Institutional Equivalent Education?

While Ray does teach how to trade using no indicators (even no charts), he recognises that it is harder for retail traders to do so.
There is nothing that needs to be fixed - but there are still improvements which can make successful trading technically easier for retail traders, such as being able to have everything they want in a single platform (instead of perhaps feeling the need to use 2 or 3 or even 4).
Any Prop Firm or Hedge Fund doing short term trading will have access to some sort of advanced OrderFlow software, why should retail traders deny themselves it?
Note that since I switched charting platform from MT4 to Sierra Chart ( 3 years ago) I have not used any non-standard indicators at all.

I have not watched Mark's YouTube videos, but I remember that he is wedded to his special Bloomberg Platform indicators which only cost $12K per month.
There is nothing wrong with what Mark teaches apart from ignoring Value, Sentiment and OrderFlow.
But hey if you really want to limit yourself like him, be my guest. Just don't tell me it isn't inferior !

[quote=hostwey;10973329].... But its basic support and resistance. "but but support and resistance doesn't work" Well yes it does. /quote]

With Basic Support and Resistance you have to be lucky! And to quote Clint Eastwood: " Do you feel lucky, punk?"
Or would you rather be smart and be able to read from Value whether a price pattern is an Accumulation of Longs or an Accumulation of Shorts?
Because the price pattern is exactly the same!

[quote=hostwey;10973329] You just seem to be wanting absolute certainty in every trade, and regardless of the number of indicators and education you are never going to get that. Perhaps trade with less size? /quote]

Yes, that particular hangup is one from which a lot of retail traders suffer. But why not gain the most certainty you can? After all most people (but apparently not you) would rather trade with >80% probability than with just 55% probability at best.

[quote=hostwey;10973329] How many hours do you practise in front of a screen, trading either on a demo, or by winding back the charts on MT4 strategy tester? I think trading is a bit like golf. Its OK knowing the theory but you will always be practising your swing. /quote]

I completely agree that lots of practice is required. That is a part of the work that I put in every day after trading. The main work is before Trading. You don't say how many hours you put in, but to get yourself to the >80% winning trades level that I regularly achieve while rejecting all the added edges that Ray teaches, I suspect you would be burning out your eyeballs!

Something I haven't mentioned for a while is Trading courses for people who don't want to work so hard, or don't want to have to think so much as Ray's teachings require.

Before I found Ray, I did a course which at the start of my trading life would have been perfect for me.
Highly defined rules, using price and indicators alone (though you also need to know when news is scheduled, when Sessions start and end, plus when European traders break for Lunch and the same with US east coast traders if you trade the full US session).

For me it back-tested great, so what is not to like!
Well actually it came too late for me - I discovered that by that stage I just couldn't persuade myself to trade an indicator based system with real money! - Yet another of my psychological hang-ups.

If you don't have my hang-ups and you like a rule and indicator based system, then I recommend the MAX. I also highly commend Eusebio as an instructor - even though he was unable to me to the point of actually live trading what he had taught.

I seem to be agreeing with Boris Schlossberg a bit these days.
(I hope it doesn't go to his head - LOl !)

Here is his latest:
Why a Winning Attitude is the WORST Thing in Trading
by Boris Schlossberg
Among the myriad of terrible trading advice out there none is worse than the idea that you need to have a “winning attitude” in order to be a successful trader.
Successful trading is all about losing, and a “winning mindset” is just about the worst possible posture you can assume because it’s the farthest thing from reality.
This realization hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday as I was walking through frigid Central Park listening to the inimitable Aaron Fifield (of Chat with Traders) interview a trader named Ben, who goes by the handle of @BLB_Capital.

Ben comes from a blue-collar background and had a very refreshing take on trading, far different from the sterile, quant driven, MBA-processed ideas that dominate today’s discourse.
But it was this exchange that really made me perk up.
Aaron: What were the some of the challenges that you had to overcome?
Ben: The fear of losing… The fact that you are going to lose a good percentage of the day is pretty scary to most people.

Exactly!
How many gurus ever tell you that you will spend a good portion of your trading day, sometimes all of it -- losing?
The fear of losing is behind every bad trading behavior there is. It’s behind the idea of trading with no stops. It’s behind the notion of martingaling your way out of trouble. It’s even behind the idea of index investing. Because what is index investing but simply the hope that if you hold equities long enough they will rally and make you money?
I know that I am tilting at windmills and talking blasphemy when I challenge the orthodoxy of index investing, but the simple truth is that we’ve had a 40-year bull market and there is absolutely no guarantee that the trend will extend indefinitely. In fact, there is a good reason to believe that it won’t. You don’t even have to use the Nikkei which has been under water for nearly 50 years, to see what I mean. I’ve posted this chart before, but it bears repeating. Here are four distinct periods in the 20th century when 10 to 25 years of investing would have yielded you exactly bubkas.





So stick that into your 401-K.

But back to Ben.

“It scared me at first too,” he notes. “ But then I realized that it’s part of the job. It just like tuition”

Or like the cost of goods sold.
Sometimes you are like a guy who runs an ice cream store and the electricity goes out and all your product melts. Do you blame the ice cream wholesalers (dealers) do you blame your competitors (the other traders) for your woes?
Of course, you don’t. Stuff happens, markets change on a dime and a setup that was working for ten straight days suddenly fails every time.

This is where being comfortable with losing is key. If you know you are going to lose. If you EXPECT that you will lose, you will be much less surprised, much less hurt by the situation. You will trade the right size. You will honor your stop. You will preserve the capital so that you can make it back another day.
Most importantly, you won’t reflexively change your setup at the first sign of difficulty. I am not saying you shouldn’t IMPROVE it if you see legitimate input from the market that could sharpen your edge, but way too often the pain of losing makes us abandon the trading premise altogether -- and that is a sure sign of ruin. Because I can assure you of thing.
There is no trading without losing. There is no trading without pain. There is no trading without a struggle. If you want all that put your money into a Treasury bill and collect 1% per year.
But if ever want to achieve more, if you ever want to get true control over your capital, get comfortable with losing, it is the single most important skill in trading.
BORIS SCHLOSSBERG

3 trades (in several parts) 100% wins, +32% profit on account in less than 1 day!
It has been a while since I last posted some trade results from Ray's Prop Trading Desk

Ray set up his Algo to do 3 trades today when the conditions (all of which he teaches to us) were right.
This shows what can be achieved by his students.
Here is the result:

It amazes me that even some of Ray's students are rather similar to Hostwey, in that they refuse to use all the edges that Ray provides. Even to the extent of wanting to deny them to the rest of us. - Not very charitable to those who see/trade the market differently!

I think it was on Monday that Ray asked for us to give our opinion on the new indicator that he was having a student build for us.
Because if it was of no use to us then there was no point in continuing developing/testing it.

It is a display of something that the institutions he has worked for have been using for many years! The simple explanation is that when the Market Makers are Bullish it is high or goes up, and when they are Bearish it is low or goes down.

Here is a screenshot in which the indicator in question is the thick green line in both the outside chart captures. In case you don't recognise it, the chart in the middle is of an 'OrderBook Liquidity Heatmap':



The following chat occurred today in Ray's live room, Ray had just said that all the trades taken by his Algo (see the post above) could have been seen by us without the need for the new (in test) Market Maker Delta Bucket indicator (screenshot above).
(12:33 pm) S D: Who wants Delta Buckets on their charts?
(12:33 pm) J B: I WANT THEM!!!!
(12:34 pm) Ian Foster: But it is harder to see without the Delta Buckets. I say they look like a good thing!
(12:35 pm) F C: WHAT really HAPPEN is THAT we as a RETAILERS, GOT, a GARBAGE software, platforms and ALGOS.
(12:35 pm) F C: THEY "as" INSTITUTION got a pretty good QUANTUM guys... like... RAY.
(12:37 pm) F C: I DO know BEFORE coming here that ABSOLUTELY ALL indicators out there are GARBAGE. I use NONE. plain F* charts. and VALUE analysis and AMT.
(12:37 pm) Ian Foster: There are worthless indicators (mainly those based upon price alone) and there are useful indicators which tell us something we (though perhaps not Ray) can't see with Price alone
(12:38 pm) F C: If you follow price. I follow VALUE
(12:41 pm) F C: I'm gonna say it again, that way I'm gonna be in peace: ALL indicators and ALL Trading Psychology out there ARE BS.
(12:42 pm) F C: I'm seeing you coming @Ian
(12:43 pm) Ian Foster: @F....: Isn't Value another indicator just like the OrderBook Liquidity and the various 'skews' based upon the Options pricing and the Volume at Price (FootPrint) charts ?
(01:03 pm) F C: No @Ian NO

Fortunately I think Ray will go with the opinion of the majority of his students, who were enthusiastic about the MarketMaker DeltaBuckets Indicator!

So you can see my argument, here is a screenshot of Oil (the bars) versus a +ve correlated Value Line (gold line).
Note that F. C. does not consider the Value Line to be an Indicator !

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6 trading insights from some of the best in the game
I came across this amongst some trading stuff from Netpicks, and it all fits in with Ray's teaching (and goes against the people who think Ray's course covers too much):

6 Trading Insights To Commit To Memory
You could fill a blog full of quotes about trading risks, methods, and psychology but I wanted to start with six that you could hit the ground running with by making them a part of your own thinking.



This really highlights taking full responsibility for your trading and not pointing blame when it goes off the tracks. If you choose to commit to being a trader, it makes sense to use that time productively and work towards being the absolute best at what you do.
If being just an “o.k.” trader is good enough, you may be leaving a lot of potential left unearthed.



At the first sign of struggle, most people give up and take the path of least resistance. You must accept that there will be frustrations in trading just like in any other career.
It’s those that pick themselves up, learn to accept the challenges, and find ways to minimize their impact, those are the ones who have a great chance of reaching their goal.



Many people think the trade entry is the most important thing in trading but Paul Tudor Jones puts what’s important in perspective with this trading insight. One trade will not define your success so if it’s not going well, simply exit and regroup. Being stubborn and holding on because the trade “will come back” will cost you.
Take too many losing trades where you didn’t properly define your risk and eventually you will lose your account. It’s that simple.



We have a tendency to have a high opinion of ourselves in various circumstances even when faced with information to the contrary. In trading, you have to know what you don’t know and be free enough to admit that.
Since psychology is vital in terms of trading, you also have to be able to point out flaws in your personality that can affect your decision making process and find ways to lessen their impact. You will learn a lot about yourself as you venture forward in trading and some of the truths you find, may be hard to accept.
-This is the one area where Ray feels he can't contribute anything, because he would sack any institutional traders who had trading psychology problems! So us students have to fix these ourselves with the help of our Self Help Group.

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Assuming you do have a statistical edge in the market, the best thing to do is to simply focus on the process. One stumbling block that a lot of traders face is trading outside of their trading plan leading to taking low probability trades for various reasons.
One common issue is they take that trade to make up for the losses that came just before it because they “know” that the market will deliver. In the end, this type of trading never leads to consistent success.
If you are trading an edge, focus on doing everything right (the process) and the money will come.
- And boy will that money come if you follow Ray's teachings and do everything right!




This is one of my top picks in terms of trading insights. I call it the “why behind your trading” and it can lead to some serious soul searching. If there is a big enough “why” behind what you do, your chance increase that you will reach your goal.
Why do you trade? Yes, it can bring you money but what does that mean to you? What can it provide in terms of enjoyment, family, experiences….anything that you cherish? It can be anything from being able to be a stay at home parent all the way to doing good for your community, your city, the world. Dare to dream.
Knowing “why” you trade will help you stay close to your trading plan, motivate you to deal with frustrations, and above all, keep you from doing something that is the polar opposite of a professional approach to your trading career.
- If you are NOT passionate about trading - DON'T DO IT! It is the best paid profession in the world, so when trading you will always be up against the world's best. Are you prepared to work hard and long enough to find out if you make the cut? If not, find something else. But if you are prepared to do that work, then give yourself a chance by getting the best possible trading education!

Free educational Youtube videos I put together

https://www.youtube.com/user/DayTradeIdeas

Who is Jason Sen?

Jason Sen began his trading career in the options pits on the trading floor of LIFFE in 1987 at the age of 19, making markets on his own account. In 2001 when the trading floor closed he successfully made the transition to day trading on computer screens. Trading financial markets is all he has ever done, every day for over 25 years.

Jason uses this experience to advise traders at the largest global investment banks & brokers, including Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America. He is and is also the leading provider of daily technical analysis to Marex Spectron, Tower Trading Group and Schneider Trading, the main direct market access providers to thousands of professional traders in the UK and around the globe. He provides pin point entry, exit and target levels for day traders to give them the edge, helping them to maximise profits and minimise losses.

It seems that DayTradeIdea is self-taught Technical Trader - like many hundreds of others.

Once he learns to incorporate Value into his analysis, he might become a decent trader !

123% profit on account in a day and a half - based on 'Retail' risk parameters.
Update on trades Ray has done with his 'Best Execution Algo - but no individual market details on this, just 1 1/2 days trades:



Notes:
1. He got a bit close to his suggested $3K Stop Loss
2. It has now taken a losing trade, but still over 95% profitable.
3. Based on the parameters from yesterday (for a retail style account) it has made 123% in a day and a half !
4. It takes a loss before hitting the notional Stop Loss. This is because a Stop Loss is only for emergencies.
Ray says any trader who regularly hits their Stop Loss is managing their trades very poorly.
Value, Price Action or Orderflow should always get them out before that happens!

(01:05 pm) Ian Foster: This has hopefully been the first week of me starting to trade more normally. Took Oil Inv on Wed +7.7%, then a trade yesterday and 4 trades today. It is a +10.5% week with 26 trade parts aqnd a 76.9% win rate . I hope my skin condition allows me to do more trades next week.

Here is this week's email from Boris. Hes is attacking the idea of Backtesting.

Now I have to make excuses for him, because he really means backtesting a 'retail robot' or MT4 EA - I think.

If not he is an ignorant idiot! Does he really think that Institutional Algos don't work well for long periods of time? Why would they spend the big bucks on them if they needed tweaking every few days!

In the 'professional' retail space the MAX is a set of fully defined progressively more advanced 'Systems/Methods' all of which are backtestable and have worked well for many years before I took one of their courses about 5 years ago.
Ray's methods are also manually backtestable - though you can't do it in conventional single chart platform. And they are based on the ways Institutions have traded for decades.

Anyhow, here is Boris' opinion on Backtesting an EA or 'conventional Indicator based system':

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You Don’t Back Test Your Life
by Boris Schlossberg

In his book, PitBull Marty Schwartz writes about one of the greatest individual trading runs in the history of the markets. As a pioneer trader in the S&P futures pit in the early 1980’s Marty noticed that there was a strong relationship between the price of bonds and the S&P futures. If interest rates rose stock index futures dropped the next day. If interest rates declined, equities were bid up. Since bonds stopped trading at 3 PM NY time and S&P futures traded until 4:15 PM there was a little more than an hour where you could watch the bonds trade in the cash market in after-hours trading. If bonds staged a significant rise of 3/4 of a point or more the probability of S&P 500 opening higher the next day was very high. As Schwartz noted, “Being ahead at the opening was like waking up with a woody.”
Here is how he describes the trading run.”All through October, I smacked the S&Ps when they went up and I smacked them when they went down. On October twenty-second, on rumors that the Fed was not going to lower the discount rate before the election, the physicals plummeted in after-hours trading, the S&Ps opened down 1.85, I was short 150 contracts, covered at the opening, and in one minute made $138,750. By the end of the month, I was up $1.4 million. My legs were sore from jumping up and down, my voice was shot from screaming at Debbie on the phone, and Audrey’s ribs were tender from being hugged. In February, when we’d crawled out on a limb and dumped $400,000 into the beach house, our net worth was $1.2 million. Now, in one month, I’d more than doubled that, I’d made more in a month than I’d made in my entire lifetime. I can’t begin to describe that feeling. Every day, for twenty straight days, we’d get in the Eldorado to drive home from work and we’d be, on average, another $70,000 richer. It would have taken me a whole year to make $70,000 if I were still a securities analyst.”
Here are a couple of things to keep in mind about Marty’s “system”. He didn’t backest it on a thousand samples across an array of markets to prove its robustness. He didn’t optimize parameters or run Monte Carlo simulations, or try to see if this “signal” worked on wheat or pork bellies or some other unrelated nonsense. He also stopped trading it the moment it stopped working.
His system -- like all successful trading systems -- was simply a behavioral edge that he exploited until it stopped working. It’s not that he didn’t do research. Before committing capital to the idea, he did check past occurrences and started making relatively small bets until his thesis was proven correct -- but by standards of “data scientists,” it was a woefully inadequate test and yet it was one the most successful individual exploitations of the market ever recorded.
I bring this up because I think most retail traders are far too obsessed with backtests. Backtests are good at only one thing -- showing you how to make money yesterday. If you really want to learn how to make money today and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow you need to stop testing and start doing. Losing, as I noted in last week’s column is the single best test that you can run. Losing in real market conditions will finally tease out the profitable idea in your thesis -- if there are any. Lose and backtest. Lose and backtest. Lose and backtest until you start to win.
Otherwise, you will simply waste all your time trading yesterday’s data while learning nothing about how today’s price action differs. How many times have you seen a system with a perfect equity curve, passing every statistical test under the sun, fail in real market conditions?
100%.
I have never seen a backtested system that could maintain its profitability for more than a few months without serious editing and adjustment to its initial assumptions. That’s because successful trading is a function of understanding past price behaviors and while being finely attuned to any present-day variations in the market. Yes of course price action is cyclical and basic buying and selling patterns persist over and over. After a self-off comes a rebound. After a rally comes a selloff. But the amplitude of each move is highly variable that’s why the future is just different enough from the past that you won’t be able to exploit it mechanically.
Backtests should be viewed not as justifications for systems, but rather as insights into certain behavioral edges that will not last. That’s the other key to understanding backtests. They will all fail under future market regimes -- and if you understand that going in it will be a lot easier to abandon them or modify them when they stop working.
There are literally hundreds of exploitable edges in the FX market every year, but they are fleeting and usually very instrument dependent. There is no “universal” system of trading that will work across all markets. That’s why the most successful individual traders tend to specialize in one market or even one product.
So stop wasting hours on a perfect tweak of yesterday. You don’t backest your life. You live it. Do the same with trading.

The fact is, if it works for one person, it can definitely work for you, if its not working for you, then just know, you have not understood it correctly. For example, I learnt breakout from freshforex, so far, so good, All I can say is that If you learn any strategy very well, it will be very good for you. And have faith in your strategy

I strongly disagree. A trader's personality MUST match the type of trading they are doing - otherwise they can't be successful in the medium to long term.
For example I paid for and diligently studied a course/system which I KNOW works for other people. One of the last things on the course was some homework for each student to backtest the system (it could only be done manually). So I backtested the system and it was nearly 75% win rate with a favourable R:R. So then I backtested to twice as many trade instances than I was asked to and the figures were still great- hardly different from my original backtest.

Did I ever have the confidence to live trade that system? - NO I DID NOT, primarily because by then I had a deep distrust of indicator based systems and I was yearning for Fundamentals - something objective telling me that THIS trade SHOULD work out well THIS TIME!

Don't let anybody feed you the B*S* that you WILL be successful trading their system or even trading in general - that isn't true for everybody!

One good example that not everybody can trade is my wife - she is so risk averse that she didn't want to take out a Mortgage to buy a house!

Here is a great post from Hanover's thread showing a valid reason why I didn't feel comfortable enough to live trade that great system I mentioned in the post above:

https://www.forexfactory.com/showthr...5#post10229305

In fact Ray is that Institutional Trader Hanover mentions in his post.

Wow, I can hardly believe how well David (Hanover) understands trading, the Nay-Sayers, and the Blow-Hards:
a superb post: https://www.forexfactory.com/showthr...7#post10680067

Hanover destroys the arguments os some who try to prove that FX price movements are Random and therefore it is impossible to be a net winner.:
https://www.forexfactory.com/showthr...7#post10731457

Hanover's opinion on true institutional trading after he attended Ray's class last year.
The 'institutional trading topics' he mentions are all (some) of the ones taught by Ray.

https://www.forexfactory.com/showthr...9#post10554969

@IanF0ster and Copi88 I decided to give Ray's earlybird course a go! I'm going through the videos over the next few days! Thanks for your insights on this forum!

Lol only an amateur would think fx movements are random. It's all down to fundamentals, geopolitical, investors, etc.

Congratulations Mr Octagon, I know that the recordings of last year's classes will keep you very busy not to mention the ongoing daily focus sessions (depending upon your current knowledge since they are meant primarily for students who have already taken the course). However once you have signed Student Non-Disclosure Agreement, then you are able to join the free student Self Help Group that I run and we can help with your studies.

Send me a Skype if you are interested, my Skype id is ianf0ster ...that is a zero in my name (just like my ID here at ForexFactory).