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.