Um... since you're the one accusing people of faking trades, then isn't it kind of silly to make a big fuss about someone else not tracking the corresponding "results"?? Doh!
Trading Rooms/Chat Rooms by “edabreu” After more than 5 years' full-time trading and about 100 trade rooms later, I have a few thoughts about how to save yourself a bundle of headaches and heartaches and maybe a few bucks as you search for a trade room. First question is why do you need a trade room? Simple answer is that in the beginning it can help you get through some of the learning curve, and you have a place for some sympathetic response and support for your trading woes. Complicated answer is you really need guidance but cannot afford a 1-on-1 mentorship. A good trade room should help you make money while you learn. Unfortunately, with 100s of methods and as many trade rooms out there, how can you wade through the junk and concentrate on the better ones? I have a few criteria that I think are an absolute must for a real trade room where your chances of succeeding and MAKING MONEY WHILE LEARNING are high. Number one - You must be able to see the moderating trader’s charts in real time. Number two - You must be able to see the trades entered in real time either through the moderator’s order dom or chart trader or some method where it is apparent that the trade was entered, filled, and managed. Number three - You must be able to follow the trades, or at least most of them. This issue gets a bit difficult in a fast market and may need some adjusting. To my mind there are three basic types of trading rooms. One is where it's just pure trading, minimal instruction. Another is where the education has more emphasis, and trading takes a back seat...hence few trades. The third is a hybrid: a steady stream of trading towards a set room goal, some Q&A once the daily goal is met, and a scheduled series of ongoing educational sessions in addition to the room's daily trading. So, first you need to decide which is right for you. Here's a tip. If you are considering a trading education in a particular trading method because you have none of your own, then look for the education emphasis. Otherwise, if you have a few good setups you know, and have some of your trading education already underway, then look for a trading room that will add to your knowledge and help you make money as you learn their methods and tools. If, however, you have traded a bit and have some tools and know some setups and yet nothing is working or going well for you, then look to the hybrid. Regardless, remember the #1, #2 and #3 rule. DO NOT SETTLE FOR ANYTHING LESS. If a person hangs out their shingle and asks for your money in return for a service, then you better make sure that service is to your liking. If you are unable to see the trade moderator's charts and his trade entries then pass that place up. It may be a good place, it may not. But without the visual verifiable evidence, you will find yourself not only having to watch your own chart but also having to compile in your head what is happening and keep that picture going along with all the other pressures of trading. I do not care what excuse is given; there is no excuse for not showing real-time moderating trades taken in real time. Technology is not an issue, money cannot possibly be the issue, so it must be something else? Let's see...fear, exposure, stop fluffing, doubling up or bad trading habits or what? You tell me. So, there is the absolute newbie (and it's going to be painful) who really needs a lot of luck to avoid the garbage rooms and there is the trader who is just looking to improve and there is the trader who really needs a better set of tools and methods to get him out of his funk. So if you have found a room then the best way to research the room is to spend a few weeks just listening and watching. We are conditioned for immediate response syndrome, instant gratification syndrome and these are detrimental to your trading health. We can probably all agree on that. If you do take the time to watch and listen, then keep a notebook and write down every trade call, the time and the particulars: targets hit, stops, etc., and review it after market while looking at your own chart. Don't even look at your own chart while doing the assessment. Concentrate on what's going on in the room because if you decide on that room, you are going to have to do the next very important thing to get the most out of the room: trust the trading moderator and his trade calls. Why? Because you want to be able to make money while you learn. So your next task is to see if the room makes sense to you. Can you follow the logic of the trade moderator? If he is a really good trader, he may be a lousy moderator and vice versa. So you need to know that before you join. Look for verifiable results. Verifiable results are the trade records 1st hand...not some spreadsheet made up afterwards, or some list of trades posted in a chat window (even if in real time). In Ninja it's pretty easy. Look for the trade list records unadulterated right out of Ninja. Look for the summary records. I have heard a lot of traders complain that sim doesn't count. Well, I think that is wrong thinking. What you need to see is the trade time of entry, the target completion and the stop. Add a tick of slippage in one direction, if you like, to the trade and see what it looks like. Often, a moderator will move to sim if he has hit his daily goal. The better moderators are not at all shy about letting you know they have moved to sim. I think it very unreasonable of traders who insist that a moderator continue to endlessly trade throughout the day without some kind of stopping criteria. The concepts of over trading, pointless trading, mental fatigue, and plain stupidity come to mind if anyone thinks that trading without some kind of daily goal or quota is going to make you a better trader. On the contrary. So why should a moderator who trades his own money be forced to practice bad trading habits just because you as a member may have strolled into the trade room at 10:56 a.m. and want a winning trade? Well, guess what? By 10:56 a.m. most good traders are done for the day! So, once the daily goal is hit and if the moderator is any good, then you should not have any problems with his moving to sim. What's important is does he continue to call winning trades? Do the tools continue to give high probability setups? Can you see his trades? So, now you have a room you think is going to work for you. You took the trial, you signed up for 1 month. BTW, Do not accept a room where you are required to sign up for a longer specified term...this is bs. If the room is a good room then there should exist the confidence that you will be so pleased and satisfied that you will return of your own desire. Now, remember the part about trusting the moderator's trading? This is where it is important that you accept that fact and live with it. You are not going to catch every trade call...no matter what room you are in. It’s just the way it is. Hesitation, you coughed just as the trade was called, a bug distracted you...whatever...it’s going to happen that you will miss a couple. So, the bottom line is that to get the most out of any trade room AFTER you have done your homework and decided is to take every room trade, period. Your homework should already have told you the performance expectation, the style of the room’s moderating trader, the basic methodology and trade setup rules, etc. Your job now is to learn the method and the setups in great detail, practice them under guidance, and make money while you learn. I have been in some pretty crappy rooms (now I know they were crappy) and some pretty decent rooms (of course these are the ones I abandoned because I did not have my own act together). Currently I do not need a trade room. If you are at that point then congratulations! If not, then even if you join any trade room, remember to look forward to the day when you can graduate and trade independently, consistently successfully, and live off the profits of your hard-earned accomplishment. --edabreu
lol tandh, you're funny. I mean i dont blame you for being cynical because frankly a lot and most of the online trading folks are crap. But honestly you just can't complain if they can show the p&l and order execution and fills and the trades were called before they even took it. I mean what can you realistically complain about that. Frankly i dont even care about their results, cuz in the end, its my results that matter and they have improved over a period of 2-3 months. lol at your sahara comment. My first question would be, do you have the papers for the land, do you have the documentation to prove it, can you should your statements that you make millions a week ? I guess no., But if they can show p&l and results. Then you can't complain. But honestly if you are cynical, its best to move on and try something else you feel comfortable about. But i feel that, it will be the case for you anywhere, which is okay. The market does that to most people lol.
Well, Blaze trader with 25 post, half of them about your chat room, and S trader, your alias with fewer post; I wish you the best in your business venture, because you obviously need the money. Since you can't make money trading, hopefully you'll be able to scam enough people out of their money each month.
lol honestly, I won't even respond to you. Because more than a discussion based forum. This is tandh unhappy therapy session. We are sharing facts and ideas and our thoughts here. While you just continue to whine . Frankly i dont care if people join any room or not. Someone made this thread. I contributed and thats the last of it.
Looks like his trading room didn't meet his trading room criteria: https://www.bigmiketrading.com/vend...trading-club-protradered-blogspot-com-17.html
Agree with pretty much everything you've said, great post! For me, the specific service we'd been discussing meets my own criteria as far as the categories you mentioned -- actionable and transparent trades, education, and guidance - as well as news and alerts (many eyes, hopefully looking for the same setups you are). I've also developed a comfort/trust level with the mods after observing them trade for several years now, interacting/communicating directly with them and in chat, and also getting others' feedback. The only thing you suggested that I'm a little iffy about is the part about "taking every room trade." Although I understand the logic behind it, I also see some issues related to doing that. For example, there happen to be three moderators in the service we were discussing. Although they share a common educational/foundational background, they nevertheless have distinct personalities, trading styles, and approaches. I suppose an adaptive response would be to simply pick one of them... but I also believe that your chosen trading style/approach/strategies should match your own personality, and none of the three is a *perfect* match for me in that regard -- each has certain setups and methods which overlap to some degree, and which also mesh well with my own style of trading and appeal to me. Still, the concept makes sense. If you want to learn something from someone who's an expert at something, then don't go to him/her and try to learn something else. Immerse yourself in what they have to teach you, and then stay or move on. If I could go back in time and re-do things from the beginning, that might have been ideal. A lot of this is a matter of to each, his/her own -- there are few absolutes, mostly shades of gray. Maybe a year from now, I will change, or the service will change, and I will move on. Sometimes, chat rooms can also be a detriment/distraction, for various reasons. But for now, for me, this particular service is a good fit, and I find excellent value there.
The trade posts (entries/stops, targets, stop adjustments, partialing out, etc.) are provided under a separate tab (Omnovia chat platform), so I just snip an image of that transcript EOD. They're there all day until the room closes, but they're not captured & saved "officially" as far as I know, so I just do it myself. Then the official results are provided in typical trade log format and posted to the docs folder -- usually before the EOD, but no later than the next morning. They seem to remain in the docs folder for about a week. For whatever reason, the guy who asked me to email the results isn't able to log in while the room is open (maybe he's busy and/or it's a time zone thing), but I think he still likes to review what's happened on a timely/daily basis... so I've just been sending him the transcripts & results at the end of each day. It's not a problem for me, and he's helped me a lot in various ways. Also, just to clarify -- even though I personally don't track the mods' results very much, I'm there in the room watching them trade, seeing them post their PnLs, etc. So it's not like I don't have a good sense of how they're doing. It's just that I'm much more focused on my own trading & results than on anyone else's.