I've gotten good info from people who know a thing or two about testing strategies against randomness, curve-fitting and performance metrics. The thing about those topics is you have to have gone through a "trial by fire" and figured out a working strategy before you really have anything valuable to say on them. I've got most of the negative guys on ignore because they don't have anything to say on the topics where I want to hear from people with a certain level of expertise.
You reap what you sow Feed the monster it grows Your only as good as the the worst company you keep You only look down on people to lend a hand up The best help for some people is for them to be ignored If you only out for yourself in life you will end up as nobody and empty
I have found some of the posts and ideas found on Elite Trader to be unbelievably helpful and profitable. Granted, it is only a small portion of the entire site, so here's my very small contribution: 1) backtest ideas, even manually on a small sample, to see if they hold water, and 2) if someone seems to be offering interesting info, use search to examine everything they have posted. See what else you might find. This has worked for me, and I am grateful. And yes, it has certainly involved my own hard work and persistence. Moreover, I have found that there is a big gulf between having a good idea or strategy, and successfully trading it (psychology).
Yea, there is some useful stuff on this site. It is hidden in all the other stuff tho, so it takes some digging. I can't say there has been anything earth shattering that I didn't already see in some other text or more direct source.
I don't think it's a problem limited to ET but rather a problem on the internet in general. Just look at the comments sections on some news sites. I remember coming out of college in 2001 and from what I had read on tech career forums you'd have thought it was 100% impossible to find a job in IT. May as well throw out your degree and apply at McD's. I've seen the same things on other forums and a while ago decided to cut back greatly on reading them because of this kind of stuff. Lots of bitter people out there, I guess. Maybe it's the anonymity of the internet that lets people feel that it's safe to say things that they would never say to others in person. Or maybe it's that more positive people are less likely to be frequenting online forums in the first place and that skews the ratio. In any case it's not just an ET problem in my opinion.
an idea for a new interesting thread - ' Tired of all 'successful' traders- pretenders ' telling everyone around how it is easy to make money day trading , ignoring all the available statistics, refusing to make even a couple of live calls through a certain period of time so that it would be easy to verify them , insisting on how price action and a ma makes wonders for them , popping in here and there preaching about TA while still saying no to any requests about facts from their own accounts.. and so it goes.. bitching here bitching there - just another way to kill time while waiting for a set up did I mention averaging down type of people??? - also sick of them.. but I don't want them to die
Don't recall anyone saying it's easy too... Possible, yes. Easy, of course no! Also statistics of success of 90%+ losing traders is true... But the same statistics is true for many other areas of human activity, which doesn't mark all such activities as "wrong". Heck, simple stuff like weight loss has over 90% failure rate in the long run for most who try it. Does it mean all dietology is a scam? Or maybe it's much wiser to look in the eyes of the bitter truth: failure in weight loss or day trading is the lack of planning, dedication, self-control and other important traits?
you also have to ask is if the life you want? Many people hate their jobs, travel, want to work form home so they randomly pick "day trading" But have they really considered the lifestyle of a day trader and is it something they'll be happy with? But that takes some common sense and work and those two traits are missing from most people.