Michael Covel: News & Info.

I have had my share of critics. There are those who don’t like trend following trading. There are those who don’t like the fact that TurtleTrader.com was even started and has become a great resource for thousands. I have met and talked with many of these people. Some are stand up people with differing opinions, some live in a world of deception. A few of the latter are somewhat well known.

That world of deception is something I have come to know more about in the last 6 months. Specifically, the deception of email and chat forum posts. Consider that last fall on the same day I received (2) emails. One was from a supporter and a considered friend of mine for years. The other email was an anonymous attack email telling me how dumb I was. Fair enough. One good email, one bad! That’s life. Ah, but here is where it gets interesting. Those (2) emails, both sent from Yahoo email accounts, had the same IP address. It was the same person.

Then in the last few months, unrelated to the case above, I started noticing chat forum posts offering agenda type criticism. There seemed to be (2) people leading the charge. One of critics was from a “name” known in some small Wall Street circles, the other was an anonymous alias. The named critic heaped on the negatives from his perspective and so did the anonymous critic. However, the anonymous critic with the alias was VERY praiseworthy of the other critic who was using his real name. It all struck me as odd since they sounded like the same person. The two chat forum posters were one in the same. They were posting under the same IP address.

In a past life I was a baseball catcher. On the baseball field we had a way for dealing with people like these. It was called a fast ball high and tight, and if they got hit, well, that was the point.

One of the best quotes about internet chat forums comes from David Silverman in an issue of Stock, Futures and Options Magazine:

Just as they did in the pits, traders continue to trash-talk, deceive, manipulate, confuse and lie. What I was told so many years ago remains fresh today, and anyone who does not understand this and totally relies on the information they read in chat rooms may get eaten alive. That the Internet is being used to pass misleading information about the markets - and thousands of other things - comes as no great shock, but what I realized as I read one bogus posting after another, is that the anonymity the medium provides can make chat room lies far more insidious than any ever told in the pit. On the trading floor, market professionals, fully aware of the rules of the game, aware of the stakes involved, and able to look any trader in the eye to help determine the degree to which the truth might be shaded, needed protection only from the egregious lie. In chat rooms, by contrast, where the naive and uninitiated congregate with the potential hustlers and con men, it is no fair fight. Anonymity fuels the liar’s sense of invincibility, and often statements are so bold and outrageous it’s amazing anyone takes this nonsense seriously.