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Saturday, April 2, 2011

the problem with people nowadays is that they just don't have the patience to read it through....

The Motley Fool, one of my favorite financial investing advisory services, announced it was offering a new service: a day-trading system it was secretly using and improving. Sadly, I've reached the Motley Fool's April Fool's prank of this year too late. Thus I can't really boast that I'd known immediately it was a hoax. But considering some of the funnier bits of this joke, and the fool's past April 1st jokes, I believe I would have spotted it somewhere in the middle of my reading, even if I did not remember it was Fool's day.

Therefore, I was quite surprised at the number of Fool members who admitted they have fallen for it and requested to join in on the Fool's new day-trading operation. It is really hard to explain, if one assumes rationality as a qualifier of financial investor. But even though I know financial markets display investor's emotions much more than investor's cold analysis, one has to suspect at least one of the following claims is required to explain a behavior that is not just irrational, but actually quite foolish:

  • People don't believe a word they are being told by advisory services they seek. Therefore, discovering that the Motley Fool supports short-term trades appeared like nothing to be suspicious of, despite the Fool's long history of long-term investment advocacy. It might be that they have suspected such a thing all along... 
  • Some people will always take a suggestion for a shortcut to richness, regardless of who makes the suggestion, the terms of the suggestion and its likelihood. It seems like people's brains shut down at the first glimpse of the imaginary accumulation of wealth. 
  • Some people do not learn from past lessons, and regardless of what happened only 365 days ago, they perform very similarly to newborns or toddlers, as far as experience and knowledge are required. One may explain this phenomena not by refusal to learn, but by being too submerge in the NOW, in the current doing, and thus the knowledge acquired in the past becomes worthless in any practical view.    
But the one claim I'm sure of, is also the most understandable. I don't believe anyone who  has meticulously read the Fool's faked documents, prepared for this April 1st Jest, could have fallen for it. Therefore, it is clear that people did not do a thorough reading of the documents they were provided with, before making the decision to join the new service. 
The fact that financial investors, who should be aware of the importance of costs at the process of making profits from investing, make such rash decisions, and do not invest their time wisely in reading, is just another proof that the main problem with people of our age is that they don't read properly. It might be that the burden of the information revolution has taken that ability away. It might be that they are just too tired, or too stressed. As jokes always carry a lesson with them, I think that this joke's lesson is simple: To make sure that the offer you are given is not a joke on your account, read it through. 

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