Offering services has much greater potential of becoming "passive income" without the traders daily involvement. For some, as they age, mail-box money becomes a goal, instead of screen-time. Screen-time generates life's stash, services allow the majority stash to be handed-down. Osorico
Argee The peak of this career aspect is working for big hedge funds. The honorarium can be huge, Tom DeMark and Robin Mesh are good examples.
I'm not generally a fan of vendors...and it really boils down to the question "what kind of trading product are they selling?".... Is it a chat room? Generally this is the point I write them off as being a lame ass scammer... Or are they selling market analysis? In that case, they probably are already doing this for themselves and I don't think it's a big deal at all to sell it, as it's extra, risk-free income, as mentioned earlier. Granted, many of these individuals can't trade to save their life, so there are bad apples in that side of the business too...but I think there are a few genuine individuals out there who are decent vendors and great traders not trying to sell the keys to the kingdom but just giving some insight into the markets. Also, as mentioned earlier, I think as you get older your values change, etc...I don't see why some 25-30 yr old trader would be trying to increase his competition by teaching others everything he knows about the markets and trading...but I guess after someone has been trading 30-40 years, maybe they aren't too concerned about teaching a few people how they do/did it. So at that point it's a whole different story. I think the answer is subjective and is based on the specific vendors circumstances and perspective.