Haven't you noticed how the posts are layed out? The theme is made up, I am convinced of it. Just read the next "readership-increasing/participation traffic count" post through my glasses...try it.
Sure...Baron, Joe etc are not going to come on to this thread and say Electric you are right! But I feel so stupid falling for these 1st time posts for 1.1/2 decades.
Look...I have been banned, fired, reprimanded..etc so many times..I think Baron keeps me around for post count. He is extremely patient, forgiving, wise...etc...I am not just kissing ass...I don't care but I know the qualities that Baron has. Baron does things that some of us do not understand..he is his own man. I do not know of any forum such as ET on the internet with any noteworthy qualities.. ET has been around for around two decades with the same founder and owner... But its all about traffic for ad revenue. ES P. S. I believe that I will meet Baron in heaven and say hey why didn't we meet? What a waste. But this is my fault for being a recluse by choice living in my self-imposed creative world.
You're not wrong. I myself became suspicious of this practice in 2014 - 2016 via the "marketsurfer facade" (multiple user names & multiple bans & multiple IP addresses)... He remained after all of that and then was eventually granted sponsorship after all of the attacks on book authors, TA, vendors and such in which at the end of the day...he sold a book on Amazon. It left many members scatching their heads...most eventually left the forum or rarely now post after that. Now that surf is gone although I still think he's here via a different nic...ET has to be creative (cough) to find ways to get readers more involved when in reality...some of us have begun to notice what's really going on with these strange "please wipe my butt...I'm a newbie" type message posts... The overall number of retail traders is down and the overall readership at forums is down and the overall interest is down...rightfully so in my opinion. Just trade and ignore the online social crap although I do recognize former active members that no longer post messages here but they do actively click the "like" button on posts by other members...that in itself is a big warning sign that active members are voicing their displeasure without even saying a public word about it anymore. Yet, they (more active members) could be exclusively just conversing via "private threads" only as a way to show their displeasure with the public area of the forum. wrbtrader
Business is business. Without ET you would have nothing. It's like looking a gift horse in the mouth whinging about it. Nothing is perfect, no-one is perfect, suck it up and enjoy the ride. These annoying 'woe is me' noob posts that keep popping up are just sandfly bites, I too notice everyone gravitates to them like gawking at a train wreck, such is life.
Maybe it's "just my perspective", but it seems to me that posters in trading forums are actually attracted to failure, as can clearly be seen from the relationship between "views" figures and thread-lengths for most threads with anything negative in their titles. This isn't limited to ET. The same is true in other trading forums: in particular, threads containing accounts of an individual's struggles nearly always get a "disproportionate" number of views, albeit not necessarily responses. (This may, to a small extent, be explained away by the fact that it's also normal for people to want to help, so when they see someone struggling they try and help - but that's about numbers of responses, not the number of views). In fact, this isn't even limited just to trading forums: there are entire so-called "news" websites, some of them comparatively mainstream, whose entire business model is more or less built on negativity. I have almost no "psychological insight" at all, because of my own mental/neurological state, but I still wonder whether people relate to failure because it is easier: they've experienced it; they understand it; ploughing through such threads perhaps provides them some comfort? Call me uncharitable, but might there even be a component of schadenfreude in it, too?
the only other person who i have seen using that term is the famous David Fuller, who has been described as the best individual analyst in the world, the only trader,i know, who declares his trades, as he makes them, who started trading when he was 17 now 70, one of the most human of all analysts i have seen and his website fullermoney.com is well worth visiting. I subscribed in 2004 to his service
You were an admin at one point if memory serves. So was I. You know what a pain in the ass this site can be to admins - just keeping the peace. You really think Magna/Baron, etc have time to go create fake posts? Do they strike you as the type that would do that?