Atti, You seem to have all the details Nothing better than the gory details to make a story complete.... Continue with the info....
I heard it from a guy on ET who traded at LAC for a few months. Attrition was like 80%. He'd bring people in on the promise of arbitrage, when in fact the crossed markets were gone before they started. Now a pick-em market is arbitrage. I had no idea about the regulatory action until this thread. Participants were trading sub-accounts, so any profits would be apparent in that regulatory pdf. The pdf shows a 3MM loss. Everyone mentioned in this thread left LAC due to losses, save for rearden who was never involved in this moronic pick-em trade.
I know of three or four guys from ET who have told me that they left with less in their sub-account then when they began.
We really need Michael (metooxx) to chime in and lay out the truth. It sure feels like anyone that had traded the pick-em must be under a life-threatening gag order.
Why all the renewed interest in this all of the sudden anyways? I traded the 'pick em' system briefly in 05 when I was entertaining the idea of setting up a group to do it exclusively. The software was pretty slick and there was without question opportunity and money to be made. I was really just a game of picking up nickels and dimes but it could be consistently profitable. All trading was 100% financed by LAC, and although modestly profitable it was boring and tedious enough to make you bleed from the eyeballs. For myself, I toyed with the system for about 2 months before finally deciding not to persue it any further.