Trader’s Narrative

If you read a few trading advisory sites, it doesn’t take long to notice that some of them revel in their own vocabulary and lingo. It gets so bad that they offer dictionaries to ease novice readers into their world.

For example, take Contrarian Chronicles by Fleckenstein. He provides a handy ‘dictionary’ to help you de-code Fleckisms.

Another offender is Minyanville, spearheaded by Todd Harrison (former head trader at Cramer Berkowitz). They likewise provide “The Minyanville Dictionary”, a massive tome that spans from ‘acne’ to ‘zagger’. Whatever that means.

But the worst offender is Stephen Vita over at Alchemy of Trading. He insists on peppering his commentary with massive amounts of his own unique lingo rendering it all but incomprehensible. He is also kind enough to provide an abridged dictionary. But I stopped reading his comments regularly long ago.

Maybe it’s like highschool where you’re not ‘cool’ unless you speak your own language, unintelligible to those outside of your inner circle. Whatever the reason, I wish everyone would stop this insanity.

Why be proud of spouting so much esoteric verbiage that you need to provide a de-coder ring to your readers? I have a suggestion, why not use a simple and alternative means of communication? It is called the English language.

Does that make me ‘uncool’? a ‘dork’? I don’t really care. My solemn promise is to never write in a way that requires a dictionary (abridged or otherwise).