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I do not think I ever agreed with you more and I applaud your courage to come forth with this. After over a year and literally thousands of hours of watching and replaying charts I am finally starting to become a profitable day trading. And I can state I have never seen any industry with so many snake oil salesman as this one has. I think used car salesmen are angels compared to the people in this business. I have been in trading rooms that just out and out lie about their entries and trades and I have seen journals here and elsewhere that are clearly fantasy. You know which journals I am talking about; the ones showing trades that would lead to a 7 figure or higher income, showing 10 to 20 lot trades in CL with no slippage and seldom to never taking a loss, no intelligent explanation of their trades and when people ask them about their trades they cannot even intelligent explain their own trades. Or the ones clearly doing hindsight trading pretending they did it live. I am always amazed how anyone with such amazing ability is not trading ES and working for a hedge fund being paid over $100 Million a year. And why would anyone trading profitable give away their edge that took them years and thousands of hours to develop for free on Big Mike. It makes no sense. Yes I know they are just the Mother Teresa of day trading; Not!!
Some say it is their personal journal and if they are not selling something it does not matter. I disagree. First I am not talking about the 99% documenting personal journals. These fantasy journals are not personal journals and that is obvious by reading them. And many of these folks get PMs and sell webinars, trading rooms, education/training, books current or future and so forth. Some of them might even be stock brokers trying to get you to invest with them. And worst there are new traders coming here and get sucked into the fantasy, thinking trading is so easy and end up losing money. And the days of buyer beware is long gone and it is time this industry wakes up to that fact.
I believe in Truth and that goes here. Someone needs to stand up and clean up this industry. This industry is just rife with charlatans who provide no proof what so ever that they can truly trade profitable. Big Mike has made a major effort into cleaning things up by making vendors state they are vendors and so forth.
This is undoubtably hard to police, but anyone posting these fantasy journals that do not seem like personal journals with outlandish claims should have to state if they are sim or live. And if claiming to be live then show proof; at least to Big Mike for we know this is an honest day trading worth actually listening to. And I will tell you those traders are few and far far far apart.
Sim or live doesn't matter. But what I hate is when a chart gets marked up after the fact with all the great trades, but other trades that should have been taken (assuming I know what they're doing) don't get taken. Any discretionary system will have trades like that, but if you try to trade that method without knowing the filters, you get killed.
There are a few threads here where the after-the-fact charts look amazing, and those people should be living on an island somewhere. Imagine doing 10+ points a day in the ES! That's a million a year with only 8 contracts.
Just tell the people to post their blotters with time stamps. And do it the same day, not the next day after replay is available.
Apart from jsengxx there have been no direct accusations on this thread. I read over some comments like "we all know who I am talking about" or "you guys know which journal I mean" etc. I have no idea which journal or whom is being referred to here.
Perhaps to avoid direct confrontation (and the 13 subsequent back and forth childish "no you're the poo poo head" posts) a button like thanks could be added, but in this case an anonymous thumbs down button. In the trade verification website profitly they have thumbs up and thumbs down for the trades, I think they used to have little Madoff heads instead of a thumbs down. If you don't believe something just give it a thumbs down and perhaps that could serve as a warning to beginners to proceed with caution.
Some websites the comment system provides for up and down arrows and after a couple of down thumbs or arrows the posts get flagged or automatically hidden. Let the community pass judgement and tag spam, rude or suspicious posts in a way others can see.
Truth is there is no foolproof way of determining what is real or not on the internet. With programs like photoshop you can't even trust pictures. Real or SIM there are lessons that can be learned. To me the danger lies in following blindly like sheep. Don't shadow anyone's trades, ever, IMO. About after the fact trades, an entire industry is built on this. They sell books, services, indicators, etc. Down arrows and bad reviews could help raise an eyebrow; other than that it is up to you to not fall for the *****My neighbor makes $59,650 an hour working from home, click here to find out how link*******
The 'futures with context' thread is a constant reference for ridicule over at a few other popular trading forums.
I know this, because as a CL trader, i've seen the thread mentioned a number of times.
The thread got quite a few mentions in a recent topic where a lively debate about 'hindsight trading' was started.
It's a bit of an insult to those of us who know better to imply that one can make some many perfect trades everyday, rain or shine, raking up hundreds of ticks per day.
I suggested that trades should be posted in realtime (I post real time calls in another popular thread on a different site for example), but that idea didn't go down too well.
At the very least, hindsight charts should have proper broker executions on the charts as opposed to arrows annotated in msPaint. Even then, it could be SIM, but it's better than nothing.
It's impossible to police, and so unfortunately, when someone goes to the effort of playing various 'tricks' in SIM mode (hiding bad trades etc etc) it's down to how naive new traders might be, which is where some sort of protection is maybe needed. I'm not sure what exactly, but like @rwbil mentioned, it's nice to see BigMike address the topic.
I've been at this on and off for years and years. Placed thousands of real money trades. It's extremely difficult. I've met lots of traders in real life (not just online personas) and I know what's possible and I know what is complete fantasy (either inspired by online ego or something much more sinister)
I don't pay much attention to what percentage gains or absolute returns (hypothetical) traders post. Without proper context it is meaningless anyway; think of trading objectives, start capital, and risk management. In the end it is up to the individual trader to conduct due-dilligence. It is up to the beginning/ aspiring trader to formulate appropriate strategies to suit their own investment objectives. I do agree that accurate and clear information can speed up the learning curve but where do you draw the line on a internet forum?
A simple rule to state CASH or SIM might help, however indirectly 'validating' such traders could introduce a whole set of new negative-externalities (dishonest/ malicious traders leveraging this platform to indirectly sell trade services to new traders/ and or individuals attempting to game the new system).
I totally agree. Maybe all newbie traders who sign up here should be told what to watch out for in a sort of 'intro' to futures.io (formerly BMT), and then they're on their own because they won't be able to say they haven't been warned.
You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.
just make it mandatory that anyone wanting to post trades do it with that script that feeds a thread automatically. Everything not through that method WAS, not is, a possible trade set up...not an actual trade SIM or real. Once running on a chart or OE that is real time seamless and requires no effort and takes no time...really the simplest less invasive way to do it.
Someone explain why that won't work.
The "trades" posted on futures.io (formerly BMT) will drop perciptiously, but so will the bullshit. That seems very simple doesn't it?
There has been times for me where I thought I was in TOS paper money and I was actually live trading. Yeah for a someone that is in the beginning stages of trading there is a difference emotionally.
I strongly disagree with the premise of jumping to real time trading before thoroughly testing a trading strategy for months, that's what the professional traders want someone to do of course. If it won't cut it in a real time paper account, it wont cut it live trading. Paper can very powerful tool to test different strategies and not blow-up accounts. Just my two cents.
IS a JOURNAL! This means a LOG of things that happen NOW.
A journal is a very personal thing and has to do with TRANSPARENCY to the reader (journalist included).
The question is really not about cash or SIM or educational reason.
It is about the MOMENT where the poster sees a setup that fits his trading plan and he opens
a trade (short on xy, entry @ ... eventually a SL). At the moment of closing the trade the next log
entry fills the journal. End of week preferably a overview about the weekly result and totals.
That's it!
Only a marked thread "real time journal" can make clear to the reader that with this live feed action is SHOWN.
All other "journals" are for fun and have nothing to "proof".
Longtime futures.io (formerly BMT) readers know how to distinguish.
With the above method the real journals here would come down to pretty few
Just want to say, if you see someone post a trade live, DO NOT FOLLOW them and put a live trade on.
That person could be using futures.io (formerly BMT) to sell their contracts to you.
BUYER beware.
Learn for yourself, to trade your own way.
You can get an idea from someone and test it out for yourself but don't be foolish and trade live with them, they could be using you to sell their contracts to you.
Learn their system, take stats and if it works, then you can trade live then.
If you come to futures.io (formerly BMT), thinking you can find a trader and you can follow their trades and make money, that is lazy and foolish.
This is the internet and it is trading, it is the wild wild west and people take advantage of others, plain and simple.
I have been there, if someone posts they are in a trade, just watch and observe and if you like their trading style, LEARN how they trade and do your homework and stats and then you trade your set ups.
Sorry, if I am a bit blunt but I have been trading for a long time and just had to speak up.
You have to do the work.