Open Source Investing: What Can We Learn from Other People?

After reading a wonderful post on Happiness is Better, I was really inspired. The post documents the blog author’s experience in Forex trading. What’s really interesting is that he is just learning how to trade Forex, and is not yet an expert. It’s like he’s sharing his experiences of the learning process, and we can learn at the same time.

It seems that this is really a significant paradigm shift. In the old world, information was a business’s most precious resource. Patents, technology secrets, and copyrights protected a business and individuals against people trying to steal from them. But the Internet and the blog phenomenon has created a new way of thinking. Now, it’s all about,

What information can we give away that will create value?

Investing knowledge was treated the same way as a trade secret. People did not want to share how they made money through stocks, Forex, or real estate. They were afraid that other people would copy them and the writer would lose money.