Larry D: Since you keep coming to me with these threads, I am NOW going to speak my mind. (No offense intended to Paul.)
I don't see commissions, taxes or expenses (computers, desks, chairs, data feeds, software, information services, internet connections, etc) being figured into the profit margin, something real worlders have to do. Secondly, … “Total: 15.17% gain, if reinvesting proceeds on subsequent trades” … It is not smart to bet the entire portfolio on each trade, you should know that!
Comments: Now I am not talking about Paul's thread, as I did not take the time to read it. So take no offense in the following Paul.
Larry, you may think it worthwhile to be encouraging folks on these message boards to post all their trades publicly. While it certainly can "help" separate some of the bullshitters from those actually trading, if they don't communicate their trade setups in advance, posting fifteen, ten and even just five minutes after the fact can also be abused. If you allow me to post my trades five to ten minutes after the fact I can guarantee you I'll almost always make money, well at least it will seem that way.
The danger in encouraging folks to post their trades for all to see is that they can get caught up in the online notoriety game. They spend too much time worrying about how their thread header looks and their online reputation, rather than their "real world" portfolio balance. Isn’t collaborating to better profit in the markets the true goal of these message boards not message board fame and notoriety?
There was a nice guy on SI (the CFZ’ers contended he was one of my many alias…gg), who started out on the SI MDD Thread as a newbie. After a while he begin to post charts and make market calls. Pretty soon he started his own thread. He began to post charts and calls on a very regular basis during the trading day. I later found out that what was happening due to the attention he was giving his online personality was that his portfolio was suffering. He stopped posting some time ago and disappeared from the message board scene, I am pretty sure I know why.
The goal of these message boards should not be about gaining online reputations and fame, but using these message boards to better profit in the markets. Unless of course your goal is to sell you analysis or sell the privilege to others of looking over your shoulder as you trade in a chat room. Then, by all means pound your chest and tell everyone how great you are.
I resisted going into trading chat rooms for years, but over the last 18 months or so, I dropped in on a few just to see if they were of value. Frankly, some of the more touted and infamous chat rooms and the hosts were a joke, something only newbies could be fooled into believing were of value. Some of the lesser-known free rooms seem to be more about making money as no one there was trying to make money from subscriptions and did not feel pressure to provide daily profits. Sometimes, the best trade is NO TRADE.
Now there are a few folks I guess that can post every trade they make during the day and actually focus well enough to make money. I personally cannot. I don’t see how some of these folks can post all the trades they say they make and find the time to actually be making the trades, forget about those folks posting charts all day long as well. You see, I post charts from time to time and when I was hosting the SI MDA now MDD Thread, I on more than one occasion missed opportunities because I was preparing a post. I know how much work it is to prepare a chart, upload it to a web site on the net so it can be linked and then prepare a post to present the chart complete with commentary. It can take a while. I don’t know how much money I left on the table doing that, but at times I was kicking myself as I finished posting and saw my entry point had passed by.
So forgive this thread if we don’t post all our trades. This thread is not about establishing a trading record, each of us do that in the real world anyway. If you are not focusing on making money in the real world, you are just “playing” on these message boards, not using them to truly better profit in the markets.
Readers of this thread can learn from our work, what to do and sometimes what “not” to do. In the end, this thread is a collaborative effort to better profit in the markets. The collaboration requires participants to contribute their work or the noted work of others to the pot. For those of you that step up to the plate on this thread and contribute, I thank each one of you. In the end, it is the responsibility of all that read the MDA Thread (participants and lurkers alike) to draw their own conclusions and formulate their own investment decisions.
If piggy backing someone else’s trades is all someone wants, then this thread is not for them. I’ve not seen to many folks learn how to trade the markets watching someone else chirp buys and sells. I guess it depends on your goal, dependence or independence...
Regards,
LG
AI
Market Data 
Markets 
