Quote from JWKirkland:
How would you feel?
I have heard that some current and former echo traders are pissed off about it.
Where do you think the strategies came from???
I heard a rumor regarding a potential lawsuit....seems some echo guys are not happy about their specific strategies being used for marketing and sold off for anyone with 100 bucks.
Story developing....
I am a current Echo trader who has been with them for years using profitable strategies, and I can say that I have some secret ones that have not appeared in anyone's software yet. And I, like everyone at Echo by now I'm sure, am on the free demo of this and I can say that I don't think there are any strategies in it that everyone doesn't know about by now, I think Echo has just found a way to do them better.
My feeling is that for most traders, they all get to the same place in the end, some just have a pinto to get them there, and Echo has given their traders a Ferrari. If I were competing with Echo, I would be worried too about losing traders to them, that's for sure.
But as far as proprietary info being out there, Opening Orders have been around for years, but Echo has given guys a way to auto-trade out of them as well as in. I don't think that sells anyone out, and I don't think guys will be all trying to exit at the same place also, as each trader has to input what they feel the best place to exit is, 10-cents off the high, at a $20 loss, whatever. I think if anyone has put Opening Orders out there to the world to see I would look Don's way (not that there is anything wrong with that
).
Where do I think the strategies came from? Well, I know that their office manager in Chicago was one of the first spread traders in this game, anyone can go to Chicago and learn how to trade spreads from him, I'm sure he developed the spread tools. Filter trading has been around since the beginning of time, filtering down to a select list of stocks and then buying or selling the ones that meet your criteria... The stuff that makes or loses is how good the trader's criteria is, which each trader has to put in themselves. What Echo has done is give guys a way to have the computer automatically buy or short anything that meets that criteria, which is pretty cool, but I can't imagine steals anyone's idea.
From what I can tell, and I think this is the part you may be missing, the software just gives guys the tool to automate all these strategies, it is still up to the trader to input the criteria to use to do the automization with. It's not going to do anything that everyone hasn't already heard of I think, just gives everyone access to automization. I think what they were trying to do was give everyone access to programmers and a tool that can take any strategy the trader might trade and automate it, but it doesn't seem to all of a sudden enlighten people on a bunch of secret ways to make money. But it is a well made piece of software.
I would be curious to hear from any Echo traders that think that somehow their secret strategy is in this software and they are mad that all traders can now do it? I'll bet you if you do a search on each strategy they list in the software, at one time or another it was talked about here even, making it public knowledge that anyone could use.
I know that unlike most firms, the partners at Echo are good traders as well, you can go sit with most of them and watch them trade if you trade with the firm. Even Vito, the CEO, gives free training on the "Echo Methodology" that any trader can sign up for and go sit next to him for a week or two to watch him trade, so I would imagine that they compiled their trading knowledge another tool to help Echo guys.
Maybe I'm biased because I trade here, but I find nothing wrong with a firm trying to look out for its traders and give them a tool to help them automate what they do already anyways.
