A-Train Finance

Value investors would be the guys that show up at the barren, run down club, when nobody is there. Everyone stopped going there months ago. They end up buying whatever drinks are on special, and pray for a good looking girl that might happen to be there by mistake and hope no one else has seen her there yet. They stick around and just hope that eventually the management will put some work into the place and people will start going there again.

Momentum traders would be the guys that go to the hottest club in town and get there right as the party is starting. They pay the $50 dollar cover, the $12 dollar domestics and make the biggest scene possible. They party it up hard and after a careful selection, the girl in which they see the most potential– they go for. They stick around until they see a few people start to leave and then after some careful calculations the momo’s leave because they wouldn’t be caught dead at a party that’s not kickin’.

Shorters take a different view of things. They go to the club and proceed to sit in the corner, get drunk and hope a fight breaks out. Possibly thrill seekers, maybe just pessimists - no one really knows for sure. They go for the more attractive girls in hopes that by the end of the night she’ll lower her standards and leave with them. Rarely successful, they usually just wait around for fights.

Scalpers are some of the sketchiest of the bunch. They start club hopping around 1:15 AM, so they never have to pay cover. They quickly jump from club to club hoping to do this often enough that one of these times they’ll catch a drunk girl on her way out and they won’t have to buy any drinks. They typically will sneak in and stand by the dance floor and pretend they’ve been there the whole time. ‘Small victories add up’ is their motto–Psh.

Long term investors are the guys that get to the club early–you know, eating dinner there– around six, seven o’clock. They’ve seen the best and the worst. They think there’s no possible way to time whether or not there’s going to be an awesome party there, so they just stick around regardless. They find a girl at the beginning of the night and hang with her, dancing and chatting all night. They’re genuinely nice to her and make an effort to show her their long term appeal. Little do they know that bars are not the best places to find these kinds of investments. (Haha..)

Short term traders are the guys that show up whenever and do whatever. Typically thought to be the rock stars of the bunch, they talk to and dance with as many females as possible in as little time as possible–just trying to drunkenly make out as many times possible in one night. Sometimes they’re successful and sometimes they don’t really get anywhere. Long term investors hate them because it looks like they’re getting all the girls from their large and publicly viewed profits. But in the end, they usually just end up with an oral ‘Banco Santander, S.A.’ (STD: 12.40 +1.64%).

The NASDAQ (kind of a sweet club name, actually?) would be a club where all the tech nerds hung out. It would have sweet LCD screens and the ’servers’ would bring drinks to you practically the second you ordered it. Almost…electronically? You might say? They all arranged to meet up there via e-mail, and then Google mapped the directions to get there. Definite usage of watch calculators to accurately divide the tab occurred.

Stock Brokers are the seemingly hot servers and bartenders that come over to you and try to convince you to buy an essentially alcohol-free shot from their tray full of neon glowing plastic test tubes for $14 bucks a pop. When you refuse, they then offer a body shot and/or pretend to be interested in you and what you have to say until like an idiot you buy a $14 dollar liquid ounce of fruit juice & Watermelon Pucker.

…and the list could go on and on–but honestly, I think that’s about enough. No one has probably read down this far anyway–We’re back to more serious stuff including the Trading Challenge tomorrow.