Bull, Bear or just a plain ol Pig? - Part 1

Yep!...I'm talking about the stock market.

In the market a bull represents an individual who buys and is very optimistic about the prices rising.A bear is someone who's line of thought is the exact opposite. He thinks that prices are going down and sells. Now while both these camps of people have very different viewpoints about the market, they have a thing in common and that is that they make money.

I am sure we all have heard of bulls and bears. Coming to third class, the pig, this is the fool who does exactly the wrong thing in the market and ends up getting slaughtered. In other words, he buys when the market might be tanking and it keeps on going down while the poor pig is losing money. This reaches a point till when he cant take it anymore. He sell at a huge loss and sits back thinking that he protected himself from a bigger loss. At exactly this point, as if on cue, the market reverses and moves up at a pace thats unbelievable leaving our good ol pig totally flustered and without a clue!

Well, throughout my trading career of the past 3 years, I have been a pig for a major portion of the time. For an outsider, it looks almost too easy to make money in the market. But once you get in and start putting money on the line - boy do things start changing fast. Emotions come into play. Greed,fear...Its a cornucopia of emotions in the market place. It has to be experienced to be believed. The stock market is the quickest wayto get very rich and its also the place to go broke in record time. Some of the most brilliant minds of our era operate in the stock market. Still a brilliant mind is not enough. People intensely successful in other fields have given up after trying out their hand in the markets. Why? - Because it takes more than a brilliant mind to function in the market. You need to control your emotions and have discipline to follow a fixed plan. Else well, its just another pig led to the slaughter!