Trading

Seems to be the rage of the news feed these days. Let’s take a look at the word.

Trade involves the transfer of goods or services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. A system or network that allows trade is called a market.

An early form of trade, barter, saw the direct exchange of goods and services for other goods and services. Barter involves trading things without the use of money. Later, one bartering party started to involve precious metals, which gained symbolic as well as practical importance. Modern traders generally negotiate through a medium of exchange, such as money. As a result, buying can be separated from selling, or earning. The invention of money greatly simplified and promoted trade. Trade between two traders is called bilateral trade, while trade involving more than two traders is called multilateral trade. “Think Global, Buy Local”.

Barter is a system of exchange where goods or services are directly exchanged for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. It is distinguishable from gift economies in many ways; one of them is that the reciprocal exchange is immediate and not delayed in time. It is usually bilateral, but may be multilateral and, in most developed countries, usually only exists parallel to monetary systems to a very limited extent. Barter, as a replacement for money as the method of exchange, is used in times of monetary crisis, such as when the currency may be either unstable or simply unavailable for conducting commerce.

Laissez-faire is an economic system in which transactions between private parties are free from government intervention such as regulation, privileges, tariffs and subsidies. The phrase laissez-faire is part of a larger French phrase and basically translates to “let (it/them) do”.

For me the first knowledge of economy was trading baseball cards. For a penny pack for bubble gum you got a bonus of a cardboard reproduction of a baseball player with all the stats. It was a great advertising gimmick and sold a lot of gum to the dentist glee. Kids would separate players by the teams and bone up on their loot like fantasy football but wanted more. You could trade a ‘Hank Aaron’ for a ‘Mickey Mantle’ on a handshake. Then certain cards became rare and valuable and swapping stopped due to animosity for not getting a square deal.

From my history book, people use to kill animals and eat the carcass and skin the bones for trade for commodities like woven cloth or minerals as a laissez-faire trade. What if the person doesn’t have any commodity to trade? Can a teacher share their knowledge for a month’s rent? Can a musician play for their dinner? Can an automobile be traded for a painting?

You might let your neighbor borrow your lawnmower but would you trade your wife? Would you trade your children? Would you trade your values for survival?

Now trading involves commodity, equity, derivative, shares stocks, planning, strategy, binary options, index, margins, risk management, trends, supply and demand, indicators, inflation, deregulation, etc. but we all use our plastic to trade numbers and calculations against algorithms to acquire our needs and wants.

Are our sanctions and tariffs bigotry on our and others skills? 

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