round trips, so I hope to learn something here.
I'm just glad that this thread is not an allusion to Jack and his PVC and STD systemologies. Imagine the stir that would cause.
I was thinking the same thing when I read it. We wouldn't want moderation deleting it because it was ET hereshy. But I think good Dr. Mudgins meant it to be a generic case study of the Hive Mind. Of which I am minded one Avery Beau Wolinsky whose antics suggest that multiple people are at work on his oeuvre. I mean, otherwise how could he ever find time to go helling through toll booths at 168 mph and still be a respectable investment advisor and run the hectic day-today operations of the KC stock exchange?
After pondering the ponderous Dr. Mudgins' hypothesis for a few hours, I have concluded that inconsistencies in software infrastructure are also a give deadaway to a Hive Mind at work (or at play, as Dr. Mudgins surmises). With regard to one high frquency poster whom I consider to be highly suspect, we have seen everything in the way of trading documentation from a scanned hand-scrawled legal pad sheet, suggesting utter inability to use Office, to three different charting formats, suggesting lack of standardization of a supposedly mature method among three conjoined-at-the-hip posters. Also, and I am by no means bragging here, I can clearly identify congenital simple-mindedness in the formats of the differing charts, suggesting unwillingness to invest in the services of a professional such as myself. So I cast my ballot in favor of the congenitally conjoined hyposthesis.