Forex Trading Tips: Stewart Versus Cramer The Value of Work

Stewart Versus Cramer The Value of Work

The biggest news story of the week came from a comedy show. In fact according to polls these days in America most people 35 and under get their news from this comedy show. I am referring of course to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart who much like the jesters of medieval courts provides us all with a measure of truth not found anywhere else in conventional media. It is no doubt truly a sad commentary on the state of ignorance and idiocy of American culture that we have moved from Walter Cronkite to Jon Stewart as our Oracle of Delphi. Those amongst you who are students of history will no doubt see more than a few morbid similarities between our own society and the corrupt decrepitude of later day Rome, but be that as it may the Daily Show IS the only true source of news on television and I much like most of my demographic watch it .. daily.

This week Jon Stewart tackled CNBC and its mindless cheer leading of the criminal crony capitalism of the past decade that has taken the world to the brink of a global Depression. I cannot say that I fully agree with Stewart's premise that CNBC should have been more diligent in ferreting out the financial problems before they came to the surface. The channel after all is like ESPN for business. Its function is to simply cover the game each day rather than question the underlying rules. Furthermore, much to its credit CNBC carried many voices of caution, including Nouriel Roubini who each and every time methodically presented his analysis of exactly how the game was going to blow up well before it did.

The problem wasn't that CNBC did not have a chorus of Cassandras before the credit bubble burst, the problem is that most of the audience chose not to listen them. Having been on the channel more than 100 times I am hardly an objective voice, so you can take my opinion with a barrel of salt, but I have to say that although I was often challenged for my doom and gloom views by Becky and Joe, I was never censored. CNBC is what it is - a source of breaking news and generally bullish commentary, but it provided plenty of bears with a platform and offered enough of an opposite point of view to from a balanced opinion for the few who chose to do so.

--------------Top 5 Stories in FX This Week----------------
Surviving the Great Collapse
A 'Phony War' On the Crisis
This is How Depression Looked in the 1930s
The U.S. Capitalism Model Has Failed
Nouriel Roubini is a Ponzi

The Stewart/Cramer interview is riveting television ( some of the clips are embedded below) and as Stewart half jokingly says at the end "I hope it was as uncomfortable to watch it, as it was to do." Kudos to Cramer for eating humble pie (although he remains an inveterate liar and Stewart caught him several times on tape contradicting himself) Still how many self aggrandizing pundits like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly or Keith Olberaman would ever admit that they were wrong about anything?

In an age of relentless hypocrisy in American media, it was refreshing to see Cramer admit his foibles and promise to reform, although I have no doubt that he will go back to banging on skillets and screaming by Monday - its after all CNBC not PBS.

Still there was one point that Stewart made that I thought was absolutely dead on. To paraphrase him, wealth he said is a function of work. There is no such thing as "easy money". Anyone who thinks that making a consistent 20% per year return in the market is doable is a fool. No one is more seduced by the Wall Street myth of easy money than us traders. All of us want to take a $10K account to a $1MM in year and most of us fall victim to greed recklessness trying to do so.

The underlying truth of trading is that it is tough, grinding work - often no different from painstakingly paving a highway or constructing a skyscraper one floor a time. Like all work it requires, research, analysis and iron clad discipline to succeed. Those of you who have been with us for more than a year at BKT know well how we build our annual returns a few basis points at a time. Often its a process of two steps back and one step forward. That's why I am always amused by neewbie subs who are perpetually eager for more and more trades, as though success is simply a function of multiplication. The subs who've been with us for while understand very well that trading is a life long vocation and wealth though trad

ing is no different than wealth thorough dentistry - it must be built one filing at a time. Ironically enough, once you come to the realization that trading is not just an electronic version of a Vegas week-end, but a calling that requires work and dedication and life long commitment, success becomes easier (though its NEVER easy) and much more realistic.

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