Epiphany Method

Brendan i'd like to know how your firm is getting around the day trading rule. tuco and several other firms have been shut down due to not being broker dealers nor there traders being series 7 licensed.you're taking deposits and making commission overides. assent will no longer take any unlicensed llcs that have sub accounts nor will they allow any commission overides unless both the llc and traders are licensed.i've read the briefs from the sec on tuco and several other firms shut down and much of the thrust of the reason for the shutdown was using leverage to give more than 4-1 margin (example taking a 10k deposit and allowing the trader to use 200k of buying power) plus not being able to overide. just curious what your firm is doing to get around this.

 

Brendan I talk straight with you because I don't know any other way than straight.

Maybe that's why I am a successful trader and not site operator. Straight talk is the only talk that matters in life.

Why do I get a feeling from your sign up page. That you guys are some half baked traders that had a good run and burned out.

And now you are looking for traders that you can mimic and essentially steal their methods.

Think carefully about how you are gonna answer this question because ET makes or brakes a business. (just ask Alex of PureSchtick)

Why would I as a trader with access to 500 down per contract trading liquid ES, want to do any business with you or have anything to do with you

I got buying power if I need it and want more money.

I got working methods and know how to use them.

Why do I even want to know you exist, what's in it for me ?

 

Why don't we look at this from their site

"Epiphany and its partners employ and educate thousands of traders in the U.S. as well as the international market trading community."

So they are here to help and "educate" like a standard prop shop.

In other words, they are here to take either opposite trades from that of noobs. Or they are here to watch closely your actions.

Call me old fashioned but the only trader I trust is a trader trading his own money with his own methods.

If I don't make any sense for a reader out there. Then these Epiphany guys are perfect for you

 

People like these Epiphany guys want you to believe that Trading Business is all about cooperation and cookies and biscuits.

NO

The harsh reality is that real trading is about HIDING your position and future position from other players.

Trading is not your friendly neighborhood veterinary business.

Trading is about ***Can I take your money.*** Or are you gonna take my money.

Trading is NOT about sharing ideas and eating cookies. Not in the real world.

But hey what do I know.

 

If these guys came here talking about positive expectancy and randomness and threw in there a little math. I would be more positive in my posts.

But they came here talking about trading "what's in play"

Trading "what is currently moving"

does this mean that they would not be able to sit down in front of intraday FX chart or intraday Natural gas or YM or ES

and hammer out positive net

Do they need a news service like god forbid CNBC to make their trades.

I am very very suspicious of these wonders popping up all over the place so eager to help little old me

 

ET makes or breaks a business lol, are you joking? you'd be surprised how many regular prop shops have NEVER even heard of ET ( no i'm not referring to places like drw, which would be even more obscure...i'm talking about places where you sit down, push some buttons, and make or lose the firm capital)

make or break a business. would make sense, until you sit next to a bunch of traders who've never heard of it. i mean the MAJORITY of traders i've sat next to at a few different places have never heard of it. When i was in college before i got into trading, i thought "who hasn't heard of this place"...

you'd be very surprised.

 

No I meant it in different way. When people do google search of epiphany.

ET opinions easily pop up.

 

touche, can't argue with that. puretick, they've been demonized here. do they still have over 20-30 members? if so, looks like any press is good press.

 

I went through this dialogue between calculator2 and punter and have to say it is a very fair and just dialogue. I am a little curious why calculator2 just happened to join ET now and just happened to have all of his/her posts on this thread quite admittedly, but it really is of no consequence. The questions raised are good ones.

Starting with this:
“Why do I get a feeling from your sign up page. That you guys are some half baked traders that had a good run and burned out.” Speaking for me, I am not the world’s best trader nor have I ever claimed to be. What I am, however, is consistent. I have not had a losing month in about a decade (I did come close in August 2004 when I made $300 for the month, but that was because my father suddenly passed away on August 1 of that month and my mind was not on trading whatsoever). I do an extraordinary amount of busy work to prepare for the day, aim to make 20-30 trades feeling that if 3-5 are really good, 1-3 are really bad, and the rest are neutral, I’ll walk out a little richer than when I started. Speaking for everyone else without divulging private information that is not fair to the customers, around half of the traders at our firm who traded yesterday made over $1,000 with 75% making over $500. The biggest losing trader lost about $400…and that was because he was doing his own thing. So, while we’re not Goldman Sachs, we do as a group earn enough to pay our bills…which in this economy is not such a bad thing.

To this: “And now you are looking for traders that you can mimic and essentially steal their methods,” I take offense because not only is it cruel, it is patently false. What I/we do as a whole works. I work tremendously hard and take pride in my efforts and my name. I am not going to make $50,000 a day trading (unfortunately), but I’ve been around trading full-time for almost 14 years and do thankfully take home a respectable living. Why would I or anyone else at Epiphany want to steal anything when what we have works?

As for: Why would I as a trader with access to 500 down per contract trading liquid ES, want to do any business with you or have anything to do with you,” at this point, I/we don’t trade futures. The research I’ve done is equity-centric and historically, I’ve never had a great deal of success trading futures. I focus on stock-specific stuff rather than market-specific stuff. So, if you are a futures trader, it’s not the place for you. If you’re an experienced stock trader, we have a chatroom (AIM-style and audio) in which we call out ideas because if 100 people are on the chatroom, I guarantee people will see ideas I won’t see and vice versa. It’s in everyone’s best interest to call out ideas because, again, speaking for me- I know if I don’t call out my stuff, why should anyone else do so? Yet, when I do and others do, there are more ideas floating. Also, we have the cheapest commissions of anyone I’ve seen. If you’re new, we have the methodology there, I am in the chatroom daily, and I and other experienced traders answer questions from newbies usually the same day when asked. Again, speaking for me, it helps me because it drills my own stuff into my head as I act on the honor of trying to help someone else.

As for, “So they are here to help and "educate" like a standard prop shop, no, we’re not…again, very cruel and very unfair. I’ve traded with three firms in my career over 14 years. The reason I left one of them was because I’d do things like say “IBM is at 124.95. If it gets to 125, I am looking to buy it.” So, one aggressive trader would buy the 96,97,98,99. It’d tick 125. And he’d sell it. Because the front-running being illegal and absolutely immoral/disgusting, I left that firm about 24 hours after confronting the individual involved. it left the impression on me that if I ever got a shot to be a bigger wig so to speak, I’d do it 180 degrees different.
As for: “they are here to take either opposite trades from that of noobs,” I am not smart enough for that. Forget the fact that new traders trade small (100 shares at most) so that argument is beyond nonsensical.

This is a more fair musing from afar: “Or they are here to watch closely your actions.” I don’t even have a risk manager. The president of the firm does, but I intentionally don’t if for no other reason than to say “I don’t have a risk manager so that there is no way I know what positions anybody is in thus it is impossible for me to know what positions anybody has.” So, the next logical question…prove the president of the firm doesn’t. I of course cannot prove it in mere words except to say it doesn’t happen. The guy is a phenomenal trader himself; over and above that, he (nor I nor anyone else) is technologically or intellectually gifted enough at our firm to do such a thing. Finally, and most monetarily important, if most people at the firm are profitable (which they are), why would anyone want to do the opposite of what it is they/we are doing?
Re “Call me old fashioned but the only trader I trust is a trader trading his own money with his own methods.” I agree with you wholeheartedly…as long as those methods work. And the reason most day traders fail (besides being lack of discipline or preparation) is because their methods don’t work. So, hey, if what you’re doing is more profitable net-net than what it is I am doing, kudos and you have my admiration and respect because it is a brutal business.
Re “People like these Epiphany guys want you to believe that Trading Business is all about cooperation and cookies and biscuits.” That is the fairest thing on here. Again, I know I am not normal. And most people who know me would say that. But that whole experience of finding that one of my best friends on the planet could do such a thing re the front running- it really really really scarred me. Also, this trading stuff is all I know…I graduated on a Saturday and started full-time trading on a Monday. I’ve done fairly well trading-wise. Well, from a basic sense, all I do is play a game on a computer all day long. So, that gets to me too. Combine the experience and that feeling and it left me really really really wanting to try to help people since, really, what am I contributing to society? Like I said, I am not a normal bird. So, I try to foster as much as possible a spirit of unison. And if someone isn’t a part of that (besides the fact those people tend to lose net-net anyway from what I’ve seen), I don’t want to know you. It is a horrible business from a people standpoint. When I started, I had *nobody* to turn to for help in the business. I never forgot that feeling and don’t want anyone else to have to go through it. And if you don’t believe me, I could say I’d swear it on a stack of bibles and you still wouldn’t believe me. It doesn’t matter; every word here is true. Again, it is all cookies and biscuits? Of course not. Is my firm a non-profit organization? Of course not. But from a bottom-line perspective, a)I am tired. Really really tired. Too tired for a 35 year old kid. I routinely used to put in 17-20 hour days and still put in 12-15 days while spending a few hours with my two beautiful daughters in between leaving me sleeping 2-4 hours a night most nights. So, while I wish I could devote my life to volunteer work (and plan on doing so if I am ever so lucky as to retire), I at least want to do the right thing now as much as possible in my ‘earning years.’ And b)if traders churn (and trade small), they quickly leave (and don’t generate commissions). Isn’t it in my best interest to see to it that these traders become profitable and generate bigger commissions (while staying)? So, I have every reason in the book to try to do what I can to see to it that every trader become as successful as possible. And mind you, this of course is in addition to trading my account which I would hope would always dwarf any income I make as a result of net commission revenue.

 

Re :”If these guys came here talking about positive expectancy and randomness and threw in there a little math,” I am not sure what you mean. Genuinely. But I’d never issue any kind of statement about a ‘positive’ outcome about anything because who in the world am I to do that? Some people aren’t gonna make it…no matter what I or anyone else does. I could have the head of engineering at Boeing spend a week with me and explain to me how to build a plane. I cannot do it because I have about zero mechanical abliity.

Re “But they came here talking about trading "what's in play", yes, because that is what we do. I am not going to trade a stock not in the news/not moving. But my take on it is different than that of most. The other day, MED issued positive earnings, i.e. earnings that beat estimates (after having had a huge rally the past several days). It opened higher. When it got to unchanged, I shorted the stock. Why? Because if it couldn’t rally on good news, it was going to go down in all likelihood. Most other people buy more as it goes down to “dollar cost average.” My take is that if it could not go up, it was going to go down. If it didn’t work immediately, i.e. when shorting it at ‘unchanged’ for the day if it didn’t break unchanged, I’d have covered and taken a quick 5-10 cent haircut on a few thousand shares. But that’s just it- about 80% of the time in my experience, this type of play works…so, I have a 20% chance of losing 5-10 cents an 80% chance of making 30-70cents in the space of minutes. Am I smart enough to technologically/mechanically put that to a system? No. But I am smart enough to know what works and what doesn’t so I do that type of trade all the time.

Re “does this mean that they would not be able to sit down in front of intraday FX chart or intraday Natural gas or YM or ES, an d hammer out positive net,” I for one cannot do it with a great deal of success. So I don’t try to do it.

Re “Do they need a news service like god forbid CNBC to make their trades,” nope. I think I’ve addressed that a little more specifically already.

Re: “touche, can't argue with that. puretick, they've been demonized here. do they still have over 20-30 members? if so, looks like any press is good press.” We have much more than 20-30 members. And the ‘demonizations’ have been for the most part very unfair.

So, tell you what- we have a free chatroom. Sign up- it costs nothing- try it. If you both are experienced, it can only enhance your trading. I don’t know what else I can say. I likely just wasted a few minutes of my life because skeptics will always be skeptics I firmly firmly firmly believe in the whole “if it looks to be too good to be true, it usually is.” But the key word there is “usually.” People always told me that raising a child was the best thing ever. I couldn’t agree until I had my two daughters. So, try it re the chatroom if you wish. Watch for a few days. If you have your own methodology, use it. Use it with the ideas called out. All it will do is help you regardless because even if 49 of the ideas aren’t good, the one thing that is there that you didn’t see…well, I don’t need to finish the sentence. We have a morning call at around 9/9:10AM whereby we discuss the blog and a few trade ideas and I’m on the chatroom all day calling out stuff.

In the interim, I wish you both well and hope to see you on the chatroom.