You seem determined to judge by the exception. The tiny fraction of the "verified profitable" members who turn out to be flaming assholes is no reason to nix the idea, this website already has flaming assholes. What the badge means is that a member with one offering advice probably knows what he's talking about, whereas now you can't tell until you've familiarized yourself with his posting record and how that compares to the outside world. Certainly a vendor offering training with a "verified profitable" badge will have a leg up over those who don't. Does that concern you?
OK, you got me searching my library of some 500 or so trading books. It was from Computer Analysis of the Futures Market by Charles LeBeau and David Lucas published in 1992. It was about a boardroom trader "who claimed he received entry signals from mysterious beings in outer space. He claimed to receive these messages via his interplanetary cellular phone constructed from a Coca-Cola bottle with a broken piece of radio antenna sticking out of the top"..... Apparently, much to the dismay of the other boardroom traders this nut job had a knack for making money because he exited his trades correctly. The article went on to state that basically all he was doing was cutting his losses and letting his profits run. It further stated that the traders who are best at exits are the ones who make the most money and " In spite of what everyone might claim, those who succeed in futures trading all share the common denominator of good exit strategies"
Ask Baron how that went when he requested any credible third party viewpoints about an Advantage Futures trading statement. In three weeks he got exactly one viewpoint. Hundreds of condemning posts, but only one viewpoint. Not one of these self-proclaimed profitable members could get some buddy at their clearing firm familiar with US member firm proprietary futures statements to email Baron. Which led to Baron's observation in first post on page one of this thread: "... If someone brings in a statement, people will just say it's fabricated or missing information. Bring in a 1099 and people will want verification from the IRS. And even if that got verified, then the inevitable "Yeah, but were your taxes done by a credible third party?", and then that would lead to "Fine, but were your trades audited to determine that they were indeed intra day trades in XYZ and not swing trades or other gains from other types of investments". And it would just go on... and on... and on." Cynical, but reinforced by his experiences over the years and especially as of late.
Which is precisely why I suggested using Journal threads but you had objection to that as well. Methinks you're just afraid you won't make the cut.
No, you are completely ignoring my posts in this thread. I said on multiple occasions within this very thread to count me in. You can't let your bias filter your reception of facts.
Arch Crawford has the number one rated accurate newsletter EVER in HISTORY---- Arch is my friend and 100% legit. Arch is an astrologer who uses astro finance to make decisions. Does correlation equal causation? surf
"Count me in ... but I'll continue to cite reasons why it shouldn't be done.". LOL. Yeah, real convincing. I haven't fallen for that ruse since junior high. How old are you again?
I'm unfortunately not as well versed as I'd like to be on statistics, but this comment made me think of something I read... I believe it was in the book "Fooled By Randomness" by Nassim Taleb (I could be wrong since I read quite a number of books on this subject), where he states that someone like Warren Buffet is still statistically possible within the realm of chance given how many managers there are. Now of course Buffet does seem to use good methedology (buy low, sell high,etc), but it still struck me as interesting that you can often make data say what you want. Now I'm not sure if a day trader, given that he puts on thousands of trades within a year could be so lucky over the long run (Buffet for example puts on many less trades), so I'm sure there is a certain number of trades beyond which it would be possible to still be a winner less than 0.00001% of the time if by chance and not an edge, even with the huge number of day traders out there, but this idea of the statistical nature jumped into my head when I read your comment.