The painting above was done by the artist Raphael and it is called “The School of Athens”. It was painted in the early 1500’s within the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. This painting represents Philosophy, also known as the love of wisdom. The painting contains many figures and the most central figures are two of the most famous philosophers known, Plato and Aristotle. There has been much talk about how the figures are laid out in this painting and their meanings but what can be seen are the books they are holding in their left hands. These are their own books that they are holding. They contain the wisdom they have accumulated throughout their time of contemplation and problem solving.
Just as these two incredible people spent time working out the answers to questions regarding existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind and language, we are also on a quest to explore the questions we ask ourselves about the markets, price and the movements of the two. This is an ongoing study that can never end. When you decide to take on the challenge of trading you are taking on the challenge of understanding one of the most misunderstood things that has ever existed. Many people before us have spent their lifetimes trying to figure out how the markets work and trying to determine if it were possible to predict markets moves before they took place. Each one coming closer and closer to the answer but no one has ever completely solved this riddle.
In the book “The man who solved the market” the title suggests that a man did indeed solve the mystery of how price moves but this is in fact not true. What happened was the man, Jim Simons, was able to create an algorithm that could extract money from the markets enough times to be profitable but this in no means lead to Jim Simons knowing the secrets of the markets. His work doesn’t even come close to the work we are doing here at White Oak Trading University. We are breaking absolutely new ground with the work we are doing and we are constantly adding to our knowledge base and making this knowledge available to all our students. We will look back many years from now and truly understand the importance of the work we are doing right now. We will not stop; we will push forward and continue to unravel the very mystery that has alluded so many in the past!
Kevin Araujo