As an aside from spread betting — which for some of you may not have gone too well today, unless you were “short” — I offer the following anecdote.
While browsing in my local Currys / PC World store I overheard a helpless oldish woman ask one of the friendly “expert advisors” (i.e. “salespeople”) for some advice. She asked, “What do I get when I pay for your computer set-up service?”
After scratching around for something to latch onto by asking the potential purchaser some questions like “Do you have an existing computer?” (no, she didn’t) and “Do you have a printer?” (nope!), the salesperson finally settled on this explanation of the expert set-up service:
Computers these days don’t come with software installation disks, it’s all on a hard disk partition. So for £50 of the £69 set-up service we spend five hours (I kid you not) creating a set of backup disks, because there are five disks and each one takes an hour to burn”.
Like I said, I kid you not. I was just seconds away from interjecting and telling the poor purchaser “Save your money, this so-called advisor is talking hogwash”… but at the last minute I bottled it 🙁 I wish I hadn’t.
Anyway, if this has any tenuous link to financial and investment matters, it’s this:
I have never yet met an “expert advisor” (including any financial advisor) who has ever truly given advice that is in my best interests… or even really knows what (s)he is talking about.
Note that my use of the term “expert advisor” (with a small “e” and small “a”) is not to be confused with the term “Expert Advisor” which refers to the kind of auto-trading plugin for MetaTrader that is mention in my SOUND FX book. But come to think about it…
If you want a job done properly, in both cases it’s usually best to learn how to do it yourself.
Two Steps to Better Spread Betting:
1) Buy the Better Spread Betting Book
2) Sign up with Capital Spreads, IG, ETX Capital, or Spread Co
Disclaimer: this posting is for general education only; it is not trading advice.