[TradeRunner]

If most traders fail or are failing, the standard figure seems to be 95%, then that leaves 5% of traders capable of helping others become successful traders. How many of the 5% would be willing to contribute their hard gained knowledge and experience for free on a public forum? I guessing not very many!

How can you identify the people that are worth reading? Here are some of the attributes that I think you should look for:

• By definition their message will be different to most contributors

• They have worked hard so they have a spoon feeding phobia

Here are some contributors that made me site up and think!

DbPhoenix
Peter Crowns
TheRealThing


Not a complete list by any means but my current top 3.

What about the other 95+% well these are also worth reading for different reasons as these are the people you need to extract money from.

[BlowFish]

"If most traders fail or are failing, the standard figure seems to be 95%"


That's probablly worth challenging. 95% of all statistics are made up on the spot you know Every now and then large brokerages will release figures on client churn, burnt out accounts etc. These would suggest its not quite so high. My guess is the figures probably follow the Pareto principle. Anyway that's as may be.

There's quite few people worth listening to, there are fewer who are really worth listening to. The dichotomy for the less experienced reader is unless they have already developed a wealth of trading knowledge and used that to established strong beliefs based on 'facts' about trading, they are ill equipped to sift out wisdom and truth from well meaning rhetoric.

Personally I try and judge the usefulness of the information based on it's inherent value rather than the success of the informant.

The final thing is of course your motivation for reading (and participating) in forums. Whilst interesting titbits come along that might have an impact on ones trading, for me its more social.

Anyway thanks for the links though the offsite ones don't work for me, I wonder if you need to be registered and logged on or something?

[smwinc]

I think a forum is a good source if you have:

- specific, direct, questions
- require feedback on charting software, broker, firm, etc.
- general facts about a market
- shooting the breeze

Unfortunately, trading forums tend to get "diluted" from new traders wanting to learn "everything" and creating threads requesting such a thing.

[TradeRunner]

Yes sorry I messed up the links...
Peter Crowns
TheRealThing

80% unsuccessful ok. I don't know what the percentage is but I think you have accepted that the majority are not successful at trading. Some of the successful minority may participate in trading forums. So my point is that most of the posts are by people who are not successful at trading. So there advice or ideas have not made them successful.

Originally Posted by BlowFish »

The dichotomy for the less experienced reader is unless they have already developed a wealth of trading knowledge and used that to established strong beliefs based on 'facts' about trading, they are ill equipped to sift out wisdom and truth from well meaning rhetoric.

Exactly. To recognise wisdom and truth you need trading experience and only then will you start understanding what the 'facts' are and at that point you will have no need to read them if your only motivation is learning how to become successful. Accepted you may read/contribute to forums for other reasons.

Originally Posted by BlowFish »

Personally I try and judge the usefulness of the information based on it's inherent value rather than the success of the informant.

Yes and you may be in a better position to do this because you have 15 years of trading experience. However this would be an inefficient method for a beginner as it is difficult to establish the value.

I have no idea whether these links are to people who are successful traders. Their messages strike me as being different and their underlying message is that your are going to have to do most of the work yourself.

[MC]

I looked at being new and getting bombarded with info (some good, some bad) as me paying my dues. If you go to an anonymous web board and ask how to invest your money, you deserve what you get and you get what you paid for. I started in the pumped penny stocks, you can guess what happened to my money on that endeavor. Sad thing is now when I try to help noob's and they call me a basher and shun my advice despite my warnings VERY frequently panning out.

After understanding that most info on the web is garbage (some intentionally, some from blind leading blind) people can react 3 different ways.

1) Keep funding and trying the same crap that lost their money in the first place, OVER and OVER again. Treating the market like a get rich quick scheme by gambling for the rush of a win. Many will eventually move to option 3. Very few of this type will progress to option 2 as they often have the wrong motive and expectations.

2) Wise up and begin to use paper trading and/or trade with limited capital to educate yourself. It's a long journey so I'm sure many that choose this option eventually move to option 3. The further I get in the more amazed at how hard WE make this game. It's our minds that cause losses and difficulty, not the market.

3) Quit and accept your losses moving on to the next get rich quick scheme or suicide if you're broke enough and everybody has left you. The professional traders thank you for your patronage.

Note: I'm not saying the refunding accounts in option 1 is bad, this game takes repeated funding and insane determination. It's the motive and approach that separate the winners and losers. If you want to get rich quick, you'll go broke even faster. My motive is to bend my mind into that which the market allows me to profit from. I'm a psych driven thinker that loves a challenge almost as much as the thoughts of profit.

[atto]

The search links you gave are actually search caches, so the link is dead already. Here are ones that won't die:

DbPhoenix

Peter Crowns

TheRealThing

edit: Are the last two usernames correct?

[Hlm]

Originally Posted by atto »

The search links you gave are actually search caches, so the link is dead already. Here are ones that won't die:

DbPhoenix

Peter Crowns

TheRealThing

edit: Are the last two usernames correct?

The last two were search strings over at forexfactory.com

[Hlm]

Also, in my opinion all of jperls threads on Market Statistics are worth reading. They are some of the most organized, detailed, and informative threads I have seen on any trading forum. They are also quite unique.

Note: If you want to link to all threads started by a user, go to their profile, click on statistics, and copy the url for "Find all threads started by". This url should contain a user id that does not change. When clicked, it goes through the search process and then comes up with a temporary search id which you DON'T want to link to.