The journal should benefit the trader first, and the readers next ... ... for an active trader, taking several trades per day, having to report each and every trade in details in an ET journal is counter-productive. Those details should be logged in a spreadsheet where the trader tracks his//her own metrics. As you wrote yourself, readers will be more interested in cumulative performance ... a weekly summary can provide that level of information, without dwelling in every single trade, unless there is a particular reason for the trader to take note of such or such detail for a given trade. Credibility ... I don't see why its needed in the first place ... but a trader wanting to gain credibility can get his/her P&L tracked on a public website pretty easily, use RAPACapIntro for example, or mirror the trades to Collective2.
Agree, if you trade multiple times a day then a journal here can't be real-time without being a loss-making distraction. But then a journal focusing more on the method, would still work well here. Still, if the only issue with the Journal forum was difficulty in posting realtime results several times a day, I would not have started the thread. I'm thinking more of journals where people talk of longs and shorts with no size declaration, no entry/exit prices, no stops, no discussing of losers. There is a wide range between alpha and omega.
Why do you think trade frequency has anything to do with profitability? Let me get this right - you are trying to say that someone making a call of short gold from 1500 to 1200 in a month has a problem making a living? Ok big shot, I'll take you up on that. Show me an equivalent call. In fact, I'll make it easy for you - show me a call half as good as that. Show me a journal half as good as that. Come on big man...this should be easy for a trading legend like yourself. Step up to the plate, back up your big talk with some action. The field is yours, atticus...show us how good you are!
Just waiting for atticus to show me his trading calls, I am sure I won't be able to match up to his genius...quite frankly I might as well give up trading now, and just follow his journal bets play by play. If he has a bad streak, I am confident that wrbtrader, Pekelo, and Lord.Maushi will show me the way to profit.
Feathers get ruffled, I understand, but it's not worth losing it. Let's all see if we can go forward without the name-calling. Thanks.
But it's just so fun. Cmon, have you never wanted to totally roast a troll? Anyway I fully expect this post to be deleted by tomorrow morning. You got a job to do, no hard feelings.
Ah...now I see why attaboy was so upset: http://www.barchart.com/charts/futures/GCQ3 Jealous much? Don't worry, I'm planning to cover in the next 1-3 trading sessions. If you're lucky, it'll even hit my 1245 stop before it goes down faster than your pretty lips at a North Shore bath house http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntG50eXbBtc
Journal started May 13th. Gold price 1440 http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=267347&highlight=scalping+journal Gold price now, $1190. http://www.barchart.com/chart.php?s...ddindicator=&submitted=1&fpage=&txtDate=#jump Atticus: "How do you make a living?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbqMV2B3Q8A
More importantly for quick scalpers, it's rather impractical. I think that the trading journal along the lines suggested by the OP is okay if you are a swing trader (longer term trader) or an infrequent day trader, but for others it could be too much to ask for.