Market Myths


Fairy Tales Mislead Investors of All Types


The world of investment is a hothouse of myths that belie the reality of the financial markets as well as the real economy. The billow of fairy tales pervades the entire landscape, ranging from stocks and futures to commodities and currencies.

The bluster of fiction serves to fuddle and stymie investors of all breeds. The players in a bind include newcomers dabbling in the market in their spare time as well as veterans bent on trading the whole day long.

The worst of the folklore can be traced to a pile of voodoo spawned by the high priests of financial economics. The tall tales spun by the hoary clergy run the gamut from the mystique of random walks to the impossibility of superior returns.

Not surprisingly, the heap of bunk confuses rather than enlightens the luckless investors. In fact, a host of shibboleths do not merely distort the reality but contradict the facts entirely. The hail of obfuscation feeds a quagmire that’s in many ways more slippery and treacherous than most people suspect.

On the upside, though, the financial forum is not as fickle or mystic as it appears to lots of folks, be they wild-eyed tyros or jaded pros. To approach the field in a cogent way, the earnest player can take concrete steps to sort out the wheat from the chaff, the signal from the noise. In thrashing out a sound trail through the thicket of hokum, the first task of the investor is to thresh out the solid facts from the mushy yarns piled high and wide throughout the landscape.

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