Chat Rooms - Trading oriented...
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Kirk, yes, I was referring to "Kent" Calhoun, of KCI. I'm sorry I didn't realize there was another "Calhoun" with such similar first name. If I could offer "Ken Calhoun" any advice I recommend he legally change his name!!
I will give Kent Calhoun one thing- he is knowledgeable about the markets (which doesn't mean he can show you how to make money) and comes across very convincing in his seminars and advertising materials. And he is very good at salesmanship. And finally, he is very, very good at producing statistically very attractive, unoptimized trading materials with very attractive statistical properties that would pass most due diligence. You put these three qualities together and you have someone who can make a killing running full page ads in the various trading magazines (that alone should raise a red flag!) for years and making six figures per seminar + add-on services.
There are many stories regarding Kent Calhoun and clients who have lost lots of money (in six figures) trading his system and also using his managed services through his personal broker & CTA, Michael Sheaves. Sheaves raved about Calhoun for years (Sheaves claimed he trained under Calhoun for 4 years) until he started losing all of his clients money. Sheaves than ran into trouble with the CFTC http://www.cftc.gov/opa/enf01/opa4573-01.htm and parted company with Calhoun bitterly. It was interesting that for awhile Sheaves was willing to sell the fully disclosed method he was using for $10k, and at the same time would manage money for 2% management fee & 20% profit incentive. Sheaves and Calhoun claimed that the average trader using the system would make $30k on a $50k account. Why fully disclosed a system if you can get clients lined up to manage their money at 20% profit incentive? No risk man! Maybe because it's all BS.
Not to mention the long and drawn out battle between Kent Calhoun and John Hill of Futures Truth. First friends, then business partners, now bitter enemies. You can find archives & archives of their public war on Usenet and many other publications such as Commodity Traders Club News. I won't even go into it here. They each call each other pathological liars & scammers. I would tend to believe John Hill, with well established credibility & registered CTA (Calhoun withdrew his CTA registration- rumor has it so that he would avoid regulation scrutiny).
Calhoun also had a huge falling out with Russell Sands. Something about Kent saying "Russell Sands has incorrect assumptions about the basic nature of technical analysis" and Sands saying Calhoun was a liar and a scammer.
There was also a software developer hired by KCI to market his system. Once the software developer realized Calhoun was scamming everyone, he released the 5VBTP code publicly. Kent slammed the code and insisted that the code was full of bugs and did not accurately reflect the 5VBTP method. The software developer verified that the code that was leaked was the same source being sold by KCI. But where was this revelation when KCI was making a ton of money selling software all this time? There were tons of bootleg copies of this software floating around at the time. If it was making people rich you think you'd hear more about it by now.
Kent ran an ad for awhile saying "do you know CFTC verified 92% KCI traders profitable"? Which was one of the reasons the CFTC filed suit against him. I tried to verify his mechanical system but could not even get the numbers profitable, let alone anywhere close to his claims.
There are many other incidents that I don't recall. This is just what I remember off the top of my head.
I will give Kent Calhoun one thing- he is knowledgeable about the markets (which doesn't mean he can show you how to make money) and comes across very convincing in his seminars and advertising materials. And he is very good at salesmanship. And finally, he is very, very good at producing statistically very attractive, unoptimized trading materials with very attractive statistical properties that would pass most due diligence. You put these three qualities together and you have someone who can make a killing running full page ads in the various trading magazines (that alone should raise a red flag!) for years and making six figures per seminar + add-on services.
There are many stories regarding Kent Calhoun and clients who have lost lots of money (in six figures) trading his system and also using his managed services through his personal broker & CTA, Michael Sheaves. Sheaves raved about Calhoun for years (Sheaves claimed he trained under Calhoun for 4 years) until he started losing all of his clients money. Sheaves than ran into trouble with the CFTC http://www.cftc.gov/opa/enf01/opa4573-01.htm and parted company with Calhoun bitterly. It was interesting that for awhile Sheaves was willing to sell the fully disclosed method he was using for $10k, and at the same time would manage money for 2% management fee & 20% profit incentive. Sheaves and Calhoun claimed that the average trader using the system would make $30k on a $50k account. Why fully disclosed a system if you can get clients lined up to manage their money at 20% profit incentive? No risk man! Maybe because it's all BS.
Not to mention the long and drawn out battle between Kent Calhoun and John Hill of Futures Truth. First friends, then business partners, now bitter enemies. You can find archives & archives of their public war on Usenet and many other publications such as Commodity Traders Club News. I won't even go into it here. They each call each other pathological liars & scammers. I would tend to believe John Hill, with well established credibility & registered CTA (Calhoun withdrew his CTA registration- rumor has it so that he would avoid regulation scrutiny).
Calhoun also had a huge falling out with Russell Sands. Something about Kent saying "Russell Sands has incorrect assumptions about the basic nature of technical analysis" and Sands saying Calhoun was a liar and a scammer.
There was also a software developer hired by KCI to market his system. Once the software developer realized Calhoun was scamming everyone, he released the 5VBTP code publicly. Kent slammed the code and insisted that the code was full of bugs and did not accurately reflect the 5VBTP method. The software developer verified that the code that was leaked was the same source being sold by KCI. But where was this revelation when KCI was making a ton of money selling software all this time? There were tons of bootleg copies of this software floating around at the time. If it was making people rich you think you'd hear more about it by now.
Kent ran an ad for awhile saying "do you know CFTC verified 92% KCI traders profitable"? Which was one of the reasons the CFTC filed suit against him. I tried to verify his mechanical system but could not even get the numbers profitable, let alone anywhere close to his claims.
There are many other incidents that I don't recall. This is just what I remember off the top of my head.
Thanks for clearing that up, right - I'm not "kent calhoun" of texas who did all the options bs, I'm Ken Calhoun of Hawaii. I daytrade nasdaq stocks, I don't trade options/futures, and have only been producing materials for traders since '99. I graduated from UCLA back in '86 and was a quality engineer/statistician up until the early 90's, when I moved to hawaii to get away from the corporate rat race etc. (I listened to tony robbins too much and hey it actually worked 
. lol.
Re chatrooms, I definitely agree with you all that both entries and exits/trailing stops should be posted in realtime.
Also, unlike most others, I think chatrooms should Solely be used for trader education, and the entries/exits posted for educational purposes only.
My belief is that live rooms should be used as a virtual training seminar, not for "buy it now it's running" and "sell it here wee noodles cranking cachingos we just made .3". That's bs, imho.
My position is that traders need to learn how to trade on their own, independently, and that chatrooms should be used as a live training seminar type environment, as a "bridge" from books to personal live trading. People who simply become dependent on chatrooms are doomed to fail, that's my candid thought.
Also, posting paper performance numbers is "treading on thin ice" with the SEC - since paper performance is not real trade numbers, they don't reflect slippage and actual order executions.
The Only people posting performance numbers should be those who are actually trading those calls, and this should be 100% (not selective) disclosure. This is the guidance I've been given, and it makes sense to me. I'm a born skeptic, that's why my 'expose' type approach, though I realize I may seem abrasive at times, sorry about that. Main thing is, test it yourself, on your own, anyone's trading ideas, and see how they work. I think the 2-day high over .5 2-day short under .5 approach works well for breakouts, and use fibonacccis for intrarange trades. And of course use the relative sector strength, TRINQ and compq relative to prev day's range etc.
In summary, I think that traders should experiment and test heavily, ask the 'room op' why the trade was made, ask him to post a screencap of his actual trading rig so they can see what this person's toolkit is (eg mine's at http://www.daytrading-university.com/!!6mon.gif ) and focus on learning vs trying to "get rich quick" by trading some stranger's calls.
I think also every room should have a premarket daily trading plan that goes beyond "futs up crank wee". Lol. I like to post the entry areas for where if, I were trading my core basket for that day myself, I'd be looking to get either long/short, so people have a gameplan by 9:15am for the trading day.
Having tried other rooms years ago, I personally found the experience of anxiously waiting on the edge of my chair for some "room guru" to say "Consider BUY SEBL 20.4 Always use a Protective Stop" to be unnerving and totally uneducational. Not to mention, real trades often chopped out. So I became the worlds biggest skeptic.
There's a few authentic trading resources out there, a la Tony Oz, Toni Turner, Barry Rudd, Steve Nison, Douglas, Edwards/McGee. Much of the rest of it, I take with a grain of salt.
just my .02.
Merry Xmas,
Ken
btw, here's transcripts from my actual room, take a look. judge for yourself, re my style etc, I'm always open to suggestions for improvement, as I work to improve myself. (I can post more recent ones if anyone wants, let me know, these are all I have so far, note the chatspace timestamp needs to be adjusted for correct EST etc).
http://www.daytrading-university.com/livetranscriptOct08_01.htm
http://www.daytrading-university.com/livetranscriptOct22_26.htm
http://www.daytrading-university.com/livetranscriptOct30.htm
http://www.daytrading-university.com/transcriptNov10_01.htm
You'll note that I post the entries both premarket at 9:10 (long trigger short trigger) format, as well as realtime updates, and trailing stops for exits on positions.
What I hope to accomplish in all of this, is that I actually trained a small group of people in more careful, nimble daytrading - not that I posted paper profits and had lots of people doing attaboys. What counts is people leaving saying "ok I'm a better trader now, I feel confident that I can trade more independently".
Room Performance Metrics (suggested) should not simply be:
x) did he say buy it now it's running and it ran?
they should be more training process oriented, like:
a) Can the room members expect to be fully trained to be able to Leave the room after 3-6 months max of realtime training examples? (vs auto-rebilling people for $200+/month, something I would never do, I dislike the 'hand in the wallet' approach I've seen out there)
- the measure of a good teacher, trainer, is that the person has learned and can duplicate, with a fair degree of consistency, the room ops calls, based on what's been shared.
b) Can traders then make consistent profits by applying the techniques they've been taught, on their own, away from the room?
c) To what degree are traders able to provide their own risk management trailing stops/quick .2 or less stop losses in realtime examples on their own?
etc.. thoughts?
I don't claim to be some super trader, I'm just a guy who (I think!) learned how to develop a consistent set of daytrading guidelines, and I enjoy sharing these with other traders, in realtime examples.
What I would *Really Like* to do is have a money show type trader head to head competition with any other room op out there. This would be great to do, at an upcoming expo - let tim b. know if you'd like to see this at an expo if there's one in calif in the next year or so, I can be there Anyone up to the challenge?
on the 'humble pie front', my personal "trader's block" is, I need to get comfortable trading over 2K shares/trade, so that's the next step, I'm still just comfortable with 300-1K share size trades personally, I need to expand share size, that's my own area for improvement.
What are the other traders' areas for improvement, any ideas? Curious...
. lol.Re chatrooms, I definitely agree with you all that both entries and exits/trailing stops should be posted in realtime.
Also, unlike most others, I think chatrooms should Solely be used for trader education, and the entries/exits posted for educational purposes only.
My belief is that live rooms should be used as a virtual training seminar, not for "buy it now it's running" and "sell it here wee noodles cranking cachingos we just made .3". That's bs, imho.
My position is that traders need to learn how to trade on their own, independently, and that chatrooms should be used as a live training seminar type environment, as a "bridge" from books to personal live trading. People who simply become dependent on chatrooms are doomed to fail, that's my candid thought.
Also, posting paper performance numbers is "treading on thin ice" with the SEC - since paper performance is not real trade numbers, they don't reflect slippage and actual order executions.
The Only people posting performance numbers should be those who are actually trading those calls, and this should be 100% (not selective) disclosure. This is the guidance I've been given, and it makes sense to me. I'm a born skeptic, that's why my 'expose' type approach, though I realize I may seem abrasive at times, sorry about that. Main thing is, test it yourself, on your own, anyone's trading ideas, and see how they work. I think the 2-day high over .5 2-day short under .5 approach works well for breakouts, and use fibonacccis for intrarange trades. And of course use the relative sector strength, TRINQ and compq relative to prev day's range etc.
In summary, I think that traders should experiment and test heavily, ask the 'room op' why the trade was made, ask him to post a screencap of his actual trading rig so they can see what this person's toolkit is (eg mine's at http://www.daytrading-university.com/!!6mon.gif ) and focus on learning vs trying to "get rich quick" by trading some stranger's calls.
I think also every room should have a premarket daily trading plan that goes beyond "futs up crank wee". Lol. I like to post the entry areas for where if, I were trading my core basket for that day myself, I'd be looking to get either long/short, so people have a gameplan by 9:15am for the trading day.
Having tried other rooms years ago, I personally found the experience of anxiously waiting on the edge of my chair for some "room guru" to say "Consider BUY SEBL 20.4 Always use a Protective Stop" to be unnerving and totally uneducational. Not to mention, real trades often chopped out. So I became the worlds biggest skeptic.
There's a few authentic trading resources out there, a la Tony Oz, Toni Turner, Barry Rudd, Steve Nison, Douglas, Edwards/McGee. Much of the rest of it, I take with a grain of salt.
just my .02.
Merry Xmas,
Ken
btw, here's transcripts from my actual room, take a look. judge for yourself, re my style etc, I'm always open to suggestions for improvement, as I work to improve myself. (I can post more recent ones if anyone wants, let me know, these are all I have so far, note the chatspace timestamp needs to be adjusted for correct EST etc).
http://www.daytrading-university.com/livetranscriptOct08_01.htm
http://www.daytrading-university.com/livetranscriptOct22_26.htm
http://www.daytrading-university.com/livetranscriptOct30.htm
http://www.daytrading-university.com/transcriptNov10_01.htm
You'll note that I post the entries both premarket at 9:10 (long trigger short trigger) format, as well as realtime updates, and trailing stops for exits on positions.
What I hope to accomplish in all of this, is that I actually trained a small group of people in more careful, nimble daytrading - not that I posted paper profits and had lots of people doing attaboys. What counts is people leaving saying "ok I'm a better trader now, I feel confident that I can trade more independently".
Room Performance Metrics (suggested) should not simply be:
x) did he say buy it now it's running and it ran?
they should be more training process oriented, like:
a) Can the room members expect to be fully trained to be able to Leave the room after 3-6 months max of realtime training examples? (vs auto-rebilling people for $200+/month, something I would never do, I dislike the 'hand in the wallet' approach I've seen out there)
- the measure of a good teacher, trainer, is that the person has learned and can duplicate, with a fair degree of consistency, the room ops calls, based on what's been shared.
b) Can traders then make consistent profits by applying the techniques they've been taught, on their own, away from the room?
c) To what degree are traders able to provide their own risk management trailing stops/quick .2 or less stop losses in realtime examples on their own?
etc.. thoughts?
I don't claim to be some super trader, I'm just a guy who (I think!) learned how to develop a consistent set of daytrading guidelines, and I enjoy sharing these with other traders, in realtime examples.
What I would *Really Like* to do is have a money show type trader head to head competition with any other room op out there. This would be great to do, at an upcoming expo - let tim b. know if you'd like to see this at an expo if there's one in calif in the next year or so, I can be there
Anyone up to the challenge? on the 'humble pie front', my personal "trader's block" is, I need to get comfortable trading over 2K shares/trade, so that's the next step, I'm still just comfortable with 300-1K share size trades personally, I need to expand share size, that's my own area for improvement.
What are the other traders' areas for improvement, any ideas? Curious...
Thanks for posting the info.
When your basket of preferred stocks is trading within yesterday's range (not breaking to new two day highs or lows), how do trade them under this circumstance? Do you simply not trade that particular day?
You offered to post more recent transcripts, I would like to see these. Would you please post them?
Your emphasis on education as opposed to calls only is great. I'd like to see more of your work.
thanks.
ProTrader1
When your basket of preferred stocks is trading within yesterday's range (not breaking to new two day highs or lows), how do trade them under this circumstance? Do you simply not trade that particular day?
You offered to post more recent transcripts, I would like to see these. Would you please post them?
Your emphasis on education as opposed to calls only is great. I'd like to see more of your work.
thanks.
ProTrader1
dottom,
thanks for the history. those guys had some epic battles all right. too bad people got ripped off. I was also confused about "Kent" and "ken", so I'm glad that was cleared up.
Ken,
You make some great points. I have said for a while that most people could not make money following a chatroom. I have posted several times a challenge for ANYONE to step up and credibly claim to have made consistent money following a daytrading chatroom. To my knowledge, no one has come forward with a credible claim.
Now I have to add a caveat. Yes, the chatroom format is great for teaching, provided the teacher has something useful to teach. The problem is no one has any way of knowing if the operator knows what he's doing or is just someone spewing nonsense.
There is an obvious answer. Produce either backtested results that can be duplicated independently or post an audited account statement. This has become dufferdon's quest, and I think it speaks volumes that no site has taken up his challenge.
thanks for the history. those guys had some epic battles all right. too bad people got ripped off. I was also confused about "Kent" and "ken", so I'm glad that was cleared up.
Ken,
You make some great points. I have said for a while that most people could not make money following a chatroom. I have posted several times a challenge for ANYONE to step up and credibly claim to have made consistent money following a daytrading chatroom. To my knowledge, no one has come forward with a credible claim.
Now I have to add a caveat. Yes, the chatroom format is great for teaching, provided the teacher has something useful to teach. The problem is no one has any way of knowing if the operator knows what he's doing or is just someone spewing nonsense.
There is an obvious answer. Produce either backtested results that can be duplicated independently or post an audited account statement. This has become dufferdon's quest, and I think it speaks volumes that no site has taken up his challenge.
I've found that if I keep a pareto's law principle at work I do much better, eg 80% of my trades should be buying breakout highs over previous day's high, or shorts under previous days low, and only 20% of my trades should be bottom fishing or top shorting type entries inside the range established by the previous day.
For intrarange trades, I like to see a wide 'clean line' 3-4 point range in the previous day ... by clean line I mean, it wasn't chopping around much in the previous trading day... this helps me identify the technical support/resistance lines more easily, and keeps me out of whipsaw trades.
For these entries, I always avoid trading in the middle 1/3 of the 2-day chart - test this out yourself, it's the 'chop zone'... I instead will either go short if it tests and fails the previous day's high, or go long if it gets buyers (volume has to be higher than same time prev day for this) if it's going up over the previous day's low.
and sure, will do re more recent transcripts, I'll post all of december soon..
aainbeltway, agree that it's good to be able to provide independently audited results, I could suggest that you look at the premkt entries I post for say a month in a row and see how effective they are .. eg the (long trigger short trigger) ... with my general rule of a stop loss at .2 after entry has been made, and use the 'red band in L2' as the trailing stop once in the trade. I'm very risk averse, I've found that this tight stop strategy, combined with breakout trading, seems to produce the most consistent results.
In defense of others, I did find that the comraderie of other rooms and the sense of excitement about having a live forum to be in, was a benefit. Trading by oneself in front of a pc can get to be a bit lonely. Unfortunately, I did not learn much. So, I started my own place, with the main focus being on training, and the alerts of secondary importance, just to learn from, illustrate the points I was making etc. So far, so good.
happy holidays all ..
For intrarange trades, I like to see a wide 'clean line' 3-4 point range in the previous day ... by clean line I mean, it wasn't chopping around much in the previous trading day... this helps me identify the technical support/resistance lines more easily, and keeps me out of whipsaw trades.
For these entries, I always avoid trading in the middle 1/3 of the 2-day chart - test this out yourself, it's the 'chop zone'... I instead will either go short if it tests and fails the previous day's high, or go long if it gets buyers (volume has to be higher than same time prev day for this) if it's going up over the previous day's low.
and sure, will do re more recent transcripts, I'll post all of december soon..
aainbeltway, agree that it's good to be able to provide independently audited results, I could suggest that you look at the premkt entries I post for say a month in a row and see how effective they are .. eg the (long trigger short trigger) ... with my general rule of a stop loss at .2 after entry has been made, and use the 'red band in L2' as the trailing stop once in the trade. I'm very risk averse, I've found that this tight stop strategy, combined with breakout trading, seems to produce the most consistent results.
In defense of others, I did find that the comraderie of other rooms and the sense of excitement about having a live forum to be in, was a benefit. Trading by oneself in front of a pc can get to be a bit lonely. Unfortunately, I did not learn much. So, I started my own place, with the main focus being on training, and the alerts of secondary importance, just to learn from, illustrate the points I was making etc. So far, so good.
happy holidays all ..
Ken,
I don't want you to think I'm picking on you because I am not. In fact, I went to your site and reviewed a lot of the training material and I think it is pretty good. I am not endorsing your entry methods however. I have tested the 2 day break method on futures and found it profitable only under very specific circumstances. Perhaps it is profitable on selected individual stocks, due to their greater volatility but I simply do not have the testing results to confirm that. Similarly, I doubt the 10 day channel break swing entry would show positive testing results on futures, but again it might be profitable on carefully selected stocks. My question to you would be 1)have you in fact backtested these methods, and 2) if so, would you share the results with us?
I don't want you to think I'm picking on you because I am not. In fact, I went to your site and reviewed a lot of the training material and I think it is pretty good. I am not endorsing your entry methods however. I have tested the 2 day break method on futures and found it profitable only under very specific circumstances. Perhaps it is profitable on selected individual stocks, due to their greater volatility but I simply do not have the testing results to confirm that. Similarly, I doubt the 10 day channel break swing entry would show positive testing results on futures, but again it might be profitable on carefully selected stocks. My question to you would be 1)have you in fact backtested these methods, and 2) if so, would you share the results with us?
Hi - I test the techniques daily in my live room, that's the best test of them, from what I can tell, eg using live examples. Backtesting would likely not be of much use since much of each day's trading activity also uses realtime indicators such as 1) where's the TRINQ right now? 2) which of our sectors is strongest/weakest now? 3) Where's the nasdaq COMPQ relative to the previous day's range now? 4) what's the stock's volume doing relative to the volume at same time, previous trading day etc..
if there was some way to integrate those conditionals, that would be great, eg long over 2-day high If the TRINQ >1.5 and the stock being studied is in one of the two strongest sectors for that timeframe etc..
You make an excellent point too, re applicability of methods to what's being traded, this method would be completely incompatible with futures/currency/options/nyse stocks etc type of trading, it's been tested out, refined specifically for nasdaq tech stocks priced $20-$60/share trading over 1m shares/day avg volume.
My current basket of stocks I like to trade (and thus, to which this technique would be most applicable to) are:
semis (SOX): AMAT BRCM GNSS KLAC NVLS NVDA QLGC XLNX
software (GSO): ADBE CHKP PSFT SEBL VRSN VRTS
biotechs (NBI): AMGN HGSI IDPH MLNM PDLI
others: BRCD CIEN EMLX EBAY JNPR QCOM
Hope it's helpful - those are my current favorites for daytrading. I realize this is a "niche" trading style, also my roundtrips are 2 to 8 minutes on average, my idea of a long term hold is 12 minutes round trip, very unlikely... i found that the 'good trades are usually good right from the start' maxim is true. I'm a very impatient, aggressive trader, I like to use a goal of +1/2 to +7/8 for wins and .2 max for stops ... it would be good to see any ideas for improving/refining the technique...
I have found that many of the momentum oscillators such as stochastics tend to give false positives in the choppy market we've been having, so I avoid them. I like using time & sales as a key indicator, along with micro support/res lines on the 2d chart.
ken
if there was some way to integrate those conditionals, that would be great, eg long over 2-day high If the TRINQ >1.5 and the stock being studied is in one of the two strongest sectors for that timeframe etc..
You make an excellent point too, re applicability of methods to what's being traded, this method would be completely incompatible with futures/currency/options/nyse stocks etc type of trading, it's been tested out, refined specifically for nasdaq tech stocks priced $20-$60/share trading over 1m shares/day avg volume.
My current basket of stocks I like to trade (and thus, to which this technique would be most applicable to) are:
semis (SOX): AMAT BRCM GNSS KLAC NVLS NVDA QLGC XLNX
software (GSO): ADBE CHKP PSFT SEBL VRSN VRTS
biotechs (NBI): AMGN HGSI IDPH MLNM PDLI
others: BRCD CIEN EMLX EBAY JNPR QCOM
Hope it's helpful - those are my current favorites for daytrading. I realize this is a "niche" trading style, also my roundtrips are 2 to 8 minutes on average, my idea of a long term hold is 12 minutes round trip, very unlikely... i found that the 'good trades are usually good right from the start' maxim is true. I'm a very impatient, aggressive trader, I like to use a goal of +1/2 to +7/8 for wins and .2 max for stops ... it would be good to see any ideas for improving/refining the technique...
I have found that many of the momentum oscillators such as stochastics tend to give false positives in the choppy market we've been having, so I avoid them. I like using time & sales as a key indicator, along with micro support/res lines on the 2d chart.
ken
Yeah, I gotta agree with Vadym on this... Stochastics are only of any use for rangebound situations, and allow you to bottom-fish or short-tops (which I tend to avoid intraday anyway)... when swingtrading bottom-fishers I don't use stochastics (I just use Tony Oz set-ups).
For trending markets, the price itself is the best indicator.
For trending markets, the price itself is the best indicator.