I think it’s safe to say that, save for independently wealthy philanthropists, the majority of the world’s working-age population spend their workdays in pursuit of pay.

Are you ever tempted by the internet ad, TV infomercial or Bloomberg/CNBC TV/Radio spot touting some genius’s sure-fire trading program?

Every once in awhile a client will ask me what I think about so-and-so, the guy who says he made X million trading stocks in a tough market, and is eager to teach the world how he did it.

Now, ads aren’t cheap, and I never see the guy-in-question’s name atop the list of the world’s richest traders. Hmm…

So, is it true that the gent is so incredibly generous that he would spend his own money to make you and me richer? Of course not, his program is for sale. He hopes to make more money selling his strategy than it costs him to run the ads.

Okay, so the guy, like virtually everyone else, is spending his days in pursuit of pay. So, you tell me, what are the odds that his strategy works? You got it, exactly zero! For one, he’d not need to sell his strategy to make money if his strategy really made money. And two, under no circumstances would a pursuing-pay trader ever share his successful strategy with the world; at least never while it’s working. He has to have the rest of us buying and selling into his sells and buys for his strategy to work.