anyone follow their blog? they claim to know all and see all, but the best idea trades they post in advance seem to fail about 90% of the time.
I haven't looked at it in months. The bald headed guy who runs the place, Mike Bellafiore has one of the worst ego's you'll ever see. He talks about how much smarter he is, how big his trading account is, and rarely admits his mistakes.
yeah, its all about selling his book and filling his chairs. just wondering if anyone else smelled the stink
You might receive more feedback if you re-post in another sub-forum. SMB isn't a retail firm. It is a proprietary trading firm (which also sells trading education stuff). I like the information they offer for free, but I haven't yet felt inclined to buy their paid stuff. They do appear to have some very skilled traders there though.
Funny to see this thread tonight I just finished reading the book and found it to be entertaining. No useful trading info but as a former manager of others I loved relating to dealing with idiot employees. It made me glad I don't day trade equities, it sounds like way to much work. Although I guess if I could be real prop trader and have earnings taxed as regular income it would be worth it. One side note... why would prop firms hiring discretionary traders care about math skills? I would love to send two years of records to a place like Geneva or Gelber but since most mathematical operations are as foreign to me as Chinese seems like it would be pointless. It doesn't seem that hard to find trades that will make at least twice as much as they lose most of the time. Good for Mike B he is living the dream, after all shouldn't trading be a means to an end?
some of the blog postings are clever enough, but all retrospectively. it's not hard to CHERRY pick trades that fit a story after the close. the so called best AM idea's seem to fail more than 50% of the time.
Our best AM Idea for today, which we highlighted in our AM Meeting is to get long RIG as long as it is holding above 60.40. Another perfect example of how bad their POSTED trades are. Markets screaming , and this was a nasty loser.
By their protocols.... and Bella's One Good Trade book... they would only have gotten long IF RIG HELD this morning above 60.40 and also if the tape had HELD bids on the Time and Sales stream and IF there was Size volume on the stock and if RIG then did not move up but broke back down below 60.40 they would usually be out within 3 to 10 cents below their entry using the T&S stream as their key as to when and where to bail... especially if RIG broke below 60.40 with HELD offers on the TS stream... then they would quit RIG Long or even Gone short RIG and/or they would have moved on to MOS where they would have been long today if it HELD above 60.25 with HELD bids on the TS stream, etc.. etc... they are very IF THEN in their trading...
gimme a break. traded above the level for long enough to tempt anyone looking for a long. your analysis is after the fact bs. In fact, it may well have been SMB that kept it at that level as they bought I have no idea how fast they bail, but thats a good way to get chopped up and churn lots of tickets for the house. my point is , the posted trades are nothing like the genius displayed after the market is closed when they share their wisdom.
I see where they got the 60.40 level from, but wouldn't it make a lot more sense to just wait until RIG was holding above 60.50 for a bit considering that was right at the pivot point level as well as Friday's high?