Yeah sure.. the point is nobody can argue that they want to sell really bad. They work at it real hard. For whatever reason.. Now let's say they are great traders. These guys are desperate to sell. They aspire to be sellers. They TRAIN at selling. They sleep, breath, and eat selling. They think selling every single day. Given that let's say they are way smarter then me so they can do that and still trade great --of course without even thinking about it. Not even going to question why with millions they'd NEED to work so hard at selling if they were great traders. But given all that, why can't they produce a record? If 2+2 = 0 then it doesn't add up. A. They desperately want to sell. T/F? T B. Many people doubt they can trade. T/F? T C. If they produced a remarkable record then they could sell more? T/F? T D. It would be possible for them to produce a record, T/F? T Given this, it is obvious they are not that great. Even IF their current situation doesn't allow them to produce a record then as much as those guys like to sell they'd structure it so they could -- if they could. Instead they try to structure everything to where they can't produce a record.
So your entire argument has unraveled to the single argument that they are scammers because they don't show their trading records. Without watching them or knowing anything about them, you believe that because they don't produce trading records, they must be lying about how good they are. However, if they did show their trading records, you could still say that they faked their trading record, or they could be trading multiple accounts. So, really there is nothing they could do to convince you that they aren't scammers, whether they produce a trading record or not. Anyway, feel free to continue thinking they're scammers, it's your prerogative.
If you ever follow their premium newsletters or trading room, you would quickly find out that they're scammers. They lose, lose, lose and when they win, they all scale out of it very quickly. Nearly every loser is bigger than a winner, because a winner is only 1/3 size of a winner. Hubert once claimed that he could be black balled for telling the stuff that he tells, which is very secret insider information. For only 400 dollars he would reveal everything to you, but you had to promise to share the information with others. Yes, he's a scammer. On the point of their showing a record, please don't make excuses. How easy would it be to record the results from the trading room? How easy would it be for them to establish a private fund to trade their newsletter trades, and show those results? 1 man had John trade a 250K account for him, and he nearly wiped it completely out. Once it ran down to 25K, he pulled the plug. John's excuse? He was busy moving, and the man who gave him the money should have thought that John would be distracted.
I've been following their premium newsletters for the last year. What you're saying is completely untrue. Like I said John just recently had a trade in wheat for over 100 cents, and Hubert just tonight closed a trade out for over 700 YM points. John caught something like 50 ES points on the day of the Flash Crash. I remember this particular incident and yes, I didn't like this either, and for this particular incident I stopped subscribing to him. But like I said, there are times when Hubert comes across as a snakeoil salesman. I do, however, think he's an honest person, and not a scammer, but his sales tactics are hard to swallow. Hubert takes on much more of the "sales" aspect than John and Hubert definitely plays the "bad cop" to John's "good cop" in terms of sales. But they both actively promote their service, and like I said, they shouldn't apologize for it. Really, I'm not trying to defend them, people are free to believe what they want. I don't care that they don't publish their trading records because the trades that they have called out on their premium newsletters are good enough for me. I've been following these pretty closely and they've been right a lot more than they've been wrong. I guess you haven't been around for a while. Their trading room was essentially shutdown because they didn't have consistent moderators and both John and Hubert didn't spend much time there so the trading room fell into disarray until last month when Rob Hoffman started taking over the trading room. Rob Hoffman has a verifiable record of over 1 year with zero losing days in the trading room. My guess is that you won't believe this. I didn't believe it myself but I watched a week's worth of his trading, and in that week he either made no trades or he made winning trades, and from friends who are in the trading room, he hasn't made a losing day in over a month since he started with TTM. But there's no way I would trade his particular style even though he was able to be profitable from it, so I dropped out of the trading room. Both John and Hubert have commented publicly on their premium newsletter that they are waiting for Rob Hoffman to blow up one of these days, because they don't believe someone can trade forever without a single losing day. I have no clue where your sources are from, and frankly I don't believe it, just like you probably don't believe that they have a winning trading record. But again, even if it were true, it doesn't matter to me, because from what I've seen in the premium newsletters, this is what I want. I don't want him to trade my money, I want him to give me market guidance and some ideas for trades.
I would assume that all those who cannot show trades are SCAMS. If they are really good, they would post their long-term records as part of the marketing. Great traders are too busy trading to spend so much time selling, selling selling ....
I have no clue where your sources are from, and frankly I don't believe it, just like you probably don't believe that they have a winning trading record. But again, even if it were true, it doesn't matter to me, because from what I've seen in the premium newsletters, this is what I want. I don't want him to trade my money, I want him to give me market guidance and some ideas for trades. [/B][/QUOTE] Guess where my source is from? The trade the markets forum. That's right. Search around, you'll find. John admits that it's true, but again the blame falls on the guy who invested in him because after all he knew John had a lot going on at the time. I understand that some times they catch good trades, every one does. Their failures are quickly forgotten and not updated on, and they will never shut up about their winners. If you're saying that they don't scale out, then you're just a schill. They always scale out. So even though some wins seem big, they're still usually smaller than their losers, which are very, very frequent. As far as the new guy doing the trading room, I'm surprised you cancelled after he has no losing days. I can't say anything wrong about that, that sounds great, but not what I experienced at all. Couldn't John and Hub just show how much capital gains tax they pay in a year? Or would they have to show how much they get to write off because of their losses.
I'll search around for it, but like I said, in the end I don't really care. Others may. I personally get what I want from the nightly premium videos. I don't recall ever saying they don't scale out. I pointed out in my previous example how he scaled out of the trade a few weeks ago and got stopped out of his second half. My point was that he always holds onto runners. John's methodology is to always scale out, and depending on the trade he'll scale in as well. There's nothing wrong with scaling out of a trade. I just told you of the AAPL options spread the John lost money on last week. He's pretty open about his wins and his losses. He showed a huge CTXS options win a few months ago, and I verified that the trades I saw in the video were actual trades by looking at the ticks. He hasnt mentioned that win since. But his winning trades are much more frequent than his losing trades. And I'm not talking about trades that he doesn't mention and then gives us the results out of the blue, these are trades where he says he is buying something that day, and then we can watch the results over the course of several days. He does a lot more swing trading these days as opposed to daytrading, so it's easier to watch his setups and trades. His style is completely different from John's. Rob Hoffman scalps a few ticks and gets out really quickly. That's not my style and I don't think I can get used to that. My friends who subscribe to the trading room say that if he gets into a trade and it's not working out, he keeps buying (or shorting) more contracts until the trade reverses and his cost basis is such that he can get out after a few ticks. At one point he was long something like 100 contracts and got out once he got a few ticks, and made a few thousand in the trade. That's great he made money but aye carumba, 100 contracts just to make a few ticks?? I don't have the money or the stomach to trade that way. My friends said that in that particular trade at one point he was down $20k at one point but escaped with a few thousand, I think. This is why both John and Hubert think that he will blow up one of these days, but so far so good. Rob Hoffman sounds like a nice guy, and not a schill since his system appears to work, but I honestly can't trade that way. The trading room is extremely lucrative and a source of a lot of money. Apparently they have around 1000 subscribers, with each paying around $300/month. That's $300k/month. If Rob Hoffman gets $150k of this per month, then even if he takes a loss of $30k, it's just a fraction of how much he makes from the actual trading room subscription. But I've seen him trade to make $40 on a trade, and make that his only trade of the day, so he seems pretty honest. I think he really is consistent and careful about the trades he takes so that the integrity of the trading room is in tact.
TTM is a marketing and sales organization that makes a lot of money. I was in the room years ago and learned a few things ("few" being the operative word) during my +- 1year stay. I went back in for a month to see what Rob Hoffman was doing. What he does is 100% inline with the TTM company strategy. It's not trading it is marketing and sales. What I have seen: - Rob talks like a cult leader, he has the wisdom, "you losers are not worthy", "you have not earned the right to trade" BUT "you are part of my family", " I do this to help you" SO "get my videos and follow my teachings or be damned forever". Well if you have done some reading on cult stuff you will know what I'm talking about. At some point it gets really annoying. -100% successful trades is a great sales argument. And I can testify myself that during that month I have only seen winners. There is however a tiny little problem. A problem that would make a risk manager go postal on his particular method. Rob scales in exponentially and takes any small profit he can get. You may guess what this can do to an account, on the other hand your probability for success is 99%. The killer 1% are the ones Hubert and John are referring to. It's basically like a naked options writer who can go years without a loser, until..... - When trading, aside from the risk, the return is also important. Rob keeps talking about his 6 digit returns. Well I'm sure he even has monthly 6 digit returns from the contributions made by his "family" (as mentioned above). But since he has a "huge" trading account I'm afraid his trading returns in % are pretty puny or at least lower than my poor 20% being a "loser" trading a 70% 2:1 basic method. Pointing this out is not appreciated I'm afraid, the cult leader reaction is pretty traditional.
A trader who is profitable will never want to do anything else ever again. You can deal with people and make money as a salesman, or you can trade your strategy and make however much money as you want. A pro trader selling his training services is like Eli Manning charging 20k for teaching a HS football team, it doesn't really happen. Though if I made a website, said I was a pro football player willing to teach you how to be a pro too, but I can't tell you who I play for because I'd get in trouble for training others instead of working on my own skills for the team. I'm just a great guy who wants to teach other people to be pro QB's in the NFL. For the low low price of 20k of course. A real trader will mentor you for free, or not at all IME.
Trading is all about odds. And the odds hugely favor that TTM is just a sales machine. That being said, I really liked John's book. The funny part, not sure if John himself realizes some of the staff in the book is really valuable, not by itself but with combination with other things. If successful trader is short term day trader, then any teaching will only distract, so he will not do it. Liquidity could be an issue for short term traders, so sometimes teaching income can be more that trading. That is the only time when someone successful might, just might, consider teaching, but that will require him to abandon trading, and we all know how fast markets change. Swing or long term successful traders does not have liquidity issue, and would never in the right mind teach, because trading income can easily come close or break 8 figures, and no teaching income can come even close.