I think a good rule for those who start journals, from what I've seen here at ET, is that if someone has an opinion and thinks they are "helping" you, they better damn well show trading skills themselves. We have so many experts here at ET, and if you could poll them all, I'm sure that in the same instant, half would be short and half would be long. So collectively, all this advice isn't all that helpful.
Everyone here has an opinion of what someone else is doing wrong, and yet, when it comes to showing what they are doing right, its utter silence. Human nature unfortunately makes it so alluring to point the finger at everyone else and say what they are doing wrong. I think most ET personalities come to the journal section just for the thrill of putting someone else down.
So
@nursebee , I commend you for being highly selective of what you will listen to. Yes, there are some on here who know their shit, but given how low the percentage is, it is more likely that most advice in this journal will be utter crap for you and your method.
Of course its a good rule as suggested earlier. Yet, its
not a realistic rule because surely you don't expect people to enter
your trade journal and start proving themselves in your trade journal ?
Doing such will make your trade journal about them...how they're doing it...their trades...not about what you're doing nor would such correlate with the thread title of your journal. Seriously, nursebee would need to change his thread title to attract traders he's only willing to listen to.
Therefore, reality is that you expect such to occur
prior to someone entering your thread. In addition, you would have spelled out such a requirement in the beginning and
not after the fact.
Also, the forum owner (Baron) has ignored such a suggestion for many years that there be a section created just for traders that have proven themselves. Traders that have shown proof they know what they're talking about...
walked the talk into profitability. That's understandable considering as you stated...only a low percentage would qualify but the low percentage will be counter-productive for the Baron because this forum is a business to him and the last thing he wants is to label certain traders with some title in which members themselves should do themselves via their own
"following" list that Baron specifically created for such.
The other reality is this...just because someone has proven themselves to be profitable does not imply the advice they have is suitable for your trading style and objectives...there's a few journals here at this forum as proof of such in which the thread starter in his/her journal got consistent advice from proven traders in which the advice was contradictory to each other and made trading worse for the trader after he/she listen to such and then applied it.
This is why I strongly believe its the OP responsibility to be clear upfront about the purpose of the journal and whom he/she wants to listen to. For example, there are several traders off the top of my head that are trading exactly the way the OP is trading involving small stocks
. None of them have posted in this journal...not one.
Getting past all of that...I've only seen a few journals here were someone was very selective about whom he/she wanted to listen to. They were upfront (very first post) about such via specifically "naming" the user names that have been helpful in the past along with identifying those traders that "qualified" via whatever they needed to know about someone they're willing to listen too. Yep, those journals aren't as popular as other journals but the thread starter seems happy with the content being posted in his/her journal considering the messages often get "likes" from the thread starter.
May seem ridiculous at first but those journals sure didn't go this way as this journal.
Another option is to do what others are doing after the forum owner (Baron) redesigned this forum...make a private thread here and than "invite" specific traders you want to listen to for viewing your journal.
As you can see, there are ways to get exactly as you and I suggested. Its
not the fault of the readers when such was not initiated by the thread starter nursebee. That's why I sometimes call these types of journals
an ambush. Not a big deal considering the OP has another journal of the same content as a blog elsewhere.