Vote: Adding Rule for Commercial Members

That is very interesting Razzle, you should add a little post on the currensee thread, Asaf is a bit clueless about operational risk and this will make a few noobs having to take some of the performance of their "managers" with a grain of salt especially in light of the total lack of audits and risk management over there.

Are you sure, captain? I had a chat with the chaps from myfxbook some time ago and they said you can upload shit with MT4 but you don't get the two green ticks (aka verified account) until they have verified the trade blotter against the broker's server using the investor password.

Clearly Currensee is not using the FTP upload mechanism so there is no way to game what we show as performance.

-- Asaf.

ForexFactory is the most fertile ground to scammers and in fact the people here that get the most recommendations may be the biggest scammers around and there is no way anyone can ever stop them or force them to show real performance - see the thread about Nial's trading for example.

The reality is that while ForexFactory has created the commercial forum to try and clean the rest of the site from people promising ridiculous returns in fact the commercial forum is the fastest growing thread and now has more people viewing it than the trading discussion which goes to show you who are the people that participate in ForexFactory to begin with.

-- Asaf.

Yes I am aware that they have a process that verifies accounts against selected brokers. Clearly any shinnangins as I described would fail the verification.

However, if the verification process was a one off event, you could of course verifiy against a non profitable account, and then once verification had been established, over write all further uploads with faked statements.

You would therefore hope that the verification was checked periodically rather than it being a one off event. I dont know, I've not tried it.

What I do know is that the process I've described worked for every single audit site that I looked at, and some of these sites of course dont offer a verification process.

MyFXBook are particularly bad because of the flexability they provide in allowing the vendor full control over what information they disclose. A lot of the worst offenders tend to have a couple of live verified accounts, but they hide deposits, withdrawals, and trade details such as lot sizes etc, and then augment these results with full disclosure of unverified demo trades !

Most traders would spot the obvious tricks, but of course these types of sites are generally being used to add legitimacy to products and services targetted towards those with a limited knowledge.

And then people would complain and say it is only a demo account.

Bill had it right (like I told you in the chat this morning)

Another slam to the general FF population from asafyigal. You've stated that you were badly bullied by the people at FF when you were a member before. Since your site is based on making all things public and you state that you are "all about transparency," would you mind sharing your former username so we can all see the instances of bullying that you suffered? It would help us in our due diligence if we could see your entire history, rather than just your current posts. I wouldn't ask here, but I was banned from your threads for asking there.

I'm asking in a polite and civil manner. And my apologies for the battering you took if I was in anyway involved.

Thank you, actually i didn`t know it. What can you say about zulutrade.com? Is it also can be exploited in such a manner?

I asked myfxbook support for the problem about fake statements and they told me that track record is verified several times a day. Indeed I watched my account and it was verified on 09/10/2010 06:27. More about it here http://blog.myfxbook.com/2009/11/30/...-finally-here/

It verifies what the MT4 server is telling them not whether it is the truth or not. There is no way myfxbook.com can prove that a broker didn't fabricate the results before allowing myfxbook.com to download it. The brokers are setting up fake real and demo accounts claiming 400% + gains, they are usually based in Russia. Only NFA regulated brokers should be reasonably safe, but nothing is guaranteed.

I voted yes in the pole but the question which account will be used to demonstrate trading ability. The commercial member could have a real futures account showing 100% gain like Unger is doing at http://www.robbinstrading.com/worldcup/standings.asp but not tell us about his losing 100 other acounts.

Come to think about it , this is probably how Larry Williams won the contest way back in the 80's .

is why he turned to "teaching".

http://www.jurikres.com/snake/lawsuits.htm "...NFA fines Larry Williams for not reporting to potential clients that, while his personal account in a promotional 1987 contest was very profitable ( a gain of + $902,599 ), his managed accounts for clients lost substantial funds ( - $6,122,281 ). This constituted deceptive and unbalanced promotional material and disclosure statements. Details in William Gallacher's book Winner Take All.

Footnote -- In July 1988, the Larry Williams Financial Strategy Fund was launched, followed in March 1989 by the World Cup Championship Fund, managed by Larry Williams, Jake Bernstein and two others. The 1988 fund lost more than 50% of its clients' equity in barely one year, as reported in the October 1989 issue of Futures magazine. The 1989 fund also lost more than half of its original equity by May 1990. ..."

Larry winning the contest could probably be described as a "Black swan" event as per Taleb.

http://amzn.to/cI3M95 The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: "On Robustness and Fragility" [Paperback]

Review of Black Swan by Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.

Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon warned that our minds are wired to deceive us. "Beware the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall--they are the real distorting prisms of human nature." Chief among them: "Assuming more order than exists in chaotic nature." Now consider the typical stock market report: "Today investors bid shares down out of concern over Iranian oil production." Sigh. We're still doing it.

Our brains are wired for narrative, not statistical uncertainty. And so we tell ourselves simple stories to explain complex thing we don't--and, most importantly, can't--know. The truth is that we have no idea why stock markets go up or down on any given day, and whatever reason we give is sure to be grossly simplified, if not flat out wrong.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb first made this argument in Fooled by Randomness, an engaging look at the history and reasons for our predilection for self-deception when it comes to statistics. Now, in The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable, he focuses on that most dismal of sciences, predicting the future. Forecasting is not just at the heart of Wall Street, but it’s something each of us does every time we make an insurance payment or strap on a seat belt.

The problem, Nassim explains, is that we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat (diligently trying to follow the path of the "millionaire next door," when unrepeatable chance is a better explanation). Instead, the really important events are rare and unpredictable. He calls them Black Swans, which is a reference to a 17th century philosophical thought experiment. In Europe all anyone had ever seen were white swans; indeed, "all swans are white" had long been used as the standard example of a scientific truth. So what was the chance of seeing a black one? Impossible to calculate, or at least they were until 1697, when explorers found Cygnus atratus in Australia.

Nassim argues that most of the really big events in our world are rare and unpredictable, and thus trying to extract generalizable stories to explain them may be emotionally satisfying, but it's practically useless. September 11th is one such example, and stock market crashes are another. Or, as he puts it, "History does not crawl, it jumps." Our assumptions grow out of the bell-curve predictability of what he calls "Mediocristan," while our world is really shaped by the wild powerlaw swings of "Extremistan."

In full disclosure, I'm a long admirer of Taleb's work and a few of my comments on drafts found their way into the book. I, too, look at the world through the powerlaw lens, and I too find that it reveals how many of our assumptions are wrong. But Taleb takes this to a new level with a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature.

With myfxbook, in order to verify that the trades are not flake the investor password is required. There are two steps that takes place:

1) you upload (ftp) your trading statement
2) myfxbook verified your statement by logging into your account with the investor password.

If you falsify your trading statement, myfxbook will not give you the green check mark on "Track Record Verified" because you trading statement is not the same results as the actual trading account using the investor password log in.


In order to obtain the "Trading Privileges Verfied", you will need to place a special comment on a trade pending order to validate that it is your account and not some investor password account that you got from someone else.

Another method is to show a screen capture of your MT4 trading platform with your account # and current trades. I was able to shut StephanusR's mouth when he claimed that I flaked my real trading account. Alternatively, you can create a video with click through of the open trades and trading history.

StephanusR - you still owe me an apology as I was able to demonstrate that my trade account is real.

Boys like to criticize and complaints but it takes a real man to apologize.

We are not secure from brokers fake track records but are from cheating traders. If you verify trading privileges with myfxbook it will check statement stored by the broker with user provided on the daily basis. And if difference found it will be corrected.

Even though the voting sample is small, it does show the wishes of most traders/customers towards preferring accountability and verifiable track records from commercial vendors. Like most mutual funds out there, they are publishing multi-year auditable return figures out there so that potential customers can make more informed decision. I personally believe that if you sell a product to help people make trading profit, and yet reluctant to publish a real verifiable statement of your own trading using your method, it shows a lack of confidence in consistent performance of the product. It is understandable for the bigger and established vendors not willing to do this. They have nothing to gain. If they publish a profitable statement, it is supposed so. If it is a losing or mediocre statement, they lose subscribers by the masses. But this is the point, lack of confidence in consistency of performance, and fearing to compare with other lesser/newer vendors who can only gain more business if their published statements are consistently good with sound money management and low drawdown. regard. After Jacko, people should demand more accountability from commercial vendors, and FF can feel more secured that their members or site visitors are more informed on the products/services being promoted at their site. I do hope FF will do something in this regard to categorize vendors with verifiable statements and those without. I personally will not spend any time reading those w/o a verifiable statement. That is just my personal choice. Don't want to waste time reading 100's of pages, even 1000's if the method being promoted has no live verifiable track record. Most of us have a day job or with family responsibilities. The little time we have to read up so many methods/products promoted, we need to spend on those that we can see real live verifiable results. Tired of just trusting some strangers' words. Show us the real beef!!!

(by the way, I am reading up on Mr. Smith's thread as he is doing live trading with his method (which he claims is J16 or close to it), even though he does not sell anything. Go go, Mr. Smith and thanks.)

Small? 15 people bothered to vote out of 35,000. It really shows you how insignificant the commercial section is and how 99.99% of members couldn't give a toss whether it was here or not.

If traders would stay away from the rubbish here and instead focus a bit of thier attention to learning how to trade, more then the 1% now would be succesful.

Nobody in the 1 percentile is going to share his methodology, least of all in the commercial section of FF.

As Twee has stated before, most of the commercial section is worthless.

Right, no new rules or requirements are going to make the commercial section a wonderful place. The commercial section was a poor idea and no band-aid will fix it.

Cloggie: When you get banned from the Currensee thread, feel free to participate here: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=255266

I've quoted one of your posts there, since I was banned from the Currensee thread for asking Asaf what his other username is.

Perhaps true that the commercial section is mostly useless, as Twee claims. Why then have the section on FF? Any time you check it, there are over 100 readers on various threads. Perhaps remove this section so people do not have to deal with 'paid' stuff and just focus on the free stuffs. However, if it stays, perhaps FF can organize the services/products to help readers to make their reading more time-worthy.

In general though, the word 'commercial' implies being more professional, which means the authors of their respecitve threads are experienced and dedicated to their products/services. If they can provide verifiable live statements, then nothing wrong to spend time reading their threads or to give their products/services a try. Every one has his/her reasons for visiting commercial threads, and no one needs to justify to others why they want to invest in mutual funds with verifiable records, same here with the commercial products being promoted.

You are missing the point of the Commercial thread entirely. Only failed traders would dream up some signal service or Indy to sell and we need to put the scammers somewhere to keep the rest of the forum for the traders.

The Commercial section implies exactly that, a place for the scammers and failures to hang out their shingle.


Out of 10,000 traders online during the day, again that number is insignificant and only shows that 99.99% of the traders realise that there is no value to the commercial section.

Having participated in the discussion over the last month or so about the value of the commercial section, I actually am coming around to Twee's way of thinking, it is a place to dump the garbage. It is not a perfect setup or solution, but it keeps them out of the trader's side of the fence and for that I am grateful.

As I posted earlier, even Twee thinks that most of it is rubbish or worse. That is a good endorsement of the owner of the Forum, heed his caution and stay out of it.

so what the hell is the point of trading competitions then? all these talk about fabricated statements really just bring me down :-(

forexstreet is running a contest now, but since broker can lie, WHAT'S THE POINT!?!?...ugh.

bastards

It is pure marketing, get a few guys to compete in a competition with ridiculous results and you have a few thousand retailers trying to emulate it and can't wait to sign up for an account.

Look how all those "winners" get shopped around for photo-ops and interviews, pure PR.