Secrets of Traders Rant!

[CandleWhisperer 10]

One of the first books I bought was Wells Wilder's Delta Phenomenon. Turning points based on the phases of the moon. What was I thinking?

[Bearbull 10]

Funny how Tradeguider have taken Williams half a dozen or so simple (and quite Whyckoffian) principles and simplified them into 400 indicators. Still glad you find it amusing. Makes me and and a little bit and just a touch :puke:. The videos are a bit like train wreck TV I watch now and then out of morbid curiosity. Nowadays the 'shock horror market manipulation' BS pretty much dominates anything useful. I guess that's what sells software books courses symposiums Gavin Holmes action figures etc.

We know a couple of traders who have the full history of this circus, It is not that Tradeguider has taken Williams half a dozen or so simple principles and simplified them into 400 indicators, they were already there in the original VSA program before GH came on the scene to revive their fortunes. I believe GH took over around 2003 and they had their first seminar for the Technical Analysis Society in U.K, don't think it made much impact, talk of each volume bar reflecting 90% of professional activity was very much at odds with why 95% of them lose;)

Yes listening to any of their archived presentations, or CDs or YouTube videos (now they constantly quote Jim Cramer) , they go through the ritual, how Williams came to US as a nurse, then became a chartist of a syndicate prior to taking the SMI Wyckoff course and computerised what he learnt from the course. Then "We are not a software company, we are here to teach you how to read the smart/dumb money" - ofcourse at this stage there is no mention of the costs that a wannabe trader is going to incur.

 

Why not just direct the inquirer to the original source to gain further knowledge, at least it will be a systematic study and a lot cheaper.:crap:

[waveslider 10]

FWIW,

I get the secrets of traders emails and started reading them recently because, well the guy is actually on the floor everyday. Maybe he gets a feel for the chatter?

I think he does. One interesting thing he mentioned before that I didn't know (though I don't watch CNBC or any TV) is that the traders put on Chef's hats when new "important" economic numbers are released.

Is any one else discouraged that it is common knowledge that the US government blatantly "cooks the books"?

I know its a different topic.

 

Back to the dude who started this topic (sorry forgot your handle) - a good thing you are humble enough to admit your mistake. Tip for everyone looking for instruction/method: the seller must provide actual entries and exits that you can verify personally to see if they are achievable. They should provide, on request, a copy of their brokerage statement to verify these entries (they should be taking the same trades).

 

As was mentioned, the "secrets of traders" are within themselves and their discipline, not the method. yeah!

[FFTrader 10]

GetMoney, I was with them briefly and decided that I cannot ... at that point, I had zero experience in trading and thought their secrets were secrets. :doh: However, after opening a tradestation account and doing more research, things are more real. Nonetheless appreciates the sharing the truth.

[bh_trade 10]

Lol, I remember wanting to buy that book but it was quite expensive for a college student. Nothing like "inversion" when the predictions don't work out. Elliott guys call it "alternate count".

 

One of the first books I bought was Wells Wilder's Delta Phenomenon. Turning points based on the phases of the moon. What was I thinking?

[dementyia 10]

Thank you so much for the warning!

 

Most people haven't seen enough of this to actually realize it, but the truth behind any offer selling "secrets" of anything is that all of the information is freely available online to anyone willing to do a little research to find it, no matter what topic they're looking for.

 

Of course, for a lot of people, paying out some cash to have someone else do their dirty work is worth it, but not for me, or most others who are looking to save money instead of spend it.

[rglim 10]

Did anyone here take advantage of the Secrets of Traders Course 2009 guarantee they just promoted? For $2009, they provide you with all course materials, a month's worth of webinars with Larry (supposedly), and access to their trading room. If the trading room doesn't make $2009 within the first 2 months and 9 days starting Jan. 2, they will give you back $4018. The catch is that the trading room must make at least $2009 in that time period, not the individual student trader. However, when I took their free trial and followed the called trades on a simulator (they call out entry prices and stops and when they move their stops), I had some problems matching their performance. On a few of the trades that were called, I got stopped out for a loss, whereas the guy calling the trades stated that he exited at break even after my stop had been hit. And on one trade, he stated he was able to take a profit of 2.75 S&P points, but he wrote it after my stop had already been hit for a loss. I was tempted to buy the course, but after I couldn't get reassurance that my performance would be able to duplicate or at least come close to that of the trading room, I passed.

[FFTrader 10]

rglim,

 

Though I completely agree with you on the duplication on performance, I would think that the "desire performance" is probably above "a performance".

 

For me, I have set aside performance targets for my own trading. Quite honestly, $2009 is just under 41 points with 1 contract on the ES and over two months and 9 days is less than 1 point per day. That is a low target I would think.

 

I suppose I am implying that the target should be much higher. But whether one can achieve "a target" and then move on to a higher target can be entirely very unique to an individual - logically.

 

In other words, your goal, my goal, and others can and should easily exceed that regardless of the system we trade eventually in IMHO.

 

Just my 2 cents.

 

Thanks.

 

Did anyone here take advantage of the Secrets of Traders Course 2009 guarantee they just promoted? For $2009, they provide you with all course materials, a month's worth of webinars with Larry (supposedly), and access to their trading room. If the trading room doesn't make $2009 within the first 2 months and 9 days starting Jan. 2, they will give you back $4018. The catch is that the trading room must make at least $2009 in that time period, not the individual student trader. However, when I took their free trial and followed the called trades on a simulator (they call out entry prices and stops and when they move their stops), I had some problems matching their performance. On a few of the trades that were called, I got stopped out for a loss, whereas the guy calling the trades stated that he exited at break even after my stop had been hit. And on one trade, he stated he was able to take a profit of 2.75 S&P points, but he wrote it after my stop had already been hit for a loss. I was tempted to buy the course, but after I couldn't get reassurance that my performance would be able to duplicate or at least come close to that of the trading room, I passed.

[BlowFish 10]

Just don't even think of going there.

[Bearbull 10]

How many times it has to be stated, all the principles of supply/demand, effort/result, cause/effect are there playing out on every chart on any timeframe.

All that is required is the resolve, determination, patience and will to learn the dynamics of demand and supply, develop your own setups, tactics etc, only then it will be possible to be self reliant and trade with confidence.

 

In this respect it is compelling to repost this: It is an extract from Dbphoenix file where Demand /Supply is explained in more detail without charts, the reason......WELL READ ON.

 

REAL WISDOM OF TRADING

 

I'm sure it has occurred to at least some readers that if the accumulation-distribution

pattern I've described here were dependable in all circumstances under all conditions, then all stocks would have a pattern of up, across, down, across, up, across, ad infinitum. This is clearly not the case. The markets are not represented by a straight and narrow highway. A far better metaphor would be a roiling sea of rallies, reactions, markups, markdowns, shakeouts, thrusts, buying and selling climaxes, turning points, all happening all at once in timeframes varying from minutes to years and with all the accompanying eddies, currents, inversions, and undertows. This is the primary reason why I haven't provided graphic examples here of the concepts I've presented. The point is not to find some stock somewhere that typifies accumulation or a shakeout and use it as a template for all future investigations of manifestations of changes in demand and supply, but to understand at a deeper level how the threads of demand and supply, accumulation and distribution, and the relationship between price and volume all intertwine. What I've provided here is only the beginning of an exploration, not an exhaustive treatment of the subject.

Each chart you look at, instead of being "typical", will instead be unique. Each movement of price and volume in a chart has meaning only within the context of what has gone before in that particular chart. Therefore, solving the puzzle of the dynamics of

demand and supply will be a new challenge with each chart. Achieving mastery of this skill will take time, if mastery is ever achieved at all. But applying even the most basic of the principles outlined above will result in an almost immediate payback, if not in money gained, then in money saved.

[BlowFish 10]

You don't even have to go that far BB learn a couple of price action 'patterns' and play them against 'lines' or areas. Again you could look over in the Wyckoff forum to learn how to identify areas based on supply/demand or just use 3 day H L C weekly H L. VA or a whole bunch of others that require no thought whatsoever to draw. They might not be as 'good' but still 'work'.

[FFTrader 10]

It follows that there is no secret(s) in trading.

 

It is also kind of funny that we all seek the holy grail at one point or another and also find ways to point fingers at others if the trading fails.

[spcul8r 10]

Get $,

 

Sorry to hear that you were mislead by Larry and the gang. Years ago he was making consistent money by arbing the pit traded vs electronic S&P emini when it first came out in 97. Over the years black box/algo traders in the big houses have erased this edge. Now he apparently has gone the "it's easier to sell pick axes to miners then mine for gold" route". Don't beat yourself up, all traders go through the same process. I first became introduced to futures trading (commodities) through an ad in the mail by a man in a cowboy hat in 1988. $200.00 later with secret manual in hand i was on my way! I proceeded to follow the cowboy's advice and lost my a$$ trying to "scale" into Silver for over 12 months and it never moved. This was before the age of the internet. I spent countless more $ on "hotlines", 900 numbers at 6.00 per min to gurus, fax services, the Allstar hotline in futures magazine etc. Then finally I decided that I knew about as much as they did and started hand charting the dailies in the bond market. I began drawing simple trend lines. Before long I was getting a feel for the markets. Since then I have become a screen trader like most of us here but I still do alot things by hand. The thing I learned is that less is more in trading and to keep it as simple as possible but not too simple (Albert Einstein). No one for any amount of $ can teach someone how to trade with real money. It has to be learned first hand and along the way you will undoubtedley pay more tuition to learn your craft to traders who have paid theirs before you. The 10% club is only for the traders that have the stomach and courage to continue on in the face of adversity and incredible odds stacked against them. What I can promise you is that if you make this your career and you have the passion and desire you will make it, and you will be able to do so without Larry or any other guru.

 

Cheers,

 

Spcul8r

[sdoma 10]

But the fact is I was idiotic enough to shell out 6500 to Larry Levin at secrets of traders! The term 'Secrets' is misleading being that everything in this course is well known and widely discussed on this forum (Value Area, Engulfments etc).

 

Geez, I would've taught you that for a drink and a little flattery. But in any event, from what I've seen of profile seminars, they are all very similar with a couple of exceptions. Cisco's MP method is different, and so is Alex Benjamin's.

 

But in any event, Market Profile is a way of seeing markets, as is the Wyckoff Method or VSA. If you read about them all here, you'll see a lot of overlap between them. Focus on principles and the rest will come.

[ezduzzit 10]

While I am always saddened to read of yet another trader getting duped by a slick, high pressure marketer.. as others have said, it absolutely comes with the territory and there's nothing wiser than to just accept the lesson and move on under your own steam to learn things on your own.

 

The current flavor of the day is that each of these trading gurus is going to show you their secret ways of detecting what the Smart Money ("SM") is doing and if you will just shadow them you cannot fail to keep on the right side of the trade and make money. PIFFLE! Pure balderdash... If it were so easy to consistently discern and mimic SM tactics just from watching volume and context, etc. don't you think a heckuva lot more of the floor traders who attempt to make the transfer over to screen trading could figure that out a lot easier than you or I? Well, truth is. .extremely few of them make the transition to becoming a profitable screen trader. As retail traders we also don't have the account size to continue buying as it declines (where might it stop, eh?) just as an example.

 

I daresay that a good number of the prior floor traders may only have made money in the pits because of either developing a good "feel" for the live action in the pits or else they were even better at keeping an eagle eye out for newbie floor reps and taking the other side of their trades.

 

Trading is a tough, tough business mostly because we tend to either terribly complicate it with scads of indicators and theories or we lose sight of just trading what we see, in constant attempts to figure out WHY the market is doing what it is doing, when we THINK it should be doing something else (one of the potentially dire risks of having a personal bias unless you are a really sharp money manager).

 

Don't trust anybody else's ideas until you try them out for yourself and see if they work for you. If you have to pay much of anything for them, you are probably better off taking a pass. As an earlier poster pointed out.. likely you couldn't trade their method anywhere near as well as they can, if in fact that "guru" even trades for real money now or if he/she ever did.

 

Get yourself some good trading buddies and stay in touch with them. I used to think I was doing pretty well..until one of my buds let loose with some info he said he thought was pretty outstanding if he could just get his mindset and emotions under control to trade it. He used to bug me with detail after detail about his ideas, etc. until one day I finally had enough and set aside some time to really evaluate what he was saying in order to show him that his method was probably not viable. Well, surprise! I can trade his method much more successfully than my own now yet he still can't make money with it.

 

So, if trading is really in your blood, keep your money in your pocket or in your account, put in tremendous amounts of screen time and talk regularly to other real money traders (not during trading hours!) that have been around the block a time or two. You may never end up with a real mentor but all you really need is 1 to 3 very simple and consistently profitable set ups to become expert at. The rest is all about learning about yourself and fitting what you are and how you act into how the market operates.

 

All the best to James and the many great contributors in this forum,

 

E Z

[Soultrader 12]

Hey EZ, been a while since I saw you last around here and good to have you back.

 

I agree entirely about having a good trading buddy to talk to. I do keep in touch with more veteran traders that I can learn from at the same time have enough ideas to contribute. We recently build a trade system on Japanese equities... and I would of never thought I would be trading stocks! Well at the end of the day, all that matters is "Did you make money?"

 

Interacting with veteran traders have helped me gain further wisdom and become more open to the variety of trading methodologies out there. The trade system we built has nothing to do with chart patterns, fundamentals, or technical analysis. Simply exploiting regulations created by the local exchange. So just like the pit traders who made money by exploiting the newer pit traders... in this game no one will hand you a medal for placing a trade based on a pretty looking technical setup. I dont expect the edge to be there always. But for now, might as well exploit this edge.

 

Though I do think the ability to read price action and tape as well as understanding fundamentals is key to longevity in this game, I think it really boils down to what is it you want out of the markets. There are so many ways to profit from the market.. and like ez said only 1-3 setups is all you need. The problem for new traders is that they lack the experience to understand when to stay aside. I think this emotion of patience and discpline only kicks in after a trader make his/her mistake and experiences the pain. All you need is just a small piece of the pie.... I found this to be the hardest when starting out especially coming from a tourney poker background where I had to eat up the entire pie to win.

[tlfx 10]

It follows that there is no secret(s) in trading.

 

It is also kind of funny that we all seek the holy grail at one point or another and also find ways to point fingers at others if the trading fails.

 

Very true! It's really up to the trader to create his own holy-grail trading system. It's like golf, you have to find your own SWING...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

:missy:

[trk08 10]

So secrets of traders is just a scam?

[BlowFish 10]

What do you think from the comments here? I din't think people could have put it any plainer.

[Guest umafhkanta]

It wouldn't make sense. Why not trade your own money, start a CTA or CPO. Truth is that the "method" is shit, or very basic at that and if their own money and/or ass was on the line the method would choke.

[ChicagoTrader 10]

I knew Larry for the S&P pit. Larry has longevity on his side and some marketing savy.

The longer you hang around this business, the better you learn that there are no shortcuts. Larry is a good guy. People have to determine what exactly they are paying for before they plunk down boatloads of money for shortcuts. At $7,000, a person could have gotten any floor member to sign them on as a floor clerk for a few months to learn.

Sitting a computer or scraping out a living on the floor, it all comes form the school of hard knocks. I would tell you this "secret", recite ton yourself that there are no shortcuts.

Patterns may repeat, but each trading day is a discrete independent event that has nuances. Learning the patterns is the key (and I don't mean technically necessarily).

[Guest chghtor]

Thanks it's somewhat comforting to know I'm not the only one whose been through this. Like you say it's just apart of my tuition I suppose. One thing is for sure: I'm not giving up here!

[Stormy 10]

"a person could have gotten any floor member to sign them on as a floor clerk for a few months to learn".=ChicagoTrader

 

When a person who is willing to learn trading, using me as an example, I believe they are looking for hands on experience. Each person learns by different methods. Like me, I learn better by "hands on" experience. People who have not even been around a trading floor or office don't know where to begin in their endeavor of learning. So, they are apt to become "suckers" (me) when choosing a learning avenue. I did not know you could have a floor member sign them in as a floor clerk for a few months to learn. Not that I know a floor member, oh wait, maybe I do, well, not personally, but I have met one, anyway, what better way to learn. I would take the chance!