The Carter 5 Min Pivot Entry Strategy

Two years ago I had this guy trade my account (I had no time to trade myself, and from his "record" it seemed feasible).

I gave strict instructions as to what percentage of capital to risk (at the beginning 2%, then I reduced it to 1 and then to .75%. I knew about money management but that did not protect me in this case). In about 5 weeks he managed to lose 40% of the account. That was a $80,000.00 loss, by the way. He put on big positions with options that just imploded. I was a bit caught off guard when it happened so quick, then I stopped the bleeding.

I am not posting in order to have some silly poster gloat about it- ( I know, I know), and I made the money back. My point is that if somebody runs a search on John Carter, at least he (or she) is warned.

My advice: stay away from that guy, and for sure do not give him one cent of your hard-earned money. In my personal opinion he is either (best case) completely incompetent or (worse) a crook.

And, by the way, should somebody require documentation , I have our email correspondence and the trade records on file. PM me if that is required.
 
Vienna ,

the add claims documentation to prove his ability.

he made 143% the year you got slaughtered

143% in 2001 · 131% in 2002

Honda,

Did they show you his statements? Did you ask? Do you feel the

material is useful to you personally? Did you test it??
Good Luck,
Steve

"Brokerage statements confirming John's performance are on file"

84% in 1996 · 126% in 1997 · 65% in 1998 · 178% in 1999 · 348% in 2000 143% in 2001 · 131% in 2002 · 109% YTD in 2003.
 
Quote from stocon:


"Brokerage statements confirming John's performance are on file"

84% in 1996 · 126% in 1997 · 65% in 1998 · 178% in 1999 · 348% in 2000 143% in 2001 · 131% in 2002 · 109% YTD in 2003.
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Yep, and has anyone checked them out or even only asked to have them sent? Just curious...
 
Did all the brokerage statements come from same broker and same account #?

I've done due dilligence before and have been showned statements from different accounts and different brokerage statements. Think about it- if you had 3 or 4 accounts, odds are 1 of them will be profitable.
 
Quote from stocon:

Vienna ,

the add claims documentation to prove his ability.

he made 143% the year you got slaughtered

143% in 2001 · 131% in 2002

Honda,

Did they show you his statements? Did you ask? Do you feel the

material is useful to you personally? Did you test it??
Good Luck,
Steve

"Brokerage statements confirming John's performance are on file"

84% in 1996 · 126% in 1997 · 65% in 1998 · 178% in 1999 · 348% in 2000 143% in 2001 · 131% in 2002 · 109% YTD in 2003.
More...

Hmmm...confusing...

Thread started via talking about reselling a trading course about Pivot Points and then it went to about some guy trading someone's account and did poorly at such.

Is that what the course is about...trading someone's account?

Did Vienna lose money in his account because of the Pivot Point strategy or because the guy ignored Vienna's specific risk management instructions?

Also...are those brokerage statements via John Carter trading his own account or someone's else account or the account of a group of individuals?

In addition, someone that trades well from their own trading account but was trading another account (the account of another indivual) and did poorly while not respecting whatever the two agreed upon as in money management...

implies they aren't good at following rules of some agreed upon contract and litigation may be the proper action.

Just the same...letting someone trade your account and then checking on it 5 weeks later is odd...

Thus, I'm going to assume there's more to the story and hopefully that story doen't involve with Vienna being lied to on a daily basis about the things going on with his money.

I know someone right now that doesn't trade his own money and trades the group money of relatives...

I think about 1.5 million.

There are strict risk management rules he agreed upon and signed a contract about such any individual that's part of that money pool sort'uv speak...has access to view what's going on in that account on any given trading day.

It's not an investment account...its a trading account and the guy made about 62% last year (started trading it in April) and is up about 12% this year.

Vienna...that truly sucks you lost 80k letting someone trade your account...

but why did you let 5 weeks go by without checking on your account or is this an issue of you simply giving him the money and you didn't have access to the daily account trade activities?

Vienna...was there a contract involved between you and him or was everything verbal and or email exchanges but nothing signed?

If so (no signed contract) and he violated the rules you spelled out in your email exchanges...

can you take him to court if those strict instructions was ignored and he proceeded to lose 80k of your money because of such.

Sorry...

The thread started about a Pivot Point course and seems like it has nothing to do with trading someone's else money...

or does it?

Maybe John trades his own account via Pivot Point or teaches about such while using an entirely different method when trading someone's else account ?

I've seen (read about) the above happening before...trading a personal account via one method, trading someone's else account via another method and teaching via another method...

I don't see anything wrong with that but just means 3x the documentation and more research to find out what specific method will be used if that person will be trading with my money.

NihabaAshi
 
Quote from NihabaAshi:

Hmmm...confusing...

Thread started via talking about reselling a trading course about Pivot Points and then it went to about some guy trading someone's account and did poorly at such.


The thread started about a Pivot Point course and seems like it has nothing to do with trading someone's else money...



NihabaAshi
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Nihabashi,
On the tradingmarkets site there is a page giving Carter's sterling performance for the last 5 years: this is put there to bolster sales of his pivot point course.
If in another account(whether his own or one he trades for someone else) he lost 40% of the account in 5 weeks, would that have any bearing on a potential purchaser of the course? If it would then it would be honest to add it.
 
Niha and others: thank you for your comments and questions.

First, I did not want to go into this whole thing. I just saw somebody offering the course, I had met the trader (" ") in question before and thought that the experience I had might prove beneficial to other people's wallets. This is not a post of me whining about a loss: It took me a while but I made the money back and consider it a useful yet painful lesson. Perhaps it serves others.

I know the situation sounds ridiculous. Perhaps it helps to understand that the guy lost 40% in my account WHILE his trading room showed a 25% or 30% profit per month. Lesson Nr. 1: be careful about room records.

Since then I give ZERO credibility to most profit statements of online gurus. Statements such as these can be published for some accounts, but not for the losing ones. There are all kinds of tricks. Theorethically, it would even be quite easy to engineer it so that one account would just be used to hedge profitable positions in others. I am not saying that this is what happened to me, I have no idea.

My situation was that I lacked the time to trade, I work. So I did some diligence (but obviously not diligently enough). I followed the room record for a while, the entries and exits looked profitable, then signed an agreement with the guy to trade my account. Should I have asked for "audited" statements? Perhaps. But it might not have helped- see above.

So, I took the "fact" of these returns and held on to that, after all, it was expected that the fellow would be able to match the performance of his own trading room, right? Please note that the room had shown once or twice intra-month drawdowns of perhaps 15% or so in the past.
Lesson #2:The important point is that the false judgement on my part (seeing some great returns and making the jump to "this guy is a market wizard and could trade my account profitably") led to me tolerating drawdowns that I would have never accepted for my own method. After all, this was an expert trader with a proven record, right? I knew about risk control, had even gone to a Tharp seminar on the subject. We started out with an agreement of risking about 2% of the account per trade. There were some profits, and then almost immediately the account was down about 10%. No big deal, there had been drawdowns of 15 or so percent in the room historically. However, we agreed to reduce the percentage to be risked a little, to perhaps 1.5%. Did I have this signed in a legal document? No, but per phone conversations and emails.
The account made some back and then dove down another 10%. Still only 5% more than what had been "historically" happened, right? And up again for a while, and another big downwave. That is how it happened until I pulled the plug. Actually, I have to check in my records: I am not even sure it took 5 weeks. It might have been as short as 3. All I know is that it happened very fast. There were stops in place, but some large option positions were put on that basically evaporated overnight. Should I have checked each position and calculated the stop value constantly? Probably, but the idea was to have somebody else deal with it for a while. There was a flood of more and more nervous emails from me to the trader, and friendly, reassuring and calming answers, very articulate, claiming that these losses were unusual but some drawdowns were to be expected etc. etc. Was I actually lied to? I don't know, but I know for sure that my risk parameters were not kept. When we finally had our confrontation, the trader claimed that he was trading other people's accounts profitably, that they were all experiencing a big drawdown etc. I have no idea if any of this is true or not.


Well, it is water under the bridge, I moved on. (This is not to say that I did not entertain homicidal fantasies for a while).

Anyway, I took the following lessons from it (and I hope not to offend the professionals)- this is but my opinion:

1. The trading "advisory" industry- compared to other fields- is one big glitzy fair which is crawling with incompetents, people who can't trade but sell their "expertise" and some downright crooks. Not unlike the casino industry perhaps. There are some decent people there too of course, for example I think Bo Yoder is a very nice guy, Tony Oz seems to be etc.
2. When somebody claims certain returns on a website, audited or not, be careful: it does not mean he can trade your money. For example, he could even be a good trader with his own but fail miserably at trading other's money. There was a tread on misc.invest futures where somebody claimed a similar thing happened to him with Pesavento.
3. In my limited, personal opinion people who can trade don't run websites were they sell all kinds of gimmicks, entry techniques or seminars. People who sell all kinds of gimmicks don't have the time. They are busy selling gimmicks, and they make good money with it I suppose.
4.Online fame means absolutely nothing. You can be a famous online "guru" and not be able to trade your way out of a paper bag.

There is nothing new or especially deep about these insights, of course. I only responded to the tread because I saw the name John Carter pop up and it triggered some memories.

all the best
 
Quote from Vienna:


Anyway, I took the following lessons from it (and I hope not to offend the professionals)- this is but my opinion:

1. The trading "advisory" industry- compared to other fields- is one big glitzy fair which is crawling with incompetents, people who can't trade but sell their "expertise" and some downright crooks. Not unlike the casino industry perhaps. There are some decent people there too of course, for example I think Bo Yoder is a very nice guy, Tony Oz seems to be etc.
2. When somebody claims certain returns on a website, audited or not, be careful: it does not mean he can trade your money. For example, he could even be a good trader with his own but fail miserably at trading other's money. There was a tread on misc.invest futures where somebody claimed a similar thing happened to him with Pesavento.
3. In my limited, personal opinion people who can trade don't run websites were they sell all kinds of gimmicks, entry techniques or seminars. People who sell all kinds of gimmicks don't have the time. They are busy selling gimmicks, and they make good money with it I suppose.
4.Online fame means absolutely nothing. You can be a famous online "guru" and not be able to trade your way out of a paper bag.
More...

Worth repeating...
 
Quote from NihabaAshi:


"Vienna...was there a contract involved between you and him or was everything verbal and or email exchanges but nothing signed?

If so (no signed contract) and he violated the rules you spelled out in your email exchanges...

can you take him to court if those strict instructions was ignored and he proceeded to lose 80k of your money because of such. "


No contract, just one of these disclaimer forms, cleverly articulated. And the risk control was agreed upon only per email. And no, I could not take him to court. He was protected by his disclaimer form.

best regards
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