I stand by my post notwithstanding your anecdote. It's a popular pastime to criticize the government. There is always plenty to legitimately criticize, but we don't stop there. I happen to have fairly broad experience in interfacing with, and even working for various government contractors and government agencies directly, and nearly everyone, at some point, will be involved in some kind of interaction with medicare, social security and/or the IRS. I am often, but not always of course, amazed at the competency of our employees in the various government agencies, up and down the chain of authority. For a number of years I worked with the NIH as a consultant in a particular technical area. The level of competency I encountered there was nothing short of amazing. Right now we are experiencing incompetency in a small group of elected government employees (not civil service). They are incompetent and disruptive, but the fact remains that they represent a small number of the total of elected officials. In the past we mistakenly elected a charismatic President with no experience in government, and one who had a history of business failings and fraud, but one who had nevertheless been a successful television actor. He appointed some agency heads on the basis of personal loyalty to himself rather than on the basis of competency for the job. This is atypical. We are all prone to generalize using atypical examples. We should not do that. That same President tried to remain in office after the voters had fired him by staging a coup. In common with his other ventures, the coup failed. This President, just prior to being elected and after assuming office, respectively, was found to have been a principal in both a fraudulent for-profit business and a fraudulent foundation. This helped established his record of both serial incompetence and law breaking before he became a government employee. It would be ridiculous however, on the basis of this one, atypical president's record to assume most presidents have been incompetent law breakers.
You were missing situational awareness. For example, I confidently bought the 30 year near the open for a heat free, nicely profitable scalp. Did not bother checking the report beforehand.
You obviously never worked in the government if you believe they are competent. My father worked for the DOD & IRS and he told me most of his colleagues did nothing all day except take lunches & dinners. Oh they also ran businesses on the side. Your writings suggest you're another victim of TDS. Your love for everything government explains your semantics of "Debts".
By your own post you show you have never worked in the government. Me neither. Oh but your father has. Well that settles that. Got a brother-in-law who was #3 in Fed agency (prefer to not say which) in NYC which was the 2nd most important to DC. He said similar to your dad, except he didn't include himself in that way. Funny how people talk about others. No, no not me. I earned my paycheck/retirement. LOL
Nope. Fishing and trading have some in common... like "what you should be doing and why." I'm willing to show traders where to fish (Price TA.. KISS), but I'm not willing to bait their hook and cast their line for them too. I've been chewing on the notion of posting something audit-able (won't be audit-ed as audits are a hassle and expensive). Haven't decided whether I want to go to the bother.
Instead of going through that hassle, how about tell us? What is your performance? Roughly how much of that performance would you attribute to short term trading? Thanks.
I've got a thing about that. I'm a former RIA. The rule about disclosing performance.... (1) You can disclose only audited performance, and (2) if you disclose any performance, you must disclose ALL* performance. And if you have a break in performance, everything before the break is no longer usable... that is, you must start over. (That's to exclude the possibility of deception. Say, some advisor has a really bad year that he'd like to exclude from this track record... maybe say he was injured/sick for that year and didn't trade. Whatever the reason/excuse... all performance before a break is excluded, and he has to start over like his first year where he has no documented experience.) Ever notice that no money managers/advisors advertise "performance"? This is why. So lemme say this.... when I ran my mutual fund timing service way back when... I averaged 41% compounded return for 18 years. Most of that was audited, but not all. (My best run was 75%/yr, compounded, for 5 years... and that was audited. I even went 7 months once without a losing play. One client called me up and said something like, "you're on fire... we haven't had a losing trade all year... July... I said, Oh Shit, you probably jinxed us... next trade was a loser. ) So... if you still think "I don't know nuthin' about the market", well I can't help you. Suggest checking my posts about Technical Analysis. I've highlighted GOLD that anyone could learn from and capitalize upon. *anecdote... back when I was trading the US Investing Championships, one year I was nosed out of a win by some other manager who scored ~ 100% gain. Almost all of that was made because he loaded up in gold and Hong Kong in the 4th quarter... the 2 best places to be. But that was the only year out of ten where he made > 2%. Without the SEC rule, he might have hyped "Made 100% last year". Well, that was fact.... but also fact is that his last 10 years were flat, flat, flat, flat, flat, +100%, flat, flat... etc. Shouldn't the public know ALL of his track record rather than just the 100% year? So you see, you can't "cherry pick" the good without disclosing the bad, so says the SEC... and I totally agree.