Have you ever wonder why successful traders are so secretive about their trading? In other disciplines, you generally find successful people open up and share about their experiences and success... it is human nature that people WANT to talk about their success... it feeds the ego, and successful people generally have big ego... But this doesn't happen in trading... those who talk most probably trade worst... do you know why? Many people point to the zero sum game mentality and states that if too many people knows about it the profit goes away... This is simply not true, because trading is not a zero sum game... this is true even for derivatives such as futures and options... and successful traders all know about that... The reason they don't talk... is simply because successful trading is so simple... or I should say, successful trading method is very simple... The methods are so simple that you only need 30 seconds to tell someone the essence... what is difficult is the path that one had to go thru before he reaches these simple methods (enlightened stage?) The name of the game is to figure out what DOESN'T work... there could be tens of thousands of items on your list, and what you do is to throw out the items one by one, until you're down to the last 2 or 3 items that really stays there... If it took you 10 years of work to figure this out... and then you find out you can pretty much tell ANYONE in a day what those 2 or 3 items are and make him as good as you in trading... what would you feel? You feel a sense of "unfairness" and avoid to simply "give it away"... It is this sense of "unfairness" that create the "my precious" mentality... Some would even fall into denial and start to make trading sound complicated... as if successful trading has much to do with "the trader"... the inner state, some sort of energy flow or psychology that only a "true master" possess... they tell you successful trading is "all about the trader" and little to do with the method... they can't accept the fact that they're making all these money with such simple methods... they have to feel special and they practice buddism to make it complicated... The only reason why people shut up after they've "made it" is because successful trading is so simple... They're just human and they are selfish individuals... they can't help but enjoy seeing other people walking in the dark while they're printing money because "they deserve it"... occasionally they "give back" to the community by handing out small tips without revealling anything of meaning simply because they need to let their ego out somewhere... I have yet to see ONE genuinely successful trader sharing his current trading methodology in whole... It is simple as that... people don't talk because it is so simple... if it were complicated they don't need to keep silent - they can give you phone books of rocket science equations and you won't figure it out anyways... The first person who invented the wheel was a genius, the second person only need one peep to get level... understandably the first person would want to stay genius for as long as possible...
How do you figure that futures/options aren't zero sum? BTW, if your trying to get free info by playing off empathy, here's actual advice. Don't waste your time.
Successful trading is simple. Someone told me about it when I was about 8 years old. "Buy low, sell high."
No secrets. All good trading methods are well known, there are countless books on trading that reveal methods that can make you rich. You just need to find the method that fits you and tweak it to your risk tolerance etc. The reason that people dont tend reveal their exact entry, is that they dont want competing orders at the same price. But the principle they are trading from will be no secret.
They are called brokers...brokers or anyone who takes money from a trade creates a situation that is NOT zero-sum. People saying that the mkts are zero-sum is one of the biggest misconceptions of the market...