How would you say EliteTrader became number one? while all the other Forums come and go? What is it that EliteTrader has done...Is it a combination of things or is it just luck? Michael B.
Its number one? My guess, is the funky easy on the eye background. T2W- you ever tried to READ anything there? Impossible, everything takes forever to load, blazing ads everywhere, 50,000 forums, crazy. Cant POSSIBLY have anything to do with the quality of posts...... Actually, less spam could be a factor to. Do you look at a forum with millions of posts, most of em spammy crap, or a good site where noone ever posts? Et falls conveniently in the "mostly acceptable" range i guess.
'cause Captain Baron knows what his doin', savvy? http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006BKGK/104-0526182-4977545?v=glance great resource, v.accessible thks to the handy search engine...
I spent years on Raging Bull and now I don't even sign on there anymore. ET has been easier to use than RB is and RB never has upgraded their site. Plus most of my trading buddies left so I am starting over here. Much happier...
First it's the ease of use... It's easy to search and posts. Relatively fast. And the format of the site is simple and organized. Second, it's the moderation... I've seen enough potentially good message boards go away due to Russian software spam. Also, vendor spams are identified fast and erased. Third, it's the active members. There are some smart / experienced people in here... Fourth, the site isn't associated to any retail product. Looking back at history... Omega-List used to have solid active members but it's a mailing list and it's a bit hard hard to use, keeping track of replies to a "post". After Omega-List, there was Chuck Lebeau's site but there was no moderation and the Russian software spammers took over. There's Curtis Faith's TradeBlox Board with solid members but it's associated with Curtis' own software. It's not big as it should be, considering the quality of the posts in there... ================= Timing isn't the case. The main crowd of this site is mainly concentrated towards Newbie to Middle Leveled traders. It's easier for newbies to get close advice which they can relate to. Of course, there's the turnover with posters but as traders survive with time, you get accustomed to habits. And ET seems to be one of them. I think people would agree that experienced traders don't start threads in here, unless it's Chit-Chat. You start identifying and making online friends, getting hooked... especially due to trading business making traders isolated from society, more & more. If I'm asking for serious advice in public (virtual), I would goto site or groups focused on the matter... ------------------------------ So where does the future of ET head to? Hrrrrmmmm.... One thing I find it interesting is that most of the references made in posts are from popular trading books like Market Wizard, Van Tharp, and Douglass. When I started following ET, it was about technical analysis. The main topics debated were on Technical vs. Fundamental Analysis, Gann/Elliott/Fib. credibility, Buy/Hold vs Swing, Internet bubble, and "Market Wizard: Where are They Now?" type threads. Soon that all shifted as Van Tharp, Douglass, and others came out with Trading and Market Psychology books. The topics started being philosophical / psychological. I think it's also an influence on prop. firms where they focus on this matter. For a while, a lot of equity traders left and shifted to E-mini / Options products, after the Bubble Burst and the market getting dead for a while. ET was relatively slow and didn't have a lot of things to talk about... other than "This market sucks" thread... Though, few traders stuck around shifting towards systematic trading... With Forex and the equity/index futures market becoming a bit more active, ET is where it's at. The number of discretionary / systematic trader's ratio seems to be even and there are more books on system trading and programming. I don't find ET to get more sophisticated but probably be in sync with what is available to the public for New and Middle leveled traders...