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The story goes that the fellow sitting in the bar approached an attractive young woman inquiring if she would sleep with him for $100.  Outraged, she shouted “Certainly, NOT!”  He apologized profusely, begging her forgiveness, imploring her to allow him to buy her a drink to amend his transgression.  She cautiously accepted his gesture of reconciliation and began conversation.  After the tension subsided, and they became comfortable with one another he quipped, “Would you have considered my proposition if instead I had offered a million dollars?”  She smiled and confessed, “I suppose for a million dollars I would have agreed,” To which he responded, “Good, now that we have established your character, we are only quibbling about the price.”

 Yesterday the board of directors at Potash promptly rejected the advances of BHP Billiton, protesting what they described as a “lowball” offer for a company they insisted was of much greater value alone.  “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”  As Jeremy Frommer mentioned yesterday, eventually, “It is just a function of price.”

Yesterday’s Webinar discussion of socialism reminds me of one of the core principles that attract me to Hedge Fund LIVE, the notion of “Collective Intelligence.”  With apologies to Marx, Engels, and Adam Smith, I will take the liberty to ignore the arguments on political economy in favor of a simplistic consideration of one of the more humanistic elements in the common perception of socialism.  The concept can be encapsulated in the notion of a collective effort for the collective good.  Take as example how individual Amish join together to raise a barn for a neighbor with the understanding that neighbors will likewise convene when it is in their personal interest.  Similarly, a collective intelligence of traders leverages their available intellectual capital to compound each individual’s insight to opportunities, facts, and opinions.  Whether principal or freshman, intern or CEO, all receive and provide intelligence, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  Again, sorry, Karl.

The power of the Internet has further enabled this socialistic opportunity for individual traders beyond those that can form a conventional collective around a physical trading desk.  Tools such as Skype, instant messaging, and webinars with real-time audio and video invite like-minded yet diverse independent traders to participate as what Moskowitz has envisioned as a “community of traders.”  (“Mosk” will cringe at the notion of being coupled with the founder of Communism, but his boss may find it entertaining!)  His notion of this community of traders found emergence among a handful of his former students who nearly a year later continue to work as a collective on a daily basis to target individual profit opportunities.  When the on-line day trading training sessions ended, three of us decided to continue working through a conference call each day to share the input, encouragement, and camaraderie of one another.  We rescued solidarity from the solitude of trading alone.

 We greeted this decision with enthusiasm, recalling the slogan we all knew from childhood, “One for all and all for one!”  We considered referring to ourselves as the Three Musketeers, until Kevin asserted that it should not be Musketeers, but rather “Market-eers.”  And so we began, and continue today, working daily as a collective intelligence, much like a good natured version of the Borg (for you Star Trek Next Generation fans).  We now number four, having added the Costa Rican Canadian, plus an honorary German Marketeer in Tokyo.  By electronic extension, our collective intelligence is supplemented by Hedge Fund LIVE and by further extension, the community of traders that shares Membership and participation in the Live Member Chat.

 So whether Amish, Borg, or Marketeer, a core value of socialism to unite a collective effort for the collective good can benefit the foundation of pure capitalism to maximize profit.  We emerged as a practical reality born of the conceptual notion of Mark’s “community of traders.”  Perhaps we should call ourselves The MARK-eteers…