Troubled night, MP? Or is the forum time-stamp playing up again? No doubt Jo Stalin had a similar restless night just before he decided to become the voice of God booming down the wires ... but they made him "Time Man of the Year" for it in 1939, and no doubt they'll do the same for you.The problem is that you have only described Chapter One. In Chapter Two the demos, growing restless at your inability to perform miracles / keep share prices going up / make the sun shine every day become tired of your excuses, burst into the citadel and tear you limb from limb. Never did Tyche send Nemesis to extinguish such hubris. "My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings, Look on my works, Ye mighty and despair!"I find it interesting that a trend-trading duck should post such a message at the end of a week in which, for many trend-traders, despair has turned to triumph. You asked on a different thread about money-management for trend-traders and I gave you a rather dry list. Perhaps the list should contain only two things - the Schylla and Charybdis of trading - (1) resisting the deathwish and (2) avoiding the urge to ride the lightning. What d'you think?

"But a power with no one weilding it is a power just waiting to be seized, no?" Yes, of course, but whatever you do, please don't take away the garlic. I need it for a certain ritual.

"In Chapter Two the demos, growing restless at your inability to perform miracles / keep share prices going up / make the sun shine every day become tired of your excuses, burst into the citadel and tear you limb from limb. Never did Tyche send Nemesis to extinguish such hubris."No, no, no, The Mob never loses faith in miracles themselves, only in the heart of the hero. If it were their own foolishness for sending one of their own to meddle in the web of The Divine, they would just fade away quietly, each to his own home, and shameful of his own hubris. Rather, a competing God promises to wrest control of The Lightning from the unjust - with a little help from mortal hands of course - and truly deliver the miracles as promised. Hey, nobody said there wouldn't be other mortal hands grasping for the end of the firehose. But rule number one is, even as you cast your competitors as evil incarnations of Satan, never preach against the lightning itself or cast doubt on its magic. The magic is never in doubt, just the veracity of competing idols and your own misplaced faith.MP

"The Mob never loses faith in miracles themselves"The miracle of the ever-rising stock market? All the angels and saints from St Alan of the Interest-Rate-Put to the evangelist David Faber couldn't stop that miracle from taking a beating. How many Americans are still "buying-the-dips", worshipping at the altar of buy-and-hold and maintaining steadfast faith in the bull market? You surely can't have failed to notice the change in tone of newspaper articles referring to or discussing Alan Greenspan? And what happened to Barton Biggs' plumber? I wonder what he's saying ...The cult of celebrity is not new. Each new celebrity is associated with his or her own little miracle. And when the miracle fails - or when the celebrity pulls on the lever and nothing happens - the mob loses faith. Sometimes celebrities are allowed to limp back home with their tails between their legs and sometimes they are chased out of town by a lynch-mob. But always the same pattern: a new face, a new miracle, initial adulation, eventual failure, the downward spiral of guilt and recrimination ... were you never carried on the shoulders of the mob just for a few minutes before they discarded you for the next bright hope? The magic is always in doubt; the mob is always looking for another cause-celebre. And the most successful new cause is the one that damns the old one whilst allowing the mob an excuse for their belief. In 1930's Berlin, the KDP and the NSDP used to find that the easiest people to recruit were members of each other's parties ...

"It is partly for many of these pitfalls which you have listed, that people turn to systematized mechanical trading"So you're saying you need a mechanical system to eliminate human weakness ..."Any process with a mechanical explanation is likely to be inferior"... but that a mechanical system won't cut it. So what do you do?

"were you never carried on the shoulders of the mob just for a few minutes before they discarded you for the next bright hope? "Way to make me feel bad, Johnny, what with the winky-eye and all. I mean, what if I never was, am I sub-normal?It's like the other week, someone declared that "white males" can take credit for most of the killing and looting throughout history.So sure, I can live with the stigma, but while your at it could you at least point me to my share of the loot?MP

The point I was trying to make about riding on the shoulders of the mob is not the adulation, but the inevitable fall from grace...... and I think that you know where the loot's hidden. And if you don't, then I'm not sure I do either.

"Every man who would be a leader must remain aware of his own image in the eyes of his followers."

QuoteOriginally posted by: MobPsychoOr as Clint Eastwood said in the last scene of Magnum Force - and I wish Bob Dole had heard him before collecting the Republican Presidential nomination - "A man's got to know his limitations."MPThe precise line is:Harry Calahan (Clint Eastwood): Well I just work for the city, Briggs.Lieutenant Briggs (Hal Holbrook): So do I. Longer than you, and I've never had to take my gun out of its holster. I'm proud of that.Harry: Well, you're a good man, Lieutenant. Good man always knows his limitations.Of course, Briggs is not a good man, and Harry kills him without taking his gun out of its holster.