i stand by what i said: If someone is selling information, judge them by the quality of the information they sell. If one can't get a good estimate of that before purchasing and their is not guarantee offered, then don't purchase. What is so difficult about this?
To be honest their are only a few books I recommend for trading: Trading for a Living A Beginner's Guide to Short Term Trading How to Get Started in Options Reminiscence of a Stock Operator Millionaire Traders The neatest little guide to trading Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques The Warren Buffet Way The Intelligent Investor Their may be more good books out their, but these books have provided a lot of insight into basic trading, technical trading, fundamental trading, psychological trading, and interviews from some of the most successful day traders. Free information can be found from various sources: www.investopedia.com http://www.fx1618.com/
So please tell me what is your definition of "quality of the information"? Nice guy? Sweet powerpoint? Great charts? It makes sense in hindsight?.... Tons of energy when speaking Lots of testimonials Fun chat room Really neat looking website? or....maybe....just maybe... it makes money. Now what's so hard about this logic? I have 9 trading accounts. One makes money, so I only show that one. No, full audit. I just want people to be skeptical before spending money.
"I just want people to be skeptical before spending money." I agree with the notion of being skeptical. However it is also a known fact that marketing almost always contains the "best light" perspective of a product. So, If I was evaluating a research or trading service I would tune out the hype and things that I recognize as effective marketing but not objective and try to do the following: 1.) I would read and assess all the material they put out for free and see if it has any value. 2.) I would assess the cost relative to what kind of value I expect the service to offer based on what I have seen of the free material. 3.) I would look to make sure they stood behind their product, for example a guarantee of some sort. If all these things were met and I felt there were decent odds the service would be worth more than the cost, I would give it a shot. For example, the larry williams threads and all the criticism. My view is i don't give a rats ass what he did or did not do 20 years ago. I don't even care if he is a great trader of his own account or not. What I would care about if I bought his product would be: "Can he pass useful trading information on to me? that is likely going to be worth more than the cost" Another example: 0ne of the traders I have learned the most from someone who has had a number of large failures in the money management business. Once again, If i am looking for useful information I judge the information on its own merits, I don't judge it based on some mistakes or missteps of the person who created the information and taught it to me, never mind the size of his apartment! If a trading service or product appears to be all hype... well, just ignore it. People who are sucked in by hype without factual content have a funny way of getting exactly what they are looking for. For people who are bitter or feel burned by lousy products.. well, learn from it and dare i say it, move on.
It's all about their sharpe ratio, profit factor, calmar, relative to the S&P500. You should be able to see this, and I'm not too sure which guru's you're even talking about, because I didn't really come onto ET until I had track records. Building an ET trackrecord to me isn't really a trackrecord, so I use other sites just to show I'm not just making stuff up about my performance. I think expecting people to disclose their financial situation is irrelevant, not to mention no one has ever questioned me personally about it with clients, but that's probably different than sole marketing through the internet. I don't think you're going to get a company's financials, but I could see someone signing documents to release their credit score.
and so I trotted on down to the nearest sandwhich-shop franchise listed on nyse and inquired about opening a restaurant of my own. 1. asked for audited results of every franchise restaurant opened in all countries around the world. clearly there should be no failures, what for paying the franchise fee sums demanded 2. asked for full financial disclosure for everything every restaurant would demand for operation 3. asked for written agreement for my franchise fee to be refunded if the franchiser stock value price closed this year below prior years price 4. approval of all ads and loss leader specials forced upon each franchisee before promotional implementation. if any single one franchisee objects, no changes can be made 5. make available audited profit-loss tax statements for every franchisee restaurant around the world so we know that sandwhich shop restaurant is guaranteed success, no fail and not a fraud