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Easy Trader

Steve LeCompte | | Posted in: Cartoons, Individual Investing

It is very easy to: (1) set up an account with an online, discount broker; (2) get margin and option-trading privileges; (3) read about hot stocks and funds on the web; and, (4) start trading. Is this process too easy for the average investor?


Further Reading

Animal Spirits, Individual Investing Snap-judgment Trading by Individuals? Do individual investors trade carefully and cautiously, or do they make snap judgments? In their March 2025 paper... Momentum Investing Top 5 or Top 10 NASDAQ 100 Momentum Stocks? “Big 10 Effect?” looks at recent performance of a portfolio that annually picks the 10 NASDAQ stocks with... Investing Expertise Prediction Versus Execution Which is more important, knowing what direction to trade or knowing when to enter a trade? In his... Big Ideas Intelligent Markets? How is the increasing role of interacting algorithms changing financial markets? In his November 2025 paper entitled “Algorithmic... Animal Spirits, Equity Premium Investors Overprice Weird Stocks? Do optimists dominate the pricing of stocks for firms with unusual/difficult to interpret fundamentals, thereby overpricing them? In... Momentum Investing, Size Effect, Value Premium Doing Momentum with Style (ETFs) “Beat the Market with Hot-Anomaly Switching?” concludes that “a trader who periodically switches to the hottest known anomaly...