He's trading CFDs. Abandon ship.
Is Tom Hougaard the real deal?
- Thread starter BartSimpson
- Start date
He's trading CFDs. Abandon ship.
Here's a spreadsheet of trades taken in March. His position size is all over the place. Sometimes he makes $2k, sometimes it's $10k, and I'm not really sure how he manages this.
I was going to ask about that. That's basically when the broker trades against you, correct? You aren't actually getting executed in the live market? He's essentially placing bets on what the cash index is doing? How does one make money? Trading against the broker?
If so, he could be in the pockets of the brokerage and they give him whatever large funds he wants because when he loses/wins it's not real money. He can also then post real-world screenshots of his account to show people it's not "SIM" but it was never his cash to begin with. Brilliant scheme.
Day traders don't trade CFDs.
newbies might trade CFD as it could be a good starting point for them.
NO HFTs (including newbies) dare to touch CFDs;
the bid-offer spread is extremely horrific.
Don't have a .xls viewer on my trading machine, so cannot see what is going on there. If you are a USA-based trader, you cannot trade CFDs. If that is what he is trading, just abandon it all.
Is this the index equivalent to Forex, where you have zero regulation, wide spreads, and the broker trades against you?
I'm from the USA, so I guess it's a definite no-go, even if I wanted to (which I don't).
He's basically trading with a 1:1 return on risk (sometimes lower than 1), trading a standard size, but even though the size is constant the stop losses and take profit levels vary. So one trade he might take a 30 point hit, and other 60, so he'll lose $3k one trade and $6k another.
His stops are wide as hell and seems to be selling into support or buying resistance, with a wide stop above the previous swing high or below the previous swing low. Price tends to retrace deeply towards his stop immediately after entry.
Seems like basic "Support breaks, sell it, resistance breaks, buy it" with wide stops and then just hoping for runners.
I read through more of his Telegram. He basically says: "Entries are static, profits/exits are not. Use your own best judgment" but then proceeds to not explain what that judgment is or how to use it to profitably exit the trade. Sounds like the same vague advice everyone gives in books/courses/videos that no one ever explains how to do with precision.
A lot of his trades seem to go 0.5x in his favor and he considers it "profitable", but unless he is hitting getting out to the tick on a reversal he isn't coming away with much.
I'm pretty much calling bullshit on it, and to me at least, this is a closed case. Thanks to everyone who responded and provided insight. Despite what other cheerleaders say about this guy (not you guys but others have mentioned him) I'm going to ignore him.
He's no Marko Ramius. This may not make sense with the video analogy. Just stay away from CFDs! Don't do it!
His methods might be spelled out in some of his documents like
https://tradertom.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Brief-Manual-on-Price-Action-1.pdf
https://tradertom.com/wp-content/up...-Manual-by-Tom-Hougaard-NEW-BRANDING.docx.pdf
https://tradertom.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Tom_Hougaard_The_Trading_Manual_Singles.pdf
I downloaded about 50 pdfs from his site and Telegram. Somehow these got missed in the sea of other pdfs. I'll read these and report back. Thank you.