To many people Facebook is a tool to announce what they are doing or what they have done, yet to some Zambians, it is being used as ‘Agony Aunt’ from which they are seeking advice on many social problems affecting them.
Facebook seems to have filled up the vacuum that Zambians newspapers have failed to fill up. For starters, Zambian newspapers do not have the luxury of space to provide such a service as most of them only go up to 12 pages comprising both editorial and advertising content.
Editorially, the pages are divided into two to three news pages, a business page, a foreign page and a features page, which also carries the editorial and letters columns and one or two features, and a sports page. The rest of the space is dedicated to advertising which means that people seeking advice on personal matters such as marriage cannot be accommodated.
A social work graduate from the University of Zambia, Tina Banda, started a Facebook page called Real Life and Hot Issues Discussion Forum with Tina Banda on which a number of topics are posted everyday and responses given by other Facebook users.
The objective of the Real Life and Hot Issues Discussions is:
Our Ultimatum objective is to shape people’s lives positively and to become the world’s most effective BLOG in educating the public on Real Life issues.
The group focuses on:
OUR focus will be on INFIDELITY,MOTIVATION,JESUS & THE BIBLE TEACHINGS, POLITICS,FINANCE,SOCIAL -ECONOMICAL ISSUES,MARRIAGE /RELATIONSHIPS AND SEX, YOUTH PROBLEMS,EDUCATION,ENTERTAINMENT,CURRENT & HISTORICAL EVENTS,GLOBALISATION,BUSSINESS,TECHNOLOGY,LEGAL ISSUES,ECOLOGICAL ISSUES,FASHION,GOSSIP,CLIMATE CHANGE AND LOVE.We have chosen to come up with the afore mentioned categories as there has been various news on the same issues all over the world…..
A typical contribution goes like this:
Some men are fond of having a permanent girlfriend besides (the) wife. Some just decide to marry as many wives as they want (Due to GREEDY/SELFISH). Must polygamy be encouraged? Can a man genuinely love 2 women the same way? How fair is it to us WOMEN? READ STORY BELOW AND ADVISE Maturely.
Tina i need help very much. Am 33yrs old woman with three kids that i love so very much, i have been married for seven yrs now, and its been a sad stiuation that when my husband was transfered to mufulira he completly changed, he no loger sl…eeps at home, he has inpregnanted his workmet and now he has even shifted to her house and they are staying together, he realy visits his children and now the children are asking me wether i chessed there dad, the whole family have tried and have failed to convince him, he keeps on saying that i love them both and yet i cant see that love for me in him, non of his family members are happy abt this and they had a kitchen party and all his family members did not even attend it, i love this man i miss everything abt him, he pays rent for us and gives us his ration money but not as he used to give out, but i miss having that sweet thing in bed you know, i stay with his brother and i should comfess that i have stated going out with a diferent guy in the hood, and his young brother is suspecting that and he is in support but i feel guilt cause i have never done it before, please help what should i do? go on cheating on him or just relax until he comes back into his senses?
Please help me am dieing with this!!![sick].
A typical response from users goes like this:
Mwenda Sitali says:
You have bn brilliant so far but you ar now messing up yourself.i know its difficult and your ar missing your chocolates in bed.The best thing to do ask your husband to free u up(divorce) so that you can go and look for chocolates elsewhere with a free mind.Your husband is not being fair with u.He is getting his chocolates and you aint getting anything(selfish zambian men)Thats mental torture since you also have a nice taste for chocolates.merry xmas bt no chocs for you.lo[sic]
Meza Mphande says:
Dear Lady: Yours is a familiar case that has happened to many women out there in marriages.It unfortunately has been a trend and other people have come to allude to the conclusion that this happens at some stage in marriage life.But my advi…se is that DO NOT go on with this relationship with this man you are seeing now as you are now doing the very THING you are fighting against your husband.Correctly,so he is very wrong in his actions, regardless of what his side of the story could be becoz marriage is a high institution and there exists channels to solve marital problems that could be of a personal nature between the two of you. Remember,despite all this,you are still legal husband & Wife as you have not divorced.So for now,with all this turmoil, you will continue to devote to your husband.Remain faithful to yourself and him.
If you feel the betrayal is unbearable and cant continue living with him,then you can seek divorce in the courts and set yourself free to start another relationship, and be respected.From your letter, you still love him despite all this, so remain faithful for now, until when you decide to take the step i have put above.
Another topic on the discussion board is about lobola (bride price):
Should lobola correspond to the amount of investment that parents spent on the woman?
Pkapanya Kapanya says:
Nice one Tina! I dont think so. The man marrying is also worth quite something in terms of investment from his family. Id say it should just be enuf to try and compensate for the wman not being home close at hand to help her family freely unlike when she is with the husband and her key responsibilities shift to the man's family. However, i would want mine to be just enuf for me to be able to return incase thngs dnt work out or am not kept well. lol!
Victor Chanda says lobola is not a price for a commodity:
Tina, lobola is not compensation neither is it a price for a commodity. It is a TOKEN of appreciation to the woman's family on how well groomed she is. undersevedly this commercialisation is a misinterpretation of the basis on which this was founded. We are talking of a human being not cattle, to be paid by the highest bidder… Over the years a lot of distortion on this have evolved including the women putting their own price tags. A woman can be formally educated but that does not make her a good wife there a lot of attributes which make a woman a good wife.
The latest topic at the time of writing this post is about a man who had to forge a marriage certificate to register his son as dependant at work and now he wants to marry. The man says:
The certificate bears no signature only our names and name of marrying officer and the witness plus church date stump. A layer said he can challenge her in court but still i will be charged with forgery which in this case i may end up in jail and my employers cant tolerate it, this i know. This will cost me more than i can bear. I offered a lumpsome to make her keep quite but she refused saying all she want is me taking her as my wife thus threatening my fiancee. I forged it coz i loved her but not for a wife coz she isnt a marriage type. We agreed that child maitainance is the allowance she gets which is more than k2.7m per month. Plz what more can a man do to an ex
Asked what motivated 27 year-old Tina, a sales and marketing executive of a Zambian-based Kenyan company, to start Real life & Hot Issues?
She said she was motivated to start the Facebook version of Agony Aunt because of her passion to assist humanity in stressful social situations and occurrences:
I have always wanted to play a role in shaping peoples’ lives, laying [sic] information and enhancing decision making skills in people, motivate the low spirited/hopeless people in society and learn more on cultural diversity and how people from different countries share their perceptions/cultural values and traditions.
I also do not like seeing people go through emotional stress/suffering due to social problems because I have seen how we women are vulnerable in most situations and we fail to open up even to friends or relatives. I always thought bringing out hot issues of the voiceless women/men will always help one or two people on social networks like Facebook and now I get a lot of mails in my Facebook inbox just to have them posted on the Real Life wall so they can get various responses and experiences from other people.
“It is for the above reasons that I developed a passion to talk about real life issues that people got through and other hot issues of humanity affecting society.
Today, I challenge the conclusions of a blog writer about markets, randomness, and technical analysis as a whole.
This opinion column could get exciting if the conversation continues beyond this challenge, and I hope it does.
Last week, Benzinga readers were alerted to a blog series challenging the effectiveness of technical analysis, especially the use of support and resistance on stock charts. The blog's writer, Adam Grimes of SMB Capital, makes a claim that almost any random line plopped onto a chart will behave like support or resistance.
He includes some nice examples, including a provocative quiz, and extends his theory to build an argument against almost the entire industry of technical analysis. (If you have not familiarized yourself with Grimes' six-part blog series, this might be a good time to do so.) His thesis is that the stock market is highly random - more random than most traders think - and therefore technical analysis tools (such as support, resistance, and indicators) usually provide no real "edge" for making money in the stock market.
Grimes' five-post argument, which can be found here, concludes in a sixth post that applies the thesis to real-world practice. Specifically, Grimes proposes a few profitable trading methods that allegedly do not violate the principle of the market being highly random.
I admire this latest post, as it moves beyond the academic nature of the former posts and addresses the personal implications of his thesis (which is always difficult work to do), as well as offering actual suggestions for action, rather than quitting after his critique. In other words, his final post took some guts, and I respect that.
However, I must admit that I feel slightly disappointed by the finale. I read the first five posts and was growing very excited that Grimes might actually reveal a trading method with a verifiable, non-random, profitable edge. Unfortunately, I must challenge him on his attempt. He has not.
More specifically, he has not actually shown his readers such a trading system, except in theory. I argue that Grimes' suggestions are far too general to actually be used for trading NYSE stocks. More importantly (and the fun part!), I extend my argument to challenge the use of technical analysis on any NYSE stock. Intrigued? Onward!
While awaiting Grimes' sixth post, I had formulated some guesses for what his conclusion might be. First, I had guessed that he might explain hedge-fund-like research for gaining a profitable edge based on special information. This is pretty standard fare in the finance industry, so this was my first guess. Interestingly, Grimes did not mention this at all.
Second, I had guessed that he might reveal a system for trading a "non-random" characteristic of the market - volatility clustering - which was the topic of his fourth post. Volatility clustering is a very human, non-random characteristic of the market, and there are ways to directly profit from it (like trading VIX long after unusual market moves). Although Grimes mentioned volatility clustering, he did not describe a way to directly profit from this characteristic of the market.
Third, I had guessed that Grimes might talk about tape-reading (one of the famous skills of SMB traders), arbitrage, dark pools, or some other way to trade based on inside knowledge of order flow. Grimes mostly overlooked these skills, however, and never mentioned ways to know more orders than the standard, public Level 2 orderbook.
Fourth, I had guessed that he might explain a news-based trading strategy (like buying volatility on certain news events).
Well, I did not find any of my guesses in Grimes' final post. No, instead, I found (in his words):
"Every edge, every advantage, we have as technical traders comes from an imbalance of buying and selling pressure." And again, as the ultimate application in the final section, "Limit trading to those times when there is actual buying or selling imbalance."
Aw. Really, that was the finale?
My disappointment comes for one reason: great idea, but how you can possibly know when that is happening?
How can you know when a stock has "buying pressure" or "selling pressure"? I mean, really know? I am not talking about 20/20 hindsight where someone pulls up a chart of a stock and jabs, "Can you see the buying pressure now?" No, I am talking about the right edge of the chart, that area by the margin that makes all bets fair and contains all the great mysteries of the stock market. Buying and selling pressure is easy when looking at a stock's history, but it is terribly difficult to know where people will buy and sell that stock in the future.
(If you think this is easy, maybe you should take the quiz again.)
The right edge of the chart is where consolidations look like breakouts, and continuations look like reversals. (I know some traders are grinning right now.) The problem with suggesting that traders "buy when there is buying pressure" is, well, the right edge of the chart. Because the right edge of the chart can look like *anything* you want it to look like. If all you have is a chart, NYSE's tape and stock chart, and the Level 2, then I have some serious doubts about your ability to judge when there is buying or selling pressure.
Track with me, because now it gets interesting. Quick.
My lingering doubt about using technical analysis for any NYSE stock is that the consolidated tape streaming out of NYSE headquarters is not the whole truth. It is only a tiny truth- a minuscule fraction of a stock's supply and demand.
Here we go. Do you remember back to your first days of learning about NYSE's tape (a.k.a. the "time and sales" of transactions from which a stock chart is derived)? Aha, let us quickly refresh. NYSE's tape includes transactions that are automatically or manually reported by the NYSE specialist or transacted over Electronic Communication Networks except - and this is a big except - transactions below 100 shares, dark pool transactions, options transactions, swaps, depository receipts trades, contracts for difference, delayed overseas trades, other derivatives volume, and delayed prints for "special" traders like specialists and majority shareholders.
Whew. Even listing out all of those hidden sources of supply and demand makes me cringe. Do you remember learning about any of those exceptions when you learned about the stock market?
These "other" transactions that never appear on NYSE's tape (nor your stock charts) can, at times, be the majority of a stock's price and volume history. The overwhelmingly vast majority! NYSE has warned investors that dark pools alone average 12%+ of daily volume (so that if a stock trades $1B, there was probably another $120M traded on dark pools that never made it onto the tape nor your stock chart). Moreover, this is only an average, so there are days when darkpool transactions are actually larger (reaching perhaps the majority) of NYSE public transactions on a particular stock. Even without these dark pools - just looking at NYSE's public tape - it is not uncommon for a given stock to trade a few hundred thousand shares during a day, and then suddenly NYSE prints a "block" of two million shares in post-market trading, which NYSE will say occurred "over time in the past." Do you recall seeing these prints? They show up all the time. These prints often come as a reminder for traders that some buying and selling pressure is invisible, occurs in hidden markets, is not reported in a timely manner, and can account for the majority of supply and demand.
But oh there's more.
So, we have recalled that an average of 12% of the true stock chart is invisible: historical price and volume data that is hidden in dark pools and never reported to the public. Moreover, "special" market participants have the privilege of delaying the printing of their trades, including specialists, majority shareholders, and several other classes of traders. Then, on top of all of this, we must also add the influence of High Frequency Trading (HFT), which is 50-70% of the tape (and, therefore, stock chart). Finally, we must add the biggest category of all: the effects of derivatives and funds markets. Here, I am talking about the influence of options transactions, swaps, contracts for difference, delayed overseas trades, arbitrage, foreign depository receipts trades, exotics, and other derivatives. These markets have real, non-instantaneous, and often massive effects on the price of a stock, and none of these effects have standardized reporting on the realtime tape or stock chart.
An example might help at this point. Say you are trading GE. You are watching bullish prints on the NYSE tape, a stock chart showing an strong upward trend, and a Level 2 orderbook that shows plenty of strong buyers willing to pay consistently higher prices. You determine that you have, as Grimes suggested, found "an edge" for a profitable trade based on "buying pressure." You buy GE.
Then, suddenly, a trader in Chicago buys 30,000 GE puts (contracts traded on a non-NYSE market that rise in value as the price of stock goes down). GE stock starts to collapse as news of this large transaction circulates, and you lose money.
Or maybe the NYSE specialist prints a delayed block of five million shares significantly below the current GE price, and GE collapses because of the surprise. Or maybe a darkpool trader sells a block of GE stock while buying it in his darkpool for better, hidden prices. Or maybe an international arbitrageur sells a block of GE because he is buying a paired, exotic option contract in Bermuda. The possibilities are endless.
So, what then? Well, beyond losing money, you are also forced to accept that the "buying pressure" you thought was there, was not really there. More importantly, you are forced to accept that you did not have sufficient knowledge to know if there even was buying pressure in the first place. Most importantly, you must consider whether you can *ever* have enough knowledge to determine if there is buying or selling pressure, given that you only have access to one data source (NYSE) that does not include dozens (if not hundreds) of other invisible and inefficiently-updated sources of supply and demand.
The point is not that one unusual event could occur in a secondary market and destroy one of your trades. No, the point is that invisible and secondary market transactions are occurring constantly, suddenly, enormously, unexpectedly, and are a significant (if not majority) amount of the true buying and selling pressure on NYSE stocks. At any time.
Which brings us back full circle. How can Grimes know that there is "an imbalance of buying and selling pressure" if over half of the tape and chart is HFT, 12%+ is kept secret on dark pools, and 100% is being randomly jerked around without warning by arbitrageurs, derivatives contracts, dark pool traders, depository receipts on alternate exchanges, exotics, and yet-to-be-reported "invisible" trades by privileged market participants?
So, there it is, my first challenge to Adam Grimes and all traders who use technical analysis to trade NYSE stocks. Can you explain how you can know if there is buying and selling pressure at the right edge of the chart, given the enormous and inefficiently-reported influence of outside money?
(I hope Adam Grimes knows that this challenge comes in good taste and good fun. Grimes is an extremely intelligent and gifted trader, and his opinion is probably worth many times that of a lowly staff writer for an opinion column. Nevertheless, I hope he enjoys a healthy debate every now and then; and why not discuss something so important for so many in the financial community. Cheers!)
Disclaimer: Benzinga has no affiliation with Adam Grimes or SMB Capital in any way whatsoever. This article was written to solely increase critical awareness of technical analysis, securities markets, and financial concepts. The views and opinions expressed by Adam Grimes and SMB Capital do not necessarily reflect those of Benzinga. Likewise, the views of this staff writer do not necessarily reflect those of Benzinga. Specifically, Benzinga realizes that technical analysis is a valuable tool for many traders and regularly provides diligent technical updates of the markets by experienced technicians for the benefit of these readers.
-- Aaron Wise
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