This comes from the original post: https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...ading-the-open-market-with-2m-candles.324677/ I'm trying to separate this to avoid opinions, and to see if we can have real proofs, because how I've said there, Oliver Velez is using a lot of influencers to promote the course, and people will believe more in their words than some anonymous comment. ----------------------------------------------- [IF YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT OLIVER VELEZ] He is promoting a trading course, valued more than $1000. In that course he will teach you (even if you know nothing about the market) how to be profitable trading during open market (and only the first hour). His strategy is very simple (but not "easy" in his words), just scan some markets, use 2m candles, wait the first one, and long/short the best opportunity (using some moving averages and size of the candles). After the course you will train the strategy with virtual money, during months, if you are profitable, then he will give you a reall account with $50K of "buying power", he will receive 50% of the earnings, so he is claiming you are 0 risk, because you are trading with his money, and you will use an expensive professional software etc. He shows many live videos where he is earning thousands in just half hour. And many youtubers/instagrammers/bloggers are doing the same. ----------------------------------------------- [THE BEST PROOF] I think the best proof is to backtest his strategy, I did it, and it has some profit, but no even close to the profit he is showing (which is 2 or 3% per month). But is not so easy to backtest 2m candles (I need a lot of tick data and is not free). And also Oliver and their promoters says is not possible to backtest, because it depends too much on the "intuition". [HOW DOES THE SCAM?] The problem is: If he is giving you the $50K and he and his followers and influencers are showing live trading with good profit. Where is the scam? I cannot prove this (that's the main purpose of this post) but I think this is how it works: 1. You pay $1000 for the course 2. You start trading with the $50K, but in virtual money (3 or 6 months minimum) 3. If you are profitable ($1000 in profit every month in average, and never loss more than $300 per day and $600 a week, and you made more than 200 trades) then you get access to the real account (with real $50K). 4. He will receive 50% of your earnings (since is "his" money) 5. I think if you start to loose he can close your trading account or you will be back to the virtual money. The SCAM could be on the $50K, he is never giving you real $50K from his money, he is just using the $1000 you paid for the course with 50X leverage. So it's YOUR money, so he is never putting at risk his money, and this is how he is making money: - If you don't pass the virtual phase, then he earns $1000 from the course (and you will feel is your fault, because you are not a good trader, not that his strategy is just random) - If you have access to the real account, then he is using your $1000 to give you $50K in buying power, and he is earning 50% of all your earnings doing nothing and risking nothing. - If you loose "too much" in real account, he will close it before he needs to start to pay your loses So it does not matter what he is teaching, he can teach you that after every green bar must be another green bar, because some times it's true, when it's true, he makes 50% of that profit, and when it's false it's your $1000 what is in risk, not his $50K. [INDIRECT/LOGICAL PROOFS] - He is talking all the time about "elephant bars" (institutional movements: big candles with big volume), but he is also saying he has thousands of traders around the world, if all of them are trading with $50K and in 2m candles, then "he is the elephant!", just some maths: EBAY: market price: $35, volume in 2m candles (during open market): 7K = $245K So with only 10 traders moving $25K (he teaches to open positions with $25K and then use the other $25K to add extra positions) you have the full 2 minutes candle! - If he really gives $50K to thousands of traders, then he should have near $300M, from his videos he does not look like a guy with $300M but also I couldn't find any information of him in Forbes or any proof of this wealthy. - If he is so good trading, why is he giving his secret to everybody? and if he has the $50K why is he giving that money to you instead of trading with that money himself? He says because he can't see all the markets at the same time, so he needs "help" that's why he is training people. - If his reason to train people is to get help: Why is not training people in private, people with knowledge, not people who knows nothing about the market like now? Or why is not offering the course for free? in that way he will get much more help! (he will filter the good traders with the simulator first anyway) Or why he does not invest in a really good bot? his strategy is not so hard, could be automated somehow (he says is not possible, only human intuition can make it profitable). - The limit for your loses is $300 per day and $600 per week. Why if you have $50K he allows you only 0.5% of risk? this is really low and for $50K, but it fits perfectly with your $1000 (x50 leverage), he will allow you to loose only $1000 because that's the real money behind the scenes (not $50K) and even more, it's your $1000! (value of his course) This is my analysis, I hope it helps to someone to open their eyes, but would be nice if someone can provide more information or real proofs about Oliver Velez scam.
Here are some testimonials: http://investimonials.com/Websites/reviews-ifundtraders.aspx Not sure if we can consider them as a proof, but it shoud add an extra warning.
Is not possible to edit my first post? I want to add more info and some corrections: - There are different courses with different prices, but normally is more than $1000: http://www.ifundtraders.com/program_selfstart.php - One extra earning for him is the fee you must pay every month for his platform: $125/month, I'm not sure if this must be paid during the training phase too (with the simulator, not real money) - Oliver Velez was selling courses at least since 2008, and he changed the company name multiple times! (HLV Trading, Velez Capital Management, Team Trading LLC) There are a lot of people saying they lost all their money when those companies closed (Oliver is saying this was due his partner, not his fault, and that's why he created a new company alone later) - If you go to http://www.olivervelez.com/ beside the unprofessional webdesign and that many links are not working (like: http://www.oliverveleztestimonials.com/) there are things like: "Ranked #1... Again! WINNER International Trader of The Year 2009" but is not explained who is giving this neither any proof of that Also is saying his profit in 2009 was: MNKD (up 918%), SLV (up 290%), NVDA (up 174%), JDSU (up 205%), PACR (up 201%), DGP (up 115%). Despite the ridiulous 918% per year profit, if he can make 100% per year, since 2009, and he started with only $1M at that moment (nothing at all if he has thousand of traders with $50K): then after 10 years he should have more than $1B, and in 5 years will be on the top10 tichest people of the world... but surprisingly you cannot find any info about him in Forbes.
Listen, you should NOT deal with him. I say this because I see you will be disappointed. Your expectations are wack, imho. You are looking for certainty in a business which has none! Search for "Turtle traders" and see why knowing one's methodology is not enough. If you think you can learn to trade for $1000 you are delusional. That is just to give you a starting point with some structure. The rest is hard work and spending MORE on education, guidance, and practice. In my opinion, the only reason he is offering the BOSS program is because everyone else is selling "get rich trading just 15 minutes a day" dream. He has good pulse on the industry and is giving people what they want. Why are you interested in the BOSS program rather than his other offerings? If you wanted to be a boxer and you had a chance to get some boxing lessons from Mike Tyson, would you expect to become a boxing champion? Would it be worth to you at all if you are a featherweight? Is being great boxer makes you great coach? Was he good because his apponents were hand picked? Were the matches fixed? Would you care that he was in jail? I would say - hey I watched a couple of his fights and this guy can definitely box! I don't know if I have the speed, or the power, or the chin, or the courage, or the stamina, but I can definitely learn something from this guy! Please note that my comments are not really about Oliver, it's about trading teachers/services in general.
That's not the point, I just hate scams, and I feel we should fight against that. Albert Einstein said once: "The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it." and I completely agree with him. I just want to offer some help to the people searching information about Oliver Velez.
I agree ... I hate scams and love transparency. We should fight scams and help others ... that's partially why we are on ET(I hope). Very hard to figure out though who is who online. However, I don't understand what you mean by "Is Oliver Velez a scam?" Is he personally a con artist? I don't know and I don't care. Does he trade live and you can replicate his trades on a sim/replay? Check. Are the money required to take his courses specified upfront? Check. You want proof that he is the best trader ever and will make you rich beyond your imagination - not going to happen. You want guarantee that his method has an edge and can be replicated by anyone with $1000 - not possible. What will prove to you it's not a scam? You want testimonials of anonymous people with possibly hidden agendas? If you expect to trade the open profitably and consistently after one or two day course, it's simply unrealistic expectations. If you expect to make same amount of money on your $50K account as he does on his multi-million(I assume) account, it's simply unrealistic expectations. I have not taken his course, but looking at his videos, my advise would be - unless you are already trading a similar style (fading/market making), do not take BOSS course. Most likely, you will not be able to trade like that after the course. His "regular" teachings (search Prestine content) I think are more applicable to most and easier to adapt to self. Sorry, somehow this topic got to me. The guy is providing loads of free high quality (imho) content and so many people just try to dig up old dirt on him which proves nothing.
The problem here is the "lie", and also hiding the truth (more if you are paying for a course, so you want to learn). These are some lies from Oliver (at least from my analysis): - He says he has a high profitable strategy, trading only 30min per day on 2 minutes candles and following simple steps you can learn in just a couple of hours (proof: my backtesting is not giving their % and his results is not compatible with that, if he can win 100% he should be the richest man in the worl already) - He says is giving you $50K, but this is actually using your $1000K with leverage 50 (proof: to give $50K to all his traders he will need like $500M, and if only a small part of those traders are opening $50K positions in 2m candles then all his "follow the elephant" strategies become nosense since he will be the elephant) Why is a scam? because to me this is the same scam used a long time ago, where people selling signals were calling to 100 random persons, 50 of them they said "apple will go up" and 50 "go down", if it goes up, they call again to the 50 winners telling them "I told you", and repeat the process with 25 and 25, after that they get 25 people believing the lie that they can give them good signals, and then will buy the signals. Why is similar to that? Because Oliver does not need to teach any valid strategy, he could say MACD is 90% profitable, he just need to show you 10 trades where 9 of them MACD worked, and you start to believe (this is what he is doing showing his profitable trades). Then he says is giving you $50K (again this is not true), but you need to use his software, and give him 50% of earnings. So to Oliver is not important if you loose or you win, he knows this will be random (like the phone calls from the signals scam), because his strategy does not work, some people will win and some people will loose. When people win, he wins 50%, and when people looses he looses 0% because is using the money paid for the course, not his own $50K how he is saying. So his work is to sell the lie that he has a great strategy and he will give you $50K (same lie from the phone scam: "I will give you good signals and you will pay me 50% if you win"). And is "attacking" people from 3rd world right now, because the people there are more susceptible to these things.
This is hilarious ... You did not buy his course, but you were able to back test his discretionary strategy. Would you be so kind to post the rules of his strategy, the symbols, periods tested, and source of intra-day data? If you take one of the days he traded live and run against your back test, do you get same result? If not, why not?