Short Term Trading Thread: Week Starting 13 Nov

Originally posted by Freehold ↑

Well 1st I may say that hearted posters are simply the posters with the biggest number of HC followers (the top 40 have hearts). There are however many high profile and clever posters which are not hearted (...yet).

When I 1st start HC there were alot more hearted posters that exploited their high following by taking a large position on the quiet in a dog stock and then starting to premote the stock heavily which draws attention to the stock which causes a snowball of interested and then the initiator then dumps into the spike. This was/is particularly prevalence on the DT thread. So novice traders would say oh this guy knows how to pick winners so they follow them relatively blindly. Only realising later that they are not part of robin hoods inner circle/gang but rather they are actually lambs to the slaughter and the main course at a medieval type banquet. The trick to survival when following these self proclaimed guru's is to take a small profit on each one, be entering quickly after the "guru" mentions a stock taking a small ride and exiting before the "guru" wallops the stock with their mega sell into strength.

Personally I think this strategy is too high risk! For me I follow no-one on HC for that reason. Most people are lazy or have a poor understanding of market and want a free lift for doing nothing... which is fine if you realise the risk and take steps to mitigate it ...sort of akin to a young innocent girl hitchhiking a ride at night very dangerous IMHO.

There were so many of these self proclaimed stock picking legends back in the day that it was one of the main reasons I created the STT Comp. To sort out independently the "contenders" from the "pretenders". When push came to shove a lot of the biggest "chest beaters" weren't the real stars of the HC at all. In fact, it turned out that the ones that quietly went about their business giving the odd tip here and there were actually the real champions worthy of being mass followed. Some of them are active on this thread to this day.

Once you become high profile at anything I think there is a responsibility you take on knowingly or unknowingly. How many times have you seen a high profile person in a power position take take advantage of it? its common. It takes folk with very strong moral fibre to resist the temptation to exploit there position. Thats why I think it is why good thing that most politicians in the country get cast aside after 1 or two terms... else we would end up with some like Putin

HC Mods (To their credit) ongoing have figured and suspended permanently many of these pump and dump cowboys. Many of the banished now reside lesser other stock forums.

At the end of the day the idea behind the STT comp was to ID the genuine champion stock pickers over a prolonged period of time and allow them promote their well researched picks and for them to receive kudos for their skills from the STT Group. At the same time allow the lesser skilled STT'ers to benefit by allowing them to get in early on the same stocks talk with the stars and quiz them on how they go about their trade. A win win for every one ! Answering your question yes most high profile posters would take a position prior to posting their STT tips (common sense really) and why would they the STT is not a charity after all we are all here to make $$. But novices can benefit by entering early on a well researched stock and make exactly the same % return as shown on the STT leader boards/Genuine rerate. Many STT regular readers have made life changing trades.

However saying all this, it is absolutely critical that you don't blindly follow any poster and do your own thorough research prior to taking a position in any stock to ensure the tip has merit regardless who posted it. Those posting tips on STT and pumping a stock which obviously has no or little prospects (like the wild days of old ) quickly get called out here and muzzled. There are checks and balances here on the STT there are none elsewhere on HC to my knowledge.

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Hi FH, thanks for all the time and effort you put into your posts. IMO it doesn't take too long to work out which hearts/veterans have altruistic motives in posting.
Just wanted to note that I'm using STT comp as a way of paper trading and practicing my TA with the view to full time trading next year. Hope that doesn't annoy anyone too much.