SIUYA

One of the best setups/stratgies in the market..... you can trade this, and take it too the bank.....lifetime guarantee to work..... Get on an internet site and ask a question ( "similar" to the theme of this thread and probably one of the most f...d up lazy, stupid questions you often see) ......and the question is Can someone show/give me a system that makes money? you may as well paste a target on you back and say take my money. The reason people ask that answers your psychological question

I think this is a great point - a....it is too hard to prove, and yet people will accept the educators proof without any thing further. b....the naivety and embarrassment of people.....combine the two and that is exactly why it will continue....and why when you have people just saying - its a scam, he is a thief, (the fact I did nothing except believe him) except on internet sites will just come across as sour grapes. If more people did go to the regulators maybe, then just maybe something would be done about the more dodgy ones. Mind you the whole finance game might be in trouble then. While I think that regulators should enforce a bit more restrictions on some things we also dont want a nanny state......currently in the UK there are these pay day loans - now that is a scam annual percentage charges in the 1000% range, preying on people who can least afford it, after the whole gfc debacle of crappy mortagages in the US ---- you would think they would learn and at least try an stop it --- this thing would just go underground I guess.....loan sharks etc; I wonder if there would be a black market underground trading educators guild develop.....??? follow our system or else we come round and swivel your chair until you are dizzy, and when it does not work, we will do the mouse and smash your keyboard....

no......it was not magic it was a sales pitch, but it sounds like you were looking for the magic secret sauce. What works all the time.....I guess that makes all doctors, lawyers, banks () scammers as well. then anyone who a.....does not charge b......has no or less than 20 years experience c...d....e.....never makes a sales pitch claim or tries to highlight the best attributes performance of something they are selling they must be the real deal....... I would love to see you in a job interview selling yourself......"Lets be honest, I am a sucker, I am a bit lazy, would rather pay for a easy and quick fix and believe everything some guy says rather than do my own homework".....answer - "dont call us we will call you" (take this in a positive light please :helloooo:) .......if you dont accept some part of it then you have learnt nothing....regardless of Rob Bookers sales pitch/incompetence/scamming abilities.

I am with you Kiwi - sometimes there are gems among the dross and I too have bought some crap - only once did I pay what I thought was an excessive price - but only as I am a tight arse, .....but I still dont believe that a trading educator is a scam artist (matter of degrees really so this is not meant to be an arguement as I know you take a harder line than me ) and that ultimately when you throw your money at a system without actually testing it yourself in some form then you have really only scammed yourself. To do this game you need to think a little independently and yet most dont when they think they have paid for a service......what ever happened to the if it sounds too good to be true it probably is - does that not apply to trading/finance/investment. and this is the real point - rforexdad, I have read this thread, and I think you are assigning all the blame to RB without accepting any of the blame -- that is all, and I guess it is more along the lines of ---- haven't you also scammed yourself. If you paid for a University education and did not ever get that dream job that was promised is it a scam? If it is soooooo bad, and soooooo poorly misrepresented then why dont the fair trading government offices close these guys down - that was also my point in my first post #4 - have you lobbied the government, asked anybody to actually look at this industry or their sales pitches or is this the only route you have taken.....? Purely a matter of degrees thats all really..... (Kiwi - I assume its you across the net as the same Kiwi, and if so thank you for your efforts with Sierra Chart - I am using your 'super trend' MA as a bit of a helper for visually seeing things)

Because if you paid for an eduction and NOT a system then you should back test. Did you actually learn something? On what basis??? Unfortunately rfxdad while RB may or may not be a lot of things.....if you have subsequently paid for other services from anyone else without doing further testing, deep thought into why it might work, or further due dilligence then I hope you pasted a big "L" on your forehead. Due dilligence should be a part of most things - however if we dont do it then its often hard to blame others. But they do say that people do more research on which car to buy than which house to buy......go figure. you what they say (fool me once, shame on you, foll me twice youve got boobs....or something similar.)

I dont know about you guys but I still want the original system that was offered at the start of this thread !! The unfortunately reality is......... if you have a fully automated robot/system that you know makes money all the time - you would be crazy to sell it, unless its to a hedge funds that would pay serious money because you cannot implement it yourself, or the returns are normal and you need cash (ie;10-20%pa would be generous). if you have a system/strategy that requires discretion, usually based on experience and time, it is very hard to teach to others. For both - and assuming there is either skill/talent/experience involved then for most systems there will be large amounts of time, or instruments when they loose money. So.....you will either be.... a) called a scammer (unfortunately even if the system works for you and brokerage statements can prove it - even these can be faked --- you know the old one --- account 1 goes long, the other goes short 2 - the winner is produced) , or b).....are a scammer....as you know its unlikely to be as good as its promoted to be. So as a risk reward trade.....it not a good one to market anything like that unless you expect this ----- its a trade off even if you are legit and it goes with the turf..... Sales and marketing to a bunch of skeptical customers who have been burnt before......why wouldn't they be a harsh bunch of critics.....or an easy bunch of suckers. (you take the critics to get the suckers.....) Plus if you are good at it you are likely to make more money selling than trading with less stress ---- now thats a good trade.

anyone notice that a lot of the trading indicators that are similar get you in at roughly similar levels and the rest is just curve fitting....or is that just me? and Kahmore1 "I lost $630K in four months"- then if that is a small part of your overall fortune then no problems, an expensive in absolute terms lesson, but small relative expense, however if not then first lesson (for free ) - you are likely either --- ----overtrading and feeding your broker, ----or you have not done any testing (which means buying another system wont help) -----or you are using way too much leverage (most likely the first two.)

Its is an interesting dilemma that I am finding trying to automate some approaches. The computer is very binary, and getting stopped out by a tick or two only to watch things continue in the original direction is frustrating.....sure sure you could use larger stops, no stops, varying stops etc; but the computer is very precise.....and then it only wants to react when it sees a 21 ma, cross a 33 ma rather than a 20 cross a 34 or whatever....... Stopping yourself out at 1, or 2 or 3 ticks over a new higher higher, or just letting the pattern develop --- the computer does not care. Thats why in my opinion (while I am sure it can be done) its very hard to get a set and forget automated system of one size fits all. (driving me crazy actually maybe I should just throw in the towel on this one ) While alternatively looking at the overall picture, not worrying about exact entries, stops, etc, looking to get on board the instruments that are already trending, at what could be seen as retracements in those trends, at levels that offer reasonable levels of success (eg, a 50% retracement of a recent upmove in an existing up trend, or a move back toward a trending MA)...... I guess its more a style/strategy/mind set for asset allocation rather than a system.... and as option timer says (if I may change slightly what he says) .... "But this thread was not about day trading. This thread is about trading a STRATEGY (system) "

Take out all the greed, stupidity, laziness and other such human flaws.....maybe its as simple as the normal economic/transaction principles of the expectation of paying for a service. Hence if you pay for something you would hope it would live up to expectations. If you went to a doctor/lawyer/dentist/banker/plumber/builder and paid them, thats ok, but would you go to a Doctor that promises a miracle cure all for only $5000? Probably not, and are Doctors allowed to do such things. Now maybe the question is - how are these people allowed to get away with the marketing ?? Or maybe its as simple as - there is a sucker born every minute - I have been sucked into things (not trading scams) but other things - such as when my lawyer said this is all under control, no problems, $10,000 thanks.....and then oh, sorry- we forgot to tell you that once you are in, its actually more expensive to close the company/trust/corporate structure down than to set it up......doh!.......and yet at the time we thought we asked them for a quick fix. :doh:

you forgot to mention, or could add.... cost (as in terms of value), reliability and stability of the package, and access to data as points to look out for

100% agree....test it (I too have wasted money but more importantly time) and adding to the same theme - dont be a perfectionist and try and get the tops and bottoms (it can be done...sure sure) but as a new trader - just look to get a profitable piece of something first, get on the trends, go with them, dont worry about trying to pick every turn and collect every pip.....first just get a slice of the pie. eg; if the EURUSD has fallen 100 ticks and you captured 25 then thats better than it falling 100 and you loosing while trying to capture 50 ticks. This will ideally stop you doing marginal trades - those are the ones whereby you sell at support trying to get a few extra ticks, after the instrument has already fallen. Look at where the odds are something will happen - if I think this is going to fall from here (plan) then am I better of waiting to enter on a rally away from support, wait for a second time to push through support, or are the odds high that it will bust through support the first time. (execution). If you miss a trade its not the end of the world. (circumstances dependent)

(not that funny, but a smile a day keeps the insanity away) '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' An old nun who was living in a convent next to a construction site noticed the coarse language of the workers and decided to spend some time with them to correct their ways. She decided she would take her lunch, Sit with the workers, and talk with them. She put her sandwich in a brown bag And walked over to the spot where the Men were eating. Sporting a big smile, she walked up To the group and asked, "And do you Men know Jesus Christ?" They shook their heads and looked At each other very confused. One of the workers looked up into the steelworks and yelled out, "Anybody Up there know Jesus Christ?" One of the steelworkers yelled down, "Why?" The worker yelled back, "'Cause his Wife's' here with his lunch."

after a hard day at the office there is nothing like a glass of wine http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=27957&stc=1&d=1331797087

first look at this.... Departing Goldman banker slams 'rip-off' culture Notice how the mention of culture is key. What you asked v what you are trying to get at...."It is because of greed, chance of success or is it the system itself who pushes them to the edge. I hoped to find some common pattern from traders and bankers how they deal with their emotions and regulation with my questions in hope that it could be linked to why traders go rogue." can be a multi varied thing. I view the world this way.....put 1000 people in a room, give them a set of rules, there will always be someone who works out how to break these rules and yet remain on the right side of the law......change the rules, the same people will still do the same thing. ie; it is nt the system - its the people, the culture of greed that is taught and encouraged.....just like racism, nationalism and other such ism's - they are taught, encouraged and allowed to happen...... and yet I will also always defend the right to free speech......its a double edged sword. As for why traders as individuals go rouge ---- a different (but related) story if you are talking about people like Nick Leeson, the Japanese copper man and the recent french and UBS guys.... check out this A Rogue Trader Is Still A Rogue Whether He Makes Money Or Not emotions, regulations and rouge traders will go hand in hand.....effective regulations will do nothing - --- this needs to be a firm internal process, and regulations while they purport to only allow people who are off good name, character and standing to operate can never enforce it......bring back the partnerships --- allow personal looses for the heads of some of these firms and then you might see a change. What you read and what actually goes on can often not be made up by the fiction writers.

love it Zdo..... thanks for your reply....(I agree but just cant help myself sometimes) I guess one romance novel is all we really need

you dont even need to understand anything in this game - often its a better way to be. thinking too much confuses, understanding that what you thought worked was actually just lucky can be devastating.

I would not think its nit picking so dont worry....but maybe I am missing something in the nuances..... IMO..... Trend following - is trading with the trend..... Trend following can also be True Trend trading. Covel seems more concerned with long term trend following.....what I think you are calling true trend trading. (????) and while there is a mish mash.....thats trading Maybe I should have written long term trend followers as opposed to just trend followers. but I was a bit confused by your quote "There is no requirement to enhance, support, etc true trend trading with leveraging, compounding, sizing, diversification, pyramiding, scaling," There is never any requirement for any of these, but they do make a big difference in many systems, otherwise every CTA attempting such things should theoretically end up getting similar results.....but they dont. With all these variables/parameters as inputs in systematic (not discretionary) systems then they do make a difference. If I am reading you right, maybe you are saying that this is largely irrelevant is True trend following (as opposed to trading) is more a mindset than a system..... (I also dont think this is off topic at all..... If its about how or why one might be interested in the books - he also sells (or did) the turtle trend systems which do have all the trading parameters...,hence some of his controversy)

Tchu - when you talk about regulations v instinct are you sure thats what you wish to know about..... Plus I dont know of many people even on an anonymous website (not everything is always anonymous) who would admit to breaking regulations.....unless they are an idiot. Are you sure regulations are the right word??? Plus if it is, most people are not regulated. as an example...... 1. Do you act sometime on instinct when making a deal or do you strictly follow the regulation? yes - I rarely pay any heed to regulations when making a trade decision unless I have inside knowledge, but I do when executing. 2. Please give a small example If you acted on your instinct before, when and why it occurs. This morning - I shorted the EURUSD 1.31171 and instinct told me to buy it back at 1.3112, I should not have. It occurs as I was not focused - in this case and was leaving to go to lunch and just could not be bothered. 3. In your opinion, can banker/traders become successful by only following the regulations? (Please give a reason why you think this way) Clearly MFGlobal shows that this is not the case Regulations have nothing to do with success. 4. It is common sense that traders/bankers are under a lot of pressure and have to deal with stressful situations. How do you deal with it? alcohol (when younger, but that was also as I enjoyed getting drunk with friends - now I rarely drink) and success is the best stress reliever - now days I just wish I had kids so I could beat them at the end of a bad day. .....and I thought train drivers and dentists had the most stressful jobs In other words......I dont think I can really answer this question as trading is not what gives me stress. 5. Do stressful situations and pressure increase your performance? sometimes, but generally not in trading. Pressure causes other problems that might be tranlated into the trading arena. 6. What is your opinion on the security regulations within your financial institution? (Are they more of a interference or help for surveillance for you) IMHO compliance was designed for two reasons - to protect firms from breaking regulations, and to ensure clients have some level of protection. They were designed to ensure processes were followed to minimise risks In reality IMO, compliance is now an empire unto itself and while providing a lot of wasted time and extra costs have not minimised risks or reduced bad behaviour - no in my terms its a general failure. However that is not to say you dont need something and as corporate culture starts at the top of the firms then this is where the problems lie. In my experience (when working at firms) regulations and compliance are clearly a hinderance as I have always acted in the clients best interests, for those that dont they are a hinderance, Its basically only a help for those who are amoral and need a set of rules to follow if they cant distinguish between right and wrong. Ultimately regulations and compliance fail as they are just another process that either bogs businesses down or they dont understand the business. They should be part of the culture. There is a difference. I have been regulated at a large firm in both Australia and the UK, and I am currently regulated - I have also seen how poor regulations are when they are deliberately ignored. (too many stories, even the fiction writers would not believe them) 7. Have you ever breached a security regulation? If yes, why? No - if I had would I admit it.

"Why would they do this? " but wait, send no money now, there is more. If you complete our course we may give you money to trade....course costs $X Or you put in 25, we put in 100, when you loose 25 we cut you. Plus you trade via against our market makers...... On saying that funds/prop houses are always looking for people, so blinkers on, blinkers off. I would imagine that the trader receiving 20-30% of profits is generous..

actually given that you think trend following is about outliers, then MM can be fairly important here.... Aim is to have the maximum amount on for an outlier. It depends on what you are trying to achieve really. There are many ways to ride/play/enter/exit a trend. depending on what you wish to achieve. stable steady returns....a potential hedge against other investments.....highly leveraged opportuniites into calamity/outliers..... testing for 1 contract is interesting for entry v exit and effieiciency of these (for want of a better word play), however, its the pyramiding (and again this is another parameter) than can make a lot of difference. I have run some tests (rudimentary admittedly) which show pyramiding really works when it works and is slightly worse when it does not. Another thing that needs to remembered with trend following is that often its diversification that helps a lot (especially with the compounding) and interestingly enough taking profits can also help (system dependent ).....The other thing a lot of people gloss over, which you mention with the always in the market.....all in or all out is difficult with size, scaling in out is often employed, hence the importance of MM. (The aim is always to get the meat and not just the scraps) How many retail systems or any systems allow you to backtest portfolios PROPERLY - in terms of scaling, portfolio and concentration risk.....???

BlueHorseShoe - I am with Electronic local on this and as soon as you talk about oversold/bought then you are picking bottoms/tops and you know what they say about that. IMHO overbought and oversold are constructs from brokers....period. V bottoms are rare..... dependent on time frame, and how long you wish to run something However - if you wish to try and do that then combine it with something simple as --- support, 50% (or whatever) fib retracement, break to new low then instant reversal..... This is as close as you might get if you wish to anticpate as opposed to react. Waiting for a retracement (of the retracement in your example) and then a resumption of the original uptrend might not mean you get the bottom, but will probably be less stressful sitting it out and/or trying to catch a v bottom. Waiting for a higher low, will often get you in near the bottom anyway. As an example look at the rumpled one - he waits for a signal within the 20 pip low range, and while not taking every signal (backtesting will show you this may chop you up a lot), having a bit of patience, waiting for the initial bounce can pay, and then applying a simple Rat reversal method might be profitable. (This is interesting as I have been trying to auto mate similar contextual/discretionary things.....so far not to a satisfactory level for me - due to the issues of overtrading, not being able to replicate my discretion (support, retracement) etc, and I am wondering if this is where you are heading. Additionally Electronic Local and his blog seem to have come to the same conclusion, and hence a mixture of automation and discretion is still needed - EL please correct me if I am massively wrong (I dont have a programming daughter ))

I think thats the best you can get.....somewhere in between as JoshDance says its all a guess and you need to make assumptions. Plus while take profit levels and entry levels can certainly be fairly accurately guesstimated, any stops might be a different story....so there is likely to be slippage - how much an impact is debatable (and later measurable) Additionally there is the issue of missing trades - both winners and losers, unless you have 24 hours IT, trading and other support, you will go on holidays, your computers will crash etc; etc;....hence backtests are a guesstimate of what to expect - or at least thats the angle I take from them. So yes - its one of those things where you have to understand the limitations of the system and expect the worst - then and its probably only a slim chance - you might be pleasantly surprised In regard your first question - some brokers purge old orders as well, so placing some orders years in advance may still not be enough. There will be the additional issue of being able to replicate the assumptions in any test in the reality of not just the markets, but also the broker system.....eg; can the broker handle longs and shorts separately, will the system be able to know its 100% filled - what about partials, will the broker allow you leeway to offset hedged instruments or is margin, margin calls and increasing margin calls a possible issue.....etc; etc; etc;.....the never ending joys

they will always be worse. ....how much will largely be depandant on number of trades, magnitude of wins v losses v costs v slippagge etc; backtesting only gives an indication of what would occur- what you would expect- if the same conditions where to occur in the future and the reality is you by adding extra volume into the live market then actually do affect the market. All you can do is be conservative, overestimate slippage and then tweak systems once live by benchmarking the results of the continued backtested system v live trading to compare and see where improvements can be made. It might be the one or two trades that a missed that completely throw off a system.

yes.....maybe. that would be your choice of hedge, no market maker is going to put on a texas hedge to help you out of your stop and ultimately that is a lot of what bigger funds/prop desks do - they hedge one large position with others a lot of the time, or they diversify, whereas a single individual position in one instrument as a day/retail trader is very different. Or people do spread trades in the same underlying with different options strikes or series (different months) to minimize risk. One issue will obviously be that often you may end up having two positions on with double the risk, or the opportunity window to quickly hedge something else when a gap occurs is very small. If you like start another options question thread....

Piston Doctor - no problems with the reference to other vendors.....but on of the nice things about TL is the vigilance attached to some spamming references - especially in first posts thats all. Regards candles - they represent nothing more than what has happened. If you assign more than that then you will unfortunately create issues. As others have mentioned the context is more important....and as food for though.....why have the MAs on the chart if they do have significance. Plus, how many other candle patterns dont work without the context.....ie; its the underlying movement that they represent as opposed to the candle causing the underlying movement -( I dont believe too much in the self fullfilling claims in liquid markets.)