Quote from Cocaine:
My my, I'm so glad BlueDolt started this thread, let me explain what I have been doing for the last 3 days.
Monday of this past week, I was back in touch with an acquaintance I met through a friend who trades remote like I do. He is a futures trader and has been for some years. I had sat with him once many many months ago when I contemplated making a transition from stock trading to futures. I have been stock trading as my sole source of income since 2000 but I felt I needed a change. I was stagnating. So I sat with him for one day and was amazed at what I saw. This man traded futures in a very similar manner to what Spydertrader and Jack Hershey talk about at ET. His results were far better than my stock results and he said that the this particular day was just "so so". After that I started investigating the Hershey method and that is why I posted several questions to Spydertrader some months back.
Which leads me back to this past week. Phil was nice enough to offer I swing by his place and sit with him again, this time for 3 days. So I drove over 2 hrs to meet up with him and spent Wed, Thurs and Friday sitting with him once again. I didn't mind missing several trading days, I usually avg ~$700 a day so in the long run who really cares. Let me quickly explain what I witnessed:
1. He trades using channels, and his software builds channels the same way as outlined in the Hershey method. He coded up the criteria which constitutes a channel and the software takes care of the rest. Its constantly given him a proper context as price moves from the past to now.
2. He uses price and volume religiously. In combination with his channeling context and his experience, he knows what to do in every situation in which he takes action.
3. He actually has some SCT like trades, situations where he knows from his experience that reversing as opposed to just exiting is the proper thing to do.
For the 3 days he earned 11.2k, 3.8k and 5.5k respectively (net). He never talks about P&L but I made note of it at several points throughout the day. He is very low key and you'd never guess he earns 7 figures from his home office.
Anyways, this was an excellent past 3 days. After sitting with him that one time, I got a decent idea of what is needed to trade futures successfully, but now after 3 more days and seeing his steady and continued successes, I have no doubt now that what people are reading about here at ET with regards to the "Hershey" method, works. It's really just up to the individual to sit there everyday and learn to make sense of it all.
I really have no comments on the claims of SCT as I have never seen any of them shown but as far as the basis for the method itself (the channels, the price+volume) I KNOW they work and everyday. Given that the Hershey method is comprised of these same very critical parts, I can only summise all of the other bells and whistles can add value along the way as one gains experience.
Just as a point of reference, I asked him how many down days he has a year and he said he usually has about 10 and they are roughly half to 2/3's of one normal up day. He said that 50% of his down days are caused by him being in a position when random market moving news is announced and the market suddenly moves against him. Basically news that couldnt be accounted for. He did say that occasionally, random news actually works in his favor so some of those down days are a wash anyways.
