Serial Trading Room Dudes Who Sign Up for Trial Membership Time After Time

One of most amusing aspects of running a trading room is to watch the depths to which traders will stoop for a simple 3-day trial.  I usually get a chuckle out of there morons as I can always see their IP address and the webinar software alerts me to a duplicate sign up.  Worse yet, the more they keep coming the bolder they become in chiming insane uninformed  advice.  I’m was trained by an Investment Bank and worked at that institution for 20 + years, which is not to say that I have all the answers in trading, but my judgment isn’t too shabby.

Last week, I was taking a trade and the trade moved against me 10 ticks or so and Henry the Trading guru blurts out  “we’re going to the daily high.”  Of course, the trade didn’t go to the all-time high but ran straight into solid resistance (of which I was well aware) and made a nice gain.  I just love it when I get help from the gallery so when the trade works out I can give the free advice-giver a little ribbing. (nothing mean spirited)  Henry didn’t care for my good-natured teasing and promptly left the room, but not before leaving a choice private message.  Too funny.

Even more amusing is when they get on one of the review sites and start pontificating on trading as if they were George Soros and not the no-talent traders that they refuse to acknowledge.  Too funny.

If it didn’t happen so often it would make most trading room operators pissed off.  But there is no better fun than giving a serial trade room attendee a rough go; hopefully, they will stay gone as their motives for coming to your trade rooms are generally less than honorable.

Then again, how smart are you when you use a fake name and sign up with the same email address?  I may not be the brightest bulb in Florida but I am not a dullard.  I have at least 1 working brain cell and it doesn’t take that much to figure out the simple situation as I have described.

Some of these guys have signed up 5 times or more and don’t leave after 3 days unless you throw them out of the room.  Wouldn’t it easier to simply learn how to trade and quit clandestinely (and that is using the term pretty loosely) try to sneak into a trading room.  People who are proficient traders certainly don’t need me to call trades for them.

In defense, some people struggle with the loneliness of trading and want a sense of community with some other traders; I get that.  I have had days where I was trading alone and traded like a rank amateur and sitting by yourself  you feel downright worn-down; there is really no worse feeling than being defeated by the markets.  So if your motivation to join a room is for a sense of community, I understand and try to keep the room lively and encourage room members to participate.

For the serial room attendee’s I don’t  know why they just don’t come out  and say, “I am a cheap-ass scum bag and am going to try to hustle as much information and trading information for free as possible.”  Hey, I have a sense of humor, I probably would let them stay a week.  Of course, no such admission has ever been forthcoming.  I currently have about 10 guys that keep signing up under different names, and sometimes different IP addresses, but it doesn’t take too much to figure the whole sha-bang out.  I suppose it’s just a sign of the times on the internet which is filled with keyboard warriors, scams of nearly every ilk, and individuals who will do anything just to get something free.

The retail world is full of new "magic" programs that promise untold fortunes with little or no effort.  They generally don't work, which is an understatement.  On the other hand, REAL TRADING DOESN'T LIE. Join me for 3 free days in my trading room and see.  No proprietary software, no B.S.

In the "Just When You Think You Have Seen it All" Category, John Paul's Outrageous Claim

In the last year, I think I have seen just about every whacky claim from sites claiming to make you an "instant millionaire" to sites that guarantee you will make big money in your first year of e-mini trading.  But one site has won the "Bullshit Claim of the Year" award, and I don't think this claim can be topped.  I don't know John Paul, but there should be some sort of limit on the hypocrisy of claims that are so far beyond the pale even a new trader should be able to spot the B.S.

This particular trading educator has posted that he has not had a losing week, or a losing month since 2008.  Adding up his earnings claims puts his tradings earning during the period at well over a million dollars, closer to 2 million.

But let's get back to that eight-year winning streak without even a losing week.  I've been trading for 22 years at the institutional level on the NYSE, and a couple of years on the CME and can state unequivocally the God himself could not put together a winning streak of that caliber.  But Mr. Paul claims to have done just that.  No losing weeks for eight years.

Let me state that a drawdown in your futures account balance is an unpleasant fact of life for every e-mini trader that has ever entered a trade.  They are frustrating and downright maddening, but the market often changes its mode of operation and you, as a trader, must make adjustments in your trading to compensate for the change in market price action.  Usually,  the adjustment in your trading requires some hit-or-miss kind of trading that can lead to days that are less-than-perfect.  Before long, most of us adjust to market conditions and continue on.  But there are generally times where you will have some losing days which generally equate with a losing week.

Further, traders are a lot like athletes in that there are certain times you can't hit your butt with your own hands.  Michael Jordan once went 1basket in 22 attempts.  Some days you have it, and occasionally you don't have it.  It's all part of the dance.

But to claim 8 years of near perfect trading would require abilities that are far in excess of mine or anyone else I know.  Many of my friends I met in the trading business and have 24-30 years of successful trading experience.  Not one of them has gone any length of time without a losing week.

I suppose claims like these should not surprise me.  But I have to wonder how his students must feel when they begin to realize that the whole 8 years streak was little more than a slick prank that parted them with a considerable of cash.  I don't mind if I pay for something and simply can't make the cut, but these new traders never had a chance to make the cut.  The whole sha-bang was a farce from the onset.  Be well, trade well, and best of luck in your trading endeavors.

Slime-Balls on Parade: The Current State of the E-mini Educators

This is a new blog and I started it with the express intention of saying things about trading issues without worrying about staying politically correct.  It is, in many respects, a liberating experience.  Sometimes I must curse, out say things that people don’t want to hear, or be downright pernicious.  If those type of things bother you, this probably is not a blog  you want to read.

I’ve run my own trading education program for eight years and for seven of those years I simply concentrated on my own program with little regard for what else is happening in the trading education community.  But reading several of the review sites has opened my eyes to the psychology of trading educators in this business.

I realized that I am in a business that has a trust rating well below used car salesmen and somewhat akin to the old Nigerian Letter Scams.

My eyes were opened when a colleague suggested that I utilize PR bots to give the illusion that there were several hundred people in my room instead of the usual 10-20 traders.  That didn’t make sense to me because it is deceptive.

During the last few months, I have learned the depths trading programs sink to entice new traders to part with exorbitant amounts of money for a dream these slime balls are peddling.

Many programs are designed to entice the uninitiated into buying into that false dream.  In reality, these trading educators present generic trading information that any simple google search could turn up.  To make matters worse, these programs offer little or no support when the trader tries to implement the programs that are usually based upon 1970’s style lagging indicators and try to shoe-horn traders into thinking they have found the holy grail.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

To my personal dismay, many of these programs are a basic rehash of generic information that will not serve the new trade well.  It’s little wonder that half the trading population is furious about the integrity of trading educators.

To add insult to injury, it is not uncommon for trading educators to repackage these generic indicators into proprietary trading indicators and charge $500-1000 dollars for something that is probably in the list of free indicators most trading platforms offer.

Yea, many players in this business earn a good deal of money without the slightest regard for personal integrity.  Look, I was a Wall Street trader for several decades and thought I’d seen every low-down method of cheating in the solar system.

These rogue internet trading educators make the Wall Street crowd look like choirboys.

It’s all about the money, boys and girls.  It’s not about learning to trade.

I don’t want to leave the impression that every trading educator is a crook.  There are ample numbers of conscientious trading educators out there.  But there is an astronomical number of shit bags who don’t trade or make videos on Market Replay and present them as real trading.  I’m calling bullshit on these scum buckets.

Tradingschools.org Has Become A Toxic Stew-Part 2

Emmett Moore’s tradingschools.org is a great site to get a review of a trading site you may be considering.  Generally speaking, Emmett’s reviews are right on accurate.  The hilarity begins when you page down to the comments section and read what people have to say about Emmett’s reviews.  If ever there was a font of disinformation, these guys would win hands down.

There are two commentors that have apparently joined various trading rooms and had bad experiences.  Based upon their comments, which dominate most of the reviews, it is fairly obvious that they don’t seem to have faired any better in their current trading.  So they seem to be on a crusade to discredit anyone and everyone that works in the trading business.  If they had a better understanding of trading their comments could be considered seriously, but instead, they ramble on about abstract trading protocol they feel everyone ought to follow.

Sam

I'm Sam and I really don't know anything
about trading but I am great at making
stupid remarks on trading review sites

Sam recently posted this insightful comment:

“Shadowtraders.com got shut down by the CFTC because they claimed their sim room was “live”. So most site have to put that CFTC disclaimer which starts with “Hypothetical results …” i.e. sim trading. Anytime a newb sees that disclaimer they can be sure it’s just a sim sham.”

Really?  Really?  That is your answer?  Get a ticket on the clue bus because you obviously don't know much about trading regs.  Ah…that particular disclaimer is required on all trading websites and client correspondence.  It is NOT an indication that a trading room is dishonest.  Here is another gem from Sam:

 “If the results were so good in the past, why not leverage up more? Why just 2 to 5 car and not 20 or more? Because the methods aren’t super.”

Every trader chooses the numbers of contracts to trade based on the size of their trading account.  If you are trading a $20,000 account I don’t think it would be wise to trade 20 cars, no matter how skilled a trader you might be.  This is just a sampling of a plethora of irrational comments by this man.  Like I mentioned, the hilarity never ends in the comments section. 

Rob B.

I'm Rob B, you can only make 10%
a month trading.  Oops, I  only make
10% a month and resent anyone that
can do better.  Yes, I am an idiot.

I’m am absolutely convinced that Rob occasionally gets off his meds.  He has a deep seated hatred for anyone in the trading industry while extolling the virtues of his own personal trading style.

“Hard to evaluate anything within 3 days. IMO it takes months to evaluate a trading room. Is there a monthly fee access to your trading room? To be honest every day trading room I have ever been in has been a scam.”

Every trading room is a scam?  Trading rooms should be free?  He also infers that instead of a 3-day trial it should be extended to a 3-month trial.  I traded on tradingschools.org robot program for 3 months and tripled the account balance.  Doesn’t trading for three months successfully qualify for proof of trading rooms veracity?  But Rob doesn’t stop there, now he’s upped ante to the level of ridiculous:

“Can you show where I posted a TR needs to show 5 years of Brokerage statement. Heck most can not even show the 3 months Emmett ask for. The fact is the only real true evidence a trading room can trade profitable is to show a certified tax return as know one lies to the IRS.”

Okay, we have now progressed from a 3-month trial free membership to showing brokerage statements for 5 years and showing the world my tax returns.  Donald Trump won't even show his tax returns.  Could I just show my birth certificate?  This stuff is hard to make up.  Nothing is going to make this Rob B. happy, but he is happy to claim a remarkable record of trading in his personal trading.  You can find Rob on numerous websites spewing forth the same vitriol.  His comment that  “true evidence a trading room can trade profitable is to show a certified tax return as know one lies to the IRS.”  No one lies to the IRS, are you serious Rob?  Too funny.  

As I said earlier, the hilarity never stops.  Hey Rob, mind telling what a certified tax return is?  Who is the certifying authority?  You're a nutcake, dude.  The IRS doesn't certify anything, CPA's don't certify, are you an official certifier of tax records?  Give up, you sound like you can trade a bit, why not stick with that?  My old daddy used to tell me, "it's better to have people think you are an idiot than open your mouth and prove it."  You seem to have the market cornered on dominating the comments section with mostly the same B.S., though there is no shortage of lousy trading rooms.  I don't know, maybe you might try being a pastry chef.  Naw, you would find some site and blast everyone about their croissants.  Too funny.

There is another guy, Stray Dog, who seems like a pretty good guy.  Posts a lot, but usually stays on point and doesn't expound endlessly about HIMSELF.  I give him a thumbs up.

I could ramble on about this site for a couple of hours.  Unfortunately, Emmett tries to create honest reviews and these fruit loops chime in, over and over, with their inane comments.

Tradingschools.org Has Morphed Into a Toxic Stew

There was a time when I thought Mr. Emmett Moore and tradingschools.org was nothing more than a self-promoting tool for the website owner.  I was wrong.  I think tradingschools.org is a legitimate attempt by Mr. Moore to clean-up an industry that could use a more than a little regulation.  To my surprise, Mr. Moore has shown remarkable restraint in reviewing trading/mentoring offerings on the internet.  Without exception, when he has a reviewed sites and “gotten it wrong,” he has made things right and issued a new review and explained he had either misinterpreted, been misled by undisclosed or unknown facts, or was just plain wrong in the review.  After being very critical of Mr. Emmett Moore, I have admiration for his honesty, willingness to expose himself to criticism, and innovative ideas to verify actual performance.

Mr. Moore is still writing quality reviews and rewriting reviews that missed the mark.  To my personal dismay, he keeps finding trading programs that are at best dodgy and at their very worst, downright misleading trading schools whose only purpose is to part uninformed novice traders and their hard-earned money.  On the other hand, the comments section has turned into a lynch mob and therein lays the problem.

But the train ran off the rails…

The comments section has become what most people have come to expect when reading comments on the internet; a harsh, uninformed, mean spirited atmosphere where “keyboard warriors” wage battle against trade room operators.  Most of these individuals have stated they have lost money in trading rooms or been swindled out of their hard-earned money.  Some of these comments are positive and I have received my fair share of positive comments.  The vast majority of the comments are not meant to inform or enlighten.  They are downright hurtful and off the mark.

Tradingschools.org has a comment section that is dominated by 4-6 individuals who feel their input on any given trading room is essential for world peace.  These individuals hide behind fake monikers to post their comments and they dominate any meaningful discussion of trading methodology.  They post and post and post and make the same off-the-mark comments without exception.

I will take up the basic issues in question in part 2 of this article.  We will look at the talking points generally expressed ad nauseum by commenters.