Marty "Pit Bull" Schwartz was a heavy hitter in the S&P pit when it was introduced in the 80s. He made millions trading it. He tels the story when after he moved to electronic trading, he made a visit to the CME to see some of his old pals. The new traders gathered around as his reputation was known by all. They egged him on to make some trades and show his stuff. Being the Pit Bull, he had to trade size (the pit contract was already 5x the size of the ES) and he quickly lost a good bit of money. Moral of the story....for most traders, exhibition trading is not only difficult but is also not smart.
My personality has two strong characteristics: I am very (too) social and like to help other people. But help does not mean share all I know. People warned me many times in PM's not to share so much. I am very stubborn. I will go with my head thru the wall if necessary. That's why I survived and became very profitable. I di not want to make fun of one trader's results. From the start I wanted to help Schizo and explain him that, according to me, there is a lot of space for improvement. I also showed where the problems were. Final result was agressive reactions from his camp. And then I responded in the same way. My first reaction when I saw him trading was OMG. Second reaction was: I should inform him and show where, to me, the problems are. I did this in past already for several members of ET. Many were thankful as apparently my critics helped them to improve their trading or at least their insight in trading. I am here because trading is very boring for me. Most of the time I wait, wait, wait. I don't need anything from anybody anymore. And I have no ego anymore, I gave it up because it was bad for trading. My friends and even many family members have no clue what I do. I live a low profile life. The only place where people know about my trading is on ET. And my bookkeeper unfortunatelly.
A trader friend of mine who lives in Oklahoma is very good and very profitable. In social situations when asked what he does, he says "I'm semi-retired and fool around with the computer".
Thank-you for the nice reply. Here is how I see it. I'm sure that schizo knows where his problems are as well, he is open about it in his journal. But you also have to remember that the journal isn't set up to trade to capture these large moves. He's said his goal is to make 6 points. Now I know nothing about what other conversations you refer to where you tried to help him, but I do know that there are many, many cases of traders over the years trying to help other traders, and all that this results in is more frustration because the trader who is trying to learn eventually wants to see some sort of application of this help, and he is left high and dry. Its easy for the teacher to say how something should be done since its all discussed after the fact, but its never as easy in real time. The teacher appears smart because he has the benefit of hindsight, so the poor student is left struggling, only to realize later that perhaps what was being shown isn't nearly as possible to do in real time as it in in hindsight. You also have to now consider some context here. This thread was started by autodidact who was making outrageous bullish calls as the market was crashing. The trade he shared to prove his point had an exit that was posted 8 hours too late, and the market continued dropping. He later, as I'm sure you've read, admitted that he was wrong about being bullish. The thing is that we have both a questionable exit, and a wrong call in terms of trend. So when you also claim to be able to forecast these major swings and say that you can capture many more points than what schizo is showing, you will have to forgive us all for being a little skeptical. I also see fortydraws participating in a thread now about DbPhoenix and this same issue is coming up, lots of skepticism and not very much demonstration of actual trading over the years. Once again, not to pick on fortydraws, but he made a prediction last evening about price reversing from 1890, which it did, but then it blew through this resistance and he said he lost a little bit. I know, big deal, and who knows where any of his other trades were, but once again, its one thing to talk about predictions, and its another to trade it. This is the point. Trading this, for whoever is actually making any attempt to show how to trade it, is coming up with many losses. Yes they might be small, but the predictions that are posted when a trade is entered has a much lower win rate than the predictions from all the experts who don't actually back their prediction up with a trade. After my experience here, I see predictions are not all that helpful, and I see all this freely available help not all that helpful either, unless I can see that the trader is trading it the same way he is teaching it. So now we get to the issue with you. You seem to want to help, but cannot show anything that says you're able to this in real time or even attempt to show any proof of actual trading. Therefore, its all highly suspicious. Its unfortunate that the industry is so crooked, but this is a healthy attitude to have when it comes to trading and participating in a trading forum.
I think this is short term bottom, current oscillation will rise, run out of steam and week will close negative.