The popular TV program Person of Interest starts with the phrase: “You are being watched.”

A byproduct of this magnificent information age is that governments, companies, hackers, and nearly anyone else can watch you.

No doubt there are benefits to this. When you know your customer, you can improve almost every angle of your business. Service, marketing, communications…

But there are the other parts: the serious violations of privacy, the threats to our very survival, the people who use our information against us.

In the financial world, one of the greatest threats are the large, more sophisticated traders who know what you’ll do before you do it, and have hence learned how to play the system to their advantage.

These are not ordinary investors that position for long-term trends.

These are the guys who play off short-term movements to make fast money while others lose it.

They watch when most people are buying or selling, where they place their stops, and then they do the opposite. In the short term, the markets are more a zero-sum game, so your loss is their gain. They don’t need the markets to go up or down to make money – they just take it from you!

This is the reason so many everyday traders say things like: “I always seem to be the last one to buy before the markets tank, or the last one to sell before it takes off again.”

You sign up for a trading account and get some neat software to track Elliott Wave patterns, Fibonacci retracements, support and resistance levels, moving averages, and so on.

Little do you know, this is child’s play to the big traders. They know what you’re thinking, what your software is telling you, and they use that knowledge against you.

Still, you’re sold. A commercial airs. You open a trading account. You’re going to be your own trader from home. You’re going to beat the pros and retire from your bedroom. Fat chance.