I am a trader of the Trend Reflection system. Somebody who was considering purchasing a TR system contacted me about the info being posted on this site and I felt it would be good to have input from someone who has been actually trading the system.
I started trading the TR "Super Model" portfolio in April 2002. I started with $27k and I took every signal trading one contract. To be fair, I must disclose that I did start at the most opportune time to trade a trend following system. If you look at a chart of any currency or any of the financial instuments, they all started big rallys in the beginning of April 2002. By Sept. 2002, my account value was up to $135k. At that precise moment, because of my naivete, I got greedy. Not knowing the nature of futures trading and how equity builds and goes into drawdown, I figured if I could made this much trading one contract, imagine how much I could make trading two! Just as I did the system went into drawdown (look at the currencies or financials charts and you will see they went into a horizontal trading range which is deadly for a trend following system). By the beginning of December my account had dropped to just over $60k. At that precise moment, again due to naivete, I got scared and I pulled the plug on trading 2 contracts and went back to 1. As the trading gods would have it the drawdown stopped, the currencies, financials and energies started trending again and as of this date my account is valued at $87k. Not a bad return for a little over a year.
It doesn't take much to do your due diligence on Trend Reflection. Open any traders magazine and you will find a full page ad for TR with actual brokerage statements of the developers account showing precisely how much the system made last year. I challenge you to find any other system vendor or trading class that will disclose that information in a public forum. If that weren't enough, before I purchased my system TR emailed me the exact open positions and trades that had occurred in each system at the end of each day. I don't know how they could be more open about what they are selling. You don't need Futures Truth, all the actual trades are fully disclosed.
Here's the thing about futures trading that people who have never done it before do not understand. You are dealing with high leverage. You are looking at large gains in a short period of time and you are looking at large losses in a short period of time. Fortunately with a system your gains will be larger than your losses. It is 2 steps forward and one step back. And if you can't deal with that one step back you will not be in the game long. That one step back could occur the minute you start trading. Can you deal with a drawdown of 10, 20, or 30%+ before you start making money? If not, don't even consider futures. It's like that old saying of how do you cook a frog? If you put him in a pot of water and turn up the heat, by the time he realizes it's too hot he is aready boiled. However if you put him in a pot of boiling water, he is going to jump out right away. The former reflects what has happened in the stock market. For the past 3 years, investors have been suffering a slow boil while their portfolio has been in a 30% drawdown. The futures market represents the latter. It is a boiling pot and if most people suffer a 30% drawdown in 3 months, they jump out. I was lucky in that I built equity from the start. If I had started in Sept., I would have been wiped out and would have been adding my negativity to this forum.
There are two things you need to trade futures. 1) Enough capital-maybe you will get lucky and ride some trends right off the bat, but the way the trading gods work that may not happen. You need to have enough to ride out the storm if it occurs as soon as you start. And make sure it is money you can afford to lose because scared money is always vulnerable money. 2) Discipline-Understand this-you will have drawdowns in any trend following system. It is going to happen. You will be so tempted to abandon the system and you will feel most likely to abandon it at that precise moment when it is most likely to turn around. You must prepare yourself psychologically for this inevitable fact. It needs to be a part of your trading plan. TR or any system vendor will show you results over a years period and they look great, but your equity curve will not be a straight line up from the time you start. You will have some wild rides during that time. Also, concerning a previous post from someone who said he lost 90% of his account value trading a TR system. The TR software allows you to go back to 1996 and it gives you a trade by trade listing of all trades for all the TR systems. I have gone back through all the systems and there is no way he could have lost that much trading TR. A big part of discipline is following the system every day and making sure your broker is following the system precisely. If you think you are going to buy a system and sit back and have a broker trade it for you, you are wrong. Watch what your broker is doing! Brokers make mistakes, data feeds make mistakes, anything could go wrong.
In summary, Trend Reflection has exceeded my expectations. I would highly recommend it. Have enough capital and prepare yourself psychologically. I can recommend some excellant reading that has helped me, if you want, contact me.
