The debacle of the dubious value of the "Teach Me to Trade" approach suggests to me a new trade mentoring business model. Rather than giving me your money and sallying forth to lose even more, I suggest that you simply give me your money and quit before you get even deeper in the hole. Further, rather than giving you purportedly good advice which turns out to be bad, I will give you bad advice from the outset which any fool (even you) can recognize as specious. I will solicit the counsel of ET luminaries in every aspect of trading. Joe Doaks will talk to trading systems. Arthur Deco will discuss psychological issues. John Merchant will teach us how to recognize frauds. And N.Q. Enqueue will wrap it all up with real-time trade calls for NQ. I cordially invite other thought leaders on ET to join me in this endeavor, of course sharing in the ill-gotten gains accruing therefrom.
I will begin with what I consider to be the central issue of trading systems: complexity. I don't really care if a system works or not, but I do require that it be simple. A simple system at least distinguishes itself from a complex system in that you can clearly discern whether or not it works. As a mathematician of some ill-repute, and a real-world practitioner of state estimation systems of even less distinction, I know what many on ET do not. In trading there is no maybe. Only long or flat, or short or covered. Hence trading systems MUST employ binary decision theory throughout. And as my legion of acco-lites here full well knows, the final decision to pull the trigger must be go-no go. I represent this in the oft-scorned but easily comprehended stoplight indication, which while appearing to be ternary, in truth is a binary pair of red-yellow and yellow-green.
Professor Doaks' admonition to keep trading systems simple and binary has a psychological advantage as well. If in fact 95% of new traders go bust, the least the market can give them back for their money is an education. Not an education about markets, but about themselves. And the clearest possible insight into oneself comes from knowing what you should do and observing yourself self-destructively doing the exact opposite. With Joe's binary systems, there is utter clarity as to the system call: long-flat, short-cover. If you trade one of his systems, you will immediately become aware of the profit killers: doubt, hesitation, subconscious fat-fingering, anxiety, impatience, boredom, greed, illusion, delusion, and confusion, to name the biggies.
So with these principles in mind, how does one distinguish a phony from the real deal on ET? By an unambiguous indicator of the trade call in the poster's charts. By binary decision rules, no matter how numerous, with stated numerical threshold criteria and stated numerical weighting criteria contributing to the trade indication. By real-time trade calls. Anything less is pure charlatanism. For examples of the perfection of simplicity, I invite you to consider any of the systems Professor Doaks has posted over the years. N.Q. Enqueue will select one of his systems, perhaps even a profitable one, and give you real-time NQ calls tomorrow.
As a time stamp test, my chart says the time is exactly 4:45 PM ET as I post. Edit: since the ET time stamp says 9:41 PM I think we can safely assume that ET has no interest in facilitating verifiable real-time calls.
I have selected from the copious historical record of Doaks systems published here the latest one yet to be posted called "Profitalia Marginalis". It doesn't make much, but it doesn't lose much, either. With one contract it earns just enough so your wife won't make you go to work, but not enough to disqualify you for welfare. A carefully selected example is attached. If ET ever gets its time stamp fixed, I will make the promised real-time calls for your amazement and disappointment.
Knowing that I am not qualified to post in this thread, I would have to admit that I think Hypo had/ has got some very insightful views/ concepts such as manipulation/ heuristic/ binary regarding structure and behavior of the markets. I appreciate this thread and its guideline above, therefore I will only observe its development, quietly and silently.
Calling my system "Profitalia Marginalis" sounds suspiciously like it was inspired by Havelock Ellis' "Psychopathia Sexualis", but no matter. The system is an excellent choice because it uses only two rules and one constant, about as simple as a system can get. Therefore let me emphasize again my position that the so-called trading experts here who cannot reduce their systems to a stoplight do not have legitimate systems at all. Whatever reason they may cite, they either do not totally understand their systems' rules (intuition) or they do not have a system at all (negative expectancy). I do not wish to provoke a shitstorm by naming names, but IMO there is not a single poster on ET other than me who has a true system as I rigorously define it. I am not saying no one else makes money, only that they don't really know why they do.