For me as a professional in the financial
services industry (broker, CTA, newsletter publisher), my greatest concern
about participating in RT is being branded a spammer for including any relevant
information, or even a proper disclosure in any post. I do not wish to be
anywhere near the spammer line, but a zero tolerance policy leaves little room
to maneuver and a Saturday only policy would infer any contribution I wished to
make on a Saturday to would be probably considered spam/advertising. While
I appreciate the ideas that have been suggested, that is not appealing to me.
While I certainly have commercial
considerations to any of the professional endeavors I am engaged in, all of
them are not directly sales oriented. For example, some sharing of ideas
may be in the formative stage of developing a new managed futures
program. I can’t sell a program that I have not fully developed,
registered and created a disclosure document for, but it would be helpful to be
able to get feedback about the attractiveness of particular programs. This
may or may not have value to other members of the list, but it would be helpful
to me without it being directly related to generating sales.
If I even include commentaries that I
write for my newsletter, that could be considered advertising, despite the fact
that the information is very relevant to traders. My newsletter broke the
story about Trading Technologies receiving patents on their MD Trader
technology over a year ago. That has been a major story in the futures
industry and had an impact. I think this is relevant to members of this
list, but I can also see where some would think it just another form or
advertising. That is why I was suggesting a contextual basis for judging
advertising. Does the post offer any helpful information, or is it just a
sales message? There is always an underlying sales effect, but if that is
not the intended primary purpose and value of the message, then perhaps it
might be allowed.
If not, then I say go back to the zero
tolerance policy and let sleeping dogs be.
Regards,
John J. Lothian
From: realtraders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:realtraders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of jim thompson
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2005
9:49 PM
To: realtraders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [RT] Advertising ...
proposal
Ok, since I started the interogatory, let me make a simple proposal that won't
please everyone all of the time but hopefully will be a compromise that
everyone can live with most of the time. I used to contribute moderately to RT but
unfortunately since I'm back in practice I just don't follow the markets as
closely anymore to make intelligent comments. Hopefully, that may change
again in the near future.
I do like the idea of having those with something to 'offer' being given the
chance though on an infrequent basis. Those that don't like the idea of
'advertising' in any area of life that comes on the internet as with any of us
in any other situation, have learned to hit that delete button mighty quickly.
Most traders who post on RT, don't do so on the weekends and especially on
Saturdays, when RT is pretty darn dead. There are preparations going on
Sunday night for traders in anticipation of the next trading day so Sunday
would not be a good day, nor would any day during the week when RT volume picks
up and the focus should be on the markets and not elsewhere.
So my proposal is this..... ''''' 'Advertising' will be
allowed on RT on the first Saturday following the end of each month from
12:01am to 11:59pm.'''' No exceptions. Those breaking the rules will be
warned,'banished', hung at the stake etc. ie Following that plan,
advertising would be allowed Oct 1, Nov 5, Dec 3 etc. or basically just once a
month for one day, only 12 days a year....which are usually inactive RT
days anyway. Those who aren't interested in such will realize in
advance that on that particular Saturday there may be a bunch of 'deletes'
needed when they return to their screens Sunday evening. Knowing this in
advance can forewarn anyone that that's what will likely be from RT on that
day, perhaps among a few other non-advertising posts. Those who are
interested in procurring advertising/education will also realize that what they
are looking for, may in fact be advertised on that particular day.
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