Chat room reviews

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Response to wwatson1 on Alfa

Hey man, my healthy dose of skepticism for any of these guys is published here on record so you can leave me out of any hype "team" comments.

>Keep you slightly in the dark so you arn't quite
>sure when you should be getting out of a stock
>that is tanking and then say afterwards you
>should have been out around here.

Your above comment shows that you certainly are familiar with the average chat room, but it also shows that you don't know a darn thing about the way the calls are made at Alfa. They tell you EXACTLY when to enter and exit and so far from experience, their published track record matches up with their calls.

>People who actualy trade for a living know
>how these rooms work.

Well, I guess that leaves you out of the "trade for a living" category, cause your description doesn't fit with how this one works.

The question remains as to whether they will continue to make me money. I remain the skeptic.

JB
 
I've looked at many performance records of chatrooms, and most of them seem to be deficient in math when calculating their returns. An example that's very common:

10/15/2001-10/16/2001 AMAT $10,000 invested 5% profit
10/15/2001-10/16/2001 AMCC $10,000 invested 10% profit

For a total percentage return of %15 for those two days (5%+10%). The only problem is you have $20,000 invested, not $10,000, so the correct % return is 7.5% (AMAT =$500 profit + AMCC =$1,000 profit or $1,500 profit on $20,000= 7.5% return). This is half the return they publish. It's even worse when they have 3 or more positions at the same time. The daytrading rooms I suspect have the same problem with overlapping trades.

Here's a quick example I found with a Google search. Notice how they added up the column to get the % return, disregarding the amount invested in each position when trades were made over the same time period: I could find ten others if I had the time.
http://www.swingplays.com/Perf/Jun_01.htm
 
That is to say, if the price of a stock goes from $50 to $55, and a long trade nets you $5, they call it a 10% gain. And then in a short trade, if the price of a stock drops from $70 to $63, they call it another 10% gain. They then say it's a 20% increase, but increase of what?

Are these trades concurrent or consecutive? If they're concurrent then they should probably use an average of the two numbers. If they're consecutive then what is your problem with their numbers? If you have an account with $5000 and you buy 100 shares of $50 stock, you sell it at $55, you now have $5500. That is 10% increase.

You also seem to be saying that they don't compound returns, and don't give results that could only be obtained using margin.

voodoo

ps. I have no use for commercial chatrooms, this message is not an endorsement :)
 
Originally posted by vikana
Over the last year the site as degenerated a bit into a promo for additional pay services.
www.tradingmarkets.com
More...

I agree with Vikana's assessment of TradingMarkets.com. To make matters worse for them, their sales people need some help with their sales technique. Received a call from one of their sales guys this week who could really use a lesson on the tactful soft sell.

On the brighter side, I think they that they have hit bottom and the content has just started to improve a little with the more specialized daily commentary.

Still not as good as when they had Marder, Kuhn, Fleckenstein and Cooper writing commentary, in my opinion.

-- Punter
 
Originally posted by voodoo_invest


Are these trades concurrent or consecutive? If they're concurrent then they should probably use an average of the two numbers. If they're consecutive then what is your problem with their numbers? If you have an account with $5000 and you buy 100 shares of $50 stock, you sell it at $55, you now have $5500. That is 10% increase.

More...


Alfatrading's posted trades are a mix of sequential and concurrent trades.

Their posted return figures is misleading. It would never meet the AIMR standards of reporting (see www.aimr.org).

Furthermore, their total count of trades on their home pages doesn't match the number listed in the trade log. Also they counted zero return trades as being winners: I consider them losers are you paid commissions for the trades.

Here are the statistics for alfatrading, with returns given as average daily returns as some trades were held longer than others:

Avg Daily Return 1.10%
Std Deviation 3.96%
Reward to Risk 3.61

Num Trades 267
Num Winners 190
Num Losers 77

Now if you could average 1.1% a day, and compound your gains over 365 days, that's a 5281% return. Of course as your account grows you'll get more slippage in your fills so the returns will be less.

Also note the 3.61 reward to risk ratio: it's a little on the high side. There's a significant non-zero probability that you can lose a large chunk of your returns if you get a string of losing trades.

-- Punter
 
Punter,

They are the same...owned by the same person!

Source: Network Solutions

----------------------------------------

wwatson,

NoProblem

:cool:




....as always,


GoodInvesting, Rocky
 
first of all, why would they have two web sites with the same stuff? i think ive noticed it with swingtrade.net or something fellows. maybe it's an innocent marketing practice, maybe not. Also if you get a daily return of blabla% per day, keep in mind there's only (260-holidays) trading days in 1 year, not 365.
 
<i>why would they have two web sites with the same stuff? i think ive noticed it with swingtrade.net or something fellows. </i>

Because Im a total fraud and want to rip off more innocent people, and I figured that having two sites is better than one. My plan is to run the biggest P&D joint ever, accumulating tens of thousands of shares of thin stocks such as GE, JNPR, FNM, QQQ, SPY, SMH, MDY DIA etc, and after I am positioned then I can use TWO (not just one, but TWO baby, TWO!!!!!!) sites and really manipulate them.
 
Ok maybe my last reply is not the real reason :D , but its more fun than the real one.

For the last several years swingtrader.net has been affiliated with at various times two other sties (Mtrader and teachmetotrade) and has always been a commercial site. Since at this time neither of these three apply now we figured it might be best to get another site. TFMS was originally purchased maybe a year ago because it is the title of Toni's and my upcoming book. With in the next few months we will be taking swingtrader.net offline and running things from TFMS. The other reason is simply that swingtrader.net implies one style, and its frankly a style that we dont use much in the way that most traders think of it. Anyway, we still have a number of things to work out related to our departure from TMTT, and as soon as its sorted out, the relevent conent from that site will be put on TFMS and swingtrader will likely be taken down.

Brandon
 
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