The OP knows there's profitable traders out there along with saying he knows a few. In contrast, the OP wanted to know about the traders (gurus) that specifically said that it's easy to be profitable and that anyone can do it even though there's no verification via videos that such is true. Think about it...how do someone show via a video that "anyone" can be consistently profitable and that "trading is easy". Only thing I can think would be good enough as verification that "trading is easy and anyone could do it consistently profitable" is to find an average IQ kid between 7 - 14 years old...teach a method for a few days and let him/her trade your hard earned money for a year...then post the results along with videos of many of the trading days.
Yes, Geez was a price action trend-follower who used a fixed stop/target ratio on every trade. RW also called every trade live in advance, but he was a counter-trend fader who averaged down from extremely overbought/oversold conditions, looking to capture profits from reversion to the mean, so he didn't have a fixed stop loss or profit target, and as is common with that style of trading he occasionally took large losses, but I don't believe his account ever dropped below his starting equity during the time I followed him. His win rate was 90% or better and he had long strings of 4-figure (and occasional 5-figure) profitable days, so a 5-figure hit looked awful in isolation, but did not result in erasure of all profits. In fact, in 2009 if it wasn't for the fraudulent scam that resulted in a $120K loss on a single trade, his annual return would've been truly impressive by anyone's standards. Despite that, he was still net profitable that year. SU, you can re-wire your brain, but it may require drastic measures. A good start is to have an overwhelming desire to be on the other side of large losing trades. After taking several large losses trading against clearly defined trends, I realized that someone was on the right side of those moves. I wanted to be that trader. I was afraid I didn't have what it takes to succeed in trading and came very close to throwing in the towel. It took me a couple thousand hours of work to reach the beginning of the path to becoming that trader and another couple thousand hours to get to where I am now. In the spirit of this thread, I'll tell you that I viewed a little video on Austinp's site in May 2010 and a seed was planted that led to the couple thousand hours of time I spent developing and honing my current trading plan. I have no idea if Austin is a profitable live trader. What I do know is he is one of several people whose ideas contributed greatly to my successful trading plan.
Hi all Assuming you are a profitable trader with an edge and eventually you can live well from your trades why should you head to promote your system(s) for a few bucks on platforms like C2 or similar? The same goes for paid trading rooms - maybe a rip-off. Dreaming of a mentor who takes you at hand and proposes once a day in advance by when to take a trade with direction, entry time and exit time⦠Hopefully with consistent great results - could that be possible? For Forex I think this is not easy. In the futures market I remember a guy who did exactly that on Twitter daily for free. He must be living from his trades and was so generous to share. Twitter results are realtime and ways better than a "video" which proofs nothing. We just have to go for it and find ourselves. TheFinder PS: My first post here on ET falls just on the "dumbest thread ever"
Most of the mean-revision stuff I have been reading about is traded without stops, which seems like an invitation for a black swan. The trend followers are exactly the opposite, they usually have tight stops. Both Niederhoffer and Dennis went bust, so perhaps Dirty Harry asked the right question.
No. "Dreaming" is the key word here. If anything like that were possible, EVERYBODY would be following someone else in the same manner already... for years on end. Why wouldn't we all? As for the mean-reversion fallacy, that whole concept includes many small wins and few large losses, loss size relative to win size on whatever scale. Averaging against is a 100% death sentence, which of course is the core tactic most traders apply. The siren song there is, hapless traders dream about somehow eliminating those wipeout losses while preserving the large number of small wins. Eventually they make peace with the fact that large wipeout losses are as intricate to the process as numerous small wins. Sometimes it takes years and years for a trader to figure that reality out. Hope and need keep them beating their heads against that proberbial brick wall.
Didn't Larry Williams used to trade live at his seminars and split the profits with those who attended ?
Thx austinp. As I have seen from the twitterer - there is only 1 trade per day which is closed the same day as the trade is announced with opening AND exact closing time. So there is no averaging up or down. The question is why a trader is posting his trades live. If he is not relaxed in his trading the results will make him a loser. If he shows persistent gains he will be himself gaining and followers should be happy. That's it. If there is no immediate proof of his profit(s) he will be "dead" (after margin call). So he will no longer post. As I mentioned the few gainers in this game need not to have paying followers in any program be it system-selling or chatrooms. You are pointing out a crucial point here: If everyone only bets on the same given entry/exit there will be less winners overall because of volume and slippage for sure even in a liquid market. As long as you stay with the 5% winners (personally I am more with 20/80) you may stay relaxed. TheFinder
The finder.. you can use the compound interest calculator to answer all questions. When you do the math then you can understand why I sell my systems.. There are some important concepts: Starting capital Years Trading Jump/hurdle concept ---------- Let's just plug some basic numbers in... 5k starting * 100% net return = 5k profit for 1 year of work. 5k /12 = $400/month = I don't even want to know the hourly wage. Even say I was able to start at 10k and do 100% return, net return is still less then 1k profit per month. The other concept is the jump/hurdle concept. I typically take a rather high possible risk on my trades. Although, I use my skill to realize less risk.This is the hurdle concept. If my risk/trade was less then I might be more inclined to trade for myself versus share. It's all just a matter of math. I'm constantly working to improve my edges.. if I could get my risk per trade to the say $200/$300 and my returns in the 4x-5x range then the balance might start to shift away from selling my signals. Even at that level, Id probably still offer my signals. I want to be at the top of the my game, and I want it recorded. I don't see a (high) cost to offering my signals and but I do see a high possible return. To be clear nothing prevents me from taking my own trades for myself and I plan to go live with my systems this month. I'm working to fund my account as soon as possible (requires some transferring and maneuvering on my part). Another reason I share though is that I'm very enthusiastic and love the game. I actually shared all of my stuff for free with a scientist/friend for years. Why? Because it helped me.. It takes a lot of work to stay on top of my game and sharing with another helps me to do the work that I need to do and keep my energy up. I've offered to share all my work with a few people but most people don't have the capability/interest to "take in" the full amount that they would receive . I quit sharing here because all I got was flak. Yet, I sell my stuff on a routine basis. It makes me feel good when I know people value my work enough to pay for it. Of course, I don't share my best ideas with the public at large. Why? Go back to the math.. if I find 1 or 2 people who are interested in my work then the cost with share with them isn't high. The potential cost would be too high to share with the public at large. I'm not worried that a few people will impact my performance. It is all just a matter of economics in my case. I'm willing to SELL MORE (offer more information) to fewer people whereas I'm willing to SELL LESS (offer less) to more people. For example, I only need to share with 1 person to help me at my peak performance. Due to not finding any suitable partner, I share most of my stuff with myself.. creating my own feedback loops to keep in top performance. One benefit is you know an analogy would be when you have a partner that you lift weights with and then they quit coming to practice or lose interest.. then that becomes a drag on your own game. So, there is a benefit you know to just going at it alone. I do think most vendors though understand they can make a lot of money selling trinkets and can't trade anyway. my 2 cents