He's not an index trader and anyone professing to have edge in ES would be at the bottom of the list. Edge generally decreases with liquidity. The only liquid-market trader worth investing in [in this environment] would be curve traders in FI or CL/crack-spreaders.
Every futures trade is viable up to it's maximum allowable carrying contract. On ES that's 1000 e-minis and also on NQ.
<i>"He's not an index trader and anyone professing to have edge in ES would be at the bottom of the list. Edge generally decreases with liquidity."</i> Which makes the ES by far toughest index of all to trade, imo. But it's tradable. Just requires a few things most traders eschew: patience, discipline, discipline, patience, willingness to let profits run after cutting losses shorter, adding to unrealized winners instead of scaling out when key moments dictate such, accepting lower expectancy results for more effort expended than some other trade vehicles, etc. And I should add patience & discipline, too. The edges are there in the tapes, visible to anyone who learns to see them. Correct execution thru all stages is where red or green shows up in accounts. More liquidity always = greater degree of difficulty by nature, 100% agreed.
<i>"On ES that's 1000 e-minis and also on NQ."</i> There are many spots on a chart where 1,000 ES contracts clicked in will move the tape two handles or more. 1,000 NQ contracts clicked in would be the market further than you'd care to be filled
In my view, most of the folks on this thread display suboptimal pattern recognition skills. Granted, the context of ET is that 90% of all offers/claims are shill driven, semi-scams, or otherwise outright bullshit. The community is therefore shell shocked and skeptical of "everything" and this makes their skepticism "right" 90% of the time by default. Having said that, my assessment is that this particular guy is legitimate and indeed undertaking the effort just as he described. As a side effect, his post filters people whom one would not want to work with or who would not be a good fit. The other side of the coin is that 98 out of his 100 positive respondents are probably wishful thinkers, sucker-prone, psychologically damaged, short term profitable but long term blow-outs-waiting-to-happen, or for whatever other reason ultimately unable to deliver profits over a sustained multi-year period. Only takes finding one good trader for the effort to be worthwhile, and my best guess is that he will probably find one or two.
It is said that " There is no free lunch. " I am skeptical so I would not reply to the OP. If you really were looking for good traders an online forum is the last place to find them. That said, I see no point in attacking the OP. If you don't like what he writes just ignore it and leave him alone. If you are interested reply to him and good luck to you both.
This thread reminded me of a story by my first trading instructor. He said that in the late 90s he want to do something similar to Richard Dennis' Turtles program but out here in California and using his methodology. He reportedly offered a 1-year program consisting of free training and trading an account of 1 million dollars which he funded. I don't recall how many people he was prepared to train. All he asked for was full commitment to the program. He said that he received so much skepticism or excuses of why people could not commit full-time. He said he became so disgusted in people's responses that he would never offer anything like it again. Since I maintained contact with him for quite a while because he offered 1-year of follow-up on his studentsâ training, I got to know him a bit and I have no doubt that his story was legitimate and more of an ego thing than anything else. I don't know if Doug Allen is on the level or not but, like austinp, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. I agree that one should always maintain a skeptical attitude given the vast number of scam artists out there. But there probably are a very small number of legitimate ones who might want to offer such training opportunities for various reasons. If Doug Allen is indeed sincere then I wish him luck