Trade post types in the forum

There's been a bunch of meta-discussion on and off the forum recently about members being lambasted for the types of posts that they make related to a trade.

Here are some trade-post-types that I have identified and along with each one I describe why it's useful or not. Consider each one of these as a topic starter or a reply anywhere in the forum.

I have ordered them roughly in order of least useful to most useful although I struggled with the ordering of 3 and 4.

1. After-the-fact winning trade figures with no explanation.
- Zero value, why are you posting this? Are you bragging?

2. After-the-fact winning trade with chart image and explanation.
- Has some value if the poster can indicate how you could have anticipated the trade before the rest of the technical data was available. Has more value if it's a summary of trades that were taken during the day that were discussed earlier in the topic.

3. After-the-fact losing trade.
- More value because it's unlikely that the poster could have an ulterior motive. It's likely that the trader wants to analyze what went wrong and seek help and opinions from other traders about how that loss can be prevented in the future.

4. Before-the-fact trade plan, entry and exit (stop and target) prices.
- Better value. Trader states what they are doing before they do it. By itself this only helps other trades if they want to shadow trade what you are doing. Do we want to encourage that type of trader? Probably not. So this type of post would have more value if it was followed up by an explanation later. Sometimes a trader might not have time to explain at the time they post their trade plan.

5. Before-the-fact trade plan and explanation.
- This is the most helpful. It allows other traders to understand a methodology and ask questions while the market is moving against or with a position and learn how this method or technique works.

Feel free to comment as a reply to this topic. If I've missed a type let me know and I may come back and edit this later to add more value to it.

I especially hope that this helps new posters on the forum understand why a post that they thought was useful may or may not be viewed as such by other members. I hope that this information improves the quality of the topics on the forum.