SpreadProfessor Openings
- Thread starter bone
- Start date
That's not what I said and you know it.
I wonder how everyone would react if the OP claimed to be a dentist and all his friends say he is a good dentist. Would that be enough to pay that dentist 100% of what he asks before he takes a look at your mouth ?
Before shelling out your $6500 you ask him what school did he go to study dentistry, and instead of showing you he gets very irritated because you question his "integrity" so he insults you, along his with friends.
I'm pretty sure he invites anyone who comes into his dentistry practice to look at his licensing, background and history of success as a dentist. I don't think he feels like running full-page adds in the local pennysaver to troll for every toothless indigent and drunk that wanders past.
Regardless, we're talking in circles here. The pervasive ET attitude has always been "kill all vendors" and that'll never change. We could hash this rehash over and over again for another 1,000 pages and it'll just end as more of the same, right exactly as we began. So why bother?
I'll turn my attention to more proactive and constructive conversations here. Long as I'm making the effort to log in and browse around, might as well contribute something positive to the board.
Gentlement, as you were
Trading isn't dentistry. With dentistry you can teach almost anyone how to do a procedure, get them to practise enough, and they will be able to do it. Problems are known and have standard solutions. That is not true in trading, for the most part. Markets change in nature, people's teeth don't. Many failed traders know exactly what to do, but can't execute in the heat of the moment.
Having a license has no correlation whatsoever with being good at trading. The only barometer of trading skill is performance relative to risk, along with good risk control. If the OP is willing to show a profitable set of account statements/audit and track record for several years, and his risk control approach makes sense, before charging clients, then that is sufficient evidence that he knows what he is talking about.
Quote from TsunTzu:
Dear Bone,
Why do you get yourself in such a tizz about all this nonsense on ET? I really find it hard to understand why anybody who is 50 years old and been around the block would feel the need to justify themselves to a load of anonymous posts on this forum. Most of the 'size' traders I know couldnt give a s##t what people on ET thought of them. I am sure we had chatted in the past what the best route for growing your model was. Why do you keep putting yourself through this rubbish regularly? Anyway, good luck with it all If you have guys trading 2 lot spreads and making 7k scaling out in 1 lots then that really is something else
He's probably too old to have grown up getting used to what dickheads people are on the internet, as opposed to real life (where they are bad enough).
Obviously it implies that the auditing was done properly, not by a 1-man operation no one has heard of (one of the Madoff red flags). Few things in life or markets are certain, but it is certainly a high probability that if a professional audit was done, then the numbers are real. Most healthy 18 year old adults don't die of illnesses either - the fact that a few do, in no way invalidates that conclusion.
There are also other ways to test trader credibility, but usually only people with lots of market experience themselves understand them. E.g. does the performance roughly fit with how the given strategy should perform. A long volatility strategy that lost money in market crashes is suspicious, for example. A value investing firm that makes huge returns in a late stage bull market is suspicious. A relative value fund that makes money in times of risk aversion is suspicious. Etc etc.
In this case, since clients are not handing over money to manage, but are going to trade the methods themselves, there is no "Madoff risk" either. If bone turns out to be a charlatan who has made up account statements and audits for the last several years, then clients will be out $6k - that's not exactly a giant loss for a pretty unlikely risk, and they can sue him to get it back + punitive damages. A ponzi scammer would not run the risk of 20-30 years in jail for $6k from 24 people.
You can still do a "personal audit" by looking over brokerage statements, income tax returns, writing (with permission) to the brokers to get references, ditto with past clients. Also simple stuff like checking out someone's car, property, dress etc. Google them and ask around the exchanges, bad reputation spreads fast.
Legitimate reasons that sole traders don't get an audit is because it's not a legal requirement, it provides no benefit to trading P&L (the opposite in fact), it costs money and it imposes a heavy paperwork burden.
I agree that if seeking client funds, and audit is very useful (arguably essential). But if just charging for "mentoring", it's not that important, because the customer is not placing their own funds with the trader, they are trading them themselves. Brokerage statements and broker referrals, income tax statements etc, along with client references are normally sufficient. You don't get a $50k audit for a $6k fee.