Everyone talks about how great a university education is, but they don't tell you the negative. You lose a lot of ability to think for yourself. There's very little direct experience. There's a man or a woman in the front of the room who influences how you think. You get graded on your ability to learn the same crap that everyone else is learning everywhere. We all came out of school programmed. That's why it took me so long, cause I had to unlearn the conditioning. You can especially see this conditioning every day in the blabber put out by Federal Reserve board members. They have a textbook of theory in their head, and they look for evidence to support their view. Theory is kryptonite for traders.
quite a few of the successful floor traders on the Amex(american stock exchange) were street-wise italian and Jewish kids from brooklyn. my conclusion it has something to do with the air in brooklyn.
I am going to spend the next couple of years learning how to trade before i can come up with the capitol to start and a descent plan. When i mentioned to this people, the horror stories i heard. One lady told me she lost 5 thousand in the market. I asked " how much did you start with." She said "I don't know." I was floored, how can you know what you lost and now what you invested. Lets be honest for second, most people are dumb. And i don't mean the chew on paste dumb, i mean they sit around and watch keeping up with the kardashian's dumb. They have a bit of money and try an idea it doesn't work out the buy a boat next for a investment? Most people don't realize you even have to have a plan let alone have one that works. They really believe a banker at the grocery store can give them good investment advice. With as brutal as day trading is it is no wonder people fail.
How long ago did you go through university, Cswim63? I'm interested, because from what you say above, your experience really couldn't be any more radically different from mine. I'm guessing (though maybe wrongly?) that that's mostly because of a time/generation-difference, rather than because you're talking about the US university system?
In school, you have to have the right answer, and failure is bad. Now tell me how that might affect your ability to scratch a trade, beat your stop, or just take a loss. Also, if you get the right answer consistently you're considered smart. One of the first things my mentor told me was that Eagle Scouts have a very high suicide rate.
I went to a four year liberal arts college on the Main Line of Philadelphia, majoring in Russian. I also took a lot of philosophy and economics. I loved the place and what I learned but I stand by my comments. It never really occurred to me until I read a comment by Linda Raschke about the same. That and Eastern philosophy, especially Buddhism. And the work of the late Jim Williams dealing with inference and the unintended messages behind things as it applies to the markets. The latter just opened up a whole new world to me where I enjoyed learning again. Traditional education eschews anomalies. It just can't really deal with them. They know that change is out there, swimming around somewhere. But what to do about it?
I just realized I didn't answer your question. Haha. It was thirty years ago. But things have gotten worse, not better. There's more groupthink now than ever before. And way more distraction.
Marshall McLuhan talked about how the University system had its roots in the industrial revolution. It was designed like an industrial process. Think about it.
I think you develop your personality for most part between ages 1.5 and 3 years old, you are either going to develop into some of the skills of not quitting and finding a way over the wall way before going to university, otherwise if lacking those skills most don't have the grades to even take those courses. I went to college for Business and Science mostly unrelated to trading. I think those who have higher than bachelors degree take much longer to become good as egos gets in the way, they can tell me all the reason of why something should happen but being in a trade for three minutes, all that is useless information as I trade Noise. Higher education get you to a door, whereas no education-there is no door to knock on, but trading is OTJ training and all your college learning except for writing skills and maybe programming skills was for fun and college ways of having people do "filler" to be able to charge and stick in degree plans. Like the basket weaving classes I took, yep they come in handy for trading Japanese Yen. People I have mentored, toughest ones were those with more advanced degrees, they knew much more about trading than I do, but they did not have control of who they were on subconscious level. I co-owned a Futures brokerage in 90s for longest year of my life. First year traders, 95% plus of them last 4 months and less then get margin calls. They needed $12k for margin on Big S&P500 index then, there was no E-mini ES, so they put in $13k all thinking it was going to be so easy to day trade, can you imagine risking 4 ticks and they keep calling down to floor to keep changing orders? I know floor brokers get real tired of cancel and replace and would intentionally giving them extra slippage. Weak hands very very seldom have an account long enough to make a go of it, experienced trader can do so on less monies but guys starting out without well back tested method have zero % of working out well regardless of bucket shop or registered futures brokerage. Personally, I could not handle the stress of owning a brokerage, clients could call down to floor and by time next morning show statements could be in the hole and I would be concerned if they had monies to pay, and if not, brokerage has to pay, unreal risk and limited commissions, much safer to do now providing you have very good programmers to keep hackers at bay. Couple more weeks till September, Yeahhhhh
Thanks ... I suspected it must be a generational thing. Times have changed. (At least in Europe.) I probably wouldn't have stayed at university for long, if it had been anything like what you described above!