Rhody Trader

After a very lengthy delay, I’m back to posting here once more. I’d drifted away for a while, then had a major issue upgrading WordPress. Next thing you know more than a year’s gone by!

Obviously, I was able to get the WordPress issue sorted out. I’m not entirely sure how, mind you. It works. I’m going to leave it at that for now.

So with that, be on the look out for some fresh updates outlining my thoughts on the markets, economics, politics, and whatever else I’ve got going through my mind. Trading education stuff won’t be found here, but just about anything else is fair game. Also, I like to use this blog to test out new functionality for use in other places, so sometimes you’ll see a bit of that too.

This morning a visitor to my trading education blog posted the 1000th comment. That’s approved comments. There have been over 35,000 spam ones to-date. That’s against about 550 posts, so that means the averages is a bit below 2 comments per entry. Admittedly, a huge chunk of the comments came from one post – No More “Hedging” for Forex Traders. That discussion of the NFA rules against carrying offsetting positions accounts for about a quarter of all comments on the blog. Needless to say, there was a very active and intense discussion.

Admittedly, I’d love to see more commenting on the blog. It’s a form of feedback to let me know what interests people and what they are looking for, and I like interacting with folks. Hopefully the next 1000 will happen more quickly than the first 1000.

I’m in demand as a contributor again.

This sort of thing seems to go in cycles. Around the time my book came out (2006) I was getting requests from all kind of places, like magazines and websites. As a result, my name was all over the place in trading media circles. The last couple of years have been a bit less intense in that regard, but now I’m getting queried on the subject again.

I was contacted by www.forexpros.com about contributing regular content there. I’ve also been corresponding with one of my former colleagues (old boss actually) about doing some writing for www.forexlive.com. I’m taking a look at things and sorted out what it means for my employer (www.ifrmarkets.com), but the odds do seem to favor my getting involved in the not too distant future.

Maybe I’ll write another article for Stocks & Commodities and/or SFO Magazine. Haven’t done that in a while.

I suppose I really should do some work to raise my profile again. I’ve got my trading faq book in the works, after all.

Blogging is in the middle of a storm these days as certain high profile blogs such as Zero Hedge are in what seems to be a running battle with news outlets like CNBC. I actually think it’s probably a good thing. In particuar, the  subject of anonymity is one of the major points of conflict, though the press also holds up the lack of editorial standards as being another issue with the blogosphere. At risk of losing points with my blogging peers, I actually tend to fall in line with the news media’s stance on things.

Anonymity
The advantage and disadvantage of anonymity is that it allows someone to say and do things they would not otherwise. It can be good in terms of bringing things to light when might otherwise put the individual at risk. On the bad side, though, it can allow one to engage in destructive behavior without concern for negative consequences. The folks a Zero Hedge claim they use it to keep the focus on what’s being said, not who. I find that problematic, however.

To my mind, one of the most important things we need to know in life is where the biases are with those who seek to offer us information and/or advice, as well as the credentials they bring to offer it up to us. We need to know if it’s reasonable to believe and accept what we are being told. Is it coming from a legitimately knowledgable source? Is the information or recommendation is being shaded by the deliverer, intentionally or otherwise, because of their own underlying motivation? This is important for our own decision-making process in terms of whether we can rely on what we’re being told, and relates to friends and family just as much as with media or online sources.

The NY Post ran a story today that one of the Zero Hedge contributors was given the boot from the securities industry last year by FINRA because of insider trading. That sort of thing naturally sets off all kinds of alarm bells about the credibility of the blog’s content. I tend to want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but can’t help wonder what kind of grudge this guy might have. That sort of thing could flavor his writing and bias his commentary. Oh, and then there’s the whole history of dishonesty suggested by the insider trading charge.

Editorial Standards
Bloggers get things wrong, a lot. I don’t mean all the time, but I see plenty of errors in my travels of the blogosphere and related sites. It’s like the healthcare debate where things are being misinterpretted and blown out of proportion all over the place. It’s one thing to offer an opinion. It’s a whole other thing to present facts. If you’re doing the latter you have a responsibility to your readers to get it right. And it’s a good idea for your own credibility as well because if you share erroneous info and it gets spread you end up looking like an ass.

Obviously, we all make mistakes. We’re not going to get it 100% right all the time. No one expects that. They do, however, expect us to make the effort, to accept the responsibility, and to fix the errors when we do make them. Why? Because people actually believe what the read, it is kind of scary at times.

Conclusion
All the above is why I do not blog anonymously, nor do I post anonymously on trading forum sites like Trade2Win. While I may not agree with Charlie Gasparino on many things, I do agree with him on this. I don’t hide behind a screen name to take shots at people. I let folks know who I am and what my background is so they can make an educated decision whether to take what I say seriously or not. And because of that I take responsibility for the quality of the content I produce. After all, everyone is going to know who wrote it.

Over the weekend (I think), someone uploaded a copy of the Trader video, the documentary from circa 1987 featuring the now legendary money manager and original Market Wizard Paul Tudor Jones, to YouTube. No, it wasn’t me, and I don’t know who did. Although I do own the video, I would never post it on YouTube or any of those sharing sites (so don’t bother asking). Obviously, others have no problem doing so.

Boy, did that create a storm!

I don’t frequent a lot of the apparently really popular market-related sites (as I’m finding out), so I probably don’t even know the full extent of how far things spread. I do know, however, that several very prominent sites, including at least one well known traders’ forum, had articles or posts which embedded the YouTube video. It made rapid progress from site to site – at least until the video got yanked from YouTube for copyright infringement at some point on Tuesday.

Still, the video was out long enough for a lot of people to give it a look, and the comments I’ve seen so far have been very positive, though there are of course the to-be-expected jokes about 80′s technology and fashions. I have always thought the video offered quite a bit of educational value for developing traders, and once upon a time used it in my college classroom teaching, but PTJ clearly has a problem with it being available.

The blast of interest in the video splashed on this website and my trading education one as well. Both sites had BIG jumps in traffic. Part of it was search based, which brought a lot of people to this post I wrote about 15 months ago, which shows up very high in Google’s search results. I got even more traffic to this post on my Essentials site. Part of that was search too, but that one was also directly linked to by several prominent websites because it includes the text from the back cover of the original video tape case. As far as I can tell, that turned Tuesday into the single biggest traffic day either site has had so far. That was certainly totally unexpected.

With the video no longer up on YouTube, the attention will no doubt back down to its normal underground levels, though I’m sure those who missed out seeing it will be eager to try to find a copy somewhere.

Fellow blogger ducati998 indicated to me at one point that the reason he doesn’t link to other blogs and sites is that he doesn’t know how. Well, I’m going to help him out because as you may or may not know, when you link to other sites it actually helps your Page Rank (PR), especially if those links are to quality contextually related sites. Better PR increases the likelihood that your page is seen by searchers.

At the same time, if you link to another site you don’t have to copy and paste large chunks of content, which can get you in some hot water legally due to copyright considerations. On top of that, search engines don’t like to see duplicate content. They can actually reduce the PR of a page which is seen to be largely a duplicate of another site. This is an important consideration in terms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

So without further discussion, here’s how to link to another webpage in WordPress.

First, highlight the text you want to link.

Then click on the link button (looks like a change link).

That will bring up a dialog box.

Enter the URL for the webpage or site you want to linked in the first box. The Target is optional, and most users probably won’t worry about Class. You’ll want to fill out the Title box, though. That’s the text which shows up when someone mouses over the link. It’s also something search engines look at, so it contributes to the SEO equation.

Alternately, you can create the link by putting it in through the HTML code. To do that flip to the HTML editor by clicking on the tab. You can see the link code below as it was created using the link button process above.

Pretty easy and simple, right?

Now duc has no more excuses for bulk copy and pasting without link citation in his posts anymore.

A quick look at my trading education website statistics shows that while the visits and page views have backed off from where they were a couple months back, they were still at a respectable level. There were nearly 10,000 visits and over 17,000 page views in June. Considering that nearly 60% of that traffic came from search engines, that’s not too bad.

The top 5 sources of referral traffic were:

1. Trader Mike
2. Afraid to Trade
3. Zero Hedge
4. FinViz
5. Newsflasher

Setting the site’s home page aside (it got nearly 10% of all page views), the top 10 most viewed pages were:

1. Three Big Reasons Small Accounts Fail
2. An Introduction to the Fixed Income Market
3. Over Two Years Trading and Nothing But Losses
4. My Top 5 Trading Books
5. Trading for a Living vs. Trading for Wealth Building
6. What are Your Favorite Trading Websites?
7. Update on Trader – The Paul Tudor Jones Documentary
8. Misunderstanding the Bid/Ask Spread in Stock Trading
9. Three Ways to Know You Shouldn’t Trade
10. Most Active Forex Currency Pairs

The top keyword phrases that brought people to the site were:

1. fixed income trading
2. best trading books
3. prop trading
4. paul tudor jones
5. best trading book

Given that the fixed income page listed at #2 above is the top listing for the “fixed income trading” keyword phrase, it’s no real surprise when it comes to the page view frequency there. Other keyword phrases for which the site has #1 spots are:

• stock spread
• calculating relative strength
• option open interest data
• trading vs. investing
• best prop trading firms
• commercial paper trading
• mind over markets download
• nfa first in first out rule
• trading fixed income

And of course my name is #1 too.

Some of the above phrases are really meaningless as far as I’m concerned. In need to work on improving the search positioning of more relevant pages which focus on more introductory trading elements.

This website did 1159 visits and 1798 page views during the month of June. It’s got a long way to catch up, but it’ll get there over time, and probably even further.

Today is officially the day the Cash for Clunkers program starts, though apparently there are some details still to be sorted out. I was thinking about this program on my way home yesterday as my car could be a candidate given its age, and now it’s mechanical issues.

Part of me thinks I should go for it. After all, my car is definitely not worth $4500, or even $3500. At some point I’m probably going to want to get a new car. My current car isn’t going to increase in value. That’s for sure, so if I think I’m going to want new wheels in the next few years, this program is probably something I should take advantage of while it’s available.

On the flip side, as I noted before, I don’t really drive much. A new car means a payment and more expensive insurance.

Of course there’s maybe a plan C. What if I could sell my car to someone to use it as a trade in? That could actually be a real business opportunity – aquiring used cars and selling them for trade in purposes – if there aren’t restrictions in the legislation which make that impossible.

Actually, it would make for a really interesting dynamic if the weren’t contrary rules. Used car prices would rise as demand for them being traded increases. If those cars were destroyed on the back end, then supply would also shrink to further the price rise along. In theory, clunkers could actually increase in value beyond that of some lower end sectors of the non-clunker used car market.

I had the distinct pleasure of finally meeting Brett Steenbarger face-to-face while I was at the Traders Expo a couple weeks back. I’ve known the good doctor for something like four years now. He was a big help in both the development and publishing of my book, The Essentials of Trading, and even wrote the foreward. We’ve had the opportunity to communicate several times over the intervening years, but the Expo was the first time we actually got to meet.

Brett recently posted on the subject of blog growth. He’s been nothing short of prolific in his writing over the years, including bloggging and books and everything else. At times I’m in awe of how much he churns out. Of course I do my fair share of writing too. My forex analyst job, after all, is all about writing. It’s just not so much in the public domain.  Even still, the amount of verbiage Brett puts out is impressive by any measure when you consider how much travelling and other stuff he does as well.

In his blogging post Brett makes five key points.

1. Don’t be afraid to start small
2. Success is a team sport
3. Promote ideas, not people
4. Stick to your niche
5. Maintain integrity

I’ve been blogging since 2006, though I probably didn’t really get serious about it until 2007. It’s been a massive learning experience and the points above are all part of that learning. Brett’s basic theme is that if you provide value and are honest in your dealing with readers and others people will gravitate toward you. This is what’s called organic growth and I can tell you from personal experience that it’s the most rewarding.

Now Brett and I do differ in that he only markets books while I sell a few different type of trading education products, and as a result promotion is part of the equation for me where it isn’t for Brett. The same principles apply, though. It’s about value, quality, and integrity. If you’re thinking to start a blog or a business, keep those things in mind and you’ll be much more likely to achieve long-term success.

I went through the upgrade to bring this blog up to WordPress version 2.7 the other day. It definitely is a change.

To start with, the dashboard is totally rearranged. It’s also quite customizeable, but even still it takes a bit of getting used to when you first start working with it. I think I’ll probably grow to like it, but for now I still have to try to find things a bit.

My one gripe is that I’m having problems with scheduled posts not appearing when they are scheduled.