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Trading Psychology
How do we learn to conquer our fear and greed? Discuss the mental aspects of the game.
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By mitsubishi · Posted
Thanks for the really useful info -
By mitsubishi · Posted
Have to admit ilike my own posts dont forget to like and subscribe -
By mitsubishi · Posted
you aint seen nothin yet. Everytrime you pretend you're not a scammer.. What Is Financial Fraud? Financial fraud dates back to the year 300 B.C. when a Greek merchant name Hegestratos took out a large insurance policy known as bottomry. In layman's terms, the merchant borrowed money and agreed to pay it back with interest when the cargo, in this case, corn, was delivered. If the merchant refused to pay back the loan, the lender could claim the cargo and the boat used for its transportation. Hegestratos planned to sink his empty boat, keep the loan, and sell the corn. The plan failed, and he drowned trying to escape his crew and passengers when they caught him in the act. This is the first recorded incident of fraud, but it's safe to assume that the practice has been around since the dawn of commerce. Instead of starting at the very beginning, we will focus on the growth of stock market fraud in the U.S. Key Takeaways William Duer committed an insider trading scandal in the late1700s when he relied on his information edge to keep ahead of the market. Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War leader, created a financial panic in 1884 when he could not raise funds to save his son's failing business. In the late 1800s, Daniel Drew used techniques known as a corner, poop and scoop, and pump and dump to defraud stock market investors. After the second world war, stock pools composed of the wealthy manipulated large stocks such as Chrysler, RCA, and Standard Oil until the bubble burst in 1929. How Fraud Perpetrators Work There have been many instances of fraud and stock pool scams in the history of the United States, and all of them expose devious schemes based on greed and a desire for power. The first documented fraud occurred in 300 B.C., and it is unlikely that it will ever by stamped out completely because it is driven by greed and the desire for power. The First Insider Trading Scandal In 1792, only a few years after America officially became independent, the nation experienced its first fraud. At this time, American bonds were similar to developing-world issues or junk bonds today—they fluctuated in value with every bit of news about the fortunes of the colonies that issued them. The trick of investing in such a volatile market was to be a step ahead of the news that would push a bond's value up or down. Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the Treasury, began to restructure American finance by replacing outstanding bonds from various colonies with bonds from the new central government. Consequently, big bond investors sought out people who had access to the Treasury to find out which bond issues Hamilton was going to replace. William Duer, a member of President George Washington's inner circle and assistant secretary of the Treasury, was ideally placed to profit from insider information. Duer was privy to all the Treasury's actions and would tip off his friends and trade in his own portfolio before leaking select information to the public that he knew would drive up prices. Then Duer would simply sell for an easy profit. After years of this type of manipulation, even raiding Treasury funds to make larger bets, Duer left his post but kept his inside contacts. He continued to invest his own money as well as that of other investors in both debt issues and the stocks of banks popping up nationwide. With all the European and domestic money chasing bonds, however, there was a speculative glut as issuers rushed to cash in. Rather than stepping back from the overheating market, Duer was counting on his information edge to keep ahead. He piled his ill-gotten gains and that of his investors into the market. Duer also borrowed heavily to further leverage his bond bets. The correction was unpredictable and sharp, leaving Duer hanging onto worthless investments and huge debts. Hamilton had to rescue the market by buying up bonds and acting as a lender of last resort. William Duer ended up in debtor's prison, where he died in 1799. The speculative bond bubble in 1792 and the large amount of bond trading was, interestingly enough, the catalyst for the Buttonwood Agreement, which was the beginnings of the Wall Street investment community. Fraud Wipes Out a President Ulysses S. Grant, a renowned Civil War hero and former president, only wanted to help his son succeed in business, but he ended up creating a financial panic. Grant's son, Buck, had already failed at several businesses but was determined to succeed on Wall Street. Buck formed a partnership with Ferdinand Ward, an unscrupulous man who was only interested in the legitimacy gained from the Grant name. The two opened up a firm called Grant & Ward. Ward immediately sought capital from investors, falsely claiming that the former president had agreed to help them land lucrative government contracts. Ward then used this cash to speculate on the market. Sadly, Ward was not as gifted at speculating as he was at talking, and he lost heavily. Of the capital Ward squandered, $600,000 was tied to the Marine National Bank, and both the bank and Grant & Ward were on the verge of collapse. Ward convinced Buck to ask his father for more money. Grant Sr., already heavily invested in the firm, was unable to come up with enough funds and was forced to ask for a $150,000 personal loan from William Vanderbilt. Ward essentially took the money and ran, leaving the Grants, Marine National Bank, and the investors holding the bag. Marine National Bank collapsed after a bank run, and its fall helped touch off the panic of 1884. Grant Sr. paid off his debt to Vanderbilt with all his personal effects including his uniforms, swords, medals, and other memorabilia from the war. Ward was eventually caught and imprisoned for six years. The Pioneering Daniel Drew The late 1800s saw men such as Jay Gould, James Fisk, Russell Sage, Edward Henry Harriman, and J.P. Morgan turn the fledgling stock market into their personal playground. However, Daniel Drew was a true pioneer of fraud and stock market manipulation. Drew started out in cattle, bringing the term "watered stock" to our vocabulary—watered stock are shares issued at a much greater value than its underlying assets, usually as part of a scheme to defraud investors. Drew later became a financier when the portfolio of loans he provided to fellow cattlemen gave him the capital to start buying large positions in transportation stocks. Drew lived in a time before disclosure, when only the most basic regulations existed. His technique was known as a corner. He would buy up all of a company's stocks, then spread false news about the company to drive the price down. This would encourage traders to sell the stock short. Unlike today, it was possible to sell short many times the actual stock outstanding. When the time came to cover their short positions, traders would find out that the only person holding stock was Daniel Drew and he expected a high premium. Drew's success with corners led to new operations. Drew often traded wholly owned stocks between himself and other manipulators at higher and higher prices. When this action caught the attention of other traders, the group would dump the stock back on the market. The danger of Drew's combined poop and scoop and pump and dump schemes lay in taking the short position. In 1864, Drew was trapped in a corner of his own by Vanderbilt. Drew was trying to short a company that Vanderbilt was simultaneously trying to acquire. Drew shorted heavily, but Vanderbilt had purchased all the shares. Consequently, Drew had to cover his position at a premium paid directly to Vanderbilt. Drew and Vanderbilt battled again in 1866 over a railroad, but this time Drew was much wiser, or at least much more corrupt. As Vanderbilt tried to buy up one of Drew's railroads, Drew printed more and more illegal shares. Vanderbilt followed his previous strategy and used his war chest to buy up the additional shares. This left Drew running from the law for watering stock and left Vanderbilt cash poor. The two combatants came to an uneasy truce: Drew's fellow manipulators, Fisk and Gould, were angered by the truce and conspired to ruin Drew. He died broke in 1879. The Stock Pools Until the 1920s, most market fraud affected only the few Americans who were investing. When it was confined largely to battles between wealthy manipulators, the government felt no need to step in. After World War I, however, average Americans discovered the stock market. To take advantage of the influx of eager new money, manipulators teamed up to create stock pools. Basically, stock pools carried out Daniel Drew-style manipulation on a larger scale. With more investors involved, the profits from manipulating stocks were enough to convince the management of the companies being targeted to participate. The stock pools became very powerful, manipulating even large cap stocks such as Chrysler, RCA, and Standard Oil. When the bubble burst in 1929, both the general public and the government were staggered by the level of corruption that had contributed to the financial catastrophe. Stock pools took the lion's share of the blame, leading to the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ironically, the first head of the SEC was a speculator and former pool insider, Joseph Kennedy Sr. Fast Fact The first head of the SEC was a speculator and former pool insider, Joseph Kennedy Sr. The stock pools were held largely to blame for the bubble that burst in 1929. The SEC Era With the creation of the SEC, market rules were formalized and stock fraud was defined. Common manipulation practices you fucking nigerian scamming cuntwere outlawed as was the large trade in insider information. Wall Street would no longer be the Wild West where gunslingers like Drew and Vanderbilt met for showdowns. That isn't to say that the pump and dump or insider trading has disappeared. In the SEC era, investors still get taken in by fraud, but legal protection do now exist giving investors some recourse. -
By mitsubishi · Posted
Why Russian scammers use TheBat! Let me ask you two questions: First, what would you think if you knew that the person writing you was using a commercial software application typically used by businesses? Second, what would you think about receiving e-mails from a mail client from someone claiming that they were using an Internet Café? If you do not understand either of these two questions, your vulnerability to being scammed is much greater. There are two pieces of background information that will help you understand why understanding the context of these two questions is important: First, managing the large number of scams that are necessary in order to identify a victim is difficult. The solution is to use a commercial software application that has the following characteristics: 1) The Scammer needs an e-mail client that can manage large amounts of e-mail from many different e-mail accounts (using the same e-mail account for communicating with many victims can be problematic since once identified as a Scammer, there are enough Blacklists that the e-mail account will be readily recognizable). 2) The Scammer needs an e-mail client that can sort messages from different e-mail accounts into threads do that the dialogue over time can be managed - this allows "customization" of the communication with the victim to help avoid suspicion (not answering questions or ignoring important information can tip off a victim that something is wrong. 3) The Scammer needs a way to reduce the amount of effort required to communicate with all their victims. Second, as the scale of the scamming activity increases, the Scammer will have a problem using a web e-mail service: 1) E-mail service providers, once aware of a scam, can involve law enforcement agencies and can identify other victims and send out warnings - the Scammer needs to minimize, as much as possible, traces of their scamming activities. 2) Most people would never consider using an e-mail application from an Internet Café (which many Scammers claim to be using) since all of their mail would be left on the computer they were using! If someone is using an e-mail application of any kind (Outlook Express, Outlook, etc.) while stating that they are using an Internet Café warning lights and a siren should be going off. Now that we have identified the characteristics, we can discuss two simple tests that you can do yourself: First, as soon as possible, ask the person that you are corresponding with where they live. With this information, you can inspect the e-mail message header (most e-mail clients will show this information as "message header" or "show original message") - the part that you are looking for looks like this: Received: from 192.168.0.4 (29.214.dialup.mari-el.ru [195.161.214.29]) (authenticated bits=0) by mailc.rambler.ru (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id jBHJSM2V039983 for ; Sat, 17 Dec 2005 22:29:30 +0300 (MSK) Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 22:26:48 +1100 From: scammer X-Mailer: The Bat! (v2.01) Step one is to find out where the message actually came from - for this example I am using an e-mail where the woman claimed to be using an Internet Café in Cheboksary, Russia. I enter the following URL into my web browser: https://www.ripe.net/perl/whois Next, I enter the IP address from the line that starts with "Received:" which is: 195.161.214.29 And enter it into the "Search for" field on the web page, which returns the following results: person: Nikolay Nikolaev address: Volgatelecom Mari El branch address: Sovetskaya 138 address: 424000 Yoshkar-Ola address: Russia MariEl Republic phone: +7 8362 421549 phone: +7 8362 664435 fax-no: +7 8362 664151 e-mail: nnb@relinfo.ru nic-hdl: NN-RIPE source: RIPE # Filtered I am expecting the address to be Cheboksary and Chuvash Republic - I am not expecting the address to be Yoshkar-Ola and MariEl Republic! Actually, I already had a warning flag in the e-mail header: Received: from 192.168.0.4 (29.214.dialup.mari-el.ru [195.161.214.29]) If the e-mail actually came from Cheboksary, I would expect to see the following: person: Medukov J Alexandr address: 428000 Cheboxary Lenin av 2a phone: +7 8352 662912 e-mail: master@chtts.ru nic-hdl: MJA4-RIPE source: RIPE # Filtered How did I get this information? Simple, find a government or business URL in the city you are interested in and enter it into Ripe. You may need to identify the IP address by using the PING command - this will turn a text URL into an IP address that can be searched on Ripe. I will not go into this more, since this topic wanders off topic a bit. The important thing to note is that the city and republic do not match what was expected - there are a lot of people on this and other web site forums that can assist you if you need more help. The second test is to examine the message header and look for "X-Mailer:" - in our example we find the following: X-Mailer: The Bat! (v2.01) This means that the person sending me the e-mail from a supposed Internet Café is using an e-mail client application. By now, "Red Alert" should be flashing! Why would someone use an e-mail client from an Internet Cafe? Well, most normal people would not - so this is very likely a scam! Now that I have covered how you can test your own e-mails for scamming attempts, I want to return to the technology topic. The Bat! (also known as TB! And TB) - I will use TB! From this point on - is an e-mail client application (a program that runs on a personal computer) that is marketed towards companies and individuals that need to manage large volumes of e-mail. The OECD refers to a category of company as a Small to Medium-Sized Enterprise - an SME for short. Smaller SME's often have very limited budgets and cannot afford specialized Sales and Marketing, Customer Service, and other forms of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Our laboratory supports a group company that helps smaller SME's adapt TB! for their business. I mention this because TB! Has been associated with both Spamming and Scamming - the product is legitimate and is a valuable tool for many businesses; unfortunately, the same features that make TB! effective and efficient for companies, also provide a similar benefit to Scammers. There are two features that Scammers find particularly useful: 1) TB! supports a sophisticated macro programming language and a sophisticated ability to manage templates - predefined text that can be dynamically changed by the macro programming language to respond to e-mails. This allows a technically competent person to create a Scamming system that has a high degree of automation while at the same time allowing the scammer to add custom text in predefined areas within the template. The more people that the Scammer can correspond with, the more likely a victim can be found. 2) TB! is designed to work with multiple e-mail servers simultaneously. This makes it very easy for the Scammer to use numerous "dummy" e-mail accounts for Scamming unsuspecting victims (TB! downloads and erases the e-mails from each e-mail server making it harder for investigators to track what was happening). An e-mail client such as Outlook Express or Outlook Professional and most web e-mail clients such as Yahoo and Hotmail do not offer this level of sophistication. TB! is also very affordable at less than USD $60.00 - well within the means of the typical Scammer. TB! is a product of RIT Labs, which is based in Moldova. This article was produced by the Enterprise Systems Architecture Laboratory (ESAL) located in Stockholm, Sweden. Reuse of this information free of royalty is hereby granted providing that this notice is included in any reproductions. Our footnote. Beware!! recently scammers started using other mass-mailing programs (those are usually used to send spam). In particular: FC'2000, Becky and CommuniGate Pro.@rambler.ru>@email.com> -
By mitsubishi · Posted
Even if you're in the UK the scammer here can still operate. you see how he's obsessed woith scamming people because he keeps showing you his research. Its what he's always planning- so transparent Check if something might be a scam 5-6 minutes Scams can be difficult to recognise, but there are things you can look out for. You can use our online scams helper to get advice that’s specific to your situation. Online scams helper We'll use your answers to the questions to give you advice on: how to check whether something might be a scam what to do if you've been scammed Recognising a scam It might be a scam if: it seems too good to be true – for example, a holiday that’s much cheaper than you’d expect someone you don’t know contacts you unexpectedly you suspect you’re not dealing with a real company – for example, if there’s no postal address you’ve been asked to transfer money quickly you've been asked to pay in an unusual way – for example, by iTunes vouchers or through a transfer service like MoneyGram or Western Union you’ve been asked to give away personal information like passwords or PINs you haven't had written confirmation of what's been agreed If you think you’ve paid too much for something Paying more for something than you think it’s worth isn’t the same as being scammed. Usually, a scam will involve theft or fraud. You have other rights if you think you’ve overpaid. If you think you’ve spotted a scam If you’ve given away money or information because of a scam, there are things you should do. Check what to do if you’ve been scammed. If you haven’t been scammed but you’ve seen something you think is a scam, you should report it. Find out how to report a scam. If you’re not sure if something is a scam, contact one of our scams advisers. They'll give you advice about what to do next. Protecting yourself online There are things you can do to protect yourself from being scammed online. Check you’re buying from a real company You can search for a company's details on GOV.UK. This will tell you if they're a registered company or not. If you’re buying something on a site you haven't used before, spend a few minutes checking it – start by finding its terms and conditions. The company’s address should have a street name, not just a post office box. Check to see what people have said about the company. It’s worth looking for reviews on different websites – don’t rely on reviews the company has put on its own website. Also, don’t rely on seeing a padlock in the address bar of your browser - this doesn’t guarantee you’re buying from a real company. Don’t click on or download anything you don’t trust Don’t click on or download anything you don’t trust - for example, if you get an email from a company with a strange email address. Doing this could infect your computer with a virus. Make sure your antivirus software is up to date to give you more protection. Be careful about giving personal information away Some scammers try to get your personal information – for example, the name of your primary school or your National Insurance number. They can use this information to hack your accounts. If you come across sites that ask for this type of information without an obvious reason, check they’re legitimate. Sometimes your log-in details can be made publicly available when a website is hacked. This means that someone could use your details in a scam. Check whether your accounts have been put at risk on Have I Been Pwned. Make your online accounts secure Make sure you have a strong password for your email accounts that you don't use anywhere else. If you’re worried about remembering lots of different passwords, you can use a password manager. Some websites let you add a second step when you log in to your account – this is known as ‘two-factor authentication’. This makes it harder for scammers to access your accounts. Find out how to set up two-factor authentication across services like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Outlook and iTunes on the website Turnon2fa. Pay by debit or credit card- never pay a penny to anal 75 Pay by card to get extra protection if things go wrong. Read our advice on getting your money back after you’ve been scammed. Know how your bank operates Check your bank’s website to see how your bank will and won’t communicate with you. For example, find out what type of security questions they’ll ask if they phone you. Find out about recent scams You can sign up for email alerts on Action Fraud’s website to find out about recent scams in your area. You can also check recent scams on Action Fraud’s website, and find out about common financial scams on the Financial Conduct Authority’s website.
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