Let's face it, community wise the last event here was reestablishing and taking away the chatroom. Since then nothing is happening, unless one counts the reopening of the Surf Report Community Cesspool. So I figured I would throw out a couple of ideas for discussion. Again, the goal would be to make ET livelier and to increase the entertainment and knowledge factor, not to mention page views: 1. Other sites have competitions and I always liked them. It is just fun. I like the "Guess the weekly close of the S&P" on T2W. I think the bragging rights is good enough for prize, but Baron or Vendors could throw in some goodies. Here are 3 categories I would have: Valid entries have to be posted at a certain early time on Mondays. I guess Baron also has to make these posts uneditable. A. Guess where the market (S&P) close on Friday. B. Stock of the week. You have to post your pick for biggest gainer/loser. C. Crazy trade of the week. This can be any trade (most likely options) with a high risk/high return, and I guess can be posted during the week anytime, but at least 1 hour before the event/movement takes place (so people could actually trade it, if they wish so) Again, here the idea is to show of your skills or if you have a stock idea to share it in a competitive form. 2. Book discussions. Let's say every 2 weeks someone would pick a book and we could discuss either the book itself or the subject of the book. 3. AMAs. (Ask Me Anything) We have plenty interesting members who might don't mind to be interviewed by other members, or Baron could invite famous people from the industry. I recently posted one taken from Reddit, but there is no reason why we couldn't have our own. 4. Have I mentioned I like competitions? Now that C2 is a vendor here and they have monthly fees, we could have a trading competition, let's say 2 weeks every quarter, just not to make it too boring. Or we could limit the length of it to 1 week. Maybe C2 could lower the price for the competition, but I think the fee keeps out low energy entries. The extra fun could be if the systems entering can be subscribed, because some ballsy members could make money out of other ET members. Who has the bigger balls you sim trading or me subscribing to your sim with real money? Anyhow, these are just a couple of ideas that I came up with while drunk and bored, please feel to criticize them or add your ideas. LET'S MAKE ET GREAT AGAIN!
What would make ET great again is HFTs shutting off their algos, so 'daytraders' with no capital or analytic skills could make money...
I wish there were more crazy/bold/ambitious traders/gamblers out there. -- And who would brag about their wins, or losses, openly in detail Trading, doing it aggressively...is sexy Everything else out there is just sleepy, slow and boring to read or learn about, This is EliteTrader afterall...not SafeInvestor.com, or ConservativeInvestor.com "Improvement ideas (please chime in)"....funny coincidence...i was looking at Patek Philippe Minute Repeater watches while discovering this thread. (a minute repeater watch gongs/chimes)
There are out there . They are simply sharing it with people who "understand" what "extremely aggressive" trading is all about!
Trading, doing it aggressively...is sexy "Don't be a hero. Don't have an ego. Always question yourself and your ability. Don't ever feel that you are very good. The second you do, you are dead." Paul Tudor Jones
Marty Schwartz who was an 800 pound gorilla in the original S&P pit had already gone to screen trading when he went to visit his old bud's on the pit floor. All the newer traders gathered around as well as Marty was a legend. His pal's encouraged him to make a few trades to show the kids how it was done. He was very quickly down 5 figures. Trading as a spectator sport is a dangerous endeavor.
So twice now I've gotten emails that marketsurfer has replied to this thread, and both times when I've come to check out his reply, its been deleted. What is up with that? Is surf just deleting his posts? Or are the mods removing some of his posts? These days, there is so much stuff happening behind the scenes here at ET that I think a bit of transparency is what needs the biggest improvement.
Since he is using at least 2 aliases, it is possible he is mixing them up by accident, and when he realizes it he deletes the post. But anyway, so far no new ideas or criticism? So a drunk me is smarter than the rest of ET?
In my 6 years of futures trading, I have seen many aggressive traders come and go. When we use the word "aggressive" we like to think its the people who swing a bat very hard and very successfully. The truth is, they do sometimes swing successfully, but only for that period of time. The market always changes its conditions on them, and they always stay aggressive and eventually get rear-ended with a pole. Sometimes it's a month, sometime's it's a year or more.. but eventually, they just get absolutely destroyed. In the long-run, you cannot be a hero too many times. Just about every single 'aggressive' trader I know of, is out of a trading job or has been completely humbled by the market to bits in a way such that they have to spread out their risk across multiple strategies (if they're still around). When I first started, I thought "aggressive" meant "they believe so hard in this one trade that they bank on it". And since we are all males, we kind of get this confidence and ego in ourselves to want to believe in such a thing. Almost like the underdog boxer who steps into the ring and has to give it everything he's got... But now that I am actually backing people with my own money and risk, when I think of "aggressive" I think "stupid" -- precisely because, this type of personality trait has someone go from risking 1-unit of risk in the trade up to 5.. or 10... or 15... it's a career-ending type of strategy. It works until it doesn't, and it doesn't, you don't get scratches or bruises, you lose limbs and organs. Definition of aggressive: risking too much relative to what you can make in a day, week, month. For me, too aggressive is when we start to hit the 1-2 week mark. By the way, you'll never be able to "make ET great again" because there are an enormous amount of secretive and selfish scum who browse the forums themselves and keep everything in. Did you know that hedge-fund managers and other big losers will pay off some kids at clearing firms and other 'middle-men' just to be able to get the logs of some the most profitable traders? They pay money for access to reverse engineer trades and ideas from people winning. For security reasons I obviously can never speak of specifics and names but I can tell you this is 100% fact and it's the reason why no-body truly shares information on forums anymore. Anyway they can get cancer and die for all I care I am preparing some material to share at a later date in the future.