MadMarketScientist

I'm going to have someone work on this -- we finally found a good team for some vbulletin support so I would assume they'll be able to help us with this and get it improved. Thanks for letting me know, let's see if we can get it improved.

Thanks for the solid suggestions. What we implemented yesterday seems to have helped at least for the last 24 hours. We'll see if it lasts. I'm glad to hear about the Aweber complaint -- they are typically very sensitive to spam so I'll assume they will kick them off their service. Of course, they could end up using another service. Blowfish, if you wouldn't mind give me a quick recap of the search issue again if you have a chance. I will get it assigned out to fix. Thanks.

Great conversation/debate as usual here on TL. One thing that I always found, back in the days when I was managing some funds is I would show potential investors what we were making, and for this example let's say it was something like 2% - 5% a month, and very manageable/small drawdowns. I can't tell you how many people would say that that sucks, and they can make 25% - 100% a month. Could they? Highly unlikely and if they did it would last a couple of months before it came crumbling down. But it always drove me crazy that we could be showing very consistent, double digit returns but it was always scoffed at since people get so greedy, and have such high expectations on their investments that they become delusional. It's like a salesperson who let's say closes 2 of 10 people on something. Most salespeople quite because to them it's a failure - 8 out of 10 said no. When in reality that's an amazing close rate. Again, people just expect way too much. Whether it's greed, entitlement, lack of education, advertisements, etc... Just like I feel most traders will quit because they expect to be rich with little effort. And, when someone maybe tries to offer them a realistic training, course, strategy, etc.. they scoff at it since people don't like to buy realism......the fantasy is so much more appealing.

Thanks - we'll look into that and get it updated to restore the full functions.

After doing some more research I have implemented something. Let's see if it makes a difference. I'm sure you guys will let me know Hopefully it helps, if not we'll keep digging. Thanks.

Hello all. A few things and reminders. James is/was a great guy but I have talked to him in detail about this. He said it's no different now then it was. Remember, he was one guy trying to run TL on the side. When you guys report a post today we have 3 people, who work full-time get notified of those posts. And, you've probably seen they quickly get removed. Most times when I see the email and check it, it's already been removed by one of the other two who receive the reported posts. We really do jump on those as soon as you guys do it. It really is dumb on the part of the spammers since their posts literally stay up for a few minutes most times, and then are gone. Waste of time but has it stopped the spammers from jamming your inboxes? No. Despite all the great filtering today I still get hundreds of spams everyday, though thankfully in my inbox most get caught. Clearly these are very annoying and fairly dumb people. But, what happens is they are probably hired help, being paid next to nothing to basically spam whatever blog or forum they can. Usually for a few dollars or a few hundred a month. I totally realize it's a hassle and am open to solutions. However to say the website is somehow not being watched over is a stretch. James had no ability to manage this site especially in the last few months of his ownership due to a full time job and said he was giving it 20 minutes at best. We put a lot more time into it and yes, I understand the frustration but just saying how it used to be different isn't providing any solutions especially when that is a rose colored look at the past. What I would like however are constructive solutions if you guys have any. We couldn't possibly respond faster than we do on reported posts. With three people including myself notified we do jump on them. And, it's not like this website brings in revenues anywhere close to being able to just hire more people on that. I could moderate every post -- we could have every post go in a queue and get approved though I would think a lot of you would not like that. I might take a look and see if I can make the rules much tougher perhaps for new posters than they are. That is probably an idea worth looking at and I'll do that now. Other suggestions that actually could help the problem I'm all ears. Thanks for the support, sorry for the frustrations and I know you all just sometimes need to vent -- that's cool. Thanks.

I think my mulligan would have to be to drop a losing trade. If I'm following my trade plan I should be catching all my winners - meaning taking my trades as they set-up without of course knowing if it's a winner or loser. So I would just like the opportunity to drop that worst loser on the week. A trader can dream right?

Geez macdfx when you put it like that I just don't know. Seriously though, I'm not sure what you're referring to and hardly thing TL is being ruined for everyone. We actually have 3 people who work fulltime (not exclusively on TL there's no money here and receive any spam reports we get and actually I'm pretty proud how quickly we remove those from the site. Most of those posters tend not to return because they go through all that work of posting their spam and we delete it usually within the same hour (unless it's non-business hours) There's no way to really stop this completely - the only way would be if we moderated every post and that's the last thing all of you would want - every post would be delayed, sometimes for hours. However, we rely on the Spam Reporting function and it seems to really work great and just so you know, we have multiple people who get those reports as soon as you click it and first available person deals with the deletions. I'm pretty proud of the effort but hey, I'm always open to doing more so if there's something else we should be by all means, please let me know. Thanks.

Nice results lately - hope it keeps up for you post-holiday....

I concur with a few of the posters here. I think you'll be back. You put in 18 months and for most of us, the cycle to success took longer. Once you get the bug it's hard to resist it. However, I think there's certainly nothing wrong with taking that break and reassessing everything and of course taking care of the family situation. Clearly the realities of life (and bills!) has to be accounted for. I'd say you can still work on your skills and your system even if it's less active trading or even virtual trading rather than simply dropping it all. You just might find you'll have the big breakthrough when you take some of the pressure off of having to do this full-time for income which is one of the toughest challenges psychologically. I can't tell you how many times I quit this rat race only to comeback. So many times I'd set up conditionals such as if I don't get profitably by xxx or have this win rate by xxx or drawdown less than this I'm done. And, I was, for a while -- but back I came. In the end worth it. It's a journey.

Fantastic stuff. I always love coming on here and absorbing what you guys are saying. Very thought provoking. There does seem to be a message coming through here. Yeah, it is a great profession but you better have more. You need to an outlet, you need some social networks, you need to take a break. Personally I go freakin nuts unless I workout a few times a week. It amazes me when I'm in a totally crappy mood about my trading and I go work with a trainer or do hard cardio session and everything seems like it's going to be alright after - I'm totally rejuvenated. And, let's face it, sometimes when you are going through something challenge the grass does indeed appear greener but once you immerse yourself in this something new you could very well miss all the advantages trading provides. If all else fails and it's just a mid-life crisis then there's always a convertible, a bimbo and the hair club for men (since you pulled it all out trading.) In all seriousness, dive in, if you burnout take the time you need and once recharged you'll likely be chomping at the bit to get back in. Gotta feed the addiction

Gandalf you bring up some good points. One thing I like to do is have a very rules based approach to trading. If I don't then I can literally get paralyzed with indecision and then of course blame and self doubt when the trades don't work out. I do better following a set of rules that I trust, and then try to just let the trade do what it has to do. At the same time, I'm not a believer in total 100% mechanical. I like to think about 10% of it has to be some subjectivity or art of trading. Art sounds nicer so let's call it that. To me that includes sometimes overriding rules -- there are days where the trading is amazing and everything is moving great where I might continue trading when normally my rules would have me quit. Or, I get to 90% of target in a massive struggle and I more aggressively exit or move my stop due to the context of the market that day. Or my mechanical entry seems to be right on a round number or just below a failure point from an hour earlier - I might choose to make adjustments around those. To me you can add 10% onto your win/loss by learning and implementing some of this art on top of the usual mechanical rules and ideally it helps smooth out some of the rollercoaster you mention. Of course not all since anytime I'm trading actively I'm coming into and out of various states of drawdown. Hard to accept but reality. I always remind myself that every single trade I ever put on is always down at some point anyway - just the nature of trading. Not many enter and never hit the "red" for at least a bit.

They should let us have mulligans in trading - maybe the broker can give us like 1 per week where we can go back and take that trade we missed! Good call though virtual or otherwise.

HighStakes This is a fascinating topic. I could go in many different directions in a reply. I'll try to keep it brief. You mention vacation -- if I can name one thing that is essential at least to me it is to get away from trading on a regular basis. It means missing some days or even a week or two then fine. The most difficult part is no matter how successful you are, you are going to be wrong on a regular basis. It can wear you down. And, you'll feel the pressure when you are in the midst of a drawdown -- until you recover and it seems like the whole cycle will ultimately start again. It's a great profession, how many can you name where you can double or triple your profit potential by changing a number under lot size? Not many. However, taking regular breaks I think is essential and don't worry about missing trades/opportunities. In addition, stay involved in a trading community like here on TL. Even just to have a place to talk, vent, chat, share -- it really does help since it's such a solitary profession.

I think 'cuttshot' was trying to point out that the odds are in his favor when he trades since he is above the 50% level - and actually in his case above the 65% level so everytime he puts on a trade he has the odds in his favor that it will succeed. At the same time, the odds tell us that you have to be prepared to lose once, twice, five times in a row, etc... in fact at about a 65% win ratio it is not uncommon to get a 7 trade losing streak so it's important to be prepared for that and just have faith in your system assuming up to that point it has provided a consistent winning percentage. That's how I try to approach it as well -- some days can be quite painful but I try to remind myself about all the recoveries from drawdowns that came before.

Thanks for the suggestions -- I'm going to work with the tech person here and see if we can get both of those added (el and docx) Thanks.

For me trading Gold futures is like playing craps or chess. What the heck does that mean? For some reason when I go to the casino I have this mental block about learning craps -- I'll play blackjack, sportsbook, roulette, etc... but I glaze over when someone starts talking craps. Chess? Same things -- everytime someone tries to show me my mind goes far away. Gold trading is like that -- it's a market I KNOW I need to learn and be more involved in. So, I'll be reading this thread since I'd like to see if it's something to add to my personal trading, and will fight and resist the urge to glaze over and go to my happy place - which for some reason hasn't included Gold futures!

Yeah, I'm with TheDude....you other guys are making me feel inadequate. I sit here and trade with 2 monitors, and many times have traded with just my lowly laptop on the road. I do think though if you are tracking multiple markets at a time you need the screen real estate. The way I would measure it is if I'm trading, and having to click around multiple times before I take a trade there's no chance I wouldn't invest in another monitor (especially since most are sub $200) -- if you aren't needing to click around based on your strategy then you're fine. Those delays can cost you literally on every trade. I was very surprised doing some work on the time it takes to get the signal, to place the trade and though I always felt I was pretty quick comparing it to a broker that had some automated trading happening where the trades got executed in an instant it was causing extra slippage on almost every trade. Speed matters -- just depends on your situation. I might go buy a couple extra just to help my ego

Jonathan - as the others have said, welcome to TL and we look forward to your contributions, and I'm sure you'll learn quite a lot from this excellent trading community. We have some great knowledge out there....

Like the above haven't read this one. But do remember many years ago subscribing to his service back in the days where you could daytrade the spreads - bid/ask on stocks. The good 'ol days when stock daytrading was easy. At that time he was very successful but obviously that whole strategy was wiped out with the changes.

Great conversation on a favorite market. Thanks to the posters on this one. TF used to be a personal favorite as well, when it changed from the CME to ICE it lost a lot of its luster to me -- but that really seems to be changing and the volume has seemed to return as has the volatility. I always liked the speed of execution on this market as well. And reasonable margins. I think it's a better market for many than something like the ES which I find trickier to trade despite the volumes. As to your post, markl67, I do like the set and walk away approach - of course strategy dependent. The key there is can you make your rules virtually mechanical? If you can, and you have a set of rules, then you can do that. Where I think this walk away falls apart is when you really don't have that -- it is subjective or has a lot of conditionals. However, if you can get it nailed down to the specifics, I find psychologically it's much easier to trade NOT watching every tick then watching it. I've tried many times to have the monitor on and avoid it -- but it's virtually impossible. Instead, I personally sometimes turn off the monitor with the charts, and keep doing my other work on the other monitor or I know I'll just flick back to view the chart a 1,000 times in a few minutes The key though is having those exact rules, and not beating yourself up over what "coulda/shoulda" if you would have been micro-managing....

Sorry I haven't posted my trades last couple of weeks. Have been on vacation -- usually on vacation I actually do get in some trading, sometimes daily but this time the internet access I had was completely ineffective for trading. It was actually kinda nice to have that forced hiatus At any rate, I'll be back in the markets first thing Monday and will again resume posting my successes....................oh, and that other thing.........failures.

I'm in basic agreement there. While it's true, you may not find exactly what you're looking for from most trade rooms (which are consistently profitable trades) there is much to be learned from "some" of them. I mean the ones that are clearly staffed with professional and quality traders. Many times it is our expectations that are out of whack and not even necessarily the trade room that is a scam. I'm not saying there aren't plenty that aren't worth the time, there are. However, I have found that most individual traders are totally unhappy with a winning percentage lets say of 60% and an average gain above average loss. To them, that stinks and they feel the room is crap and quit. Most times due to looking for that holy grail that wins 98% of the time. I do think there are some credible rooms with realistic ups and downs that can be very educational. As long as you're not looking for ridiculous success (which I know some do advertise to hook you....)

Solid end to the week for me which is important psychologically. I hate losing Fridays and you have to wait the weekend. Nice trading on Crude and forex, the Dax I lost on today that account for my loss. I need to remember contract rollover I believe next Friday on the Dax. Forex futures just rolled over this week and Crude probably has about a week to go in the July contract.....I'm sure the rest of you who trade eminis rolled this week.

I'd have to agree with "Simple" -- you're going to need to post more than just a few lines like that if you're trying to prove a point or it looks like just a promotion and will need to come down....(talking to "the_z")