maverick I don't trade threw t-3 just listen to there vtf. Outside sperling i'm willing to bet few of the other guys do well. I'm even skeptical scott redler does well . you hit the nail on the head. just like the guys providing the picks and shovels in the gold rush make the money and not the actual miners i'd say most of t-3's income comes from the education side. Just like tony robbins made millions preaching the dream t-3 does the same thing teaching the trading dream were very very few make it.my friend knows the manager of the ft lauderdale office and he was a good trader threw the yrs and now all he does is mange other traders and override them so it tells you the condition of traders over all.In the end nobody can follow a so called superstar trader like sperling or a dan zanger as everyones risk tolerance is different thus if you tried to follow you'd get shaken out as many of those guys can hold huge down swings were the avg guy can't.so basically those guys make even more money giving out the dream
Zanger is another classic bullshitter. I think he does well getting you into decent stocks but the size of positions he claims to have is pure BS. He says he will have 30k shs of pcln after it had moved $40pts. I asked him if he uses dark pools ( bc apparently he has a broker that sits on the phone with him all day long but won't say which firm) but he says no. He also sells the top everytime.
I don't know about his current calls or proclivity for BS on his newsletter, but I've seen his stuff and size in real-time. I was Skyping with the guy and he mentioned a ticker he was following. As a joke I offered 30k shares and he got pissed. Then he told me he would show a million at the bid, and seconds later a mil bid was 10 cents under NBBO. Not quite the bid, but wtf as it was a $30 issue. So there is $30MM notional and $7.5MM minimum intra. Regardless, the guy is banked.
Not questioning the guy is banked, he def is and does well plus he has verified track record. I think his service is worth the $100 as he gets you into fast moving stocks at good breakout levels.. I just don't know if I believe the size he trades, he even will admit this day and age he couldn't replicate his $10k into whatever hundred million in 18months. But again if you had a guarenteed $40k a month (400 subs I've seen in the chat x $100) you have the cushin to go much bigger in certain instances. Again against all other paid services I still think zanger is the best.
I know Dan's story pretty well. The thing is, the guy doesn't trade a lot of positions, so he is highly concentrated. Two, he gets involved at the "beginning" of moves. If you are going to trade size, this is the safest place to do it. When something is breaking out of a long term base. And three, what is size to you is not really size to him. I mean I would bet I sat next to guys at my old prop firm that did more size then him in intra-day trading considering the massive leverage we were using. If the guy is worth 50 million (and I really don't know what he is worth know days) but think about how many shares he has to trade to even make a dent in his portfolio. I mean, just do some quick back of the napkin math. He would have to make 10 to 15 million just to match the index. Now figure in he probably losses half of what he makes gross. So to match an index his losses would be around 12 million and he would need to have 24 million in profits. So to beat that, the guy probably has to gross over 40 million from his winners (20 million in gross losers) just to net out a marginal gain on the index. Now ask yourself this question, how many shares would you need to trade to make 40 million in a year from gross winners? I'm guessing it's a little more then 10k shares of FB. I'm just applying some simple deductive logic here. My numbers may be high or low, but the guy HAS to trade size. As for his revenues from his website, again, follow the same logic as above. If he is worth 50 million, do you really think 500k a year in sub revenue means that much to him? That's 1% of this worth. Let me ask you this, if you were worth 100k, would making 1k a year running a blog do much for you? Again, it's all perspective. When you change the denominator, you have to adjust your numerator. On a side note, Zanger is no overnight get rich quick story. The dude started trading in the late 70's and for 3 decades didn't make dick. After 30 years of ball busting hard work and a generational bull market, his ship caught a strong trade wind.
This is a rant that has some relevance to this thread, maybe not much, but it is a rant no less: mostly automated trading and hft is complete bs for most traders...sure you can automate...but most of the hft firms are now losing money. the principles of trading hold true decade after decade after decade. I once talked to a firm owner in his office, about trading with his firm. I roughly told him the gist of my profitable method, and he looked at me and told me that doens't work. Can you imagine that? He then proceeded to tell me how he teaches one strategy to every trader in his firm, and its the only thing that works. He might have good intentions but he will exist to suck the new capital out of any novice trader, either through their hard dollar losses to the larger market or soft dollar to his firm via fees. There is so much BS in this business, and most of it comes from types like these. Firms push commission intensive strategies and they have no stake in developing traders. Firms that charge to teach these strategies are even more reprehensible. The reason why the marc sperling mentioned about makes it is he uses valid principles of trading, not the "lastest" craze. Currently hft and full automation is the latest craze. Its a fad, and the large firms suck up all the profit while everyone else fails as the try to jump on the bandwagon. Echotrade has dozens of these types of traders and in the end it didn't work for most of them. Most of their traders were just failing, and they were very tight lipped about it. But through their front office you could sense the climate. The good people left years ago. They used to tell me to automate and trade more frequently, blah blah blah. For most traders that stuff just does not work. I had never been with a firm that was so unhelpful to a trader, from risk management to management to front office. Probably because my strategy is not commission intensive as they constantly pushed me to be. That was, after all, the only way they make money. It's a short term thing for firms like these because most of their traders lose money and bust. In the long run, the firm loses too. The only firms that will survive are the ones who have a stake in trader profitability, because the firms tend to forget that the most valuable asset they have is a trader with consistently enough capital to trade. For years firms rely on the constant influx of new traders to lose, and I believe that influx is slowing down considerably at the moment. I think it's not talked about but most of Echos traders were simply losing, and they didn't have the influx of new short term trader money to support their business. The principles of trading hold true over time. As a general rule high frequency trading does not work over time because your trading profits cannot overcome the 'noise' in shortest term trading (noise= slippage, commissions, no short term direction, large hft front running). If people would simply (not easily) learn to program (not buy a canned backtesting system but design it themselves) in that design and implementation of it your are forced to code specific rules that point out the general futility of the shorter term parameters. It is painfully obvious once you do this. I am not saying some daytrading doesn't work, but most will never understand it enough to make it work. Most don't force the issue of low commissions, low fees, and other things. If you are young you have no idea the importance of this and you tend to roll over just for the "chance" to trade. These firms have you the moment you call them. They are selling you a dream. Approach them as if they need you, because, that is a fact. More and more firms will sober up and most will leave the business, the firms that really want to be firms will do the things that support their source of profit, which is a profitable trader.
What happens in trading is most get sucked out of money when they are young, and never really go back. Therefore, there are not enough older guys to tell the young (20something30something traders) that all of this is a scam, go back to basics. So the firms and industry suck the capital from these young traders who have absolutely no clue that their whole world view of how to trade is wrong, and completely plays into the industry's hands. The middle aged guys who are developing an accurate world view are generally scared into working for someone else (nothing really wrong with that but it's certainly not why people generally trade), being beholden to a spouse's opinions (vaginalcontrol) or family obligations, and have no time to relate their experiences to the younger crops who just otherwise fail by design and have no clue there are other ways to succeed in this business. A small percentage of it make it and generally don't talk at all. Some make it and from time to time rant and rave about things in this business. Few people though actually listen. This board is chock full of traders who have no clue. Who have never backtested (and found that short term parameters that generally don't work), who misunderstand the significance of fixed costs and soft dollar fees (commissions), and who fall in to the leverage trap without quantifying risk, volatility, etc. In fact, with all the new tech, I have found the younger you are the less problem solving ability you actually have, not because you don't have the tools but because you don't have the thinking ability. It was either never developed or it's remarkably atrophied. Too many video games, too much predictive programming from various media devices, and never trained in trivium quadrivium /critical thinking. A new generation of more compliant financial slaves. Especially if you did well grade wise in public education, you are the generally most handicapped for real world problem solving and critical thinking ( because the public indoctrination education system rewards obedience and compliance not formulating and thinking). The biggest threat to a corporation is a threat to their capital, and anyone with great ideas and the ability to implement them is a threat. So they support engineering an educational system that makes you able to do some narrowly defined job, but without the confidence and ability to create and innovate. This is also why they carefully and systematically buy up all patents from young brilliant inventors(who create solutions with intellectual or physical innovations), and then shelve them until their current outputs outlive their useful financial lifecycle. So, if you do find a profitable method that kiills it, by all means don't share it with anyone, especially a firm that asks you divulge it, in order to "trade" with them. Extract the maximum dollars you can and never share it, never. If it works, don't sell it. If a firm asks you to tell them your system, create euphemisms (" identifies trends in the highfrequencysuckass derivative markets and capitalizes on the divergences in clearing times of the underlying contracts"). Never share your code or rules except give examples of risk management that are reasonable, and "acceptable." Your firm is there to clear your trades until you have enough money to clear your own, and to help you with leverage until you don't need it. You have a plan to exit when you accumulate enough capital do fund the next phase of your life. Remember this, they are not your friend, or buddy, and they will move in the direction of their profit only not in any perceived loyalty you might have. Sadly, this is one reason why they are dropping off. I have learned this through experience. It's directed at the 1% of you that will perhaps use it. Put your money offshore and run it through various other country's entities and avoid all taxes that you can. Follow the Apple's or Starbuck's methods of hiding profit (Starbucks has net losses in the UK for over 10 straight years, writes the gross profits to their Netherlands mailbox corporation, pays no tax, and pays no tax in the UK for example) . Start thinking like this. It's a game and the real rules are not advertised on websites. Really the only way to make it as a true trader, in my opinion, is to be by nature a non-conformist to the whole industry. If you learn what most people learn and do what most people do, you have the results most people get, which is in fact losing all of your capital. You have to seek out and follow the successful outliers. They are general hard to find, and they usually don't want to deal with you. They know the sacrifices they have made to rearrange their actions against the popular code. They worked hard not to be sheep and generally not going to show you the playbook, you kinda have to earn it. You will know when you are moving in the right direction by the events that seem to occur as you move forward. Red pill/Blue pill kind of stuff. In the beginning it can be very depressing. It can be so tough most people go back. Only for a few. It's a lot like the advantage video poker players in the casino, they do long term math and feel they have an advantage. They bang away at their game hour after hour and lose a lot very slowing, but because they are pressing buttons and colors and noises abound, they feel like they are producing. Most day traders are no different. They are quite similar. Except, for day traders there are no comps, their capital is all locked away out of their control, and they have to pay other fees besides their lost capital. Any money they make is taxed. They bang away generally by themselves all morning long, while they give their human and financial capital to the large entities that make the rules. To succeed at a profitable trader or gambler you need to be very confident and do most of the things differently than the rest. You need to develop confident through real winning. My hero is more Amarillo Slim than George Washington. The classic methods of finding trends has worked over time for the past 100 years. As government assimilates the free enterprise system, that will also likely come to a halt. After that government will fail, and the effects in the short term are unpredictable. Why firms are disappearing is explained by the intense regulation, traders doing too much frequent trading. Both of these are designed to put individual entities at a competitive disadvantages. Securities laws are generally not their to protect YOU, but to protect the big firms from the risk to their capital that would happened if YOU became really good. RANT over.