Institutional Equivalent Education?

Hi Ian,

Thanks for sharing. May I know how long it took u to go through ray's lessons to start making profits and what instruments e.g fx or crude oil futures etc did u see the most results in?

I was contemplating on signing up but it seems like from the recordings there are a lot of unstructured information so was thinking if it will be hard for a retail trader to follow without an organized lesson plan.

Also that ray came from a institutional trader background, was wondering if he may access to tools not available to the retail trader so will it be necessary to sign up for other third party software in order to do his style of trading?

Finally in his trading room sessions, does he go through any live trades in real time, i understand he is not supposed to show his real account details but any live trade examples will be pretty useful

Thanks

(10:31 am) Ian Foster: Done for the day and week. My Daily figures +1.86% with win % of 75%, Weekly figures +12.2% and win% of 65%. Not too shabby considering I missed most of Monday due to attending a funeral.

For me it is absolutely vital to be able to trade multi-unit to avoid having to be all-in or exiting all-out. So my stats are based on partial entries and partial exits. The total numbers for these 'part trades' for the week are 232 part trades and 79 losing part trades.

Hi Sqwaverider,
I think you are confusing the earlier course recordings and the earlier daily session recordings with the latest 3 day and 10(actually 14) day courses and currne daily condensed mini-lesson recordings.
During the first 2 1/2 years there were constant complaints about lack of structure. I and another student worked with Compass (but not Ray) to help in that respect - the result was known as the 'Structured Modules' but was only partly completed.

But this Year 2017 Ray changed everything - much fewer recordings and much more structure. Since the changes NOT A SINGLE STUDENT has complained about 'lack of structure'! But this does not mean it is easy - Institutional style trading (especially for Retail traders) takes a lot of hard work!

Many/most students make the initial mistake that Imade - trying to learn/use all of Ray's training at once. It is just not possible to do - I tried it for over 2years!
Others make the mistake of thinking you need all the resources that Ray shows - NOT TRUE. He shows how to trade just using MT4, also just using Sierra Chart, also just using TradingView, also just using Ninja Trader, also using OFA, also using Bookmap (or Jigsaw Auction Vista).

There are 2 answers to how long it took me to learn enough from Ray to be profitable:-
It took less than 6 months to master one of my signature trades (the News Over/Under-cooked trade) for which I get around an 85% win rate.

It was some time later that Ray first started to teach how to trade the EIA Crude Inventory - which is my 2nd Signature trade, but even though I am doing it the 'most difficult way', it took me only 1 month to master that and over the next year have a win rate of about 90% - over the 2nd year of trading it that dropped to only 85% win rate.

It took longer (around 4 months) to master my 3rd Trade type (Trading the Dax on the European and US volume Cycle). That was because I started out using the wrong market for me - the S&P. It was not until I switched to the Dax30 that I was successful with it. On this one I only average a 68% win rate.

The Second Answer is After I had mastered my first 2 signature trades I was still unsuccessful becaue of my own psychological problems! It was only after I learned not to take scalp trades and not to try to follow Ray into his trades and not to trade the wrong markets for my style, that I really started to have success. I still have some way to go on the psych front because occasionally I still break my own trading rules taking trades that I know I should not, or risking too much on a single trade. I feel that trading psych problems are rather like being an alcoholic, in that you can be in recovery/remission but you always have the disease.

The amount of 3rd party software required depends on the individual trader and trading style. I can tell you what I was using when I made my breakthrough earlier this year, but others (depending upon markets and trading styles) will use other combinations , even some may only use free software and free websites:-
For News trading the way I do, you must have a stable, fast charting platform and trading platform - this means you can't get by using MT4. I use Sierrra Chart Package 5 at a cost of just inder $30 per month on an annual subscription. Because my account is a Spreadbet/CFD/FX account I just use the free FXCM datafeed for this.
I also need the fastest possible notification of the news results ( at a reasonable cost) so I use Dataflash - just the basic version at a cost of $10 per month.
I also use the following free websites/software: ForexFactory Calendar and Investing.com Calendar, Investing.com 'Live Charts', the Free 'Squawk' with audio, by opening a Demo account with FXPro.co.uk plus the silent version (free in a bigger window) from Livesquawk.com

Finally Ray doesn't call trades in the conventional sense. He mentions possible trades ( dependent upon Value not changing) - quite often and from 10min to 2 days beforehand!
He also mentions his scalp trades but only after he has entered them - which is too late to follow him in most cases.
Every day he goes through several of the major trades that day from how they were recognised as having an edge through to entry and exit.

It is interesting to note that BK Forex ( Boris Schlossberg and Kathy Lien ) are now advertising a so-called course, teaching a Trend Following breakout strategy for capturing +40 pips with a so-called win rate of 94%.

Interesting on several counts:

1. How does this square with Boris previous claim that one can only attain around 10% per month from a strategy - secifically talking about a trend following strategy of his? Knowing that he is only comfortable with a 1:1 Leverage (i.e. none), this means that on a $10K account he can trade a maximum of 1 lot. So if he only catches 1 of these 'new' trades per week he makes +$400 which is 4% of the account i.e 16% per month. Indeed, this seems quite low because he says this 'new strategy' cna be used on the cross pairs as well as the majors - so say 28 different pairs!

2. The 94% win rate is really interesting. Since Boris is aq well known, well followed retail guru you might expect that he haqs done thorough testing before making his claims. But is 18 trades (with 1 loss - he doesn't say how big the loss was) really enough to claim a 94% win rate? I would need about 3 times that many trades before I even bothered to calculate a first estimete of a win rate!

3. He says this strategy includes 'everything' - Technicals, Fundamentals and 'sophisticated' Money Management. Let me break this down a little
A. Money Management - didn't he just say that there are only 2 types of trades, basically ones with a Big Stop Loss and ones wioth a small stop loss. So how sophisticated can the money management be? - Unless he has just learned from me that if you use Value and trade Stat Arbs then the only Money Maqnagement that makes sense is a hybrid of those two where you lock in a small initial profit and leave a runner to profit from a big trend.
B. Boris and Kathy have never (to my knowledge) shown that they can value a market, nor do they appear to use Sentiment, nor Order Flow (which would be extremely difficult to pull off using MT4). So although they say that their new strategy uses 'everything', in practice it is missing several of the key concepts that Ray teaches!

Summary: More 'retail guru' bullsh1t! - But what do you expect?

Boris Schlossberg contradicts himself yet again (several times in this piece):

This piece shows a more mature, sensible ,successful side to Boris' trading - much more like Ray teaches!
I highlight in red where this contradicts his previous email messages

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The Healing Power of the Repair Trade
by Boris Schlossberg


“When you are shooting a moving target, a shotgun is more useful than a rifle!” Penelope, one of the best traders in my chat room

It’s been a good month of trading in BK. I’ve managed to bank 20% in my own account which is by far the best monthly performance for myself in years, but looking over the trade blotter, I can’t help but appreciate how many times this month my a-- has been saved by the repair trade.

Those of you who have followed me for a long time know that I always trade with a multi-entry approach. My first entry is never my last entry into any trade I take -- be it swing, news or day trade. Of course, you can sneer and say that I am simply averaging down, and as Paul Tudor Jones once famously said, “Only losers average losers.” But while there is great truth to that statement I take exception with calling what I do averaging down.
Typically when traders average down in their positions they do so out of desperation as they try to rescue a losing position. The average down trade is often done reactively with little thought to the overall size and ultimate stop.
I, on the other hand, always know ahead of time exactly how many entries I will make, exactly how much size I will use and exactly how much risk I will bear. My systematic approach to trading basically assumes that I will be wrong on price but correct on the general vicinity of entry. I think it’s a more humble way of trading because you admit ahead of time that you will likely be wrong. In fact, often you are wrong more than once or twice and yet can still come out a winner by never committing all of your capital to a single price.
If markets are essentially probabilistic entities then it always amazes me why more people don’t trade probabilistically. To me, it’s the height of arrogance to assume that you can pick a price with a degree of certainty greater than 50/50. However, you MAY BE able to prick a price area with a degree of certainty that often approaches 90/10.
Strategies are important, but even the best ones have a very tiny 55/45 edge which can quickly evaporate in the changing environment of market volatility. That’s why to truly improve your trading you need a multi-entry approach and a humble attitude.
You need the healing power of the repair trade.
Boris Schlossberg

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My comments:
*What happened to the maximum of 10% per month?
*Where did this Multi-entry talk suddenly come from?
*First entry is never the last entry? - I don't agree with how that is worded, but at least the general principle is correct!
*Assume wrong on price, but correct on general vicinity of entry? - I agree, but would say 'probably wrong on price' and 'almost certainly correct on general vicinity of entry if value does not go against you'
*Can be wrong more than once on entry price and yet still make an overall profit. - Yes, provided that value does not go against you; and if you have planned the trade management that way before the first entry!
* Multi entry approach and humble attitude. - Correct, as I have said several times in this thread, using a multi-entry multi-exit approach increases your chances of success by at least 5 times. It is just crazy to trade any other way unless you are scalping for only 1 or 2 ticks/pips!

Just posting here to emphasise my luck and consistency:
Today's result:
(10:07 am) Ian Foster: Done for the day/week/month. Traded badly but was lucky. Daily figures: +5,7%, 51 partial trades, 60% winners
(10:09 am) Ian Foster: Weekly + 22.9%. not going to bother with the win% , but estimate it was around 65%
(10:19 am) Ian Foster: @Donna: I don't like my trading much. I still make too many mistakes - made 2 this week both of which could have been very costly. That scares the heck out of me !

I have done a quick check on my performance for September excluding the spread rebate from the Broker (which I will get in my account next week). So I have subtracted my spread rebate for August to get a good figure for September.
Sorry to disappoint, but it is so good that it is embarassing - lets just say that I made well over 50% to add to the 50% I made in August.

(10:23 am) E N: Ian, if you recognize your errors, it will be easier to correct them (even if you possibly have to trade less). In the meantime, if your profits are larger than your losses, that's excellent.

(10:39 am) Ian Foster: @E: if only it was that simple. The mistake I made on Wednesday (on the Oil inventories no less) was a 'fat finger' one - I doubled my position instead of closing it . That hurts when you have a 3 tick spread. Fortunately I was able to close out the new position at no loss (in fact a gain after spread rebate) aand closed the original position at the same time- thus by luck I made an extra 3 ticks on my initial position.

What is Boris Schlossberg up to now? His latest email suggests an exercise of taking 100 trades over 30days each with a minimum of a 10 pip target.

Here is his email:
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"
The other day I stumbled across an amazing YouTube video. Two guys -- both skinny non-athletic nerds challenged themselves to do 100 pushups each day for 30 days straight. The rules did not require them to do 100 pushups consecutively -- just cumulatively -- as long as the total ended up to be 100 at the end of the day.
This was a fascinating experiment. Push-ups require no equipment and can be done anywhere (they did push-ups in parking lots, conference rooms, etc.) Push-ups take very little time and need almost no athletic skill. It is perhaps the simplest human exercise there is.
Their journey was eye-opening. Neither man was in good shape. Neither man was ever an athlete. During their first week of attempts, they could barely do 5 push ups consecutively. One of them failed to achieve the 100 goal until the 7th day of the experiment. Yet, they persisted.


Here is the absolutely remarkable thing. After 30 days, both men were visibly stronger and more muscular. Each one had changed his diet to a much more healthy regime and their overall posture and presence was decidedly more confident. All of this was achieved through the lowliest, most humble of exercises simply because they set a modest goal and stuck to the plan.
The hundred push-up experiment made me realize that we can achieve the same type of radical improvement in trading if we adopt their methods. Let’s do a simple experiment. Let’s commit to making 100 profitable trades of 10 pips each over a period of 30 trading days. The only rule is that you must honor your stops (whatever they are). You cannot let losing trades float. The purpose of this experiment to not necessarily make you money (though that would be nice) but to get you to engage with the market in a proper way.
Why do most traders fail? Because they have no defined plan for how they will trade. In fact, most traders quit simply because they hit 3 losing trades in a row. Here is my prediction if you do this experiment. I predict that you will begin to realize what trades work and what trades don’t. I bet you will become a lot more selective in your entries. I predict that you will become a lot less greedy in your exits. I bet you will develop a healthy respect for risk. I bet you will begin to feel joy and then confidence at winning 5 and maybe even 10 trades in a row and will begin to understand how winning is possible.
If two nerdy guys can transform themselves into strong confident young men just by doing 100 pushups each day for a month, then we as traders can certainly improve our skills by focusing on making 100 profitable trades in 30 days. Give it a try and even if you are making 20 losers in a row, keep going. The lesson of the pushup experiment is that success lies in simply trying for a meaningfully long time.
"
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My comments:

He isn't very realistic about the parameters he sets nor the difficulty and time investment in completing this exercise, though he is correct about the benefits.

Much better in my opinion would be to do as Ray suggested in his webinar of 20th July 2017 (It is the at the top of the list of recordings in the Documents folder and the exercise section starts around the 1hr 30 minute mark). To watch the recording just follow the instructions I give in post number 365 on page 19 of this thread.

It is basically a scalping exercise and just requires a failed Auction to set up a potential Breakout trade.
Just use a Demo Account on a 1 min chart of any market with a little volatility and low spreads.- No point trying it in the 'dead zone time on a market and it is a scalping exercise - so don't cripple yourself with large spreads.

That way you can: A). See the beginning of a trading system/methodology to which you can add your own 'value' observations or things Ray has taught for free.
B). Make several trades in 1hr so you don't need to spend anywhere near so much time on the exercise.
C). See results quite quickly.

Example of the 1-minute Drill in Ray's webinar recording mentioned in the post above
Here I have decided to choose the Euor/USd and look at the first Hour of the London Open i.e 08:00 to 09:00 UK time.
This is not 'cherry picked' this is just the most recent London Open i.e Friday's one. I am assuming that in all trades you compensate for the spread. That is that the TP1 is a net 1 pip after the spread and likewise TP2 is 2 pips per unit after the spread cost etc.

Out of 5 Drill trades, 4 are definately winners and the other (Trade C) may or may not have actually been possible to trade, because there is very little time and price movement in between the Pivot qualifying (2 candles on each side with higher lows) and the actual trade entry. If it was possible to take it as a trade, then it would have lost 4 pips + spread (instead of the 8pips plus 2xspread standard Stop Loss) because the next trade in the opposite direction triggered.
All of the 4 'winning trades' would have hit both the TP1 and the TP2 for a total of 3 pips per trade, so in the worst case you would have taken 5 trades in the hour and made a net total of +8 pips.

Obviously it isn't always as easy or profitable with this very basic model since this is just a Drill to get you used to being decisive and familiar with working fast on your trading platform. But I am sure you can see that with a few tweaks to the entry and exit rules and using the direction of larger timeframe trends and 'value' that this can be turned into a decent trading method.

Why is it relatively easy to turn Ray's scalping Drill into a net profitable trading method?

Simplifying a little, we are risking 8 pips (2x a stoploss of 4) in order to attempt to make 3 pips. To make 3 pips we need price to actually move 2 pips in our direction. So you could say thatover a large number of trades our win rate should be about 66% (2 wins per 1 loss, since price only has half the distance to go foir a winning trade).
That would give a net loss per trade of -2pips on average out of every 3 trades.
But we boost our odds by:
1. Only entering in the direction of the micro-trend (the trend is your friend) and on average trend continue more frequently than they reverse.
2. Only entering after a 'Failed Auction in the opposite direction. This is powerful because if you think about the traders who traded in the direction of that 'failed Auction' price swing. - How keen are they going to be to repeat their losing entry at the same price as before, rather than wait for a better price before entering? Well if it was me, I would certainly want a better price the next time - thus giving the space for our scalping Drill trade to reach its TP2.

This Scalping Drill is the first trading that Ray has taught to all his new trainees when working for Institutions.

Strangely in many ways it is just the opposite of the type of trading that he ultimately wants them to learn. He much prefers Squeezes and Fades to Breakouts, but it has the advantage of being really simple and also being based upon sound principles.

Hi Ian,

Isn't it the "fear off" exercises?! U know I start to love playing this is ForexTester3.. just the technical part; load some data and some volume, and play it bar by bar. For anyone who reads about this, Ray also presented in the free webinars, search for those an u will see...

Yes I know, I dematerialized of other Ray Concepts, but still is fun to play. In order to really have an effect U have to put also the "filters" let's say, when, where and why!

Yes Cristy, It is one of Ray's many variations on that. In fact Above I gave a link to a free video recording where he goes through it.

Another week, another email from Boris Schlossberg. A mostly ghood one this time!

Here is his email (with a spelling correction to improve the clarity).

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The other day someone on Twitter posted the following quote from Victor Niederhoffer that went
like this:
“But life, like the markets, offers the greatest rewards to those willing to assume risk. Assuming risk brings uncertainty, anxiety, and occasional loss, but it also brings out the best in us. In becoming a speculator in life, each person embarks on a heroic quest, becoming more than he or she already is. Heroism is a potent antidote to the cynicism and alienation so many of us accept.”

Instantly, I thought it was the stupidest thing I ever read and went a long way towards explaining why Niederhoffer blew up not once, not twice but THREE TIMES.


In trading, there is a false belief that large reward requires massive risk, when in fact successful speculators do everything in their power to minimize risk always and forever. Some of the most successful speculators like HFT giants Virtu and Citadel literally never lose. You can hem and haw and scream that they do this by cheating -- by front-running orders -- but at this point, there are lots of competitors for speed and if speed was their only advantage they would have long ago been taken out of the market. Virtu and Citadel win because they are excellent at professional speculation. They win because they trade very small size and allow the law of large numbers to tilt the odds in their favor.

Unlike gamblers -- speculators never, ever “have a hunch bet a bunch”. They always control their size and always assess risk with fresh eyes. Even the very picture of a swaggering speculator George Soros is not what he seems. Take the great GBPUSD trade of 1992 when Soros broke the Bank of England and collected a cool Billion dollars in a day. The story has become its own myth and most people assume that Soros gambled all his capital on this one amazing trade.
That’s not at all what happened. In 1992 Soros’s Quantum fund was having a good year across a variety of asset classes when the GBP trade presented itself. Soros then decided to take all the profits of the year -- and ONLY THE PROFITS -- and lever them into the bet that cable would have to exit the ERM. If he was wrong, Soros wouldn’t have been close to bankrupt, he would have just been even for the year. Which goes a long way towards explaining why he continues to make money after 50 years in the business and Niederhoffer is just a footnote of history.

The better I trade the more I realize that intelligent speculation is the opposite of gambling. It is the art of saying NO and eliminating risk at every turn. My latest Trend trading strategy has been working well, but recently I discovered (with the help of traders in my chat room) that it actually exposes itself to unnecessary volatility during what I dubbed the “Bermuda triangle of FX trading” (the Tokyo -- Frankfurt -London interchange between approximately 0500-0800 GMT -- when prices are subject to sudden spikes and quick retraces. Now I try to avoid that time zone like the plague and it my risk will decrease as a result.
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My comments:
I agree that it isn't the taking of risk, but the control of unneccesary risk which is the key to investment and speculation. Why anybody would want to trade like a 3 time loser like V Niederhoffer is beyond my understanding. Better to follow somebody who made fewer big mistakes and learnt from them!
In fact the email from Boris comes with a quote attributed to the great speculator Bernard M. Baruch :
"A speculator is a man who observes the future, and acts before it occurs."

A quote (possibly falsely) attributed to him, is one that I really take to heart in my current trading style:
"I made my money by selling too soon." - That one served me well this week, more on that later.

There are many great lessons for trading in the quotes of Bernard M. Baruch. Here are links to some of them:
http://www.azquotes.com/author/1006-Bernard_Baruch
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Bernard_Baruch

Now to my customary gripe with Boris' email. When he talks about his Trend Following system he mentions the FX price movements between 05:00 GMT and 08:00 GMT. Firstly any student of Ray's recent course would not only know about these price movement, but also both why they occur and how to profit from them! Yet here is Boris talking as if A). He never knew about them. B). they are something to be avoided.

The other slight gripe is that he has got the end time wrong and it isn't fixed to GMT, it varies based upon UK time (which is GMT in winter and GMT+1 in summer).

Actually, the type of Speculation taught by Ray is even superior to that aspired to by Bernard M. Baruch.
Ray teaches how to plan future scenarios based upon forecasted or probable events. He teaches how to trade them before the event (based upon how he knows the top institutions position themselves). And he teaches how to trasde the actual event and aftermath, depending upon the event outcome.

Now on a personal note, I had another good week (an impossible week according to Boris Schlossberg).
I made a mistake in my calculation and posted in Ray's trading Room that I had made 11.1%, but it kept nagging at me that it should have been more than that based on my daily profit. So I recalculated, found my mistake and so it was 14.4% with a win percent of 76%.

The other thing is that I experienced good fortune by my adherence to Baruch in 'exiting too early'. I had a glitch (either with my Browser or at my Broker) when trying to close a trade in small profit. By the time I had tried a few times and then phoned the Broker's Trade Desk price had moved considerably. And what do you know, price was actually better - they closed out my trade for me at the 'top tick' and I pocketed and extra 2%.
You might say that this shows how poor my trading is that I am leaving such potentially big profits on the table. But as Ray always says 'You can never know in which direction price will move nor how far it will go!' I prefer to plan to 'leave some on the table' rather than to always try for the 'top tick'.

As Baruch says: "Don't try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. It can't be done except by liars."

i cannot see the link to video. where is it?

It is the at the top of the list of recordings in the Documents folder in the 'Sharpedge room' and the exercise section starts around the 1hr 30 minute mark. The documents folder is at the bottom right of the screen in the sharpedge room.
Log into it as below:

http://compassfx.webinato.com/sharpedge PASSWORD: macro (No Registration Required)

Hi Porkpie. I'm hoping to get hold of you (have followed your posts for some years now). I'd be super grateful if you'd PM me so that I can discuss some stuff with you 'off air'. Thanks!

My biggest problem is discipline. Nobody who has read much of this thread would doubt that.

Here are 2 different takes on Discipline (neither of which I wholly agree with, since they ignore Value and expectancy as Ray teaches):

First for longer Timeframe swing traders a video by WMD who has the 'Trading with deadly Accuracy' thread on Forex Factory (or as I think of it 'trading with deathly boredom').
http://www.crescofx.com/patience-dis...ng/?ap_id=x123

Next this week's email from Boris Schlossberg:-


Both make some valid points but as is usual they both fall short of covering the case for the whole range of different valid trading styles, which Ray teaches.

I have suffered badly from occasional/frequent lack of trading discipline and I still do. Trading when ill, trading when tired, taking a trade because I am bored, moving my stop loss further out when it is threatened, unplanned averaging in, increasing size when in a drawdown, revenge trading, trading a market because it is moving right now having not examined the bigger picture and where value is located etc. In some ways I must be one of the worst traders in the room, certainly I have nearly all of the psych problems which plague traders. But I am still in the game! And I am still learning! Here is a recorded podcast from 'Chat with Traders' about what you need to succeed in trading. Six ways to emulate talented traders.


https://soundcloud.com/chat-with-tra...-aaron-fifield