For every 100 friendly, grateful, nice emails I get, I get 1 stinker (it's probably a lot less than that, but you get the point). I received this one on Saturday morning; I've highlighted the parts in particular I want to address………
Hi Tim,
I just want to say I enjoy reading your blog and the insightful charts you provide. I think you're make a great teacher/educator. I come to your blog to be educated and to extract knowledge/insights.
But I am skeptical of your claims to be consistently profitable. I suspect you talk a lot of bullshxt when you claim to have gone long and short this and that at the drop of a dime. With the current volatility and the tight stops you put in place you would have been whip lashed/stop out in many cases. In bear markets like this special one, everybody gets taken to the cleaners. I believe you may have made a bit at the start of the bear market and rode perhaps 60% at most of the downtrend and living off those earlier gains. I suspect those profits are slowly been chipped away though. I do not know of any day trader that can make money in this market trading index futures (mini S&P), options, currencies (Euro) etc. If you gained in one you would have lost on the other. I am 95% certain that is the case with you. Furthermore, people such as yourself who are generous in sharing information/charts (for which I am very very grateful) normally don't have money on the line. Who in their right mind gives away money making trade secrets? I believe you have a lot of mental/fantasy positions, trades you would love to do but never carry out. You may even be one of those bystanders who take out the odd trade now and then but who lose more than they win. I know for a fact that people that write books on how to invest are not usually able to make the leap in practice.
For those truly individual profitable day traders, and treat it as a business (their livelihood),they are focused like a laser and concentrate on one area of specialty (e.g. index futures) whereas you claim to be a jack of all trades (options, futures, currencies) and even have time for a blog. Tim, no-one is as good they claim to be. Just ask Bernie M.
regards
Jimmy Linte
I've said it before, but let me be clear:
- I have no vested interest in dazzling or fooling anyone with an artificial record. I could say I make 10,000% a year, and if everyone here believed me, it wouldn't do me any good. I don't run a hedge fund. I don't sell a newsletter. The blog itself is free to anyone with a web browser. If I sell one of my books, it yields about $3 for me, which will get me a cup of coffee. In an entire year, I will make a few thousand bucks off the ads on the site, which is a dollar figure I make or lose every morning within the first 2 seconds of the trading day.
- The notion that I never 'fess up to losses is patently absurd. Just a few days ago I mentioned how I blew $10k on FXP. Indeed, part of the reason I use this forum is as a public flagellation space, so I can castigate myself for screwing up trades or taking profits too early. Regular readers are acutely aware how hard I am on myself.
- Although I don't really care if Jimmy (or anyone) believes it or not, I do in fact trade quite actively, with honest-to-goodness money (in the seven figures), and my performance is 2008 puts me in very rare company. It's just one year, I realize, but I assure you, this has been a remarkably good year. My trades were real and not "fantasy."
I immediately wrote back to Mr. Linte, asking him what precisely it is he wanted from me…………a confession? He didn't bother with a response. But, for anyone else who might harbor similar nagging doubts, I thought I'd mention – – yet again – – that I am very real, as are my trades, and I try to level with my beloved readers on both the wins and losses that transpire with my efforts.
