Including me - I guess I am a market commentator as well when I write my opinion here for myself. However, I know for a fact that I am not impacting millions (let alone a single other person other than myself). Idiots like Cramer, market commentators on MarketWatch.com and countless other websites cannot say the same. Their commentary does fall on some naive (non-financial inexperienced individual) ears leading those idiots to loose money in turn. Its mutual - the naive traders/investors are equally responsible for their actions. However, the naive crowd can say one important thing - i.e., they believed that the sources they thought they were listening to were credible sources (in terms of qualification, market-knowledge, experience).
Now, you see that the responsibility to broadcast the opinion of the so-called expert opinion lies on the shoulders of media, e.g., CNBC, Marketwatch etc. Now, they should know better. The argument can go on and on. The point is, its better that the naive folks learn as quickly as they can that these experts and their opinions are most of the times incorrect. Very few are right on the money. Until the naive folks learn to weed out the right vs wrong, it makes sense for them to keep learning and trying their trades on paper-trading platform to avoid getting burnt in real dollars.
In closing, here is an example from today -
Stocks turn because of whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.... really? The headline below quotes the job numbers that are burried inside the manufacturing report - are you kidding me? I mean the GDP was above expectations, the overall PMI report came in much stronger than expected, weekly jobless claims came in better than expected.... but no, the job numbers built inside the PMI report mattered a whole lot more today than they ever did... Right!!!! How about the situation developing in Europe? Or a fly dying somewhere in Africa? Why are they conveniently ignoring the fact that the markets are overbought and may use any silly excuse to trade down? This is what I mean, i.e., sometimes these so-called headlines are very misleading and has got nothing to do with the reality. I'm sure if a naive person reads this headline below, he/she will think next time I better pay attention to those job numbers in the manufacturing report as it surely seems to be important!!!! Crazyyyyyyyy - you see?
