Imagine the following situation: You have toiled many years in the ES market, generally as a net loser. Then your hard work starts to pay off. You discover 3 setups that, after significant backtesting, produce a 84% win rate defined as hitting at least a 1.5 point profit before hitting a 5 tick stopout. You then go from sim trading to real money and discover the setups confirm your backtesting for a couple of years with no glitches. You have many friends who also trade the markets with mixed results at best. Most are frustrated losers. Meanwhile, you are working the edge of the setups and maximizing the probabilities getting to the point where you can finally make a decent living and support your family comfortably by trading full-time. Your lifetime ambition has finally arrived. You are no longer beholden to the daily grind of the average person who has to answer to a boss. You feel your ship has finally arrived. Now, what would you do? 1. Write a book about these setups. 2. Give seminars to teach these setups for a fixed fee. 3. Create a Web based chat room and trading service for a fixed fee. 4. Share these setups with the trading community at elitetrader.com. 5. Trade the setups and keep your mouth shut about what you discovered. 6. None of the above.
Don't charge for setups. Trade the setups and make money from them that way. If you want to share them on ET, go for it - it's unlikely that it will keep them from working, and it's good karma. Share them with your friends who have been struggling, at least, so that they too can live their dreams, and don't let your ego get in the way by saying "but they didn't discover these setups..." unless they're not good friends.
<i>"Your lifetime ambition has finally arrived. You are no longer beholden to the daily grind of the average person who has to answer to a boss. You feel your ship has finally arrived."</i> Why tease everyone with such fallacies? All of what you wrote here is literally impossible for you personally... you told us so in several other threads. Right or right?
You know nothing about me personally. Copy and paste the link(s) that claim otherwise. Clearly, you are one who would choose 5. but you instead you tease the forum with your braggadocio and daily trading tales of pivot point home runs.
<i>"You know nothing about me personally. Copy and paste the link(s) that claim otherwise."</i> Sure thing... here's the thread you trolled. Have you forgotten already? Heck, you just got here, man! <b>http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=87754&perpage=6&pagenumber=14</b>
<i>"but you instead you tease the forum with your braggadocio and daily trading tales of pivot point home runs."</i> I don't consider +4pt ES trades "home runs". They are run of the mill trades. As for detailing what I do, what makes you think it's easy to just transfer & digest as a simple cake recipe would?
Setups are so easy, even beginners see them. Trading is hard. Most sites sell setups and don't teach trading. I think all the successful posters here, and most successful traders, learned that on their own. It is a skill you develop like a pro athlete, can't be "taught". Cocktails and Alderol, too hard to think about this right now.
Alright I am thinking again, it's the Alderol. LBR post's lots of her setups for free on her website, some of which I trade, been trading them since before I knew who LBR was. They are more or less commonplace. Why does she do this? Because she knows the edge is not in the setup but the discipline and execution. Write a book, I am sure your "setup" is also in a lot of traders toolboxes. Action is the edge, not the setup.
#6. Here's the deal. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and your rich beyond your wildest dreams. Is it worth it? At the point when you're rich beyond yoru wildest dreams, then share. You've capitalized on your edge, and your proof that it (at least at one time) worked. may we all all run into such conundrums.