What I mentioned only applies to shares and ETFs as they don't offer CFDs on futures yet. With a DMA broker your orders go straight to the exchange and therefore there is no spread difference at all. Other types of brokers, well, I don't really want to be in a situation where my interests are opposite of the broker's.
If it's true that answering this correctly can help one land an interview for a salaried position at a large company, we're in worse trouble than I thought. It shouldn't take any extraordinary insight to see that during the final effort the sheep reaches the top and thus doesn't fall back.
The sheep gets hypoxia and becomes disoriented and more prone to error, eventually dying. A slow process of attrition gradually kills off most non-computer day traders.
Yes, you are correct. The sheep made it to the top. But the answer is not multiple choice, its a number value in minutes. So you still need to put in what time in minutes did it take the sheep to reach the top. And obviously, that is just one question out of 4 tests I had to take which took 2 hours to complete.
Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected. I read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer." The student had answered: "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building." The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he hadn't written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on. In the next minute, he dashed off his answer, which read: "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^2, calculate the height of the building." At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and gave the student almost full credit. While leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were. "Well," said the student, "there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building." "Fine," I said, "and others?" "Yes," said the student, "there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units. A very direct method. "Of course." "If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g [gravity] at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building, in principle, can be calculated." "On this same tack, you could take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession". "Finally," he concluded, "there are many other ways of solving the problem. Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer.'" At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think.
I absolutely love this guy! A true engineer. Had a similar (albeit much less entertaining) situation with a math teacher in high school. She ended up conceding in private, at the very end of the year, for having been wrong in publically humiliating my perfectly good answer earlier on. For the curious: there's an obvious difference between the volume of a cone at a fraction of its height, and its height at a fraction of its volume. I used math beyond our level to solve for how the question was written instead of doing it as it was intended like the rest of the class; hadn't even crossed my mind. (I could never convince the teacher to downgrade them despite having misread the question...) Funny how some memories remain so clear after many years.
You guys do realize that's an old internet fable being appropriated right? ...unless of course my irony meter is broken and the jokes on me.
No. A true asshole. The purpose of the test question was to see if the students had learned the principle of pressure difference to measure heights. This is how altimeters work. Airplanes don't use ropes, gravity drops, shadows and other nonsense to measure their altitudes. They use differences in barometric pressure. I would have given the punk an F for being a smartass and for not demonstrating knowledge of what was clearly taught in class as a significant topic. Nobody was telling the little libertarian how to think, they were testing his knowledge of basic and important material. Epic fail on his part; his 'thinking' isn't as awesome as he assumes. BTW notice how every smartass answer requires something in addition to the barometer: an extremely long rope, a very accurate stopwatch, a building supervisor, etc. Whereas the correct answer requires only the barometer. People who hate teachers are assholes.