Day Trade Online
Chapter One
Exploiting the Excesses
of Capitalism
Did you ever wonder how the top trading firms on Wall Street are
able to make so much money year after year? Whether or not the
great financial institutions would like to admit it, and whether or
not the general public is aware it is happening, the Wall Street
brokerage firms do to the individual investor exactly what the Las
Vegas casinos do to their gambling patrons. In the gaming world,
the house edge is probability, a slight statistical edge that the casino
has over the gambling public. The more you gamble, the less likely
you are to win.
While the casinos deal in craps, roulette, and blackjack, Wall
Street deals in stocks, bonds, and commodities. In the financial
markets, the effects of the house edge are more mysterious and
dangerous, because unlike the casino, where most gamblers understand
that the odds are stacked against them, on Wall Street
it can go unseen, unfelt, and undetected by the ordinary investor.
This hidden force is known as the bid-ask spread. The spr ... read full excerpt from: Day Trade Online (Wiley Trading #436) ebook
