Jack, that's incredibly magnanimous and I'm sure you have the bluest piss on ET but the implication is that this is one of your photos... I remember seeing it before so did a little digging. In reality this pic was taken by Norwegian sailor Oyvind Tangen and it's all over the internet. http://tiny.cc/VySGa
Agreed 100% with the original post. But to the OP, you are trying to force people to take the "red pill," per se. People do not want to be aware of what is actually happening; they want to keep "buying the dream." Have a look at those internet "sales pages" that are like 400 pixels wide and a mile from top to bottom, full of pictures of Ferraris, Mansions, etc., all "belonging" to the author who is selling some "Get rich quick online" scam. Now, to an intelligent person, these pages scream *OBVIOUS* scam. But to the other 80% of the population, they're like "omg, who do I give my credit card numbers to?? I want this NOW!!!" And then when it doesn't make them a million dollars over night, they go on to the next thing. But back onto your topic, this is why I always make such a big deal when someone gives a bullshit ambiguous answer to an honest question. A newbie trader will ask "I am confused, based on your method, what exactly do I do when criteria a, b, and c occur?" A legit question. And the bullshit "guru" will say something ambiguous and useless like "do what price tells you to do." And then one of two things happen: 1. The newbie trader realizes the "guru" is actually an idiot, and even if the guru can actually trade, he obviously cannot teach, and doesn't spend any more time with him or, more commonly: 2. The newbie trader believes the "guru" is full of vast wisdom and, like a fortune cookie, is expressing vast wisdom through a simple parable, and decides to stay with the guru or spend more money on the guru's bullshit products. There are a few (rather long) threads on this forum posted by gurus that basically read like "how to" manuals for being a bullshitter. I made a similar post a few months ago called Trading needs the same "revolution" that martial arts went through 15 years ago" where I talked about all the bullshit and how people continue to buy into bullshit that doesn't work. Here's part of a relevant post by me from that thread: It happens ALL THE TIME on ET and people continue to accept it.
here's a pic I made for all the bullshit ambiguous mystic fortune cookie answers the "gurus" give on ET:
But "do what price tells you to do" is ambiguous. It's a setup so that afterward, the guru can tell you what the right thing was without actually having to accurately predict it beforehand like he would if he were actually trading. Ambiguous advice is worthless. Objective advice is the only kind that is helpful. Ambiguous: "Do what price tells you to do." Objective: "Do x in condition y but not condition z." I have never, ever seen an ET guru give objective advice.
I didn't take the March 2008 picture either. Mostly everyone in my situation has power point slide shows on various aspects of the environment and global warming. In January of 2008 over a 20 day period I only took 4500 shots. Vin's pic is well known for several reasons. As icebergs travel they melt. The best shots for showing this are along the East coast of Greenland. The calving periodicty is uniform and the currents simply turn the lines slowly as they move Eastward so spirals are created that are miles and miles in length. My rolls of film were shot @ over 30K feet on a flight direction of about 210. Blue depicts higher pressure and white depicts lower pressure. As you see this berg has rotated several times as it melts underwater (salt water). The berg is made of frozen fresh water. Originally, it ws 90 degrees from what you see. Those are layers formed over many centuries in a desert type climate and near the pole. Outside of the southern pole the winds flow unabaited by any land mass as they circumnavigate the globe going from West to East. Sountamerica's Andes turn more and more East as they go South. The similar spine on Antarctica flow north and turns East as well. This funnel compresses the westerly winds and they speed up and isolate the continent from any incoming weather to the pole. But, as in Grenland about 2 miles of glacial hard pack has accumulated under desert conditions. So the layers build up and at the bottom of the pile the pressure gets fairly nice for changing the color of the hard pack to blue. I met Admiral Byrd in 1939. He was aboard his aluminum four wheel antarctic vehicle. It has just been fitted with new rubber tires that looked like OTR tires. I got to meet him because my dad was a player in the science of extemes and primarily air flight by air ships like the Hindenbergh. The rubber tires were made at the same place the US dirrigibles were made. Byrd always took an Eagle Scout with him so I did that to prepare to be chosen. after 1941 this wasn't possible anymore. So I figured out to go places and do things like he did and I was hired to do it after a while. vin checked out that berg for several reasons. The top was the verybottom early in its calving. It flipped and the new top never went back in the water. At one time all of the beg was sidways (90 degrees off) and the blue/white portion seams were melted out as you see. Above them you see the surface air interface from befoe that time (the smooth curvy horizontal seam). Now you see the air surface interface is undercutting the current position and this, while balanced now, will cause some nice rotation and snow will probably fill the vertical cerations you now see. As days go by, you get to see all the steps of glaciers, icebergs calving and currents carrying and shaping the bergs. There are rules of navigation and safe guarding your ship. Liz will not go below a certain size and I like a ship that can turn on its keel without moving fore and aft. The joke is that you should be sure you have the skipper's wife and kids on board too. In the South gtting inside 65 degrees is difficult since the continent extends out quite far. When you do the weather is usually closed in but the Sun doesn't go down wherever it is above the white outs. Explorers and travelers like to get together. In tucson there are a lot of them. It is like a floating crap game but with the pics and slide shows. It is funny to hear a person say we took off and couldn't get there. (bucking the winds was too much). Once our skipper apolied to everyone for not letting use sleep during the night. Under full power he had to tack and the seas would impact the hull so loudly that the noise and vibs were relentless. the constant sliding around the matress was an event as well. we could make more than 12 knots when ordinarily we would make 23. the tides in the atlantic and Pacific are different from the tides of the Antacrtic Ocean. If you take a 0 azmith from cape horn just below the eastern ned of the Beagle Passage, you get to pass through this location whose name is "the convergence". the unabaited winds create waves on the swells and tides insulting each other all add up to water being able the climb the sides of ships and push them around for a while. Our outside tv cameras were twisted on their mounts. Decks weren't used because doors could not be handled. All the upper deck rooms and suites were found to not be waterproof if you had an accessable balcony. From the latitude of the Beagle Passage south there is ice in the sea (sea ice). An ice capitain is required and he runs things. At the beginning of the season it is worst. Here is a pic of what turning a ship in sea ice can cause.
Like everything else in your life Jack your success is a figment of your imagination.. you tried to make out you were some kind of explorer but you've never missed a day of pushing your drivel on the net
Taking a closer look... this is yet another fairy tale because if you go to the last page of rough trader's journal you'll see that his "to date PNL" is less than $10K and his account balance is $95K. Which means he went from around $85K to $95K, NOT from "1500 dollars to 94,000 dollars." Which is an increase of almost 12% as opposed to around 6200%. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=158708&perpage=6&pagenumber=9 Big surprise, just like Neoxx was doubling his money every three days
Thanks for the update. he has a schedule of contracts traded and capital in account. He started with one when he had (unknown to me some capital in his account.. You figured it out to be 85,000 dollars). The 95,000 dollars ( I only saw a 94,000 dollar comment as his capital at the time I commented) gives him permission to trade 3 contracts instead of 2 or, as at the start, only 1 contract. So, in my terms, he has made some money with some money at risk. I would measure it as the contract cost at risk and the return would be whatever you calculated he made in profits. At worst maybe 1,500 at risk and he made 10,000 as you say. If he traded as spyder does, then he had 500 bucks per contract at risk per contract. The math is simple as a graphic on an equity curve. If I did the equity curve it would be a percent point on one axis and days on the time axis. For any day, the percent profit would be added to the cummulative; if a loss occured the percent profit would be subtracted from the cummulative. There is no consideration of the idle money at any time. Rough trader has idle money because he desires or it is, as usual, in treasuries making money. Some people just put 100% of capital in treasuries and use it as a pledge against margin. As I see it, rough trader has ben risking 500 bucks a contract daily to make his returns daily. Now he has profited by 20 contracts margin and he is not using his perfomance (the additional ability to make more money using all profits). You have your head up your ass about another misconception of yours. Taking x amount to y anount in Z days. Use rough trader's record over an over and apply all profits to adding contracts and do an equity curve of your sort whch starts at value x and ends at value y over z days. By doing that you get to see what a beginner lavel trader can do with compounding. rough trader does NOT compound as we all see. If he did he would get the result that comes from compounding by doing the little drill you could have done in the past to get the answer you fail to read.