During the small time I was in Hoffman's room he went to the traders expo in NYC and then said that he was approached by people who wanted him to trade opm. Another odd thing he said that stuck with me was one morning he said off hand that he would train the ES while he was still able to, someone asked him what he meant and he said his volume was getting to big for this and he would have to trade the big S&P simultaneously---This struck me as absurd. He would say anything to keep a level of separation between himself and his students
If it's accurate as someone has stated that there are 1000 members, $200/member/month x 1000 members = $200,000/month = $2.4 million/year. Sounds pretty lucrative to me. My comments below are limited to trading stock index futures. Most people who claim to be "successful traders" are only marginally so. That is, they've learned enough to stay out of the market most of the time and participate when they recognize a low risk situation using "set ups". This is a beginner's modus and is in fact quite useful. It becomes limiting when the person focuses solely on compounding his trading size rather than increasing the duration of his participation which requires advancing beyond a beginner's understanding of how markets work. This is like the club chessplayer who has been playing for 30 years yet his rating still hovers around 1900--good enough to beat most people but not an expert. He's memorized his openings fairly well, knows the basic endings, and has decent tactical skill. Thus, in familiar positions he's quite effective; in unfamiliar positions, he's lost because he lacks a complete positional understanding of the game. The "trading educators" I've observed fall into this class. Their monitoring displays in their videos are revealing of this fact, regardless of how much "size" they trade. At their marginal skill level, it wouldn't be surprising to see them go through a losing streak of trades given the pressure to perform for an audience. (Who wants to pay to see someone sitting on his hands most of the time?) The truth to them is that "drawdowns" are an inevitable part of trading. It therefore makes perfect sense to maximize their extraction from the large pool of money seeking "trading education." Judging by the various number of players in the industry--psychologists, coaches, trainers, system sellers, etc.--that pool must be very large indeed. Expert traders have little incentive to sell anything. They are very, very rare, however. Almost no one has met one. There are even people who run stock trading prop shops who deny they exist. No doubt, they do not run chat rooms.
The amount of time he claims he was a professional trader. He was still holding a job while trading bk in the mid 2000s (believe as late as 2007). So to me that does not qualify as one being a 'professional' trader.
I agree on the first part. Back in the 90's up until 2005 or so it was easier to take money out of the markets. That's why there were so many prop firms out there. But...the guys who "teach" at these tout firms are the guys who maybe were successful back then, but now can't trade their way out of a paper bag. Perhaps they weren't as good as they thought. I think the big difference between the 90's/early 2000's and now is people who lacked discipline got bailed out a lot more. Now...you actually have to put a lot of time in and work your ass off to make money. The lazy guys who started during the easy times got smoked when it actually got tough to trade. As far as the bots thing? Sure it's tougher now. But trading is trading. So many people these days are blaming the bots and using it as a crutch for their failure. It gets old listening to. Either adapt or get out of the game.
The guy sounds beyond full of shit. Yeah, he trades Russell futures for 3 ticks, I am sure people are knocking down his door to give him money. The guy had a 300k account and his volume in the ES was too big? That's hilarious. Even if he was getting a low day trade margin rate of $500 (which is unlikely) he could do 600 contracts. 600 contracts is not going to effect a thing in the ES. Even funnier is he threatened to go trade the big SP. You can't make this stuff up.
This was like watching a car accident in slow motion- that you could see coming for a year... he scalped for 4-10 ticks in fast markets like CL TF and GC then averaged in with 100 or more when it went against him... then jumped out and called it a "win" .. because he made $ .. well we just saw what the results are- you could take the million or more $'s that he was risking and and put it in something conservative like an annuity or a good muni bond and make the return he was claiming with almost no risk and loss of sanity.. man o man.
I sat in the room for a few months and watched him trade... at first it seems very impressive- then you realize that amount being risked is so high- that you could equal the results he shows with a simple muni bond or annuity- and here is the kicker- the bonds or the annuity have almost no risk- and require zero effort. I assumed he had a couple million sitting in the account- so to produce 200k or so in a year isn't a big deal. He just lost 312k, It will take him a year and a half or so just to get back to even- then another big smack will come. All that with a couple of million of risk capital. Something to think about.
This guy babbles on and on without ever talking about his "impressive drawdown". No mention of the important thing...how much did he lose on Thursday vs how much he normally makes on a winning day. He talks about not having a losing day in 18 months before this "impressive" draw down. Sounds like to me he lost 18 months of profit in one day. He's a snake oil salesman at best. Who the hell describes a draw down as impressive? There is nothing impressive about a draw down that wipes out an account. This video is a joke. This guy has no real strategy other than building positions into losing trades. He probably gets bailed out most of the time, but the one time he doesnt, adios account. I love how he threw int he fact he had some teeth pulled...I'm sure that had a lot to do with him going from trading a few contracts to a 850 lot position in the Russell futures. If you want to blow out your account, this is the guy to learn from.