Dangers of Proprietary Software for Traders

I just posted two disturbing stories at my other blog
Message of the Markets

• CAUTION: MARKET BEING MANIPULATED!
• Can You Trust Anyone In the Market?

If you think you can make it in the market without knowing how to design and test a system, think again. If you think you can depend upon commercial software, without knowing what it does, and how it does it, prepare to be fleeced. I hope you have deep pockets.

A trader today, if he (or she) hopes to survive, needs to be thoroughly acquainted with the methods of the quants. You must know the strengths, as well as the weaknesses, of quantitative methods. At a bear minimum, you need to know how the quants think, so you can take detect, and profit when there are too many of them on one side of the market.