WOW! What happened to the tastytrade thread?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Baron said:
After investigating one of the members in that thread based on some complaints we received, it was clear that member was here for one reason only, and that was to bash TastyTrade. He had contributed over 440 posts to ET, and every single one of them were bashing Tom Sosnoff and/or TastyTrade in that one thread.

He obviously has some major negative baggage with TastyTrade and is using ET solely as a means to retaliate against them. Using ET strictly as a soapbox to bash another company is not something that's allowed here. Sure, I can see a couple of posts here and there to express an opinion, but over 440 posts all about the exact same person/company, and all are negative? Imagine if it were you and you stumbled across a website where one person had posted nothing but negative things about you... not once, not 10 times, but over 400 times! Sorry but that's stalker territory and not behavior I'm very enthused about facilitating.
More...

Do what you have to do but you should do some research on TT and see what's really behind the curtain.
 
Baron said:
After investigating one of the members in that thread based on some complaints we received, it was clear that member was here for one reason only, and that was to bash TastyTrade. He had contributed over 440 posts to ET, and every single one of them were bashing Tom Sosnoff and/or TastyTrade in that one thread.

He obviously has some major negative baggage with TastyTrade and is using ET solely as a means to retaliate against them. Using ET strictly as a soapbox to bash another company is not something that's allowed here. Sure, I can see a couple of posts here and there to express an opinion, but over 440 posts all about the exact same person/company, and all are negative? Imagine if it were you and you stumbled across a website where one person had posted nothing but negative things about you... not once, not 10 times, but over 400 times! Sorry but that's stalker territory and not behavior I'm very enthused about facilitating.
More...

Is criticism of TastyTrade off limits for the time being? I had recently contributed several posts to that deleted thread that were critical of the performance record of the ShadowTraders (Peter Reznicek and Brad Auguanas) who appear on the network.
 
No, criticism is fine when done in a reasonable and sensible way. It's when criticism of a person or business becomes the sole reason you are here that will eventually create a problem.
 
Baron said:
No, criticism is fine when done in a reasonable and sensible way. It's when criticism of a person or business becomes the sole reason you are here that will eventually create a problem.
More...

When I first read your answer, I thought you were completely right.

However, after sleeping on it and giving it some more thought, I think you should put the thread back up and re-label it: "I hate Tom Sosnoff and Tastytrade."

Here is my logic.

After watching the NCAA final four basketball, and feeling very happy that Kentucky had lost, I realized, "I hate Kentucky." I'm the kind of person who loves underdogs and hates favorites.

This then reminded me of the ESPN 30 for 30 Film, "I hate Christian Laettner." A very good show that I've watched a couple of times and highly recommend. The director of that film, Rory Karpf, made the following comment:

I grew up outside Philadelphia a die-hard Eagles fan. And I despised the Dallas Cowboys and everything they stood for. It was as much fun hating the Cowboys as much as it was rooting for my team. But why? Why do fans hate certain players or teams beyond just home team loyalties? We figured this could be an interesting topic to explore through the lens of one of the most polarizing college athletes of all time ... Christian Laettner.​

In many ways trading is like sports. There is winning and losing, and hating. And there is fun in hating. For example, if I had started a thread in 2008 and labeled it "I hate Goldman Sachs" and then spent everyday for two years contributing to it would I have been banned from ET? BTW, I think ZeroHedge kind of did that and it seems to work for them. They still run with that one and I still read them. Because, I do hate Goldman Sachs. It's also ironic that Tom Sosnoff himself and his network is on the "I hate Goldman Sachs" team. Because, he does hate GS and his network has done many segments about bad Goldman is. Sosnoff frequently tells his viewers who he hates and why. He has a long list.

Matt Taibbi when he was at Rolling Stone made his career, and helped start the Occupy Wall Street Movement, when he dropped some very creative hate on Goldman Sachs with his 2010 article, where he wrote the famous intro:

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money...​

If I had started a thread entitled, "I hate Jim Cramer" several years ago and only contributed to that thread would that have been grounds for being banned from ET? BTW, I bet almost everyone who reads ET hates Jim Cramer. Is that so wrong?

You, of course, see where I am going.

Tom Sosnoff is in many ways exactly like Christian Laettner. Laettner was an all-time great in college, who fell flat when he got to the big leagues (the NBA). Sosnoff's story covers the same ground. "The Great One," as he is referred to by his sidekick, "The Bat," on the Tastytrade network was a very successful Chicago market maker and then co-founder of the Think or Swim brokerage, which was bought out by TD Ameritrade. However, in my opinion and several others on ET, he has fallen flat with his desire to create a financial network that's bigger than CNBC or Bloomberg, under the guise of being an educational network. I wrote that I think he's nothing more than an egotisical shill now.

I could go on and on, about how I hate Tom Sosnoff. And the fact that his people got to you and got you to drop a thread about him and Tastytrade makes me hate him even more. I went back and re-read (from Google's cache) the first 80 or so pages of the 100 page thread that I had not looked at. There was a lively back-and-forth between supporters of Tastytrade and the "haters" that was enlightening.

BTW, my hate for Sosnoff is on an intellectual level, I could politely have a beer with him and tell him he's full of s***.

That ESPN show, "I hate Christian Laettner," points out that a cottage industry grew up around that meme. T-shirt sales, millions of hits on Youtube videos, websites, etc. And for better or worse, I think the "I hate so-and-so." meme is here to stay.

So, the bigger question is do you/ET want to give "The I hate so-and-so" any room here on ET? I think with a very public and polarizing figure in the trading community like Tom Sosnoff/Tastytrade or a Jim Cramer or Goldman Sachs, the answer is yes.

Especially, for Sosnoff and Tastytrade because they, in fact, are dishing out hate on the whole investment industry. Tastytrade has literally hundreds of rants mostly from Sosnoff and one of his on-air personalities, Vonetta Logan, about what is wrong and bad about the current investment community. It is hypocritical to ban passionate criticism of Tastytrade when they are dishing it out to everyone in sight, 24x7, thru their website and thousands of hours of videos.

Of course, any criticism of tastytrade here on ET would have clear limits drawn. No slander, no below the belt hits, etc. And you might want to setup a separate category, calling it something like "For the Unhappy," to hold the spew. And I don't think a fan or anti-fan should be limited by how often they post to a particular thread. If you hate the Cowboys and only wanted to rant on them would that get you banned from a sports board?

What say you?
 
Last edited:
Well now, the challenge has been issued.

I don't recall any posts being personal and were restricted to trading concepts and PnL. Why should it matter that this is the main thrust of the banned poster? Maybe this is all he/she cares to post about.

I don't get it, aside from sponsor pressure that is.
 
bidwell, your thoughts are appreciated but you're getting off track. It's not about whether you're allowed to criticize someone. It's about if you're criticism makes you sound like a broken record. If the only thing a person aims to accomplish on ET is the relentless bashing of another person or business for months or even years via hundreds of posts, then that person is just not a good fit for this community. After doing this job for 18 years, my experience with that type of obsessive personality is that they never willingly get off their soapbox, so I kicked it out from underneath him.

It's not like ET is the only site for traders. I'm sure he will go to some other site and fire up the hate machine again since there are tons of other forums he can continue to vent on.
 
Baron said:
And who should we all assume that "I" is?
More...

Excellent, point. I was speaking from own point of view. Hate will do that to youo_O. The person who was banned and got the thread deleted actually wrote:

Despite my criticism of Sosnoff, I don't believe they are deliberately scamming and are genuinely trying to 'educate' the masses ....

However, the problem is Sosnoff's Ego/Arrogance/Ignorance ....

- he has no track record as a retail options trader
- his market research / backtesting methodology is seriously flawed
- he believes there is an edge in trading probabilities and frequency
- he frequently states that trading stock is a 50:50 bet .... yet continues to scalp futures on the basis that he has an edge in reading the tape .... and losing
- even when his market research / backtesting determines a particular strategy has an edge .... he refuses to execute because it goes against his own beliefs
- he has no empathy with anyone who holds a different market opinion to his own
- he keeps discovering new Holy Grails for trading .... last year it was 1 standard deviation
IC's .... this year it is IV rank .... what next
- he doesn't understand basic maths concepts ... as Jacob frequently pointed out

.... none the less, it's great entertainment if you like watching car crash TV .... and more importantly ... the more people he gets trading options ... the better liquidity for the rest of us!
​
So, I can't say for sure if he hated Sosnoff. The part about Sosnoff's Ego/Arrogance etc. happens to be what pulls my chain.

So, let me re-phrase my proposal. If I or someone else started a thread entitled "I hate Tom Sosnoff and Tastytrade," would you ban the thread and me? I like ET, more as a reader than a big contributor, but, I still don't want to be banned. Say I started the thread, made several posts to start, and then did not contribute to it, is that acceptable? If so, what category would it fall under?
 
Last edited:
Baron said:
It doesn't work like that. Many of his posts were replies to others or vice versa. I can't just delete his posts and leave all those other posts up because the thread would make no sense due to so many posts having no context. Besides, I don't have the time nor the desire to manually pick through a 100-page thread one post at a time in an effort to clean it up.
More...
This is interesting, b/c usually 'add post' and 'delete post' functions are 2 programming counterparts. And it should be nothing wrong in deleting a logical sub-thread ( identified by the guy's login name ) from a larger thread.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top