Also, what do you think about Al Brooks? It's not unrelated, because Tom recommends his books and courses, and also TD365 offers his price action video course for free once you signup and make a deposit. Do you think he is a scam too, since he promotes trading using price action only?
Oh dear. Here we go again with one of Hougaards subjects... There are no honest and reputable CFD brokers. They are market makers, they take the other side of your trade, they can print candles wherever they want , freeze the screen on trade exits, cause huge slippage to stop people out, wick stop losses with moves that did not happed in the underlying market. Making money with CFD is possible and I flipped multiple accounts years ago but the house always wins in the end if you stay in that industry. If someone is making money they will start drilling that account to cause losses, be that witholding funds, trade execution delays (that they will blame on your connnection) or just straight banning a trader from the platform for some hard to pin down reason. Thats why these bucket shops are all 'regulated' by beach bars in the bahamas. Trade CFD till the end of the world for all I care, it makes no difference to me, this is just my experience over time.
Al Brooks is in my opinion a course shiller masquerading as a free tutor for the gullible. "Oh just pay me $3000 for the extra info where I waffle on for even longer" Anyone who claims to be profitable over time like he does and good enough to be selling multi thousand dollar courses needs to provide audited futures broker statements to be taken seriously. he has been flagged on here before https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/al-brooks-al-crooks-charlatan.294067/
@theanalyst thanks for the response, I appreciate it. I am not Tom's subject, just looking for some answers.
I got your point, but his video course costs $400 one-time fee, not $3000. His trading room is $100/mo. This is not as near as youtube fraud gurus charge for joining their private discord channels
In reality, I’m not convinced that there are any, from the retail trader‘s perspective. Seeing what the director of the UK’s FCA said in the evidence he gave to a parliamentary committee last year slightly changed my view of CFD’s. It left me with the impression that even among the world’s best-regulated “brokers” (actually counterparty market-makers, even the ones who call themselves “STP” and “ECN” and “NDD” and all the other largely meaningless terms they use, to fool their customers into believing that they’re actually brokers), the entire industry’s actually very deceptive and crooked, compared with (for example) futures. That’s exactly how I used to look at it, too. I now think that isn’t actually so, otherwise different “brokers” would have the same prices at the same times for their “products”, which they very clearly don’t. That “representation” isn’t the only factor determining their prices. And it’s approximate. Sometimes very approximate. And in ways that - for many retail traders - very often make the difference between overall profit and overall loss. I think there’s very, very widespread misunderstanding about this. (I used to misunderstand it, myself.) People see the statutory figures which some brokers are obliged by their regulators to publish, which show (typically) that something like 75% of their accounts made losses over the previous quarter, and many think something along the lines of “ok, well, that means 25% are in profit, anyway, and some of those might even be doing pretty well - doesn’t sound too terrible to me.” What they don’t realize is that those figures are measured and quoted over a quarter, not longer-term, and that the reality (as the FCA guy explained, from detailed observation of the huge numbers of accounts they regulate) is that most of those profitable accounts are those of what you might more realistically call investors, who typically made only one trade during the quarter concerned, and that fewer than 1% of “active traders” are ever really profitable, and almost none are, over a year. I found this something of an eye-opener. Since hearing that, I’ve also been able to ask three people with previous experience of working for CFD brokers (different ones), who all told me the same. There are effectively no long-term winners, with CFD’s, and the industry is designed to make sure of that. Among the lightly regulated and unregulated CFD brokers, of course, the figures tend to be far worse, and the unregulated ones never publish any. I don’t know about that; but I certainly was, myself. I can’t really add much to what I said here. I take that point completely, and my own opinion is that Al’s marketing guy has made an error of judgment, there, and they shouldn’t be promoting either - but this isn’t my business or my problem (and it obviously doesn’t change my experience and opinion about the value of what I‘ve learned, myself, from Al). I don’t think that; no. I’m influenced not only by my own comparative success from following what he teaches, but by knowing other people - some of them ex-institutional traders - making their livings that way and/or in very similar ways, too. (Al is trading futures, as you know.) It’s all personal opinion, though, isn’t it? And everyone’s opinions are influenced by their own previous experiences, which are always going to differ to some extent?
$100 a month x 1000 followers is $100k per month. Likewise if 1000 people a year buy his course (another $400k pa), he is living very well while being full of BS.
@Probability , and what about prop firms? If one trades CDF on say FTMO sim account, does it make any difference compared to trading futures of forex?
Sorry, I just don’t really know enough about that subject to try to advise or influence anyone. My personal impression/guess, from what I feel is likely to be good, reliable, second-hand information only, is that FTMO is probably the safest, most reliable CFD prop-firm and the likeliest to pay you if you win there (and it has both a repeatable free trial and the cTrader platform available, each of which is certainly a big plus). And that for futures props, Topstep and Tradeday are probably both decent, honest, reliable companies without ridiculous, unreasonable or unfair terms/conditions, and both have good, longstanding, respected reputations. I think it’s a pretty questionable “industry,” though, overall, and that almost all of these companies make almost all their income from the ever-repeating fees of “optimists” who fail evaluations. The proportion of people trying, who ever get as far as banking any net profits (let alone "steady profits") is low. I may be “missing something,” myself, though (as we were saying yesterday!) because I don’t really understand why anyone would want to try a CFD funding evaluation rather than a futures one. Again, please appreciate that I am no expert on this subject, and that it’s all second-hand information (though I think from well-informed sources), and that I may therefore be wrong. Sorry not to be of more help, and good luck with whatever you try!