A friend of mine has bought the Trend Reflection (www.trendreflection.com) Wealth Management Pro, commodities trading system for $10,000. He opened an account with Tom Reavis at Rosenthal Collins to trade this mechanical system for him. He started with the recommended $95,000. The program claims a 100% annual return on your money. After only 6 weeks and many trades, his account is down $25,000 plus the $10,000 he paid to get in. Total -$35,000. He has talked to the CEO of Trend Reflection (Bob Silver) who assured him the program was just in a temporary drawdown and people who bought in earlier in the year were still positive. He also spoke to Tom Reavis, his broker, who agreed this was a big drawdown and suggested that it was a great time to add more money to the program. Has anyone else had any experience with or have any knowledge about Trend Reflection? Any feedback or recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Will
Oh dear. I would not trust my money to a mechanical system again. I have been through 3 of them with the same result, a big loss. I have no experience with this particular vendor, but I would say it does not work if I lost that much. Please tell him not to put more money in it.
If they are just black boxes, then it's hard to trust them. But if you know the rules and they are simple enough, then you should not have a problem trusting the system. Drawdowns in mechanical systems is a part of a game. You cannot avoid them and stopping just because of that is sure to lose you money.
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7441&highlight=Trend+Reflection Especially this portion: http://www.cftc.gov/opa/enf01/opa4544-01.htm
My post from the earlier thread (which omits my opinion of Greg Gramalegui, the developer, which is unprintable) : J-Trade Member Registered: Jun 2001 Posts: 47 08-02-02 05:02 PM I bought Trend Reflection some years back, had both of the two portfolios traded by one of their 'authorised' brokers, ie. according to their advertised formulas. Guess what ? After 3 years, it had made zilch, zero, de nada (up, down & around). More fool me. Don't make the same mistake. Learn how to trade yourself.
Will, This is why most systems users fail. They typically stop trading the system at the worst possible time. But before I continued I'd want to make sure the system has a sound record, what the typical drawdown has been and whether or not I could trust the broker and developer, who seem to be making pretty amazing assurances. I really doubt they'd be prepared to put them on paper. A good test might be to ask the broker to see the account runs for the supposedly profitable customers. I know FuturesTruth has taken some criticism, but I'd want to get their report on it.
I bought the Peak system from Trend Reflections and had Tom Reavis as my broker to do the trades. Its a total scam. I have the performance documented. My account traded it for almost 2 years and was down almost 90%!!! All along, Tom was telling me it was the best time to put more money up. I didn't. When I bought in, it was called the Peak 9. When that stopped working, they changed it to a Peak something else and just stopped advertising for the Peak 9. Don't be fooled. And I did give it enough time to give the system a chance to make back the drawdown.
My thoughts exactly, here is the last 5 month results of some simple system of mine for ES trading (in ES pts per contract): 70.75, 71, -63.5, 75, 73. If you started out in September, you were bound to be very dissapointed only to make it up in the following two months.
that are too complex. If you cannot test a system yourself using just price bars and nothing else (that is by hand, as I can do with all my systems) then don't buy it. Simple systems can be good enough for most people.
Why does peak performance post such great numbers? Is the site just flat out lying or is their another reason? If they are just lying, has anyone ever concacted them on a legal basis?