I would agree with that but only up to a certain point. Ted Williams was probably the greatest hitter off all time but by all accounts was an absolutely lousy coach. But having said that I'd still rather see my kid coached by Don Mattingly or Pudge Rodriguez than some guy who never even had a cup of coffee in the bigs.
I am not a big fan of comparing trading to something like sports. Top sports competitors have to "walk the walk" whereas it seems top traders only have to "talk the talk". The sports persons proof is right there on the park for all to see. I was once the best footballer on the planet....better than Messi or Ronaldo ... it's just that I wasn't playing for Barca or Real Madrid. (Joke obviously...but you get the point)
There is a thread where we can post our PnL. It's not an active thread. But proving that you've made money doesn't help anyone. It's not because someone has made money that - They will make money going forward. - They know what they talk about. - They are willing to share. - They won't be trolling. Even if there were proven profitable traders ... They're likely not going to give their profits away.
All those that are profitable are busy staying profitable, and/or don't deal with the sophomoric. We spent the time and put in the effort. We answer those who want SPECIFIC help, that show signs they are legitimately doing the work. Is this any different from other skills? OP should ask themselves what answer could possibly be actionable. This is not a place to show how great one is. It is more a resource to kill time while waiting or get specific answers about markets, tools, technical, or code etc. I guess people assume that this is some sort of Social where one hopes for other approvals, brags like a kid, and play poser with "proof". All of which is incredibly immature behavior for a serious trader. Back to work here: Test run completed. Geeze I, need a faster machine...
Let's assume you found a handful of profitable traders here at ET today that could provide verification to your satisfaction. Then what would you do with that knowledge?
Why is it so important to know if other traders are profitable??? (and I’m not referring to the OP @Ricky Roma , but rather to some continuous bullies on the forum) Is it because the losing traders are searching for profitable traders to put them on a pedestal and hoping to emulate them? Or is it because (some) losing traders’ are projecting their own frustrations onto other forum members and are continuously bullying others to bolster their own fragile egos? As a rule of thumb, profitable traders are not crowd followers, they’re independent thinkers and don’t give a hoot whether or not other traders are profitable, they do their own thing, their own research and due diligence, and they don’t have the need to prove anything to anyone. Also, I think any rationally thinking trader understands that it’s futile to get too deeply into discussions of being “wrong” vs. being “right” in a business that has nothing to do with being wrong or right in the first place. I believe that if for the next two months traders would stopp fixating on being “right” and instead spend 2 hours each day studying price action, 2 hours backtesting their strategies (bar-replay), and say 1 hour each day reviewing and learning from past trades while journaling, they would be much better traders after a few months then they’re now, and their need to prove anything would probably dissipate. Something to think about.
I think ET attracted more professionals than most other forums in the last 20yrs. Some retired, some still active. Robert above is one of them. If you check the thread "I am old enough that..." you will see some mentioning times where they called the broker or drew charts by hand. Like most forum, the majority is noise and some is proper delusional noise. I also think that the intuition in spotting who is real and who is fake, is as important as the intuition to spot a trading opportunity.