when money was tight for me I never made a dime..there was one guy here who could be followed but he seems to be banned now / looks like he's hiding somewhere around here though/ ..atticus..so if you are not clever enough to invent your own trading method you'd better be inventive in: 1)finding him,2)convincing him to help you following random calls from random people is hardly a trading method at least in my book but I'm no expert..sorry if it looks like a job already..
I think the problem with sharing your trading experience (every trade you make) is that you start focusing more on sharing and less on trading, which eventually effects your performance negatively. At least thats my experience, the more you talk about it, the less you do it. Can share a chart or outlook but i prefer to keep most of my trades to myself, winners and losers. Trading is a never ending learning experience, i like to learn alone.
Many traders here concluded that following others posts of calls, even good ones, didn't help them much. And it didn't help others to post calls once they became more experienced. Being in a chat room, etc., is helpful... to a degree. Speedo is right, you have to do it yourself. Getting some good direction early on is hard both to find and then to understand... there is so much noise out there. I paid for classes, read the stack of books and hired a mentor. None of that really did it for me. As a suggestion Look at the hall of fame threads here at ET. Lots of good info, but overwhelming amount. A good place to start might be Susana's http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/the-price-action-journal.132170/ a simple clean system to start with. Look at her charts. Read every post she makes in the thread. What she presents can be tested in a process. Many find that to make it their own there is a basic process for the more logical part of trading: Observe the market to find ideas, or see if the ideas Susana has make sense to you. Make some statistics for it (what is the risk:reward, etc). Then back test on past charts where you see the whole day to see if the idea has merit, that is, develop statistics for it over hundreds of trades. Then forward test by going back in time and then moving a chart forward bar by bar and seeing if you can identify whatever it is you are looking for without knowing what's coming ahead. Sierra charts is good for this. Check to see if your statistics match you observed and back tested statistics. If not, figure out why. Then sim trade... doing it real time. Your statistics should match. If not, figure out why. If they do, then go to live trading. Again, your statistics should carry across. Observe, back test, forward test, sim trade, live trade. If you don't do the process, or cut it short, it just takes you longer. The faster you go the longer it takes. AND anytime you get a new idea... the process comes in again. Finding your read of the market and developing a real plan, making it your own... Alas, this is only 10 - 20% of what trading is. The rest of "what trading is" appears on the surface to be trade management; actually doing your plan. But underneath that are the belief systems you have (or don't have) about what the market is (order flow) and what trading is (risk). This is where the lights have to go on in your own head and it's not just math on paper in front of you. It is often said that trading is simple but hard to do. The simple part is a process as described above, the harder part is coming to realistic beliefs. If you don't have realistic beliefs you will see the simple part but it won't work... and that wounds one at a very deep level. It hurts. Mark Douglas is the classical source for realistic beliefs. He says that "If you have realistic beliefs, it is natural to do practical things that work as a trader." Again, a belief system is something you have to do for yourself. I'll leave you with a set of notes from Douglas's last interview for some clues about what to consider believing about the market and risk... The down days and up days can be learned to not have the slightest change in your trading behavior. Everyone’s threshold for euphoria or despair/shock is different – and the point where self-preservation kicks in and you exit a trade that is just getting worse. You don’t want to trade when you are in either euphoria or shock – because your judgement becomes off. You need the appropriate beliefs to not change your trading behavior with wins or losses; and not have wins or loses change your ability to see what is happening (as opposed to what you think should or might happen). The basic helpful belief is that there is no way to eliminate the risk. There is no way for your technical analysis or approach to be “right”. If it does win, it is just planned synchronicity, not having anything to do with why you took the entry. It will just work or it won’t. It is a planned synchronicity with the order flow. Or if it lost, it doesn’t mean you were wrong or your technique was wrong. Once you put on the trade any random event can happen. Your analysis has no correlation to the conclusion. The outcome of individual trades are essentially random. Find the variables that give you an acceptable risk to reward, you get more winners then losers, and treat each trade as a probability game so that you can execute properly. Losses have nothing to do with being wrong. Losses are just a business expense. Wins the same – wins have nothing to do with being right, or having the right analysis or approach. The reason Mark Douglas says the above is because he describes being around the trading floor and watching a particular mrkt in a range. At the bottom of the range a certain couple of guys were buying low, then selling high and rebuying every time it came back down to the bottom of the range. Eventually the range broke out the bottom. Why? The guys buying had gone to lunch. It was that simple. Many things that happen are due to the big guys doing things for illogical reasons or no meaningful reason at all (like going to lunch). If you are putting effort into your analysis to eliminate all risk… that take’s you off track: it twists your beliefs. You are trying to do something that can’t be done. You are trying to avoid the unavoidable. And from there you cannot be in a “carefree state of mind”, that is, being present to participate alertly and fully, unbiased… without feeling that you, your trades or trade conclusions are “wrong”. [With trading you are here specifically to work with risk; accept it.] How do you collapse a belief? Take the energy out of it… but that doesn’t mean the belief is gone. Douglas believes a belief never actually goes away, it just loses energy. But you can energize beliefs that are consistent with your objectives. It is two steps. One is the energy, the other is de-energizing other beliefs. Analysis is not the key to any trader’s success. Being objective is the key; along with developing a state of mind where they are not afraid anymore. …afraid of being wrong (if you do something & enter), losing out or missing money (if you don’t enter), or leaving money on the table (if you get in and it goes in your favor! Think about it... there can be fear/frustration no matter if you win, lose or do nothing!) – Everything changes: When these fears are gone the trader can be present, execute flawlessly. In kind with random after you enter, once a trade is going in your favor there is no way to know how far it will go. So then there is nothing to miss out on… you are going to do the best you can do. AND get better at it. And the way you get better at it is to become more objective (letting go of your attachment to the outcomes). Letting go of your attachment things become clearer and you see the possibilities of this trade, or… I don’t know the possibilities of this trade and I can scale out. Scaling out is something many won’t do but is psychologically great for building objectivity. As to being a scalper, swing or position trader… it’s a personal thing. So it’s not the right system, the right trading platform, the right broker… that risk can be eliminated. Instead of this you have to become detached from your results. You hire yourself, and then nothing you do has to do with being right or wrong. Risk is the plan’s responsibility.
There are sites such as Collective2 and Profit.ly that track in real time results of 20,000 plus traders/systems-- why listen to anyone who posts on elite trader ? there is zero evidence here. This is Wall Street's gossip site, not a site to follow calls-- Anyone on here who wants to PM you etc, is likely looking to sell you or build a mailing list of suckers to sell later surf
I had a Day Trading service 2001, posted my statements daily, no losing weeks for 48 weeks, had ten subscribers as I didn't want too many. After all that time only 3 were profitable, I asked others why, some only wanted to know trend or counter-trend, some always changed entries to get in better and missed many good trades, some would not wake up till we reached Goal for the day, and if Goal was reach in fifteen minutes, I was done doing the service. It became work for me and terminated it. I have posted many charts of my trades, and since this is supposed to be a forum for exchanges ideas, it is up to you to back test to see if it works for you or it is trash. I am not selling systems not expect anything in return, your evidence should be in your back testing. I have taken many systems others post here and back tested them as I would never believe anything else unless I can get similar results. It is uncanny of those who what evidence as they are often the ones who provide so little of sharing of how they actually trade. I received a letter today from someone who said I made an unpopular post few years ago on how to build your accounts before trying day trading and he changed how he trades and it did make a difference for him. That is my payment as we all just trying to get through life doing what we love and make a living and a life. You can put you better systems out there and 99% of the people going to muck it up, and someone like me understand this, ROFLMAO.
Reading this site as a noob is like panning for gold. If you acquire enough gold from your little panning operation, you can then use your profits to set up a real mining operation. Let me explain my awkward little metaphor. There are definitely people here who "drop knowledge". Read the people who's threads have been highlighted in the Greatest Threads section. Follow people who don't rely on technical analysis exclusively. Read posts written by people with an institutional or prop background. I'll throw out my list of ET luminaries which is far from comprehensive: lescor, dustin, sle, NTB, garachen, rmorse, xandman, rationalize, rufus4000, nitro, volpunter, sellingindexvol666, rallymode, whatever alias riskarb is using today, acrary, bone (vendor with a somewhat dubious reputation), londonkid, Tradenator. Just a little 0.002 gold nugget. Damn. I just reread your post. If you're looking for trading calls, ignore what I said. I think marketsurfer still posts calls now and then and NoDoji does that too.
There are a dozen or so free websites where members list their trade performance. You'll be better off following folks there because traders here do not have some sort'uv performance record that allows you to measure their trade performance. In contrast, you can follow traders here that have made excellent education posts and seems to know what they're talking about but there's no official performance record for the trader here. Just use Google to find those other sites...many members here at this forum have already listed them.