Tradewinds

No problem. There was some overlap there as I was sort of working out the ideas. And the title of the thread isn't accurate. I guess I gave the thread a title before I'd worked out all the implications of the issue. Yes, I agree, it can't be called an open and public forum unless people have the freedom to post what they wish to a forum thread, . . . within the rules.

TL has over 100,000 registered users. My personal opinion is that the 100,000 registered users is a bit misleading. How many members and visitors visit the site in a weeks period? How long do they stay logged in? If advertising is the goal, then TL should want people to visit often, and stay for a while. What is going to influence people to do that? I want information quickly. I don't want to read garbage. There may be some people who visit TL for personal drama and conflict, but I'm guessing that most aren't interested in that. But TL could have the best of both worlds, keep the forum the same where people can engage in whatever debate they want to. But allow the owner of a blog to have control over their blog, even delete other members comments. It's not "Big Brother" because each individual only has control over their blog. Big Brother would be if TL just went around deleting people's post for no good reason. There is a big difference.

True. Big brother can beat you up. :rofl:

While the U.S. bankrupted itself fighting wars, China invested in the future of rare earth minerals. China is said to produce 97% of the world's rare earth minerals. Afghanistan is thought to have a lot of rare earth minerals. Rare-earth shortage? Afghans think they can help - BusinessWeek The U.S. Department of Defense has sponsored a company named SRK Consulting to help the Afghans to expedite international investment in it's mineral sector. http://tfbso.defense.gov/www/MoM-Tender_03062011.pdf

I know what "big brother" is, but I'm not sure what you mean by "the thin wedge". I'm assuming that it means that a very small change, can be leverage open by a wedge, creating something bad later. I agree with that concept. Small, seemingly innocent changes can mean big problems down the road. If you are flying across the ocean, and the plane is only off by 1 degree, you going to be way off target when the fuel runs out. Big brother is when the few people who rule have oppressive control over everyone else. That's one extreme. There is also "Little brother". Little brother can throw a childish fit, and cry and scream and make life unpleasant for everyone else. Either way, the minority is inflicting something bad on everyone else. I don't want big brother or little brother.

Yes, I'm providing free insurance. :rofl: My intent was to begin with a very small investor. Like if someone wanted to invest $10,000 with me. Because I don't have a couple years track record of trading, I wanted to provide an extra incentive for someone to take the risk with me, like a family member who could easily come up with $10,000 dollars. Or someone willing to take the time to have me show them my system, and how I traded it. Here's how that clause would work. Let's say there was a 20% percent loss on the investors $10,000 dollars. That would be a $2,000 dollar loss. But I would only be responsible for $500 of that $2,000 dollar loss. You see what I'm saying? That would limit the investor's loss to $1,500 on a $10,000 dollar investment. A $500 dollar loss to me won't be the end of the world. Yes, there could be a catastrophic event, but all of my trades are less than 10 minutes. Most are 2 to 4 minutes. I'm not saying that eliminates the risk, but it makes it very small. My intent is to be dealing with small investors. I have no desire to be managing millions of dollars. If I were managing millions of dollars, that would change everything. The other issue is, that for this guarantee of a limited loss, I'm taking almost all the profits. For small investors, the math works. For a small investor, investing $10 grand with me, they could earn a 50% return. As the amount invested get larger and larger, the amount of return that the investor gets is smaller and smaller. I designed the math that way because of potential problems managing very large amounts of money. With a $10,000 dollar investment, I wouldn't worry about trading every penny on one trade. With a 500 grand investment, I would not want to risk every penny of that in one trade. If someone wanted to invest $500,000 with me, I wouldn't agree to limiting their loss to 15% percent. But, I would have to take a smaller percentage of the profits. If I were trading 500 grand, and not guaranteeing a return, the investor would want 80% percent of the profits.

I just realized that what I was looking at was probably an "Article". So I guess the owner of an Article has the right to delete other people's posts?

I have visited at least one thread where the originator of the thread stated that he would delete posts that did not meet a certain criteria. So, is there a way for some members to be able to control their thread to the extent that they can delete other people's posts? I guess if a person was a moderator, maybe they could do that. It often happens that threads get cluttered up with garbage, get off track, and people's behavior can degrade. I wish there was some way of structuring a thread to deal with this problem. Actually, I think it would be good if the owner of a blog had the right to delete other users comments. That way, the forum would remain the same, but the member would have total control over their blog. And structure the blog posts like the forum posts.

Thanks. This gives me more perspective to the issue. Here is Wikipedia's explanation of a Unit Trust: Unit trust - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The structure of a Unit Trust has: A fund manager Trustees Unitholders Distributors Registrars It looks like it's called something a little different in the U.S. of A. Unit Investment Trust - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This guy in the U.S. who was just convicted of fraud, was a big hedge fund manager. He was/is a billionaire. His hedge-fund was an LLC. Galleon Group LLC SEC’s Gupta Case Threatens Fair Trial, Rajaratnam’s Lawyer Says - Businessweek

I think this is it: http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/f32/institutional-look-s-p-futures-8859.html I did an advanced search for all posts by Steve46

The company would employ a trader. The trader would be me, the part owner. I would be an Owner/Trader. The other owners would be required to sign a legal agreement outlining the understanding that the trader makes all the trading decisions. There would however be a couple of rules concerning losses. At a certain level of loss, the trader would be required to stop trading. That would be part of the legal agreement with the other owners. I actually typed up an Owner Agreement. I'll attach it as an example of what the legal agreement would be. The company name has been removed. Agreement.doc

Good point! :rofl: I guess if someone was following their strategy with absolute perfect discipline, and was loosing money, they could say they were trading well, but their strategy is garbage.

You're funny. A parasite with humor. :rofl:

Yes, I agree. With something like the ES, S&P e-mini, where the smoothest trends are limited to only about an hour and a half or less in the morning, a trend can be half an hour. If you wait 5 to 10 minutes after the open to see where the ES is going, and if price gets choppy and slow at 10:30am, then you are looking at less than an hours worth of trading.

Yes, you are right. But what are the ultimate consequences? If we make a lot of money, and it becomes worthless, that won't help us. We could hoard gold, but then we'd need a place to store it. And we'd probably need to have our own mini army or security forces to guard all our stuff. We can't eat gold, so that won't help if there are food shortages. I'm considering the worst case scenario concerning the economy, and the value of currencies, which hopefully won't happen. I think that currency values and exchange rates should be tied to how much bread an hours wages will buy. If I need to work 8 hours to buy one loaf of bread, then something is wrong! That's an extreme example, but it makes a point about what the value of money should be. Of course, that scenario gets into price fixing problems. Then once that happens, the free market is compromised.

I agree. Which brings up an interesting point. What is a trend anyway? What you are saying, is that the definition of a trend is partly defined by how long a trader usually plans to stay in the trade. I guess my idea of a trend is very much tied to whether price followed a high probability, typical pattern.

He is free on bail, at least until the sentencing. I'm not sure how that works. It will be interesting if this case makes any real difference in clarifying or defining the rules about what insider trading is and isn't. I don't know anything about what constitutes insider trading, except for the obvious. I have sometimes heard of long term investors visiting a company, and getting to know the management before investing in a company. So I assume something like that is legal under some circumstances. Maybe the problem comes with shorter term trades.

It's a deal. Thank you.

Well, if he gets a long prison sentence, that will inflict some discomfort on him. He may still be rich when he gets out of prison, I don't know. Unless basic human nature somehow changes, or the human race gets better at valuing good behavior, then enforcement and punishment will remain the deterrent method.

Good point. I could see how people who try to "make things happen", and willfully try to make things go their way, could have a lot of trouble trading.

I'm not convinced that gold backing of any currency is what really gives the public trust in the value of the currency. I think the debt to revenue ratio is important. I'm no expert on money, but that's the first thing I think of. It's basically an issue of how responsible the government is with it's finances. And how responsible the government is with it's finances is simply a consequence of the individuals who make up the government. So it all comes back to human behavior. History repeats itself. The human race just can't seem to "get their act together". Oh well, I'll just keep plugging along and hope for the best.

Fiat Money is not backed by anything except faith in the entity that minted the money. Let's consider what the opposite of fiat-money would be: Let's say that you have a $10 dollar bill, and theoretically, you could go to the government that printed that $10 dollar bill, and they would give you something of real value in exchange. For example, you could go to the government that printed that $10 dollar bill, and exchange it for a piece of gold. Having the printed money "backed" by gold might give the holder of the $10 bill confidence in the value of the printed money. Realistically, it would be very impractical to take your $10 dollar bill and go to the government and ask for a piece of gold in exchange. If the economy collapsed, and paper money became worthless, theoretically you could go to the government, and get your share of gold in exchange. Again, that would be quite impractical. Imagine if all the people in the entire country had to travel to a place to get their share of the gold that was backing the currency. Either that, or the gold would need to be transported and distributed. Then everyone would need to be carrying gold around with them everywhere to buy and sell things. You could get robbed and have your gold taken from you. Gold and silver is heavy, it's grade would need to be determined, and it would need to be weighed at every business transaction. It would be an inefficient way to transact business. Metal coins made from real silver or gold would eliminate the need of being backed, but they are heavy, and might be considered impracticable to use for anything other than small purchases. In 1971 something happened that got named the Nixon Shock. Foreign countries began asking for gold in exchange for U.S. paper money. Switzerland redeemed $50 million U.S. paper money for gold. In order to deal with this issue, and other problems, the gold standard of U.S. dollars was ended. Fiat money is backed only by trust. Specie-backed money is different than fiat money. Specie-backed money is money backed by something like gold or silver. Would it be practical to have specie-backed money, if in practice, no-one could ever exchange the paper money for the precious metal? And if things did deteriorate to the point where everyone wanted their share of the precious metals backing the currency, would the distribution be fair, and actually be carried out to it's full extent? Governments can declare that it is illegal NOT accept their currency as payment within that nation. In other words, if I go to the grocery store, and offer to buy a loaf of bread with U.S. dollars in the U.S.A, the grocery store must, by law, accept the official currency as payment. If the grocery store decided that the U.S. dollar was worthless, and refused to accept U.S. dollars as payment, they would be breaking the law. As long as I have the amount of currency that equals the price of the bread, it's against the law to not accept the official printed money as payment. So the grocery store can not refuse to take the official printed money. But if they think the money is worthless, they could raise the price of a loaf of bread. So the grocery store could raise the price of a loaf of bread from $3 dollars to $300 dollars. At this point, uncontrolled inflation would rage.

How many trades are you making? Can you post a couple of charts? Are you exclusively trading just this pattern? Are you exclusively trading candlestick patterns?

Yes, it was for insider trading. He is a billionaire, and I'm sure has connections that the average person does not have.

The ex-hedge fund manager Rajaratnam was convicted of fraud. There were 14 counts against him. Basically he was getting information that was not public. This situation illustrates a big problem with the investment industry. In order to get a conviction, there needed to be wire taps. I wonder it there would have been a conviction without the recordings of his private conversations. It also highlights the difference between the big players and the small players.