do you think you trade better when your market opinion a: is influenced by outside gurus? b: your trading buddies? C: CNBC D: none of the above ... I am a self made guru
that I missed the move up in partdue to my fear of taking swing positions since 9/11 also do to my style which is scalp / arb / daytrade also do to my being influenced by a so called guru mailing a few months ago that stated that we would make a new low point this summer in the major averages ... maybe this guru laid a goose egg (?)
I might not have set up the POLL taking option correctly but any reflections / comments are appreciated by the way .... the mailing I mentioned has the initials D.S.
Now I just need to keep in mind that your question is about "market opinion". While that could be a number of things, I'll assume that your talking about "what to do next". With that... I look to no one other than the market. Yes, I do have a few friends and associates that are great traders, and they almost always point out something that I overlooked. I always make sure that I confer with traders who are as, or more successful at trading. Now success has a VERY SUBJECTIVE definition from one trader to the next, so I always defer to whether they have similar "trading disciplines and practices" as a factor. As far as CNBC is concerned, I really don't get much from it. Frankly, I see it as a distraction. My OPINION of CNBC is that since they're owned by GE, (GE is the largest publicy traded stockholder of publicly traded stocks, next to BRK). So their coverage and slant is biased. It would not be good business for them to scratch more than the surface of company in which they have a major holding, despite their most recent CYA question, Mr./Mrs. (analyst) are you long/short the stock you're talking about? I listen to Bloomberg radio webcasts, and music that I find motivating. There are times, when I listen to and watch nothing other than my screens. One of the best ways to achieve trading discipline and success is to simulate an environment that is made up of nothing but you and your workstation. This allows you to be fully in tuned with the market. It may sound weird, but if you do that long enough, you'll actually hear the market speaking to you. Once you have mastered that, you will be able to trade in any environment. Good thread, Setharb.
I always look at other people arguments to see if there isn'st any context I missed to consider. If it is just opinions based on pure faith and not a long based experience coupled with a methodology I won't take it into account. I read as much as two dozens of market analysis everyday statiscally there is little chance that they always agree with each other so it is not really for their opinions that I read them but to feel the overall sentiment of market's analysts and I am particularly amused when sometimes they almost agree with each other and the market did exactly the contrary hee hee ! At the end you are still the only responsible and must not blame others if you followed them and it happened that they were wrong.
Opinions from other traders can be a valuable confirmation or to sway you to another possible outlook .. You just have to know how to filter out the pretenders and respect the proven traders. Ultimately, you are your own best influence.. but I wouldn't go so far as to live in a cave and ignore everything.