I should also add that one of my fellow TradeStation users bought VantagePoint when she first started trading a number of years back - she consistently lost money trying to trade the VP output. So MarketTechnologies put her in touch with one of their VP specialist IB brokerages who traded the VP output for her in exchange for a commission. I'll quote her directly from the TradeStation forum: "Trying to trend trade on the crossovers was a terrible losing proposition -- and I was paying a special VP broker (a lot!)to assist me in doing it correctly. But the market was choppy and I got relieved of my entire first tradeing account (as well as the $5000 for Vantage Point)!" My point being that if a broker recommended by MarketTechnologies who *specializes* in trading with VantagePoint can wipe someones entire account out, how can you expect to do any better? The biggest recommendation anyone can make for advocating any trading approach is whether they actually trade it themselves - and make money with it. In my opinion, if MarketTechnologies were actually trading their system rather than just selling it, I doubt that they would have made it into the 50 fastest growing Florida companies list!?! Indeed, I doubt they would be around at all. I'm sorry if my posts are negative towards MarketTechnologies, but I sincerely think their product sucks and that they must know this and are (IMO) knowingly preying on every trader who is looking for an edge to improve their market trading - which is basically most of us (even a succesful trader wants to do better!). They suckered me those few years back, the blurb on their website can seem very convincing! If you want to throw your money away, then take your trading dollars and lose it on the markets - the experience you will learn from actually trading is worth vastly more than buying Vantagepoint and losing still more in the markets trying to work their system, with no real benefit to you other than learning that you'd have been better off if you hadnt bought VP. Just my 2c worth anyway.
I wish I had read your posts (especially second one) three years ago. I couldn't have said it better myself. My disks are gathering dust somewhere & I'm willing to get rid of them for 20% of advertised prices (i.e 80% discount).
Well, they periodically send me the lastest version whilst trying to pitch me to buy more modules, so I have the CD as well as those awful floppy disks gathering dust in my garage - the newest version is absolutely no different to the version I bought several years ago, it just has some new security features to ensure it will only work on the registered owners computer. Great - I cant even sell my copy, were anyone still willing to buy it after my glowing appraisal of this product! Oh - and you can now use VantagePoint to lose money in 43 different commodit futures markets too, rather than just 15 or so when I first purchased this. They obviously are trying ensure they can be all things to all futures traders arent they...
I have no idea what this Vantage s/w is or does, but a couple of posters said it was basically a moving average crossover system. This type of system is a viable if not ideal methodology, but there are many caveats. Typically they will have only 30-35% winners, but a few of those winners can be huge. It is imperative to hang on to those few for as long as possible. You can easily have a 50% drawdown using conservative money management. These systems are best traded across a diversified portfolio of commodities, since that increases the chances of catching a big winner. I would not want to use this type of system on the stock indexes or individual stocks, although certainly if you happened to pick the right stocks you could shoot the lights out. Typically the stock indexes back and fill too much for this type of system to work. A MA crossover system requires a big account to work properly, as you have to have pretty wide stops, or ideally no stops at all, and trade multiple markets.
Yeah - but the whole thing about Vantagepoint is that it is claims to be market forecasting through intermarket analysis - their website says this - "VantagePoint Intermarket Analysis Software, created by world-renowned trading software pioneer Louis Mendelsohn, forecasts 43 futures and commodity markets with up to 80% accuracy. VantagePoint combines intermarket analysis and predicted moving averages to generate consistently accurate trend forecasts that give you the confidence to take trades at the right time and keep you from missing out on great trading opportunities." Check their website at profittaker.com, but take all their claims with a huuuge pinch of salt. If they claimed to be just an MA crossover system, which is basically what it is, then thats fine - I wouldnt have anything bad to say about them, but I also would not have wasted several thousand dollars on their useless software. The numbers you quote for MA crossover statistics sound about right by the way - nothing like 80% accurate as far as I could tell.
I reckon a pure MA crossover system will produce better results than VP. VP muddies the waters by using all these different numbers & weightings which are supposed to predict the direction of the market. So even though it is a crossover system, it is sold as something else - kind of like using a hammer to paint a wall like!! AVOID!!
I agree with SProbability. There is no way to predict the future. There is no holy grail. However much we would all like this to be true, it isnt. The sooner people accept this and learn the most reliable way to trade is to use the only indicator that has no lag - price itself, the sooner they will be better, and richer traders. I have wasted countless tens of thousands of dollars over the years in pursuit of strategies, indicators, software and techniques that would give me an 'edge' - all of which taught me that you actually dont need any of this crap. Much of it is cynically peddled to us ever hopeful traders at inflated prices just to cater for this desire to find the elusive holy grail of trading - this is my opinion of what MarketTechnologies are doing - VantagePoint itself looks like it was knocked together in a few days using visual basic - and yet they have been selling it for many thousands of dollars for years! I now scalp the ES in the first two hours of the day using only a few simple indicators on a 1 minute chart and a 233 tick chart. I take my two points and go back to bed. Trust me - dont buy this software, or indeed any software that is accompanied by claims that sound too good to be true. I know from bitter experience that if it sounds too good to be true, it isnt true.
sorry for the slow reply, I've been away for the christmas break and am going away snowboarding now for the new year. I will reply in more detail about my trading techniques and the guy who taught me when I return from my holidays around 11th January.