We Don’t Need No Education

Trader Scott’s Market Blog

July 27, 2016

“Another Brick in the Wall”

Lyrics by Roger Waters. Music by Pink Floyd.

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

“Wrong, Do it again!”
“If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you
have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?”
“You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!”

Virtually all of us, myself included, focus our initial “education” regarding markets in a similar direction.

We spend our time with economics, finance, geopolitics, technical analysis, fundamental analysis, etc.

We are manipulated by Wall Street, universities, and the financial media into believing this will be our path to financial independence.

The problem with all this is almost zero time is spent attempting to truly grasp the only things that truly matter about markets – risk and probabilities.

One of my mentors gave me a warning when I was a young, clueless floor trader in Chicago.

He passed on to me about his own journey as a trader/investor, where he was very successful by the time that I met him.

He told me he always wanted to be involved in markets (which unlike myself, certainly wasn’t where my passions were focused growing up).

So after he received his MBA from Yale, he moved to Chicago to begin his trading career.

He recounted to me how he completely wasted his first three years as a trader.

His first two years were spent unsuccessfully attempting to use what he “learned” about markets while at Yale.

And the next year he spent attempting to forget everything he learned at Yale.

The best traders/investors I’ve ever been around were not the Stanford MBAs, nor the Harvard Finance PHDs. But they often were former blackjack players, which is attributable to their total focus on risk and probabilities.

Now I suggest spending some time pondering that, because just understanding the previous statement alone will be very helpful.

About

Trader Scott has been involved with markets for over twenty years. Initially he was an individual floor trader and member of the Midwest Stock Exchange, which then led to a much better opportunity at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. By his early 30’s, he had become very successful in markets, but a health situation caused him to back away from the grind of being a full time floor trader. During this time away from markets, Scott was completely focused on educating himself about true overall health and natural healing which remains a passion to this day.Scott returned to markets over fifteen years ago where he continues as an independent trader.