Gekko

BEEN an educational month or two, hasn’t it? With every turn in the markets’ fortunes, we get bloodthirsty commentary on the losses suffered by bulls or bears. But among professional money managers, some of the biggest losers have been people who are neither bulls nor bears, but trend . followers.

For all the talk in financial coverage about “bulls” and “bears” in gold or equities, the truth is that the biggest group of traders are those who have cranked the prices for the last couple of years into their desktop PCs, pressed the key for their charting program, and called in a buy or a sell order when the answer came out. In the old days, the smart money followed the trends in prices and pretty consistently took the money of the small speculators who were ready to gamble on dramatic reversals. But now anybody with cable TV and a MasterCard can pay $169.99 and buy a trend-following program touted in a commercial that is just as capable as most professionals’ systems. So does this mean that everybody becomes rich as the same time?

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BEEN an educational month or two, hasn’t it? With every turn in the markets’ fortunes, we get bloodthirsty commentary on the losses suffered by bulls or bears. But among professional money managers, some of the biggest losers have been people who are neither bulls nor bears, but trend . followers.

For all the talk in financial coverage about “bulls” and “bears” in gold or equities, the truth is that the biggest group of traders are those who have cranked the prices for the last couple of years into their desktop PCs, pressed the key for their charting program, and called in a buy or a sell order when the answer came out. In the old days, the smart money followed the trends in prices and pretty consistently took the money of the small speculators who were ready to gamble on dramatic reversals. But now anybody with cable TV and a MasterCard can pay $169.99 and buy a trend-following program touted in a commercial that is just as capable as most professionals’ systems. So does this mean that everybody becomes rich as the same time?