Originally posted by huby
Reality trader is excellent for learning, but some of the calls are quite vague.
Huby,
let me try to address this, not trying to defend or promote something but rather to understand your point and, if I get it, maybe correct something in what we do.
Like you said, our main purpose is education, so we do not call the stocks just because. Each call is based on certain setup. We have setups defined, with description of how they should be played, what serves as a trigger, where stop should be placed etc. So when our scanner finds opportunity, alert looks like: ABCD, JBE setup, trigger 20, stop 19.75. In this kind of cases it looks to me like everything is defined for those who went through setup description.
Now, here come parts that can be more vague. First of all, closing of the trade. We usually do not have targets set in advance because our approach is tape reading which means we are looking for certain event rather than price or percentage. Usually fast buying with volume spike signals first partial out (sell in full for scalpers), so if stock is getting slow buying with steady volume we will continue to hold, and we will alert to sell/partial out on that spike no matter where it happens, 20 cents or 2 dollars higher. I do believe that this might seem somewhat vague for a trader who is new with us but that's natural process of learning the method (unless the method of calling is plain "buy here, sell there" which is not our idea of chat room).
There is one more case when we might be vague. See, trading is live process, and no trader is always experiencing the same level of confidence in every situation. It happens sometimes that we see activity that does not match the setup exactly... I mean it resembles setup, but has some elements lacking, or just broad market situation is unclear, or some inner feeling is not speaking loud... it's highly liquid world, trading is. In this kind of case our alert might sound like thinking out loud rather that definite call. I don't think we need to weed this out, it shows the process of thinking, trade evaluation, and many traders are interested to see this. After all, our purpose is not just calls making money. Our purpose is traders learned to make money. Pretty often we observe this process of trader finding HIS/HER way to trade the setup: some trade it directly, some fade it, some scalp it. That's the idea of setup: to bring the structure in the chaos, showing the points that serve as triggers for different reactions, or if you will, as IFs for trader's THENs.
Concerning the question of "if anyone makes consistent money with chat room"... well, we have many traders with us that joined us more than year ago when we launched, so I guess it speaks for itself
Please let me know if I left out some of points that strike you as being vague. I am really interested to see whether it's just misunderstanding or we really fail to express ourselves sometimes. Or I should say not "we" but "I", because Chris is usually more particular about trades than I am... Hard to tell why it happens, probably it reflects the fact that we as a traders are what we are as a human beings, with all our uniqueness. If we do it somewhat different from each other, I take it as added benefit... pick what you like, or graduate from one approach to another
Best regards,
Vadym
