Category Educational

There are trading phrases that survive because they are useful, and there are trading phrases that survive because they are easy to repeat. “The trend is your friend” belongs to both categories. It is useful, but only when treated as a probabilistic framework rather than a religious commandment. Used well, it keeps a trader aligned with momentum, liquidity, and market psychology. Used badly, it turns into a license to chase, overstay, and confuse a mature move with a fresh opportunity.

There are moments when a positive headline no longer lights a fire under a stock. It opens green, holds for a moment, then fades. That is not always an anomaly. Quite often, it is the market quietly telling you that the story alone is no longer enough.

The first myths of social trading usually come from outside: the trending ticker, the guru thread, the magical catalyst calendar, the cult of “smart money,” the promise that one more breakout will fix your year. But the deeper myths are the private ones. They appear after the chart turns ugly, after the timing fails, after the confidence starts cracking. That is when the internal narrator goes to work.

This third volume is about those myths. Not the noisy lies from the feed, but the polished lies traders tell themselves when they need to protect pride, postpone discomfort, and keep a bad trade emotionally alive for just a little longer. These myths sound reasonable in real time. That is exactly why they are dangerous.

Why these commandments matter
Many people think trading is mainly about finding the right stock, the right indicator, or the right catalyst. In reality, the hardest part is not the entry itself. The hardest part is making repeated decisions under uncertainty without letting emotion, urgency, ego, or frustration take control.

That is why these commandments matter. They are not magic rules and they do not guarantee profits. What they do is far more useful: they help traders avoid some of the most common and expensive mistakes, especially in volatile environments where speed and pressure can easily lead to poor judgment.

This page is designed as educational content for readers who want a stronger foundation. Before strategy comes discipline. Before conviction comes risk management. Before confidence comes process.

When people talk about artificial intelligence in trading and investing, I almost always see two opposite – and both wrong – reactions.

On one side you have those who demonise it by default: “it’s dangerous”, “it fills your head with nonsense”, “it’s useless, markets are moved by others anyway”. On the other side you have those who treat it like a modern oracle: “tell me what to buy”, “give me the next 10-baggers”, “build me the perfect watchlist”.

I work with AI every single day to build Merlintrader’s content, and I can tell you something very simple: the truth is neither here nor there. AI is not an enemy to fight, and it’s not a guru to worship. It is a tool. Extremely powerful if you use it well. Dangerous if you use it badly. Useless if you ignore it.

The slightly less polite, more cynical and more honest companion to the original Encyclopedia of Social Trader Myths. Same dark humour, more uncomfortable truths about how traders really behave on Stocktwits, Reddit, X and Discord.