I believe it. If you are a halfway decent trader averaging down works until the odds are proven once again. They don't call the Martingale Technique the "Gambler's Ruin" for no reason. The guy that gave me the info I posted here about Rob's blowup invited me over to his house to watch this morning's "How We are Going to Fix The Room" webinar. A few comments - 1) Hoffman admitted he messed up. He said there were three times that he could have taken a small profit but that wasn't enough profit for him. BUT, he never mentioned that there were (according to my buddy) an even larger number of opportunites for him to take a small loss all the way down. 2) Hoffman explained that he had switched to a more aggressive mode of trading and that the blowout trade was an agressive trade. What he failed to mention, is that he had identified a more conservative entry point, suitable for small traders, and that many people entered there and lost money. My friend says the TTM board has people who have published their losses and one guy said he was leaving the room as he had blown up his account and was unable to trade. 3) I also heard the "institutional trader" remark. Hoffman did imply he hadn't suffered very much. My friend thinks Hoffman got hit quite badly despite his implied - it was nothing - remarks. According to my friend the Infinity DOM shows how many contracts you can enter "per click." As best he remembers, before the "minor loss", Hoffman's DOM showed button steps between 1 and 1,000. In today's session the buttons went from 1 to 100. My friend believes that is what the DOM showed the next time Hoffman opened the room after the margin shutdown. Infinity offers $500 margin on the Russell (TF) so that implies a $500K account and would account for the margin closeout when Hoffman was down as far as he was. 4) Hoffman tried to make the loss appear smaller than it was - he reported it as $307K plus commissions. Why not just say $312K? Ego? He also never mention the actual 852 contracts, just "about 800". My friend believes that Hoffman made about $200K last year and about $100K this year, so the $312K basically lost him a year and a half's trading earnings. Hoffman also mentioned all the large profits he made in the past. Good thing, or he'd really be hurting. 5) He also stated that the people in his room were more concerned with his no-loss record than he was. My friend says that Hoffman would often say "I haven't had a loss in the live trading room in XX months." You can imply, probably accurately, that he has had losses outside his trading room. To me, he has yet to realize that his ego (and listening to him talk I'll guarantee it is massive) was the primary cause of not cutting his loss short. He went through a list of reasons he screwed up, but, to my recollection, ego was not mentioned. Nor was the sales impact of being able to say "no losses in 17 months." 6) He also mentioned that there would be 29 exciting changes made to the room and he'd be revealing them tomorrow, so be sure to tune in then. After an hour and a half, John Carter took over and talked about trading psycholgy. I'm sure he was not happy to be there as he kept looking at his trading screens and moaning about not be able to trade because he had to make the presentation. Don't blame him, I was frustrated watching my friend trade while I could only watch. A curious thing. Hoffman's slide were copyrighted by PowerCharting and TTM. Maybe there wasn't a merger, just a joint venture and Hubert and John can dump Rob if they can't help him recover from the disaster. It's Rob and Hubert tomorrow. I'm invited over again, but I'll probably stay home and trade, rather than listen to a bunch of stuff from Hoffman, he does tend to repeat himself, a lot.
Wow! All that screen time gone to waste! (except for the subscription fees he managed to collect from wannabes) Why bother daytrading at all if 18 months of gains can get wiped out in a single trade?! ADD: Hmmm. Assuming it's true that his total loss was 312K, then 5K in commission for a high-volume "institutional trader" seems too high for 852 cars. Is it possible that he got charged an extra fee by his broker, because they had to liquidate his position, due to the blow-up?
The problem with these guys is they are college boys or worse. None of them are horseplayers. Any horseplayer knows that bridge jumping is for suckers. These martingale guys, with few exceptions, are just postponing the day of reckoning.
Bad assumption. You have no clue if 312k is the right amount. Hoffman said 307k + commissions, I would go with that as the right amount. Who cares what the exact figure is? He wiped out his gains for 18 months.
Where can I subscribe to the webinar? My broker closing my positions at market when I still have margin seems attractive to me.
Did you guys see that TTM has added a new instructor - someone called "D. Badboy, the Marketdiver"? Yeah he is teaching "How I profitably trade futures". Wonder when he'll blow up...
I looked at their indicators in TOS. Nothing special and certainly nothing that'll get you profitable just by using them without any solid experience. I never understood people watching other traders. No real successful trader will want other people seeing what he does unless it's someone who's personally close.
I did not go over to see what Hoffman had to say today. My friend who is a member of the room, says Hoffman took no trades for the 10th day after his $312K disaster. Hoffman did go over 25-30 changes he will be making in his room. My friend says four things were worthwhile, one has him worried, and the rest were more or less of the "I'm going to do more of what I've been doing, only better" nature. Good things: 1) Hard, not mental, stops. Students will know ahead of time what to expect. 2) Discussion of why stop area may be different for different trade types 3) Will trade like a small trader - from 1 to maybe 10 contracts. Will still scale, but 10 is upper limit. 3) More discussion of profit target. It was evidently a little vague in the past. Bad Thing: Hoffman says if his "no losing trade record gets too long he will deliberately take a one tick loss on a trade. The good things are self-explanatory. The bad, maybe not. My friend has been in Hoffman's room for some time. He feels that Hoffman saying if his winning stream gets too long, he'll take a one tick loss, indicates that Hoffman still has an ego problem, and ego and trading don't mix. I agree with him. I know no successful trader who does not take losses. Certainly you don't enter a trade expecting it to be a loser, but if it goes against you you get out before it costs too much. My friend doesn't think Hoffman will stick with the no big-time scaling plan for very long. Not good for students. Evidently TTM sent out an invite to their entire mailing list providing $5 access to Hoffman's room for yesterday and today. Once in the room they offered a special signup for 3 months deal. As a result the room is back up to 1,000. My friend will be dropping his subscription shortly so if you get on the waiting list there will be at least one opening next month.
I don't think he'll have to worry about this one. If he doesn't scale in with lots of contracts, he'll be taking regular losses, like the rest of his room. I was able to get in mid-way through the webinar without any problems. I don't think his room will get up to 1000. I know a few people who are in the trading room as well as non-trading room Trade the Markets members that are planning on letting their subscriptions lapse. This has really hurt the image of Trade the Markets, and if Hoffman takes another huge loss, it might be the nail in the coffin. That being said, I think Trade the markets offers value, and I think John Carter is legit.