If you watch Ross carefully it's pretty clear what is going on. But people won't like it. People want this boiled down to one sentence. People want good vs evil. People want to know if he can really trade or if he is just frontrunning people who try and mirror his trades. People want to know if his trading courses teach what he does, etc.
The reality is nuanced. Here it is:
1) Yes, he gets extra alpha because people jump in after him. Example: "Adding at..." also means he's selling to you. Measuring this is difficult but I have done it. Watch his screen. Calculate the delay. Look at his position updating while he speaks, etc. You see this impact the most on low volume stocks moving fast.
2) Yes, he is a good trader in a very niche environment of high volatility. Watch him trade super liquid stuff. He tends to do well and it seems very unlikely the extra alpha from #1 above is all the alpha he is getting. This part is impressive to watch.
3) The rules he teaches don't seem to be how he really trades. Sure, he looks for morning gappers but beyond that he is frequently not using his own course material. He will constantly say things like, "anticipating the next 1 min candle to make a new high" as he enters a trade. "Anticipating"!? He never describes the steps for "anticipating" in a way that is repeatable. In other words, he can't or won't articulate what he is really doing. He'll also say things like, "I don't trust it". But he'll never define what that means in a way that is repeatable.
My take away is that he is an outlier that trades subjectively but he doesn't realize it. Many people do things well in life this way without being able to describe how they do it. He may want to believe it's engineering and objective and rigorous but it isn't. He has also discovered that he gets that extra alpha by streaming his trades.
That's the reality. Anyone who needs to label Ross as "scammer" or "not scammer" is going to have a hard time with this sort of objective understanding.
