This year's NYC Expo appears to be better than the last couple of years. I spent the day there yesterday (one day is enough for me as a rule) and it was fun. For one, there were more people in attendance - the organizer mentioned over 3,500 registered - and the place was really packed. To be fair, the space (Hilton at Midtown) is smaller than the last few years, but still, imo, many more attended than last year. The keynotes were excellent, especially Todd Gordon, Jon Nazarian and Tom Sosnoff. However, on the minus side, not too many vendors this time - they've got to get more firms participating if they want the event to really turn the downward spiral of the last few years. Still, the booths were well staffed and my questions were clearly answered. It appears that the character of the show is turning towards education, as opposed to new trading product demonstration, which may be a good sign. Another observation: the average age of participants seems to be dropping, which is also positive, new blood is coming in. As always, I enjoyed the visit, my 20th, let's hope next year's is even better.
The problem for vendors is that exhibiting at a physical event like The Traders Expo is very expensive compared to the new way of doing business online. It made more sense 15 - 20 years ago, when websites, collaboration tools and internet speeds weren't that great. But these days, for what it cost a vendor to fly to NYC, set up a booth, staff it, and pay travel expenses for the staff, that same vendor could sponsor a forum here on ET all year long for the same amount of money and reach way more people than they ever could on those few days at an expo.
Yes, Baron, I totally agree, but this is the math in our head speaking. On the emotional, sort of, side, I like making one-on-one contact with the likes of Nazarian and Sosnoff, although I already know their offerings, because it helps me appreciate what they know even more. Second, there were a couple of new products there I really liked, and I plan to try them out for a few days, perhaps even subscribe to their services, which means that this money may be well spent. Third, it was very surprising for me, long term Tradestation user, not to see them there. What's going on, are they going out of business? What I mean is that there's a defensive part to this: go to the shows and spend some $$ or else.
I went to the EXPO at the Marriott Marquis about 13 years ago. Had TS at the time and went to their booth to ask a technical question of the rep there. He said there would be a TS workshop shortly, ask my question there and went back pitching to new prospects. I guess they didn't pay commission on customer service.....went to Ninja/Mirus/Dorman shortly after and have stayed.
Been to a lot of those at the Marquis.. nice time to spend 2-3 hours, for trading is inherently a very lonely profession. But don't go looking for edges....the edge is in your head not at the expo- patience, emotional maturation , a good python book to learn NLP and ML, serendipity, and above all-persistence.
Went there this afternoon. It is former shell of itself, very small. Few Forex brokers, some educational and quite number of analytical tools. Peter Najarian was there signing things. Have not been there for like 5 years. Used to love going there to meet NinjaTrader team in person, but I guess based on the reasons Baron posted they not coming anymore.
Another reason why The Traders Expo has declined so much is because the organizers are very reluctant to spend any money online to advertise the show. For years, we were what they call a "Media Partner", which meant that they wouldn't actually pay us to advertise their show, but instead they wanted us to advertise the Traders Expo on our site and also via email to our group at no cost to them, and in return the Traders Expo would put our company name and logo in the conference brochure that all attendees get and they would also put our logo on their website. The problem was that I was emailing 50,000 people about their event and running hundreds of thousands of ad impressions on this site, but only getting exposure to a few thousand people at best from their side, and that's if you can even consider a logo in a brochure as legit exposure. So the marketing swap between us and their other media partners was way out of balance and I indicated that over time but it fell on deaf ears.
You have to go back one step back and ask why this is the case. This is only my opinion. First, everything is available online whether free or paid, so people do not need to travel. Second, the demographics of the attendees have changed drastically: These are people that are either fascinated with trading or just want to have info, yet do not trade or have the means to trade. They think that the vendors are them to teach them when in fact, they are there to grab them as customers. The vendors fill the pinch of time, effort and the whole expensive setup, and the only thing they can show for their efforts are all the mouse pads they give away. While the bigger guys have to brand their name, they will not do it for the same price as in previous years. So I bet they want to pay less, and the organizers want to spend less. I attend the FIA Chicago, precisely because I am a Futures Broker, but it gives me the scope of technology available for execution, and occasionally I meet customers there.