Institutional Equivalent Education?

Since I have been saying how well I have been doing on the Crude Oil Inventory release trading, I ought to share my results this week which were disappointing to say the least. I have had internet issues for several weeks, but now have a backup ISP connection and a Dual WAN router.
But had not felt confident to trade the Oil Inv release in my live account for the past few weeks until I had those put in place.

[8:51:00 PM] Ian Foster: Update on my progress (or lack of progress). I only traded 3 days this week. Tue, Thu and Fri. For the first time in quite a while I messed up my Oil Inventory trades. I had the direction correct for the initial scalp (Ray style) but got a re-quote when trying to exit and decided to hang on for a 2nd bite at it. Well it turned and bit me with a Stop Out. I then pre-empted the Sam style trade and got another Stop Out, before taking the pass-thru rejection long. Unfortunately I had to exit (for a net 0.2% basically a scratch) because of dinner and wife while the trade still had potential - I was looking for the prior day's high and the 47.0 level. I also had a poor day today, getting some disastrous trades on E/U, Oil and SP500 as well as a good trade on Oil and a good trade on G/J for a net loss of 1.5%.

So my week's net totals (not rebased) were Tue +1%, Thu +4.2% (mainly Dax and G/A) and Fri -1.5%. So only +3.7% for the week, but considering how poor my trading was (I won't share how bad my expectancy='R number' and % Max were, but any institution would fire me for those figures), it is a good net outcome for the week.

Thus my bottom line results this week are only about what I expect to make from the 2 Oil Inv trades alone !

I had a much better Oil Inventory day today. It was important to trade it in the Ray and/or Sam Van Doorn styles, because otherwise you would almost certainly have taken a short and scratched or got hurt. I made 2.2% on the first Ray style trade and then an extra 2.1% on the easier Sam style trade.

But although the Oil Inventories was the highlight of my day, I made most of my profit on the S&P (basically also a Ray's Oil Inventory style trade) and the GBP/AUD off the moves at significant times - I call them Time Box trades to distinguish them from the other Box trades (non time dependant ones) that Ray also teaches.

A total of +11.4% on the day, which compensates somewhat for being net +0% on both Monday and Tuesday.

Ray will be starting an 'official course' around mid November and Compass are inviting everyone to attend Ray's regular Sunday Briefing tomorrow.
It is at 7pm Eastern Time , 11pm GMT (=UK time because British Summertime ends tonight).
Here is the link for free registration:

https://compassfx.omnovia.com/register/99521445643414?

Ray holds a Briefing for the week ahead every Sunday and well as briefings on Mon, Tue,Thurs when he isn't teaching an 'official course'.
In reality he is so passionate about trading that he never stops teaching. So those who sign up as 'earlybirds' for his courses get a big head start.

Mark C. who asked me about the courses as a result of this thread and signed up straight away, will have had a more than whole month free before the 'official course' starts in 2 or 3 weeks time. He has been able to view all the recordings of the previous 'official classes' and the 'Structured Training modules' in the Compass Members area during that time.
He has also joined my free Self Help Group for Ray's students and so has had advice and information about how to study and what to study first, plus much more, from many of Ray's most successful students

If you really want to know WHY markets move and how to align your trades with those of the biggest and best Prop Trading Desks, then at least attending Ray's free Briefing tomorrow is a no-brainer.

There are only 3 things that make markets move and in order of importance and magnitude they are:
1. Fundamentals
2. Sentiment - i.e expectations for forthcoming Fundamental events e.g. interest rate expectations.
3. Technicals.

So why is it that retail traders and courses concentrate almost 95% on ONLY the Technicals?
Do you think that you should concentrate on the LEAST IMPORTANT factors? - Well that is what most retail traders do.
I did it too before I found Ray. Despite basing my long term stock investments on Company Accounts, Earnings prospects etc.
For over 7 years I felt that learning about Fundamentals and Sentiment was too hard for Forex, Commodities and Indices; and would take too long.


Without Ray, it would have taken me too long - you have the opportunity to avoid most of my mistakes.

Is there a recording available of this briefing? Thanks.

Hi MongOOse,
There was a recording done but only for students. No recording available for those guests who registered or even attended. I don't understand why Compass are so protective of Ray's IP, that they prevent people seeing how well his market reading actually worked out. - They did very well!

They also had an open trading session on Friday 30th October from 13:00hrs Eastern. Not the best day to have it because of it being a month-end Friday - thus lots of book-squaring going on and rotational markets until the US afternoon (after the session ended) when the S&P dropped strongly as Ray had been saying he expected it would. This caused volatility to rise for him and he made a bundle on his cheap volatility buy from the previous week.

Personally I don't like to hear him tell us how well his options and Gamma Scalping are doing, because the vast majority of us don't have big enough accounts to trade that way. However in yesterday's briefing he showed the current status of those and he had added over £100K on that US afternoon due to the Volatility increase, which took his (then) current profit up to £380K in 10days. The total profit for that account which started with 50K back in early January and now has over 4000K (4 million) in realized profit in addition to that current trade. Please note that a retail trader could not replicate this performance since they would have to put up margin and so need a much larger starting account size.

There is a recording of the Friday's open US trading session. It is in the same Omnovia room as the session was held in and can be found by clicking on te documents tab and scrolling down. But that is only available to those who registered for it - and thus have a login and a link to the 'prop experience ' room. There will be more open Briefings or Trading sessions before the next course starts (around 17th November). I suggest that people at least register for them (even if they can't attend) since I expect that there will be a recording available from any held in the prop experience room.

There is no IP protection required for Ray's stuff. There is nothing new in Forex and trading and general.

Well nothing you can 'protect' anyway. How do you protect market and volume profile, or delta/gamma hmm?

I agree, Ray's market session was excellent on Friday. And I was trading away beautifully to Dean Malone's DOTS levels and the GMMA whilst listening to him!

I think its great that Ray gives a deeper understanding to how Institutional's play. Can go into trades with far greater degree of confidence

Out of interest what has happened to the market maker guy? I kinda like him.

Is it just Ray and Mark? I like Mark too though always seems to be in Ray's shadow.

I have just heard that there will be another free webinar open to non-students tomorrow evening/night i.e Thursday 5th November at 18:00 Eastern Time (so it is Friday morning for some people).

I have been told that Ray will show how Forex , commodities and the financial indices markets are just like Stocks and that the techniques of many of the greatest investors and speculators can be applied to those other markets too.

This is a link for registering : https://compassoffer.com/lmbreg

Ray did a similar talk during his 2hr 50min class session for his students on Tuesday and it was great. He teaches that for all trading styles except short term scalping, a 'Value Investing/Speculating' approach like W. Buffett, G. Soros or P. Tudor Jones is the both the most logical as well as being the most effective.

This webinar will be held in the 'propexperience' room, so there is a good chance that a recording might be made available to those who register for it.

Anybody would be in Ray's shadow when it comes to trading except for the truly greats. Even Eusebio can only match him in some areas.

I am not sure which guy you are talking about. A retired ex-market Maker friend of Mark's was on some of the webinars about 6 months ago or so. He trades very long term - usually holding for months. I heard that in between checking his trades, he is dabbling in Real Estate.

If you are talking about Steven Patterson, then I don't know what he is doing since he managed to piss off Compass, Ray and the Self Help Group all at the same time.
I hope that he is recovering from his psychological problems (trading and otherwise).

Apparently the in post number 68 the link for the free webinar registration stopped working for a while,

It is now working again. This is it : https://compassoffer.com/lmbreg


The email sent out said there would be no recording.
However I have been told that the re will be a recording stored in the same omnovia room that the webinar is held in.

Look under the Documents tab bottom right when you have the room open.
When you click an an item it asks if you want to open in a new Browser window - say yes. Then just put in your login details again when it asks.

Ian

Thank you very much for the information. I have registered for the session.
I really hope that there will be a recording as it will start at 2:00 AM my time and I doubt if I can make it and then still function properly the next day.
Time will tell.

Regards

Hi Nico,
There is a recording in the Omnovia room in which the session was done and anybody who registered should be able to still use their log in details to access it.

But here is a recording that one of Ray's students made:
http://www.mediafire.com/watch/0ebsa...ue_Trading.mp4

There is another open session for the US morning going on right now.
Use the same login detalis as for the Briefing session yesterday.

I see there are lot of people in there.

Yes including me! lol

More recordings

Market Briefing (Thu evening) : https://compassfx.omnovia.com/archives/253870
Understanding Intrinsic Value : https://compassfx.omnovia.com/archives/253874
Friday Trade session: https://compassfx.omnovia.com/archives/253928
Closing remark from Ray : https://compassfx.omnovia.com/archives/253954

It has been a long time since I have had an email fro ForexUseful, but I was intrigued by the line in the email about a video so I took a look.

The video starts with a description of a betting coup on Golf in the UK in 1991, with which I was already familiar. But Nigel, the narrator takes the main principle from that betting coup and attempts to apply it to trading currencies.

The video can be found here : http://forexuseful.com/price-action-...date-8-nov-15/

There are some interesting statistics are 2 take-aways from the video:

A recent FXCM survey showed that over 100 trades their average customer loses 309 pips with their average winning trade being 48 pips.

So just 1 or 2 big winning trades (of 5x to 10x the average win) in those 100 trades, could in theory transform the average customer account from net losing to net winning.

Now conventional wisdom says that such big winning trades are almost impossible to get - but are they really? Or is this an exaggeration? If it is merely an exaggeration, but almost all other retail traders believe it, then this could be an edge for you.

It is interesting that in his latest email, Boris Schlossberg is extolling the virtues of impatience - he says that he advises Kathy Lien to take her profits quickly. Apparently Kathy often bemoans her early exits from what could have been big winners. But Boris says that 24 hrs later they would no longer have been a big winner.

I can't help feeling that they are all (Nigel, Boris and Kathy), missing something here.
Ray says that you should never just accept something - even from an expert or guru. He tells us not to accept what he tells us but to test it for ourselves until we either have the confidence to use it as a part of our trading, or discard it as not giving us an edge.
He says that retail traders stack the deck against themselves by trading All-in/All-out. Because in doing that we need to not only get the best entry, but also the best exit . Ray advises that we trade in more of an institutional style. He recognizes that we don't have the deep pocket to pyramid our entries as price moves against us as institutions do.However at least we must trade multi-unit, so that we can lock in a profit and then be more relaxed in letting the trade evolve, because big moves do happen and our accounts benefit if we can stay in a successful trade with a 'runner' until there is a good reason to exit.

Eusebio is probably the ultimate retail expert at this type of trade management. Here are screenshots from the latest email from The Max. In these, all entries are of 2 units, all MX (partial exits) are of 1 unit and the XXX is a final exit of all remaining units. The screenshots show all trade adjustments taken according to more and more advanced verions of the MAX rules and methods, but don't show all the appropriate indicators:

http://img-ak.verticalresponse.com/m...x%20primer.jpg

http://img-ak.verticalresponse.com/m...20standard.jpg

http://img-ak.verticalresponse.com/m...dard%20etf.jpg

http://img-ak.verticalresponse.com/m...vative%202.jpg

I was not in the webinar room at the time, so don't know if it was mis-heard.

A Self Help Group member was saying that Ray has said he is going to stop doing more full courses after this next one (starts 17th November). Though he will continue with the trade room.

It may well be true because originally he was only wanting to do an Online Retail Prop Desk room. But he couldn't do that because no retail traders understood how he trades, the institutional language and where to find the information required.

So there are 2 more free open house webinars:
A Briefing session at 18:00 Eastern today Thursday 12th November
and a trade room session tomorrow for the US morning at 09:00 Eastern Friday 13th November

They have only given one link for registration, so it looks like it is for both events:
https://compassoffer.com/webinar-reg...e2bd8854ee1462

What Self Help Group members are saying about the possibility that this next course will be Ray's last :

[11/11/2015 10:03:35 PM] J: Just my 6p here I love Ray's non stop talking and teaching
[11/11/2015 10:04:49 PM] J: If this is the last class then great, we will have Ray focussed on the shape of things and then the question holds 'can you keep up?'
[11/11/2015 10:49:47 PM] C: And my 6c worth too, I agree with Justin - I love Ray’s non stop generosity - that is why I am in the room to learn - one day he will be gone - so the more I can learn now, the better
[11/11/2015 10:52:50 PM] C: And what’s more, if I had found Ray 10 years ago - I wouldn’t have lost the money I have, paying for dodgy educators and losing money because of it.
[12:01:25 AM] A: I've found it's more effective for me to keep listening to him live and "roll forward" my education instead of going back over all the classes I've missed. Fact is I will never catch them all up because there's just not enough hours in the day, but I also don't believe that it is necessary. I view this like an apprenticeship rather than a uni degree - all the lessons and learnings are dependent on current market conditions, so I believe they key is to show up to live class as often as possible, participate, contribute, ask questions galore, learn how to apply the theoretical to the current market, and put the analysis out there in the room... what an opportunity to learn from the master, Ray.
If I would've been introduced to Ray 10 years ago I probably wouldn't have appreciated him, or not nearly enough! Last month I moved 3 book shelves of trading books that I've accumulated over the last decade into storage boxes as they're no longer relevant - they just reinforced the same technical-only momentum-based trading styles - which work fantastic in strong bull/bear markets but outside of that we get destroyed, 1-2% at a time. Now that Ray has explained environment, valuation, correlation, price action, volume, order flow, levels, (the list goes on) I understand why financial institions have entire floors of analysts, traders, strategists, etc because that's what it takes to win in this game. The $1000's I've spent/lost over the years got me here and now I can laugh at how stupid/inferior my prior trading techniques were.
[12:08:08 AM] C: I’ve been moving my old trading education books too … to eBay
[12:09:00 AM] A: I'll probably be doing the same Chrissi!
[12:09:05 AM] E: ditto on wishing I found Ray years ago but then again back then I don;t think I would have wanted to put in the work. I had to go through a lot of pain unfortunately to realize all that technical stuff was garbage
[12:09:38 AM] E: I had early success but it was beginner's luck.. money came easily but then things stopped working and I gave it back and then some
[12:09:40 AM | Edited 12:10:47 AM] C: Actually I agree with both of you regarding the progression - the money I have spent and the courses I have done brought me here - how else would I have met the people I have that led me to here
[12:10:35 AM] E: his fundamental education is also top notch. I recently saw this one floor trader's education (he had 30 years trading experience) and his COT training was so abysmal, far below what Ray taught us.
[12:10:55 AM] E: he did not go through things bar by bar what Ray showed us on 4h COT
[12:11:11 AM] E: Ray showed us nuances we would not find anywhere else

Right at the end of the open trading session on Friday, Jason Mauney remarked that nobody had mentioned what for him is a big positive about the way Ray teaches us to analyze the markets. That he (Jason) knows which markets he will be trading, in which direction and from which areas THE NIGHT BEFORE.

In fact Jason does a 1 hour session for Ray's students on Mondays and Wednesdays at 5pm Eastern Time where he shows not only his analysis for the following day, but how he does it.

Jason is a Ray student who was able to leave his job and become a dull-time professional trader after 4 months with Ray - and although he is a quick study, he isn't really so exceptional!

Anyone reading this thread may well be fed up with me going on about my views on trading.
For those who would like to hear me on a webinar, Compass have asked if I will talk about my experiences and psychological troubles on a webinar they are doing on Monday. It will start at 1pm Eastern, but I will not be on until towards the end - so after 2pm or more likely towards 2:30pm.

They are happy for me to tell it like it is for me, the good and the bad. In my opinion anybody who isn't passionate about trading and or who is unable or unwilling to commit to a lot of hard work might as well give up now. It will save them money in the long run, because despite what the glib salesmen say, the 'easy way' just does not exist - at least not in the long run because Market dynamics change and so a fixed system that works well for one sort of market will inevitably fail in another environment.