Don’t be confused with these terms as they only have one common idea, and that is to earn a profit! However, some investors almost always end up committing mistakes in the beginning. Since investments belong to a larger scale, you may focus first in trading so that you could easily understand it.

When we say traders, they are the ones who are into buying and selling goods, currencies or even stocks. They may be transacting using their own capital or using others’, whether a single proprietorship, partnership or a company. You can check the link and reviews about nextmarkets, stock exchange experts, money market and the likes for more information about trading to get more idea about this.

Traders can be vulnerable, most especially those who are just on their initial stage. Therefore, it is a must that a beginner trader should consider all the necessary factors in order to avoid committing the same common mistakes. And what are those general trading mistakes or flaws? You may try considering and understanding the following:

1. Failure to study the business project itself and just believing on hearsays, suggestions or proposals

As a beginner trader, you owe yourself everything. Whether you succeed or fail, there is no other person to be blamed for or to be proud of but you. It is your decision that can make or break your business because you’ve certainly relied on what you have studied, researched, and gathered about the business trading that you are handling.

As a start-up trader, you need to do a post-trading analysis to be able to determine your next move. Otherwise, you’d be left hanging, losing and crying over your lost capital. Do not dare to follow the advice from random people around you as some may be giving you the right advice because they are really concerned about your business, while some may be there to mess it up with how you manage your business. So if you will not primarily consider this aspect, you know what will happen to all your trading transactions.

2. Failure to focus on the positive side and failure to prepare for the negative ones

This component is sometimes being ignored by most beginners in the trading venture. You may be willing to take the risks, but you may also not be prepared to do so. Why? The business know-how may be present, but the guts do not exist. You must be mentally and emotionally prepared as a trader. You should be firm and certain of all your decisions. Emotional trading must be avoided at all times and be aware of its consequences in the business.

3. Failure to use a trading journal and completely learning at least one or two trading methods

When you are initiating a new business journey, you should be taking note of all the details, whether you are earning and so on. In that way, you would know what to change, remove, replace or retain on the methods that you are using or applying for future reference. Don’t rely on just remembering things when needed, but a good reminder is the one that you have absolute knowledge and experience. When there is something to decide now, you can go back and check what you’ve done in the past in any similar situation. It may look like a diary, but it is really helpful.

On the other hand, you can only refine gold by putting it on fire. You may fail several times, but take the chance of redefining and remolding your trading strategy instead of always looking and applying a new one. You may come up with the right trading strategy which is applicable to what you need by doing the trial and error experiment. Practice makes things perfect after all.

4. Failure to adapt the changing markets and business strategies

In business, you may also hear of the terms such as old school, traditional, obsolete, outdated, outworn, and stodgy. These words may be referred to the business techniques, strategies, and methods that are being used and applied. Unfortunately, the business deals of today’s world are far beyond what these traders have done before. For this reason, beginner traders must be open to new and advanced business marketing procedures and all. This will save the entire business from losing its target clients, affiliates and even investors. Thus, you will rest assured that your business is secured and stable.

5. Failure to expect the unexpected

A beginner trader should bear in mind that in the trading world, all things might occur or happen. Of course, you are expecting for continuous profits, more clients and even business expansions. However, as a trader, you should be realistic and expect worse case scenarios so that you can prepare and plan for the right move to take in case these business mishaps happen. Your venture in the business world will not always be rainbows and butterflies, so you must have an alternative action for every scenario that may happen. Also, in business, it is advisable to have more sources, investments or other methods for unexpected events or losses. This will help you in making the business to recover or rise again after every fall.

6. Failure to understand that difference between the long-term and short-term perspective

Beginner traders should be aware of the differences between the long-term and short-term perspective so that you would know how to deal with things in every situation. There are some factors that are beyond your control such as fortuitous events that can affect your business. Therefore, you need to make stable and suitable back-up plans for that just in case anything happens.

7. Failure to analyze the trading performance at the right time

In business, it is not advantageous to analyze the performance of your business on a daily basis since each day is different from other days. As a beginner trader, you should focus on doing your best method each day and gather all the necessary data in a long-term range before you compare its performance to become more competitive, stable, feasible and profitable.

8. Failure to know your competitors

A trader must be aware not only of how he runs the trading business, how it goes, or how it gets more clients or affiliates but also of how his trading competitors manage their own businesses. Your competitors play a vital role in your business, and knowing how to deal with your competitors will give you an advantage. That is why we have this saying that goes like this, “If you cannot beat them, join them.” Instead of getting more enemies, it would be wiser to turn them into your allies. Get involved with a fair play in a healthy kind of competition.

There are still lots of quotations, sayings, and words of wisdom that you can best relate with as far as successes and failures are concerned. Still, you should not rely on words to make your business succeed. Do the legwork and use the right strategies to manage your business.

As falsified information spreads, more people tend to believe it, and sooner or later, it’s the common knowledge and understanding. This in turn affects how we see and think, about what we buy and what we invest in, where we place our vote and how we want Brexit to turn out. But what if we’re just causing unnecessary damage in the long run?

Fake news, news with zero credibility, isn't new. But it's re-emerged as a monster during the past few years. So much so that world leaders are falsifying commentary which they believe to be true. What's worse, it's sneaked into our everyday lives with such subtlety most people don't know it's there. Adverts published by media outlets and social networks warn everyone to watch out for fake news, but when the mediums themselves are used to facilitate misleading information, things start to get confusing.

When it's used to infiltrate a country's political and economic structure, it's what Bath University's professor of sociology explains as, “An extraordinary scandal that this should be anywhere near a democracy.”

Most intelligent of people associate the word fake with something either false; fictionalised or to be untrue. In short, a lie. Propaganda, fake news, misinformation – is there any real difference?

You could call the people we trust to run our nation’s experts on creating, aggregating and perpetuating fake news, their lies published for all to read. Like teenagers, they use things like social media to smear the opposition. If it wasn't so serious it would be funny. It's caused more than a ripple in American politics, with obvious ramifications on its economy.

False claims, politics and the economy

The Leave campaign [for the EU referendum] spurred a dangerous political game by promoting several misguided financial promises. The most protruding were the campaigns claiming that EU was costing the UK £350 million a week, and “separating” meant the money saved would be spent on the NHS. However, In March, shortly after the referendum results were announced, the agenda involving the pledge forgotten about. Earlier this year Teresa May admitted that the money pledged to the NHS would not happen.

The Telegraph reported that in 2015, the UK paid the EU £250 million a week, £100 million less than what was claimed by the Leave campaign.

Perhaps then, false claims, which certainly contributed to the win, were seen as good enough to use again to conclude the outcome of the snap general election – Teresa May has recently been accused of shaking the ‘magic money tree’ after her £1 billion deal with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). After May’s U-turn on social care pledges and the money she told the NHS, she doesn’t have, the nation is left wondering whether any of the financial pledges she has made in her manifesto will suffice.

May has accused the Financial Times, the Mail on Sunday and Jeremy Corbyn of creating fake news about her manifesto. Perhaps, it’s something unconsciously picked up from President Trump. After all, he has reprimanded most of the World's press, saying they all report fake news about him and his administration. The BBC got a special mention. It turns out, President Trump knows a thing or two about how influential digital information is, and how to use it. CMC Markets said, “For all the new President’s promises that a plan is on its way he continues to devote his energies at depicting the press as purveyors of “fake news”. If he devoted anywhere as much energy towards his new fiscal plans as he does in portraying himself as a victim there would in all probability be a lot less uncertainty around the prospects of the global economy than there currently is at the moment.”

Sometimes news is purely and intentionally fake. Click bait headlines to grab attention, generate traffic, and earn thousands in advertisement revenue. This kind of news can get so much traffic it trends, is picked up by major media outlets and then relayed as real news. How does that happen?

Buzzfeed's Craig Silverman said, “A largely credible outlet might see it and quickly write something up...The incentive is towards producing more and checking less.” If an enemy relies on weaknesses, unchecked content is payday.

“Checking less” certainly happens with editorial staff as breaking stories mean traffic and revenue. Southend News Network, run by Simon Harris, experienced this when a story published on yourbrexit.co.uk, a website connected to SNN, published a headline that said Jeremy Corbyn and Labour were happy to foot a £92 billion Brexit bill, after thousands of social media shares and even the likes of The Standard running the story, it emerged that Corbyn did not say anything of the sort and his words were taken out of context. Harris said he didn’t have time to fact check everything, so begs the question: in a world where we fight for information, whose responsibility is it?

Has Brexit and the false news ripple in the American system infiltrated UK politics, finances, and the overall economy?

Brexit certainly prompted politically-false financial claims and pledges, but also brought to the forefront the problems within the system. The truth is, financial markets have long been affected by the scandal known as fake news.

Andrew Clare, a professor at London's Cass Business School, warned the Financial Times back in 2012 about how fake news can skew investor decisions. The consequences are clear: “These stories ultimately lead to losses for investors once the truth is uncovered.”

Clare's comments were in response to an author who was paid to write about ImmunoCellular Therapeutics and their development of an experimental cancer treatment. The article was published on Seeking Alpha, a respected go-to website for serious investors. Upon the article being released, share prices of the pharmaceutical company shot up from $42.8 to $155.2. After a clinical update on the cancer treatment, the share price dropped to an all-time low. Not only impacting investors but also a thriving economy.

Here is where things get complicated, fake news and false claims isn't a harmless, satirical concept. It's more than hoaxing celebrity deaths and whatever sells glossy magazines and advertising; tweaking information from a grain of its truth and using it to influence people’s decisions is otherwise known as propaganda. Spreading misinformation (to instill fear and gain power) infuses the divide and conquer and mindset. Nations divided over financial and political ideals and the belief of said information.

Author: Ron Short began his career as a portfolio manager working with FTSE 250 companies in the UK. He now lives in Spain, where he enjoys a career in financial writing.