Question was raised.

timsk said:
This is an interesting thread in as much as just about everyone who's on here for more than five minutes wants to know who are the fakers and who are the people worth listening to. In one way or another, it's a subject that's come up many times over the years. There have been discussions about having some kind of badge system so that members could - supposedly - distinguish between those that know their stuff from those that don't (or haven't yet proved that they do). The age old problem is finding a way to achieve this goal. In part, the rep' system was supposed to fulfil this function, but it was abused (by just about everybody) and so it was scrapped.

Tim,

Wrong thread i suppose but with regards to the experienced members and who to listen to. Can T2W just set like a standard of say a trader who takes say a standard £5k account and increases it to say £10k over a period whether SB or Futures. They submit their live account details to the mods and they recive an Experienced Proofed Trader badge. THey may go on to lose that money in the end but that would let newbies know who to listen to and you dont have the usual crap of proofed statements online to prove it.

Also the trader that would like the fame and glory can submit their statements and recieve the T2W fame. The traders that dont wish the T2W fame acan stay in the background and the vendors can submit as well to prove they know their stuff. If not they can p$ss off to where they came from.

You could even have advanced status of say trader takes £5k to £20k gets a star.
£5k to £50 2 stars etc.

Hope this is not me talking b0llocks but i think it has some mileage.

Ged
Click to expand...
 
gedward3 said:
Tim,

Wrong thread i suppose but with regards to the experienced members and who to listen to. Can T2W just set like a standard of say a trader who takes say a standard £5k account and increases it to say £10k over a period whether SB or Futures. They submit their live account details to the mods and they recive an Experienced Proofed Trader badge. THey may go on to lose that money in the end but that would let newbies know who to listen to and you dont have the usual crap of proofed statements online to prove it.

Also the trader that would like the fame and glory can submit their statements and recieve the T2W fame. The traders that dont wish the T2W fame acan stay in the background and the vendors can submit as well to prove they know their stuff. If not they can p$ss off to where they came from.

You could even have advanced status of say trader takes £5k to £20k gets a star.
£5k to £50 2 stars etc.

Hope this is not me talking b0llocks but i think it has some mileage.

Ged
Click to expand...

Hypothetical scenario: I take £5k, I risk all of it in one trade and turn it into £15k within a day. Am I now eligible for this badge?

Next hypothetical scenario: I trade a £100 account, over the year using "good" strategy and minimal draw-downs my strategy takes my account to £1000. Can I get this badge and be able to say anything of value or because I didn't make x amount my thoughts/ideas are invalid?
 
gedward3 said:
timsk said:
..................who to listen to...................
Click to expand...


In the sense of accepting what anyone says without question, then I think the best approach is to listen to no-one. Even for those on T2W whom I respect - and there's quite a few - I still examine what they say from my own perspective and my own satisfaction that it makes sense for me.

Similarly, it's not always the successful, pros or not, that spark ideas that are worth thinking about. Even complete novices sometimes ask some very penetrating questions :)

good trading

jon
Click to expand...
 
gedward3 said:
Can T2W just set like a standard of say a trader who takes say a standard £5k account and increases it to say £10k over a period whether SB or Futures. They submit their live account details to the mods and they recive an Experienced Proofed Trader badge. THey may go on to lose that money in the end but that would let newbies know who to listen to and you dont have the usual crap of proofed statements online to prove it.
Click to expand...
Hi Ged,
First off, barjon's post neatly encompasses into a few succinct punchy sentences what I've tried to express over my three previous posts to the thread. Nice one Jon! With regard to your idea, on the face of it - it's a good one. Unfortunately, it's riddled with problems. . .
1. Masquerade's point is exactly right. Someone gets lucky on one big punt of trade and makes a home run. This is gambling and the trader that does this just gets lucky.
2. It's not difficult to double one's account with Spanish style stops (e.g. no stops essentially). But, sooner or later, disaster will strike and the trader will blow up completely - losing everything.
3. You can use a Martingale strategy of increasing your position size with every trade and, assuming you don't suffer from liquidity and slippage issues and your pockets are deep enough - you might well double your account quite quickly. However, as with 2. above, one fine day you'll blow your account.
4. Similarly, you can average down, increasing your size as you go. When the market reverses, you'll clean up big time. (I did well in the ETX Capital Comp' last year doing something along these lines. I tried it again in an RBS comp' last March. In one week, I turned £100k into £200k+. But, by the end of the month, I was down almost £1million!) It's fun with virtual money, but it's a really bad idea with real money.
5. Dishonest people could easily fake their accounts using a program like Photoshop.
6. There's an infamous trading vendor with an Italian sounding name who, so it is alleged, had two accounts with different SB firms. He'd go short one and long the other and then show prospective customers the winning account.
That's just six ways members could double their money (or more) and pull the wool over the eyes of those who vet their statements. There will be many more, I'm sure. You wouldn't want to give an 'Experienced Proofed Trader' badge to any one of the above! So, although the idea sounds simple enough, it's actually a bit of a minefield to implement.
Tim.
 
barjon said:
I still examine what they say from my own perspective and my own satisfaction that it makes sense for me
Click to expand...

But what perspective do you look at it from if you have no knowledge? This is the point I was trying to get at.

I wasn't talking about hounding members and hanging on their every word although I'm sure that's how things came across now that I loo at the direction the thread has taken. I meant who's really knows their stuff.

Imagine you ask a question about institutional forex and member Jimmy123 says one thing and GammaJammer says another. Who would you be listening to?
 
Happened again. You're looking too far into what I'm saying cr6196. I'm talking about asking a question not telling me how to trade or planning a career. If I have a question about the forex markets (e.g. the SNB intervention that seems to be all the rage these days) I'd rather as GJ.
 
timsk said:
Hi Ged,
First off, barjon's post neatly encompasses into a few succinct punchy sentences what I've tried to express over my three previous posts to the thread. Nice one Jon! With regard to your idea, on the face of it - it's a good one. Unfortunately, it's riddled with problems. . .
1. Masquerade's point is exactly right. Someone gets lucky on one big punt of trade and makes a home run. This is gambling and the trader that does this just gets lucky.
2. It's not difficult to double one's account with Spanish style stops (e.g. no stops essentially). But, sooner or later, disaster will strike and the trader will blow up completely - losing everything.
3. You can use a Martingale strategy of increasing your position size with every trade and, assuming you don't suffer from liquidity and slippage issues and your pockets are deep enough - you might well double your account quite quickly. However, as with 2. above, one fine day you'll blow your account.
4. Similarly, you can average down, increasing your size as you go. When the market reverses, you'll clean up big time. (I did well in the ETX Capital Comp' last year doing something along these lines. I tried it again in an RBS comp' last March. In one week, I turned £100k into £200k+. But, by the end of the month, I was down almost £1million!) It's fun with virtual money, but it's a really bad idea with real money.
5. Dishonest people could easily fake their accounts using a program like Photoshop.
6. There's an infamous trading vendor with an Italian sounding name who, so it is alleged, had two accounts with different SB firms. He'd go short one and long the other and then show prospective customers the winning account.
That's just six ways members could double their money (or more) and pull the wool over the eyes of those who vet their statements. There will be many more, I'm sure. You wouldn't want to give an 'Experienced Proofed Trader' badge to any one of the above! So, although the idea sounds simple enough, it's actually a bit of a minefield to implement.
Tim.
Click to expand...

Its not that hard.

Anyone wanting to earn this badge would send/show 1 years worth of broker/sb statements to the T2W panel of expert judges.

The panel can easily judge if the results are based on gambling or skill or if there are insufficient number of trades to determine one way or another.

The trader would also have to authenticate the statements at some point by logging into his online brokerage account history live in front of panel members. Thereby confirming the statements are legit.

Set a minimum profit threshold of 50K a year to cut out on the number of applications.

I think it would be fun to have three levels

1.Gold badge for those who can prove they made >1million in one year.
2.Silver badge for those can prove >250K a year.
3.Bronze badge for >50K

Maybe even a platinum one for >10 million a year :cheesy:
 
Last edited:
donaldduke said:
Set a minimum profit threshold of 50K a year to cut out on the number of applications.

I think it would be fun to have three levels

1.Gold badge for those who can prove they made >1million in one year.
2.Silver badge for those can prove >250K a year.
3.Bronze badge for >50K

Maybe even a platinum one for >10 million a year :cheesy:
Click to expand...

Do you not think starting capital is a huge issue? Trading a £1 million account and making £50k on it over the year is not exactly impressive. Besides, having a badge saying you made >1 million in a year or even 250k is like waving a red rag to the bull and there's a lot of reasons people would not want it. It'll draw more bad than good attention to it to be worthwhile.
 
donaldduke said:
Its not that hard.

Anyone wanting to earn this badge would send/show 1 years worth of broker/sb statements to the T2W panel of expert judges.

The panel can easily judge if the results are based on gambling or skill or if there are insufficient number of trades to determine one way or another.

The trader would also have to authenticate the statements at some point by logging into his online brokerage account history live in front of panel members. Thereby confirming the statements are legit.

Set a minimum profit threshold of 50K a year to cut out on the number of applications.

I think it would be fun to have three levels

1.Gold badge for those who can prove they made >1million in one year.
2.Silver badge for those can prove >250K a year.
3.Bronze badge for >50K

Maybe even a platinum one for >10 million a year :cheesy:
Click to expand...



to make at least 50k a year.. probably need 250k capital. wondered is the capital too high with too low return?
 
Masquerade said:
Do you not think starting capital is a huge issue? Trading a £1 million account and making £50k on it over the year is not exactly impressive. Besides, having a badge saying you made >1 million in a year or even 250k is like waving a red rag to the bull and there's a lot of reasons people would not want it. It'll draw more bad than good attention to it to be worthwhile.
Click to expand...
Yes, I agree with M'. If one was to do as donaldduke suggests, having monetary profits achieved over a year is meaningless and, dare I say it, an incey wincey bit tacky. The way to do it would be in percentage terms.
Gold: a member who makes 100% or more on their account in a year
Silver: a member who makes 50% or more on their account in a year
Bronze: a member who makes 20% or more on their account in a year
DD may well be correct in that it would be possible to overcome most (maybe all) of the issues I mentioned in my earlier post. That said, it's clearly a lot of work and who's going to do it? And, realistically, how many members will bother to apply for a badge? At which point we go full circle (back to barjon's post.) But, for the sake of arguement, let's say there are 20 members with badges - does that mean everyone ignores the posts of the vast majority of members who don't have a badge? What happens when the badged members don't post very much because they're too busy making money? Do the rest of us just sit around like Pavlov's dog waiting anxiously for that all important e-mail notification to a thread we're subscribed saying that a badged member has posted? And then, excitedly, full of expectation, we log on to see that the badged member has just posted an inane comment 'for the lulz'. What a crushing disappointment that would be! Nah, sorry, I just can't see it working.
Tim.
 
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