I have told this story about my excursion to the religious forum for enquiring about sect members for 3 months : http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17576&perpage=6&pagenumber=2 "I once made an excursion in religious forum but not for one day for 3 months just to really learn about the sects. I didn't attack them I wanted to speak with them so to understand them as thouroughly as possible or rather the phenomena. So whereas the others were attacking them, I asked them questions. And there were 4 and the chief was really some kind of nazi although I avoid to be confronted with his ideas because it would end any discussion. Another one was much more intelligent in fact he was even a specialist in Artificial Intelligence. So we "sympathise" or rather we could have a normal conversation because I never sympathise really with people from sects . I asked him the first question: why did you enter such a sect ? " How did I get interested in enquiring on sect members ? It was not that I have any spiritual needs but because I was astonished by people in french stock market forums at the end of 1999 when - after having told them to buy in March 1999 the tech stock (they were then to afraid to utter something since we were out of a crash from 1998 ) - I was telling them that now was the time to realise that new economy is just a hype and that market will crash. At that time there was a pretended guru who presented himself as a trader after having a job as an economist: this guy was pretending that I was a fool and when I even presented facts from history and the very recent opinion of Mundell the nobel prize he answered that Mundell must have the Alzeihmer illness . He was not alone I was one against everybody ... as usual . So I told myself if someone who is supposed to be educated as an economist made such weird arguments as just pretending that even Nobel Prize are crazy men there must be something that I didn't realise: people do not look at arguments objectively they only use some for asserting beliefs which they have to pay after : the guy has disappeared after the crash So my question is: - do you prefer sweet lies and accept that government, politicians, medias make sweet lies to you and afer being beneficial for short term you will have to pay the price later unfortunately more than the previous benefit so it's a lose globally - see job market for example as for stock market it's very far from finished although a rally is still possible up to 16000 in my model at the moment if they flood enough money to pass the barrier of 10000 - but I doubt that fundamentally it is possible or things will get eve worse after) or - do you prefer the truth and that they work at improving the society ?
I have been talking also with financial journalists. One told me that he regrets to have no economic background at all another told me that he wrote lies in one of the most important financial newspaper in France because he only writes what people want to hear. I was laughing with him although I was not convinced that it was true for the majority of people but after 1999 I began to wonder if he was not right finally.