You obviously aren't focusing on the subject. How many people have to tell you that there aren't any good ones worth the money before it sinks in? Spend your money and you will remain a new trader, do the work on your on and you will have a small chance. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this exact thing repeated in the 12+ years I've been trading. Just trying to be helpful.
Which real live future trading room I should choose?
- Thread starter Affecto
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I was in Robert Hoffman's room for one month only, so I cant comment about his trading after that month. However the month I was there he made 80% from the room subscriptions and only 20% from the trading. His total income I estimated at $35k that month.
I left after I noticed this fact and realization that his trading system wasn't good enough, at least for me. His system is taking tick profits and averaging into a trade, with a 3 point hard stop on every trade. It is 100% discretionary, and always results creating large losing outliers.
I realized this is the perfect system for a guru to sell, since it is price-action based that can't be backtested. Also found out his website was registered in 2006, but he didnt start the room until 2008. In fact he made youtube videos since 2007. Perfect marketing system. Build a subscriber base, do some mentoring to create capital for what's to come, then start a chatroom for $300 a month. All the while bashing other guru's (like livewithoscar $400 a month who can't trade) to create a group-feeling. The fact he keeps telling people his $300 is cheap and considering upping his prices to help out charities is a well-known marketing tactic. Buy before the good deal is gone you know...
Now everybody thinks he's just a nice guy and are blind followers. Sounds guru-ish doesn't it?
I am curious to know though, if that guy was down $20k that month, how much money did he make that month from trading compared to his subscriptions? You should know how to estimate his subscribers by looking at the amount of people in his chatroom. Did he ever made $20k in a day? Sounds to me alot of small winners and 1 large loser that can wipe you out.
Call me crazy but this guy is probably part of a larger scheme to take money away from newbie traders, under the leadership of a well-known futures broker. Alot of chatrooms are pushing this broker, and the broker wasn't well-known until 1 year, or 2 ago. These guru's are paid affiliates, sucking new traders dry of their $ with failed trading methods. It's a conspiracy!
I like this guy. He would be good to subscribe to for a month just for the education. 3 Day Free Trial.
Mike might be worth the money even if you only wanted a great news feed. He is on top of the news rumours from the floor. Keeps up with and trades around reports, treasury auctions, fed speakers etc.
Mike manages futures and he also trades, Corn, Beans, Oil, Euro,NQ, YM. He is not a scalper. He tries to catch highs, lows based on pivot levels, paper flow etc. He gets killed on trend days. He does best on normal days.
http://www.squawktrader.com/
John
Mike might be worth the money even if you only wanted a great news feed. He is on top of the news rumours from the floor. Keeps up with and trades around reports, treasury auctions, fed speakers etc.
Mike manages futures and he also trades, Corn, Beans, Oil, Euro,NQ, YM. He is not a scalper. He tries to catch highs, lows based on pivot levels, paper flow etc. He gets killed on trend days. He does best on normal days.
http://www.squawktrader.com/
John
I also joined his room for one month just for the hell of it (never logged into a trading room before, wanted to see what people were actually doing in these places)... and I wasn't all that impressed either. He has a hell of a lot of entry preconditions that means that he misses out on a lot of great trades. I've seen him sit there and watch the market run all day for 25 full S&P handles, all the while telling his students to be patient and not to trade. I've also seen him sit there and miss an entry by literally one tick, then watch the market turn and run 40 ticks the other way. He preaches that this is a good entry technique, and that you should never move even a single tick to enter the market, which is just not true. The risk/reward highly favors taking that extra tick of risk if you are expecting a 15-20 tick move out of it, especially if you know what you're doing and can read price action. S/R levels are approximate, not absolute.
Generally he does a few scalp trades here and there for 1-2 points and says that it's a successful day. If you do the math, he is making at least as much money from his students per month as his trading.
Having said that, I don't think that he is a scam artist in any way. He does seem to be a genuinely nice guy and really does care about the success of his students - and overall if you follow his trades he is not actually losing money (at least not from what I saw - every day was profitable when I was watching him, although there were a good number of "no trade" days as well). Also, a lot of newbies could learn the value of patience by being in his room, as that is one of his strong suits (although in my opinion he takes it way too far).
Also, his work with support and resistance levels is very good. If you actually watch his YouTube videos, you can see that he calls S/R levels that often end up being uncannily accurate in terms of where the market tends to reverse most of the time. If his trading techniques were anywhere near as good as his longer-term S/R analysis, he'd probably be great, but as it stands I couldn't recommend the room to anyone interested in learning how to make big money.
One other thing - he actually trades with live money and not on a simulator, unlike some other "gurus" on this forum who will remain unmentioned.
Unfortunately, no. I just joined that room for fun, I didn't really need the education in any way... and after that experience I realized that these rooms were just a complete waste of my time.
Basically, I think that's what people here have been trying to tell you - that following any chat room educator is generally a bad idea. I know why you're doing it - you either don't have faith in your own decision-making abilities and therefore want to shadow someone else hoping that will lead to profits, or else you don't want to do the work of learning how to trade, and hope to shadow someone else on your way to profits. I can 100% assure you that this is not going to work very well for you.
Not only is it difficult to consistently shadow another trader all the time and make money, but most of the guys who will let you do that aren't actually all that good themselves. Have some more faith in your own ability to learn and become a great trader on your own. The best traders probably won't take the time to teach you - they are too busy making money. The best traders also never sat there and tried to trade someone else's system - they forged their own path in the markets.
If you're looking for a shortcut, you are absolutely going to lose. Nobody in the history of trading has EVER made consistent money over the long haul by taking shortcuts. Ever. You are definitely not going to be the first.
You can waste your time looking for more rooms and more educators if you like, or you just start doing now what you will one day end up doing anyways: sit there and stare at the market all day, and learn to read the price action. Learn to see the patterns for yourself, and ignore what everyone else is saying. You have to internalize and make the knowledge your own, so that you know the market like the back of your hand. Only then will you be able to make money on a consistent basis.
You probably either don't fully believe me at this point, or don't fully understand the importance of what I am saying - that is normal. I was once like that a long time ago too. I thought I could take shortcuts. I was wrong. You are going to learn these lessons one way or another, it's just up to you how long it's going to take. Take it for what it's worth.
I would only recommend him if the person wanted to see one style of trading in action. His style is definately not fit for everybody and likewise not the type of trading that will make you a millionaire through trading. Use to think he was a nice guy too but the picture just doesn't add up. Is it nice to ask $300 a month? He tells you he wants to get paid for having the room. I can understand his reasoning, but looks to me he isn't doing much at all all day, just talking and waiting. Yeah, his trading is live and hes probably the cheapest in that regard and unique, but if you make 80% from subscriptions in one month and he wants to "get paid" for his effort, seems to me he only gets paid for his effort and not through trading.
Also you never get straight answers from him. If you ask him how he makes his S&R levels he will answer you, I use, pivots, fibonacci, etc. But the secret remains. I did my own due diligence and could recreate his levels, but there is a flaw with them how he creates them and it remains unexplained.
Also I am reading he still takes 1-2 tick profits because of "hyper volatility". Okay, so you do a martingale strategy averaging in higher and higher size contracts at better prices, then take 1 and 2 ticks of profit. If you think about it, the "volatility " of the ES is such a way, you will almost always have 1-3 ticks of jerky random movement. Then I don't think that it's uncommon at all to have a a 95% win ratio if you take 1-2 ticks everytime. Problem is if you scaled in such size and then gets stopped out, you have a big loss.
Don't get me wrong, I don't exclude the fact he could very well be a real pro trader, especially since he seems to be profitable every month and that's all that counts, even if you use a flawed technique.
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