Institutional Equivalent Education?

Now 167% profit o in 3 days: Ray's best execution Algo results for today added to those shown for Thurs and Fri of last week.
Another 78 trade parts today (all long Bonds) with no losing trades + 44% profit on the starting (notional retail ) account size.
It did a lot of Long Accumulation of Bonds today.

A PM I got today:
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Hello, i have already watch a couple of rays videos. But i would like to watch all of his work. Is there any video library? cause i understand that they videos are recorded webinars.

Thank you for your time.
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And my reply:

Hi S***,
The vast majority of Ray's vidoes are for his students only.
If you have used the link the Copi88 provides here https://www.forexfactory.com/showthr...9#post10944999

Then the 6 or so of Ray's videos in the documents folder of that Webinata room are all that are currently available to the public until he does some for promopting his next course.

Cheers,
Ian

Today Ray reported this from RanSquawk yesterday:

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Morgan Stanley pension fund rebalancing model estimates ~$14bn of outflows from equities , ~$12bn inflows to fixed income and ~$1bn of inflows to commodities/other assets over April month-end.
Flows estimated to be spread over the next fortnight.
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- What do you think is likely to happen during this week and next week?
-Will Technical traders and Price Action Traders know about/be trading based on this?
-Or Will Fundamental/Value/Sentiment/OrderFlow/Technical traders such as Ray's Students know about/be trading this? And know exactly HOW to trade it ?

Of course it isn't quite as straightforward and simple as some may think from my post above.
Other Fundamental news can and will also have an affect on US equity and fixed income (and Commodity) prices.
But to a poor guy like be $14bn seems like quite a chunk of money, so it should have at least some influence!

Ray turned on his 'Best Execution Algo' a few times today, it was trading both ZN and the ES today but he admits that he missed a few opportunities. Still a +47% profit (on a notional Retail account) isn't a bad day - LOL !
That makes it +214% profit on the original (notional retail account) in just 4 days.



Note that although this report says 100% wins, there were 2 part trades were it exited at breakeven, so those would have been tiny losses after commissions.

My personal results so far this week: Monday +1.1%
Tuesday +7.7% - poor trading, exceeded my risk parameters. Terrible win% of only 55%
Today +8.7% of which +5.5% on the Oil Inventories. - Poor trading, exceeded my risk parameters, but not by as much as on Tuesday. At least got a +72% win rate today.

Lots more work to do!

In Ray's room, Kim said she had received an email from a female student who wanted to thank her for encouragement to 'Do the Work'.
Kim was unsure if this lady wanted to remain anonymous, but she reported taking a $20K account to $71K starting in February trading a single currency pair and risking a max of 1.5% per trade. So in less than 3 months.

Now that is good trading! I wish my trading was even close to that.

Hello IanFoster,

I have been following this intersting thread for a while and i´d have 3 questions:

- How much time do you or let´s say a well trained student of Ray (like Kim) need for the trading every day?

- Is it also possible and profitable for full time workers with family, who can eventually log in a webtrader of a broker from time to time at work, but mostly trade in the evening at home (location: west Europe)?

- Is this Algo software available for Ray´s students?

It is impossible to give a general answer to your first 2 questions. I can only say what I know for me and for a few other students where I know sufficient details. The vast majority of students do not share their efforts, how much time they spend on trading or even much detail of their results publicly.

First I will address the big missing question - the first one you should have asked but did not:-
How long does it take, or is it even possible to become an institutional style retail trader when working full-time?

- Out of only 12 students of whom I know enough about to be able to answer, 1 managed to master sufficient institutional style trading while working full-time for a company (not being a business owner, or self employed) and became consistently profitable in only 3 months. However he already had some trading skill (and few pieces of useless baggage) before starting with Ray. It also helped him in that he was unmarried and not in a serious relationship so he was able to devote nearly all his spare time to studying and trading. I think that is probably the minimum time in which it is possible to do that. Especially since a trader really needs at least a whole month of consistent successful trading in order to know they are really getting somewhere. The large majority of Ray's students are either Self Employed, Business Owners/Managers, Full Time Traders, or Retired (and so able to do it on a full-time basis).

Don't get me wrong, Ray is a great teacher with fantastic knowledge, but trading is one of the most difficult professions in the world - despite what the people peddling EA's, and short Video or .Pdf courses will tell you. It is tough both intellectually, mentally and psychologically. If you have any weaknesses the market will expose them to you (and to your Broker).

Now for your first question
- The time it takes actually trading is only a small part of how many hours you need to spend both in pre-trade preparation analyzing the Market conditions; and also Post trading in re-analyzing your trading decisions from pre-trade entry through all the trade management to your exit, seeing where you made mistakes or things could have been improved.

Ray himself is able to use a huge amount of automation e.g. his 'Best Execution Algo' for his trade management, so he spends less than 10% of his trading time actually trading. But for a typical trader with only the normal 'retail' resources the time actually trading could be as high as 50% of the total trading time.

Now the actual minimum number of hours per day is dependent upon both the individual trading style and not really the Timeframe traded as such, more like the duration of the trades. For those with limited time to both find trades and then enter and manage them, the 2 extremes are the best: Either 1). Short duration Scalping -which will almost certainly require Order Flow techniques and resources in order to be successful. Or 2). Longer duration Swing Trading using the 4Hr or Daily Charts (this could include Options trading, Futures trading, Equities trading or Spot Market Trading).

With any other intra-day duration trading a trader with limited time has to be fortunate enough to be around when the markets move - this means at News times and/or Session Opens and Session Closes. Otherwise they may go for days or even weeks without a trade.

Before my lack of sleep and lack of focus problems from my recent skin condition I spent a total of about 3hrs in pre-trade analysis, 2hrs actually trading , 1hr in post trad analysis and 3hrs in studying Ray's teaching each day every weekday with around another 4hrs of study and 2 hrs of pre-trade analysis over each weekend.
I don't know how much time his other most successful students spend, but it is probably similar (or even higher).

- Simple answer. Yes it is possible, but depending upon the trading style, time available and at which times the trader is available, it is often very difficult.

- Firstly, Ray turns on the Algo for the Market he wants to trade and then sets up the specific parameters for the trades (which are either top edge shorts or bottom edge longs) that he wants it to use. This probably includes total size of entries, initial emergency Stop-Loss, and trade management parameters such as when to start taking profits, when to move Stop-Loss ultimate target etc.

Unfortunately it is an Institutional Algo not available to his students, though one student who runs several $Mill of managed accounts for friends and family uses something similar of his own design.


P.S.Kim is not primarily a student of Ray, she is a partner in CompassFX and facilitates in Ray's Webinar room.

More on the above:
I have now been told that the Lady doing the great trading above is a J.E. a member of my Ray's Students Self Help group.
She started off trading the Macro charts, but really started to find success when she first attempted Ray's 'Platform Familiarisation/Scalping exercise' (on which I have posted some comments/instructions and even a video link).
Apparently she was surprised to find out that she was a natural scalper and has worked hard to improve her scalping success. I hear that she focuses on just a single currency pair, though I don't yet know which one or even if she trades the Spot FX or the Currency Futures.

On a personal note, I am much happier with my trading today:-
I managed to stay within my risk parameters.
I had 31 trade parts with only 4 losses, so an 87% win rate.
I actually told the room I was done for the day after 29 trade parts (with an 86% win rate and a daily profit of +3.5%),
but I couldn't resist another trade of 2 parts (both wins) taking my day's profit to + 4.2%.

I'm happy even though I'm sure that it doesn't match up to the results of students like J.E. or V. H. (interestingly both female and both members of my Self Help Group).

This is the first News trade (apart from Oil Inventories) that I have done in the last few months (due to my health problems).
Ray called this as a short back on Sunday in his Price Discount table. But the value was stabalizing into yesterday's close.
However Value was dropping from the UK Open , so it was definitely looking like a short:

https://gyazo.com/96d9ec2826e8b07f5dea1c4433b9cdda

Because it was my first in quite a while, I was trading it much smaller than normal and it didn't spike high to get the 1.39 liquidity so I only made a total of +1.9%

Somebody was asking where I posted about Ray's Scalping/Platform familiarisation exercise.

One of them was this post on July 21st 2017 https://www.forexfactory.com/showthr...9#post10108349

This has been my first week back to trading between 1/2 and 3/4 of normal since January. Due to lack of sleep and lack of focus due to a skin condition.

(10:20 am) Ian Foster: Not sure if I will take any more trades today. Current status for the day: +4.5%, only 17 trade parts (a small number for me) with only 2 losses = 88% winners

(10:38 am) Ian Foster: yes, I will post the figures for the week when I am sure I have finished

(11:02 am) Ian Foster: My figures for the week: +28.2% , 113 trade parts, 25 losses = 77% winners
(11:05 am) Ian Foster: biggest win GBP 229, biggest loss -GBP 82

I have just had an interesting discussion about successful trading versus profitable trading with a newish member of my Self Help Group.

I have said before that successful trading guarantees profitable trading over the longer term. But Profitable trading can be caused by luck instead of trading well.
So it is no surprise which I think is the most important:

On 29/04/2018 at 23:24, F C wrote:
> Consistently Successful is one thing completely different from being Consistently Profitable. I'm gonna suppose that you know the difference, of course.

On 29/04/2018 at 23:28, Ian Foster wrote:
> Consistently successful mean consistently trading to plan plus the plan delivers profits over the medium to long term. Thus one may be consistently profitable without being consistently successful, but not the other way around!

On 29/04/2018 at 23:30, F C wrote:
> No. I do think exactly the opposite way. When you are consistently profitable you are beginning to be successful, and that repetition will make you consistently successful. It's a general life concept not an exclusive trading one.

On 29/04/2018 at 23:33, Ian Foster wrote:
> Oh, but Ray teaches that if your plan is good and you consistently trade to your plan then it is inevitable that you will be profitable, but if you don't trade to your plan (or if you chose a lousy plan) then you may still be profitable - but it will only be due to luck !

On 29/04/2018 at 23:33, F C wrote:
> We could argue on this forever. I do know what you mean and even I'm not agree with it, I respect your opinion.

On 29/04/2018 at 23:37, Ian Foster wrote:
> This is why I always report the qualitative part as well as the quantitative (= profit/loss). And I am only content/happy if the Qualitative side is good (regardless of the % profit or loss). Every trader will have losing trades - even several consecutive losing trades. The real determinant of a trader's success is how well they trade - which is independent of 'how lucky they get in their trades'
A trader can only control how well they trade !

On 29/04/2018 at 23:41, F C wrote:
> Yes I do. Why? I can control my own luck. I've been a Determinist all my adult life.

On 29/04/2018 at 23:47, Ian Foster wrote:
> Surely if you could control you own luck, then you would never need to learn from Ray, by sheer force of personality you could ensure that ever trade is a winner - LOL ! Napolean said he preferred lucky generals to good generals, but even his luck ran out in the end !
A trader should only have 2 goals: 1). To 'stay in the game' long enough for luck to even out over the longer term.
2). To trade a method/system that returns a profit over a period long enough for good luck and bad luck to cancel each other.

I am most impressed that V H one of the most successful of Ray's students has produced a superb document on how she trades Gold. I was not expecting a 50 page .pdf
She has shared it with Compass and with my Self Help Group and the reaction is very enthusiastic. But it emphasises the point that her success was built on her work on understanding and documenting the main concepts for herself!

share it here too....or what is the point of your posts? to sell some course?

If you have bothered to read this thread you will know That I am just a student of Ray who is trying to help as many traders as I can. I don't have a course to sell - nobody should be learning from somebody like me (or from somebody like V H).

I can't share anything that breaks the Non-Disclosure Agreement I signed. I have already shared trade types which are not covered by the NDA. V H wants to share her document with all those who HAVE signed Ray's NDA in order to encourage them to do similar work wor themselves and thus own their personal trade style!.

I have had some PMs from traders who have done a Jared Davis course, wondering if Ray has anything to add. Since I have not done Jared's course I can't be certain,. But my impression is that Jared trades longish term and with quite long gaps between trades. Ray teaches every timeframe from twice yearly seasonals, through every timeframe down to 1 min and 30 sec, or no timeframe at all ( Tick, Volume.Range, and Reversal Bar charts).
He also teaches how to trade every market you can think of - because what applies to one currency pair type can be applied to all the others of that type and the same applies to Agriculturals, Metals, Grains, Energies, Financial Indices and individual Stocks and Options on any of those markets.

I am only allowed to send/reply to 1 PM per 24hrs ( so called Commercial Members are limited in this way). So replies to some recent PMs:

To S.
I found that I had not answered your question on Stops.
The Stops that students use is totally dependent upon 3 things:
Which style they trade, The volatility of their chosen instrument, Whether they trade the Futures of the Spot/CFD markets.

Scalping requires small stops (though Ray teaches the philosophy that all trades where possible should initially be managed like a scalp. Stops can be as low as 2 or 3 ticks when trading the ZB (30yr Bonds) Futures because this is a very thick market.
In general the stops for trading Futures can almost always be smaller than for trading the same market through the Spot or CFD markets.

You may want to look at the info on the CompassFX.com website for the info on Ray's last course (even though he did a lot more than mentioned) - look for 'Sharp Edge Trading'.

To R.
Yes, any of the special indicators designed to mimic things that Ray knows Institutional traders use are restricted to Ray's students or past students.
This is partly because without the knowledge behind what the indicator is based upon it is hardly any better than any conventional indicator (which means not very useful at all)!

I watched one of the webinars where he shows a "value" indicator on one of the charts to show if a certain pair is above or below value. I'd be interested in the course just for that piece, however I'm at the point where I'm tired of studying other peoples stuff and just want to make things myself. Could you just tell me how close I am to being on the right track to emulating that indicator:

1. Make a list of the top exports for each country
2. Make an index of those export with real time prices, weighted by % of export volume (or track ETF sectors in the case of JPY which exports mostly cars)
3. Optional: do the same for imports to get a clearer view of what currency is flowing into another

Am I on track with that or am I missing something? I know I'll need to include treasury and bond data as well, just need to do some more research on that.