Journalism

The markets move like the ocean, and I am but a drifting trader weaving in and out of the waves. Sometimes the sets come in with such poetic, rhythmic motion that the probabilities within almost chant like a lucid, soothing mantra. Other times, there is so little visibility and the tides are so variant that there is no predicting the next swell or crest. Some find it reassuring to believe that Mother Nature is predictable, but it truth, she is not. She simply beats to a rhythm.

The charge of the trader is to know that you won’t prevail in every attempt–you can’t catch every wave. You can be riding the most picture perfect trend, and it can fall apart without any warning at all, like a tunnel turned breaker. We can take solitude in the fact that a new wave will always takes it’s place. Opportunity always abounds in places where buyers meet sellers and vice versa.

As a journalist of finance, I must understand one thing for certain: there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. I am not pretending to be objective here in these pages. That would be a joke. I think Hunter Thompson summed up the theory of Objective Journalism when he covered the campaign trail in 1972.

“The only thing that I ever saw that came close to Objective Journalism was a closed-circuit TV setup that watched shoplifters in the General Store at Woody Creek, Colorado. I always admired that machine, but I noticed that nobody paid much attention to it until one of those known, heavy, out-front shoplifters came into the place…but when that happened everybody got so excited that the thief had to do something quick, like buy a green popsicle or a can of Coors and get out of the place immediately.

So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here–not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”

I attempt to paint a picture of my particular vision of probabilities, and it is a perception that will not be replicated in mass prints. As the subject, I can’t possibly be objective. The mere fact that someone may read these pages will make this trader potentially observed. As Heisenberg states, “the observer changes the thing observed.”

By writing about things I contemplate, it is possible that I become observed. In becoming observed, I will change. The observer changes the thing observed. So why write? Why invite observation? Because it will make me better. Because it is time. Because it will challenge me more. My “read” on the markets will have more clarity. The more I benefit others, the more I am observed, and the better that will make me.

All along, I have the good fortune to chronicle for the world the thoughts of a speculator who thinks about winning not in terms of frequency of correctness, but by magnitude of rightness.

Peace

The Impersonator