How to Avoid Slimy Stock Traders

I’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of different stock trading experts during my fifteen year career as a stock trader. Most are great, but as with any profession, there are those that really give it a bad name. Unfortunately, they are the ones that can burn a new investor and turn them off from a fantastic pursuit for life. In the hopes of warning you away for some of the slime before you go through what I did, here are a few of my experiences, and a couple suggestions for avoiding the encounters yourself.

My worst experience was with the ultimate in slime, an encounter that changed my entire career. Through it, I learned the most influential lesson in my life: that some folks don’t care who they hurt along the way, they are just in it for their own benefit. I also finally discovered that I could not be the same as that, and I established a core value through the experience: pass up any business opportunity that resulted in someone else getting hurt.

This service, like many others, provided a daily listing of recommended stocks to buy or sell short each day. And, like many others, they had impressive statistics to prove that, in most cases, the stocks they chose would do what they said they would. I was impressed, and said sign me up!

But, unlike many others, this particular service had an ulterior motive I was not aware of at the start. Turns out, the folks running the service were making recommendations to their subscriber group for the sole purpose of manipulating the prices for their own profits.

Let me give you an example. First, the owners of this service would buy IBM stock through their account. Then, they would send out a recommendation to the subscriber group, telling us to buy IBM. Once the 3000 + members started buying the stock, the stock price would rise as a result of the activity. When the price per share increased to a point that these slime were satisfied, they would cash in for a profit.

I must admit I was shocked to learn that the stock trading service was manipulating its subscribers to manage their own trades. Their objective wasn’t the success of the subscriber base as promised, but rather to make their own money and run. That is just wrong, and it was insult to injury that we were paying the slime subscription fees on top of it.

It is true that most stock trading services will not conduct business in such a slimy manner. But there are less insulting, but no less slimy ways for a stock service to take your money and run. I really hate those services that convince a new investor that stock trading is just too risky to do alone. They put on the hard sell to sign up for their expensive monthly plan so that they can do all the work.

True, stock trading is complicated at first, until you have found a system that is right for you. But anyone who tells you that you can never learn enough to handle it yourself at some point, is just trying to milk you for the monthly fees. These systems are typically pretty generic and don’t take into consideration your personal risk tolerance or trading preferences.

There will always be some investors out there that don’t want to trade on their own, and for these folks the monthly stock trading service might be the way to go. They will receive solid trade recommendations that are right some of the time. The return is usually tolerable, but I have found that if you can find a system that works for you and your risk level, you will realize higher returns in the long run and a more satisfying experience.

It does take some investigation to find a resource that will get you started without taking over. They are there, however, and you will be happy to find that they will take the slime out of the profession and help you gain the skills you need to achieve success at stock trading. Follow this advice, and you will appreciate the outcome for many years to come.

W. Alan Gay has been a day trader and coach for fifteen years. His free report describes Alan’s voyage to becoming successful at trading stocks and gives useful techniques he and his students have used to repeatedly trade profitably. Click to obtain a free copy of his report and learn more about how you could be trading stocks profitably in as little as two weeks.

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