Who can be trusted in the market?

There are so many players in the market and who are the one you can trust?

Recently one of my friends told me that his broker recommended him a stock. He bought it, and since then the price of that stock keeps dropping. I don't understand why he chose to believe in his broker where his broker don't even share out his portfolio at all. This incident make me has the urge to write this post.

In my opinion, there are two people that you can trust in the market. The first one is you of course. If you cannot trust your own judgement in buying stock, why buy it in the first place?

The second one is someone who shares with other what are the stocks he buy or sell, show people how his strategy can work by using himself as an example, but will not make any recommendations.

Give you an analogy. If you want to learn how to play a piano, will you find someone who can talk about the history of piano all day, or someone that can demonstrate his skills by playing the piano in front of you? Of course for myself I will choose the second one as he has the skills who can show me the right way to play the piano.

Every morning, some tv channels always have analysts to talk about the market. They can talk very well and normally with some recommendation on what share to buy. Do these analysts ever show you their portfolio, tell you exactly what strategy they are using, any prove of their winning track record? The answer is almost all "NO". Basically these analysts are just paid to write and talk, just like someone who just talk about the history of piano and you don't know whether he can actually play the piano or not.