where the hell are the mods?? Seriously this thread is ridiculous. how can gmst consistently accuse mav of being a shill without getting thrown out. Can we lock this thread up already? Cliff notes for those intrested gmst is a whinning baby who can not trade and has blown up multiple times, he has a lot of free time on his hands so he decides to bash the name of a reputable et member and a company that has been nothing but upfront about its program. His evidence? He says so it must be true...
My firm is only experienced guys. No teaching/training new guys. My old firm had a strategy that was a combination of things. Would use a price action/volume strategy as the core. Guys would then use some TA for entry levels, and always pay attention to fundamentals/earnings .....was a combination of whatever worked for each guy.
You calling someone on here a joke? I have seen everything. Seriously dude. You are losing it. If they do a remake of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest you are a lock to play Nicholson's part.
I disagree. If you have an edge with a proven positive expectancy then it does not matter what the account size is as long as your risk management can handle the drawdown. If you are a rookie then why would you want to fund a 100k account to learn on when you can get just as much experience trading a 1 lot with 5k account ? A bigger account just means you can maybe last longer but at the same time you can become just as overleverged as the guy swing 5 lots on 10 k if you get frisky and try to sling a 50 lot on 100k account. Also the traders I have seen with bigger accounts tend to take on more risk and trade reckless because their fat pockets give them a false sense of security and a big ego. This is where I think the combine has more benefit because a rookie can actually work on his edge and trading plan and also get the stats of his performance. If he is trading just a one lot live then just commissions will be around $100 a month on 25 rt so paying $160 is really not to bad. The chance at getting backed is really a lotto ticket in itself but the combine experience can at least build confidence before going live on your own.
I disagree on his attacks on others but as of yet his numbers have not been proven wrong by the program's owner and I don't think you will ever see the real numbers because they verify the truth. But maybe I am wrong.
Maverick, gmst, volente: I appreciate the back and forth dialogue you guys are having (or should I say "banter") regarding their revenue model. Your numbers may or may not be accurate, only the firm and its partners know, however it does make one think critically, and besides, it's mildly entertaining to read, lol! It reminds me when a bunch of us were trading at VCM and had many discussions trying to estimate what they were making by selling seminars. Here's the model in a nutshell: sell education courses for $5k to $12k a pop which covers training and a funded live equities account with low commissions. Set the bar low, and let traders work their way up. Starting buying power was 10k for 100 shares max of stock, and a $30 daily draw. Splits began at 60/40 to 90/10. There was no deposit to fund the account, and a trader did not have to pay back any losses out of pocket. However, traders WERE required to make back their losses through trading in order to take a check, get more bp and allow for broader drawdowns. The model was a hit, since traders paid one lump sum in exchange for training AND funding, with the potential to trade up to a max account size of just over a million, and who wouldn't want to trade the million dollar account with no risk? The sad part is, hardly any traders were making consistent checks, even though the training itself was solid. The parameters were set too tight, and traders were either stuck at the lowest bp levels or only advancing up a few notches before being demoted back if their draws had exceeded the weekly maximums. The owners had many internal disputes, and it wasn't until a lawsuit was filed between the owners when the blinders came off, and traders began to discuss the real numbers. Court documents finally revealed what they had grossed in seminar sales for 2009 alone. I believe the number was around 9 MILLION, not bad for a firm with less than three years in operation. Court records also revealed that once a trader's account went into a draw, it "almost never" came back to positive. So in theory the model worked if traders were positive or as long as new incoming seminar sales could offset operational expenses and the ongoing losses of the traders. The rest of the story is buried in many of these threads, and is now part of history. The red flags should pop up when someone says, "I'll provide the tools and give you an account with no risk, first give me ten grand." If TST began selling 10k seminars promising the world, then it's one thing. But $200 combines, many of which are refundable, c'mon? The easier money is in selling education courses, not in having newbie traders test a simulator for 10 or 20 trading days before giving them a 30k account where you bear all the risk, and only share the rewards IF the trader is profitable, which by the looks of it aren't that many thus far. Seriously, if they started making millions on combines, the free market system would take note, and there would be a dozen firms lined up at the next Trader's Expo in NY making similar offers.
Nice to see a fair assessment without all the emotion. Huge amount of quibbling because of $200 and when Patak offers a freebie out come the excuses why the freebie is not worth it. I guess the reason why some folks complain is they enjoy it. Like the 'nobody can make money trading' brigade, and their counterparts the 'there's only 1 way to make money trading' cohort, some things never change.