Institutional Equivalent Education?

The trolls will keep trolling. Whilst us experienced trading veterans know the value in what we are getting and continue to expand our knowledge and experience.

Indeed. Typical FF, he's probably just another hopeful who's made poor choices and been burned, venting his frustration. Then he assumes that his experience has made him smarter than everybody else.

Anyway, I will stop here, as this will likely only fan the pointless flames further, and I don't wish to hijack Ian's thread.

JethroForex,
You could not be more wrong about transparency. It is precisely because Ray actually is what he says he is (i.e. never been a retail trader). That he can't show results - because there is no personal account! Anybody who claims to be trading for an institution and who shows personal account results must be a fraud - it is not allowed.
As for showing Coroprate results - can you really imagine the Goldman Sachs, CitiBanks of this world being happy to show their corporate accounts to the public at the trade by trade level? They would not even show that level to their Regulators because it would divulge proprietary information - that is why the SEC only hits small fry for 'spoofing' , when the big boys do it 1000 time more.

I resent that anybody would question my motives or integrity. I don't hide my name, or my failures - just read the whole thread and you will see that over and over again. If anything, I tend to gloss over my successes!

This thread started out just like any other FF member's thread, but I and it were re-classified purely because our focus on only that which is worthwhile. I don't and never have received any money from anybody for recommending something or writing about something.
I do it only in order to try to save others some of the expense, wasted time and heartache that I 've had on my path through trading.

Somebody commented that many of Ray's students have to join another group in order to be successful. Comming from somebody who has never been a student of Ray, it is hard to know what they think they are talking about. However I do run a (completely free) 'Self Help Group' for Ray's current and 'resting' students - just ask anyone who has been on a Ray course and they will tell you that you certainly need some rest after one!

There is nothing compulsary about my group and there are several succesful students of Ray who have never been members, however more of his successful students are likely to be members of my Group. - But how come this is supposedly a bad thing?
-What is wrong with traders helping each other be better students and better, more successful traders?

I had intended to give poor Boris Schlossberg a rest from my jibes this week since his emails have been quite sensible recently.

But he blew that my his latest one, in which he both boasts that his trend following trades made 10% in a month, but that he won't be leveraging them up even thouh he is currently only using 10% of his trading capital for that type of trade. He claims that 10% per month is at the upper end of what it is possible to make in Forex over the longer term.

In doing so he displays a gigantic ignorance both of the vast array of different successful trader styles and also of what is achievable by only trading when you have a big enough discount to 'Value'.

My trading was severly limited at tthe start of this month, due to a severe stomach bug and a bad case of 'the trots' which lasted for 6 days in all.
I did manage a little trading on Friday 1st September, but it was not untill Wednesday 6th that I was back to normal and able to trade fully again. In those 3 days last week I did 93 (partial) trades of which 71 were winners i.e. a win rate of 76% (which is slightly below my target of a better than 80% win rate). Was I overleveraging? - Yes on one day I did overleverage, though not near enough to put my account at risk.
How bad was my overleveraging? - My biggest loss was 6% of my account, when my maximum even on an 'all-in' trade should be 5% or less (on my entry risk level trades I am risking less than 0.5%).
So how much did I make - too much because of the overleveraging! But to give you an idea on my poorest day of the three I made over 3%, so even if I only trade that well and with that amount of market movement I can make say 10% to 15% per week consistently! Note that my best month since my heart operation made me something around the 15% per week mark.

Here is my post in here from the end of May 2017 :

I am just looking over my numbers for August. 852 (partial) trades, 209 losses, 75% win rate (again this is lower than my target - so not a good month), account gain of just over +50%.


Obviously I am trading full time - when I can avoid interruptions from my wife, but so presumably is Boris. But the multiplying effect of a good expectancy with tens of trading units traded per day is obvious. Though apparently it isn't to Boris because he believes that a high win rate and a highish number of opportunities per day are mutually exclusive! - They don't have to be, even if like me you specialise in type of trade and markets traded.


The main problems are :-
1. Keeping a check on the win rate in case it starts to drift off. If it does, cut back to only the best trades.
2. Avoiding overconfidence, complacency, boredom and anything else that might cause overleveraging or taking trades with insufficient edge/discount.

A clarification:

1. Making 1 to 3% per day isn't easy, though once you have a correct method then the hard part is in the psychology - avoiding bad trades and minimising you size on the trades which have a smaller edge.

2. At least Boris errs on the side of caution in only committing 10% of his account to a new and promising system, though reading further into his email he is prepared to increase that by up to 10% of his whole account in stages, so long as it continues to perform well. For me personally that 1st stage, which effectively more than doubles (with retained profit) the amount he is risking on this method, is a very big leap! Being objective and uninvolved I would be happier increasing the risk in +50% stages rather than +100% on the forst increment.

3. Boris does not give details as to his sample size for his assertion that his system has a 90% win rate. The sample size is extremely important, especially on a lower frequency system because is will always be a relatively small sample size. Personally I would not be happy about using any figures from a sample size smaller than 100 trades - even if you only get 1 trade per week and thus have to use some backtesting to get the sample size high enough. Note that 100% Backtesting is not acceptable - wheras forward testing in Demo is acceptable - though not accurate because Psych comes into play the moment you start trading real money!

(04:38 am) Ian Foster: Good morning guys. This is painful, I maiseed the Dax break long and am now sitting on my hands wondering where it is going to stop - I have seen no pullbacks on the 3min and feel uneasy about going to any smaller TF for a pullback. This week is looking to be a rubbish week for news.

(04:43 am) Ian Foster: I didn't trade either Oil Inventory release last week - the first time I have skipped both of them since 1st March this year. I didn't like the confusion of the situation due to refinary closures, tankers unable to offload, localised Gasoline shortages etc.
I really don't expect this week to be much better either, so will probably at least skip the API Inventory.

Hi Ian, How to register to Ray service? Is there any preview material to have an idea about the course outlook and set expectation? Thanks in advance for the details.

WTF?

You've been had
Demand a refund
You're serious?
FFS

Emperors New Clothes syndrome

what you mean by that hostey?

Hostwey obviously does not believe that Stat Arb Trading can work for retail traders.
But instead of enquiring how Copi88 is doing with it, he leaps to the conclusion that Copi88 is not able to make it work.

I suspect that Copi88 has signed up for Ray's SmartAlpha101 site services on the back of his experience with the concepts taught on Ray's course - of which Start Arb trading is only one.

Why would anybody - except a fraudster get indignant and demand money back when they have got an invaluable education at a hugely discounted price?

This is like 'Teach a man to fish' - and he will demand his money back !

On a personal note I have completed my trading for today since the Crude Oil Inventory situation is too complicated (due to the Hurricanes). Thus I am NOT trading the API Crude inventory today.

It has been a tough week so far:

Monday's profit net +1% and a %win rate of 76%
Today's profit net 2.1% and a % win rate of 86%

Looking forward hoping for some decent news trades tomorrow, since I am unlikely to be trading the EIA Crude Inventory.

Hi Ian,

Will Ray be giving any 3 day preview of the trading room in the future? Interested in checking out to see if i can learn anything new. Does the course cover mainly forex markets or futures trading (E.g Index & Oil futures etc) as well?

Hi Sqwaverider,

Since Ray hates doing promotional webinars and there was a gap of 18 months between the Classes he has just completed and the prior one (in November/December 2015), I think he will not be doing any previews or even formal classes for quite some time.

Can you learn anything new? - I am sure that you can! Have you viewed all the recordings of the free promotional webinars in here:

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There are 10 video webinar recordings, plus my personal trading biography .pdf which are posted on the Documents folder (white folder symbol on bottom right ) of the Webinato room which you can access using any email address and the password: macro http://compassfx.webinato.com/sharpedge

When you double click on one of the recordings it will put up a browser window for you to open the recording in a separate browser window. You can pause, or go back or forward in the recording but the controls are primitive.

Although I did manage to finally get in for the latest 'Ask The Students', by that time they had switched off the recording - so I am not featured in that one , though I am in the one from 18months earlier.
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Ray is currently doing a short daily mini-class, each one focussing on particular markets and techniques,
He did 5 days on Bonds, then 5 days on Equities, currently covering FX with Orderflow and Scalping and Gold and Crude Oil yet to be covered.
The courses Ray recently completed cover (more than) the following:






But the techniques he shows are ones he has been using successfully on any tradeable market that he gets an interest in e.g Corn, Soya Beans, Soya Bean Oil

We don't call it drinking from the firehose for nothing. Just because the formal course finished 2 weeks ago doesn't mean he has stopped (it was billed as a 10 day course and yet lasted 14days - Ray decided that he couldn't teach fast enough for that - even in 4hr sessions).
I have no idea if or when Ray is planning a new formal course and I don't know how much free time you have for learning, so I can't advise you either to sign up now, or wait for a new formal course.
Kim Pingleton of CompassFX may have more information and can deal with any applications. Email Kim@CompassFX or Skype forexkim

The last courses ( the 3 day and the so-called 10day) are recorded and held in the 'members area' so that people who paid for them can keep referring to them. The 'trading room' and the SmartAlpha101 subscription are only available to those who have previously taken a 'full course' i.e. NOT to those who only took the 3Day course.
It is possible to sign-up after the fact for the course - I think that that would get you 1 month in the trading room plus access to all the previous course recordings (plus be eligible to join the Self Help Group- which again does not accept the 3 day only students). But you need to have lots of time to study and it is often too much even for those taking the course in real time. Apart from Wednesdays, Ray did about 4 to 5hrs teaching per weekday over those 3 days + 14days, and although he has slowed down he is doing about 1 1/2 to 2 hrs per day (going deeper into specific markets) since the course ended. - That is a huge amount for anybody to catch up, so I would expect you would need at least another 2 months subscription to the daily recordings (the cheapest continuing subscription you can get having 'done the course') in order to have access to the recorded material for long enough to really learn (most) of it. - Nobody needs to learn all of it, in fact it is better to specialise initially.

The Crude Oil Inventories was a fairly easy trade today, especially if you have a liquidity heatmap tool such as BookMap or Jigsaw Auction Vista.

Ray put up his Bookmap scree for the release and it was obvious that there was somebody desperate to buy big at lower prices ( @48.67, 48.57 and 48.47).
Once they had done their accumulation on the release, Ray pointed out that their initial target exit would be the 'Paycheck Liquidity' at 48.96 and this was hit within 30min of the completion of the long accumulation.

It is nice to know that my trading this week has shown that Boris Schlossberg lives in a different reality.
Strangely I had the impression that my win ration was not so good - but I was wrong. When I crunched the figures:

189 'partial trade' 26 losses so 86% win rate - that is both a decent amount of trades in a week and a good win rate (a combination that Borise thinks is impossible)!

My figures for today (Friday) are not quite so good 36 partial trades with 10 losses , so a 72% win rate.
Today I made +2.4% on a daily compounding basis
On the weeki I made +10.9% on a weekly compounding basis.

I am far from alone in achieving this (or better) among the students in Ray's room:
In fact most of the successful traders don't want people to know just how fantastically well they are doing.

Vanessa H. Has reported many decent days including some with more than 10% profit in a single day.
Sam V. Never posts his % profit, but you can tell from how he trades the Bond Auctions and the Crude Oil Inventories that he is coining it!
Today my pathetic +2.4% encouraged Alex G to post:
(10:14 am) Alex G: I don't like to advertise but I normally do better than 3% a day. #% is actually disappointing to me
(10:14 am) Alex G: 3%
(10:15 am) Alex G: in between those days I've had a few monster days that bring the aveerage way up

So Boris, perhaps you should get some education from Ray - LOL !

In his latest email, Boris Schlossberg perpetuates the myth that there are only 2 Models for trading success:
The Lottery Model and the Insurance Model.

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"
Why is All Trading Advice so Contradictory?
by Boris Schlossberg

Trading is all about exits.
Nah -- trading is all about entries.
Trade with a minimum of 2:1 risk reward ratio
Nah -you’ll never make money if you don’t let your stops be bigger than your profits -- pigs get slaughtered.
If you want to make money trading follow your system rules.
Nah -- rules are meant to be broken -- they are just guidelines.


Spend an hour on the internet researching trading advice and you can easily conclude that this is a schizophrenic business and that no one has a clue as to what they are saying.
Trading advice may seem contradictory on the surface, but actually, it is not. It’s simply a matter of what trading model people choose to follow.
As I’ve noted many times before there are really only two ways to trade -- the lottery model and the insurance model. The lottery model is the traditional approach that looks for 2:1 or greater win ratio, has very few winners but makes sure that they are large enough to pay for the losers.
The insurance model, on the other hand, does the exact opposite, It tries to make almost every trade a winner and avoid losers as much as possible, but when it does get hit the loss is much larger than the wins. Just like the insurance business, it counts on winners (i.e. premium payments) to offset the rare losers.
Once you begin to view trading advice through the prism of these two models it makes much more sense. If you are following the lottery model and every potential trade could be a huge winner while the risk is generally small -- then, of course, you should follow the rules of your system and take every single trade. Discipline is paramount.
On the other hand, if you are trading the insurance way then passing up a single trade means almost nothing -- in fact, it may be hugely advantageous to do so, since you may miss a big loser which is the same thing as banking many winners. Discipline is actually idiotic and discretion is the key to success.
This also goes a long way to explaining why exiting early under the insurance model is actually very smart but under the lottery model can be ruinous. Under the insurance model, you are trying to avoid losses, your wins are practically guaranteed. So an early exit that avoids a major loss is the right move. On the other hand, an early exit from the lottery model can be devastating -- it’s the equivalent of losing your ticket before you can cash it.
The lottery/insurance duality also plays into trade selection. Lottery model traders should be very promiscuous with their entries (their risk is limited, but their payoff is large) but must be very disciplined with their exits (you need to bank massive wins to pay for a large number of losers.) Insurance model traders are just the opposite. They need to be extremely cautious with entries (the last thing you want to do is sell a life insurance policy to an overweight, chain smoking, motorcycle rider who doesn’t wear a helmet), but generally free to exit as they choose.
So when you hear two traders on the Internet yelling at each other, very often they are talking past each other.They are operating under completely different logic regimes. Therefore, before seeking anyone;’s advice or taking anyone’s criticism seriously understand your strategy and trade accordingly."
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My advice to Boris:
"September 16, 2017 at 7:45 am
Why limit yourself by choosing either Lottery Model or Insurance Model?
If you trade a Stat Arb technique using Value, then sure there is variablility about getting the ‘right entry’ since the Bigs may be in an accumulation phase for longer than you think – so you may not get the ‘home run’, though if you work your levels then eventually you will get the ‘home run’.
So it makes sense to use a multi-unit Hybrid Model where you take some profit early (preventing the overall trade from making a loss), but you keep at least 1 unit as a ‘runner’ in case that entry was the ‘right one’.
Then you can further scale-out at liquidity levels and scale back-in even bigger on pullbacks, forming a much bigger overall position as it gets closer to the measured move + major liquidity target for a final exit.
Your comment is awaiting moderation. "