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First does every kind of player actually think all the others are suckers or assholes?  I rather doubt it.  Bit of a strawman to feed into the value judgement that follows.

If you have ever had to be around the real Cramer type speculators you'll find that most of the truly successful ones will gamble on anything, are utterly amoral about how they make money and really don't much care if others get hurt.  That's my experience.  

I admit I've never dealt with people at pure quant shops -- since they don't deal with people and let the models do the talking.  The truly successful ones there just keep their mouths shut and hope no one notices their actions and succeeds in reverse engineering their models.  The best geek on our desk was one of the nicest humans you could ever meet.   Incredibly smart and grounded.  Made partner and therefore got extremely rich.  Well deserved compared to some of his peers.

As for long term investors, they are neither suckers nor aholes.  Just folks put some assets at risk in hopes of a return.

Day traders who think they can beat the system operating  from home?  80%+ suckers.  And these are Cramer's Cramerica.  

by HiD on Thu Mar 22nd, 2007 at 08:33:41 AM EST
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