tell you are a loan shark. you get your money back the same day - yet you're the one with the highest rates. and occasionally you roll out the BIG GUNS!
tell them you work for the IRS. That's always popular. Then tell them they work for the IRS, too! We all do! If that doesn't cause smoke between their ears, then the hamster must be dead, so who cares.
hehe...this is a great thread. about a month ago, i had gotten killed one day and i was pretty nonchalant about it. i usually get killed about one day a week, but the others are good, so it's all good. anyway, i mentioned this to a friend, and he was like, "man, I wish I could help you out...I really feel bad for you, but I'm just too busy these days." now, i've never asked anyone for any help in the markets; he just assumed that he was an expert (his dad is some big wig in a securities company) because one time when he was a kid he bought something like activision and made money on it, so he assumed he was an expert on stocks. so i reply, "oh, thanks anyway man, but i think i'll be okay" while trying to keep from laughing. a few days later i was watching the flick Trading Places with the same friend, and I explained to him what was going on, and he was like "how can you sell something you don't have???" so, again without laughing too hard, i explained this to him. i think the problem with telling people that you trade for a living is that they normally have no clue what it's really about.
lol....i don't even bother talking about shorting...except to my children, who understand it perfectly.
lol, yup. I have tried, unsuccesfully, for many years, to explain shorting to my father. I have given up. I don't know what it is, but some people just don't get it, it doesn't click, and it has nothing to do with intelligence (he is a physicist and a chemist).
Darkhorse, I met a New Zelander whose real job it was was to cut the sphincter off the lamb at the end of the slaughter house line. All newbies in that business start out ripping sphincters. Sometimes they are full or so he said while laughing over his 10? beer. That brings new meaning to how tough it is to be a newbie. Trading newbies have it easy. Who is Bob Dylan? Did he once play with the Travelin Willburrys? Sort of like you know you are old when your kid asks what the name of the band Paul McCartney played in before Wings...