The idea behind stocktwits was, a place where traders could come together to share there trades with other traders on a live, time stamped feed so other traders could benifit. I follow the $es_f (sp500) feed, and I noticed there's a growing percentage of traders who are taking credit for trades that are either obviously fake or cant be verified. Sometimes this is done to promote a trading product or service they're trying to sell, but most of them doing this are just looking for 'Guru status'. The sad part is when I complained to stocktwits about this, I magically found my account disabled. These 2 are my favorites vader7x 900+ followers and lots of trades exited for a muli point profit, even after the market hit his stop. amazing. TraderHenryVIII King Henry lets all the people know when he exited a profitable trade, but his entries remain a royal secret.
It's impossible to benefit from stocktwits the way you stated on the $ES_F feed...traders on a live, time stamped feed so other traders could benifit. Also, you should NEVER try to mimic someone's trades because by the time you see the message post...that price is long gone nor do you have any way to verify they had any real money on the line even if they post clear entries and exits because most just want to "tweet" something sort'uv speak so that they can get as many followers as possible as if it's a popularity race. Most users do not post clear trades and they are not gurus nor vendors. They're just drive by shooters that's fascinated with stocktwits or twitter. First of all, you have asked about trading rooms here at ET in the recent past. I noticed you've responded to others except to someone that made the best suggestion to you. You can setup your own free chat room on IRC without any cost to you what so ever. You can use free trade posting scripts, anti-spam scripts, password protect, put limits, auto logs and many other features you can't do on twitter or stocktwits. Lets now talk about $ES_F feed on stocktwits, twitter and others. That $ES_F feed is too fast or too many message posts. In fact, it's one of the most popular feeds on stocktwits almost every trading day. Thus, it's almost impossible to use that feed to benefit via the way you're implying. Also, both vader7x and TraderHenryVIII are not vendors nor gurus. One has a fulltime job as a banker and often states such and the other one has "implied" a few times he/she is a beginner on another feed. Simply, not sure why you single out those particular traders nor are those traders (none gurus) obligated to verify to you any trades they've posted. Here's the real benefit and how you should be using stocktwits or any other like it (twitter itself): Find a bunch of traders that you trust and are not gurus as you called it. Follow only them and nobody else. Next, setup a private feed of those you're following only...lots of 3rd party programs for such if you don't want to use stocktwits software or tweetdeck software. My point is if you're using the website instead of the software and if you regularly don't use the "block" feature...stocktwits, twitter et cetera is going to be nothing but noise. Simply, there's simple and fast ways to eliminate the noise, crap, gurus et cetera via "not following them" and you do that via setting up your own personal "lists" in the software of stocktwits or tweetdeck in comparison to the website itself. My complaints I've often sent them are the following: * There's no down-loadable log of messages of those in my private list or my own. However, they have told me they plan such a feature or at least stated to me it'll be a great feature to have. * There's no viewable list of those on my "block" (ignore) for others to see. * There's no way to "transfer" a "block" (ignore) list if someone request that list or if you create a new alias. Also, I've complained about the posting habits of others (a few times per week) and have never had my account disabled. Thus, you must be doing something different in what you're saying in your complaints or there are others complaining about something you yourself is doing in the $ES_F feed. With that said, there are a few brokerage firms working with stocktwits to design a way that any trades posted through stocktwits are auto sent to the broker along with showing up in the message post with a special annotation next to the message post to identify it as a real trade...one such broker is Zecco Zap Trade. However, so far the popular brokers (e.g. IB) have not follow suite but hopefully they do...rumors is that some insiders at these popular brokers are asking to implement such a feature so that they can advertise their broker services to a lot more traders in these growing social networks in comparison to traditional online advertising ways. Stocktwits is still young..still a baby in many ways. Setup your own personal lists (private or public) and it becomes very useful because you've removed all the crap and will have real-time collaboration with a good group of traders. However, my guess is that you yourself are new to stocktwits and didn't know anything about personal lists, "block" (ignore) and other features to remove all the junk. Mark
In addition to the "time machine" trades, the ratio of commentary VS actual trades waters down any value it could have. They cant trade so they post stuff that sounds interesting but dont mean s**t. heres a sample of todays chickens talking on the CL feed. Reply Like Flag More Somalipirate seeing where $EURUSD is now and $DX_F...wont be long b4 $CL_F takes out yearly high and sets new highs at 114 and 115 $$ Apr. 27 at 3:13 PMReply Like Flag More TraderSmarts 112.48, 112.27, and 111.87 TS # along the way $CL_F Apr. 27 at 2:51 PMReply Like Flag More TraderSmarts Under 112.60 and looks like $CL_F could plunge to 111.80 Apr. 27 at 2:51 PMReply Like Flag More topsteptrader TsT Chatroom: Benihanna: [01:33 pm] : $CL_F crude is in a big fast range atm Apr. 27 at 2:35 PMReply Like Flag More newberg_feed Crude Oil newberg liquid session Closing Print (112.75) $CL_F $USO $$ #oil #futures 18:30:00.810 Apr. 27 at 2:30 PMReply Like Flag More Benzinga Risk is ticking up as he speaks. $CL_F, $HG_F, $ES_F
Don't forget, what's not important to you may be important to someone else which is why they have followers. Also, if you don't like them...why do you follow their tweets when you could follow others you like. For example, via their twitter stats (not stocktwits stats) Benzinga has +6000 followers. TraderSmarts has over +2,000 followers. Somalipirate has +600 followers. newberg_feed has +400 followers. topsteptrader has +200 followers. I prefer to use twitter stats because it's been around much longer than stocktwits. Also, why you're complaining about Benzinga...it's not a person...it's a trader network news feed. In addition, don't forget...these are tweets and the tweets may be a "condensed message" of a more in-depth message posted someplace else. For example, Elitetrader.com has it's own social network send link below in the right corner of every message post here at ET via the "Share this Thread". Simply, if you post a tweet on twitter or stocktwits you can just share the link or edit it and post just the subject title without revealing any of the in-depth subject content...just the title. My point is that some twitter and stocktwits users only post subject titles because they can only post a 140 character tweet as a message post. Mark