Normally, your comments are right on, but this is a rather naive thing to say, Brandon The one thing every potential customer wants to know is, "yes, but does it WORK???" The ONE major problem with signal services/rooms/etc. is that over 95% of them don't work. I have reviewed well over 1500 systems of all types over the last 20 years, and perhaps 1% of them were interesting. They give lengthy (often phony) testimonials, track records that are often just backtests, cherrypicked example-track records, blaring "can't miss" advertising, track records that are actually maximum favorable excursion trade results, and dozens of other tricks to lure in the masses. Anyone with experience with several of these services, would never again touch a service unless it was independently verified. Services without audited results can be dismissed as suspect.
If you go out and start a website, run it for 5 1/2 years like I did and turn profits of over $2,000,000 from a two person operation, then please get back to me. The honest truth of the matter is though that an audited track record does you no good at all. You will get just as many people with one as with out it. The people who are critical remain critical if you have it or dont have it. The people who are going to sign up will sign up either way. This is not something I say that is based upon theory, its based upon having been there and done that. Also the track records are easily manipulated anyhow. For example the courts proved that Wade Cook maintained dozens and dozens of accounts. He would show the ones that where profitable, but overall his tax returns showed large market losses nearly every year. An audited record is critical if you want to manage money, its just an added pain in the ass if all you want to do is run a site and make calls. Brandon
Also, understand that I myself will not listen to anyone about the market. I don't care who you are and what type of qualifications you have. This is actually what it takes it make it as a trader. Most people signing up for a chatroom can fall into a group of people who are not ever going to make it. The vast majority of them want someone to do all the work for them, to tell them what to buy and what to sell and when. If you could tell them when to eat and shit I swear that some of them would take you up on that as well. There are exceptions, which are the people that kept me motivated. Guys like Bo Yoder or Ivica Jurasic are great examples of people who came into my room as newbie struggling traders in 98/99ish. Howerver, neither of them was interested in buy here sell now. Of course they wanted to see in action what I was teaching, and the buy now sell now augmented that, however what they most wanted to do was learn something from me that they could then apply to a methodology that worked for them, and then go on their own and trade. Others have similar goals but will stay in the room to have extra eyes scanning for them and thats great as well. I also have a number of guys who's names would not be known who came in as losing/struggling traders and wanted KNOWLEDGE, and the majority of them are still doing great, most as independant traders, but some at prop shops and others are RIA's, CPO/CTAs and Money Managers. They were the very rare birds though. If you open a room you will find that 70% to 80% of the people are clueless and will stay that way forever. You'll also find that honesty, while always the best policy and the only way I can sleep at night, definatly holds you back in terms of the number of people you get. If you go out and make outragous, unprovable claims you will get a ton of people to your site. Now, the trick then is to convert them and then keep them, which I don't know how those type of sites managed to do that, but again it just goes to show the level of hope and niaveness in the average person I guess. Now with that said, I do believe there is still a great market out there for honest educators. However, I just don't think that an audit or an account on collective or marketocracy etc will really prove anything. Just as an example, I maintain 9 accounts on marketocracy to test some ideas I come up with on paper before I test them with small amounts of my own cash and then move on from there. I'm sure that if I did decide I wanted to run a chatroom again I could go out there and be completely honest and repeat my prior success, but I wouldnt need an audited track record to do it. The people who are soured on services probably don't know the advantage they have anyway.
What a complete waste of time and highly dubious why dont you learn how to trade instead of trolling all these sites what is in it for you to spend so much time doing this?
Once again a potentially interesting thread gets hijacked and taken to large dgree off topic. Lets just see if the OP does anything with some of the suggestions.
Brandonf, TraderZones is correct. You seem to have put on the vendor's cap instead of the prospect's. The OP wants to know what traders want. Your posts are interesting, however, from an ex-vendor's point of view on the business of vending.
I'll lay odds that any suggestion of providing realtime trading calls with a web-based audit service will never happen. Don't forget the parent company is a futures broker who once pushed many of their customers to a third party vendor (Tsunami Trading) who was incompetent at best and a fraud at worst. Customers not only paid $5K for snake oil, but then watched in horror as their accounts evaporated from taking the system's trades as called in the room by the Tsunami guru. TradeMaven isn't going to get anywhere near the trade calling business again regardless of the upside.
the topic is "What Do You Want In A Trading Room" Someone brought up they wanted the returns audited Brandon said this was unnecessary I disagreed, as many people on this forum go after spammers or people trying to sell services, asking where their audited records, broker statements, etc. was to back up their claims. You said something stupid about that being knowledgeable about how vendors operate was basically a waste of time. Then the audited track record discussion continued. You then said something else stupid about a thread being hijacked, when it was on target about "What do you want in a trading room." Nobody hijacked anything, except for your several vain interruptions. That won't happen anymore, since you quickly went from an average poster who sometimes had something interesting to say, to a nuisance, in my eyes. So I will put you on ignore. Try to keep up.