Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Preliminary discussion - please participate - Certified Trustworthy Vendor program
Couple of things which come to mind. Would like an educator to be a real life trader. Not sure how easy it would be to integrate some of the below since it would be a differentiator.
1) Need for transparency of what the educator does for himself/herself is needed. Educators who are able to demonstrate Live monthly profit/loss statements with executions fills. A certificate of audit needs to be also posted for yearly statements. These can be smaller size accounts...& no SIMs. (past performance is not good enough....in competitive age....if Live accounts can be shown there will be more participation).
2) Education needs to be two way. Cannot be sell a program & move on. If there can be followups between Educator & student...by way of Educator analyzing student P&L...entry/exit per program & thereby constructive criticism adding to student success. Ofcourse this tends to be more work....but they can always add a fee. The question is ....can this be done.
3) No smokin mirrors. If indicators are sold....a reason on how indicator plots stuff. Code not required...but full logic.
4) Can educator have a daily log....of what they feel pre-market...& closing thoughts. This gives a new student evaluating a program to see....how the trader/educator thinks. Does his/her logic hold. If there was a though change to pre-market....why was it. This will also reflect & can be compared to 1) when eval'ing a program.
This is one thing I do not always agree with. I could see if your paying for a system wanting proof that it is profitable but if an educator is going to teach me something I don't care if he actually trades or not, while that may be a plus it is not a requirement.
Some people may be good educators but for whatever reason they are not able to put there money at risk to make an income. Schwager for example has said in his book he is not a great trader, yet he is a very good writer on trading and also a very good interviewer.
There also may be teachers that are great traders and they can show 10 years worth of p&l's and you will think wow I want to learn from this guy, but when it comes down to it he is a very lousy teacher. They have all the skills required to trade but are just lacking communication skills to explain it in terms that the average trader is going to understand.
You can also have a trader that is very profitable share his system and if 100 people trade it I'm sure about 10 would probably end up making any money with it. So if you are one of the traders that are not able to take that system and apply it to making money for your own account, are you going to feel better about the losses since the teacher had posted his live trades and lifelong P&L.
i kind of agree with you & do not get me wrong...I have full respect for all educators past/present & future.
But my personal preference would have been the above. No this does not in particular apply to me. i had to struggle the hard way. But reflecting back...if i had someone per my thoughts i would have gone with them.
As others, I think it will be a boat load of work, but hat would be your decision, I don't even know how you keep your head over water with all the stuff you are doing already, hats off to your accomplishments and dedication, incredible!
I think it could very well add value to futures.io (formerly BMT).
Giving good vendors some more freedom on this site should provide benefits for both sides and spark valuable discussions.
One point to consider might be that these certified vendors might need "protection" when unduly attacked...how will that be handled? Probably a very difficult act to balance that correctly...much more complicated than the other way around (vendor being the aggressor).
The most difficult aspect could prove to be ensuring that the rating process is not influenced by either the vendor himself or his competition, a good firewall might be that every rating has to include a reasoning.
The other thing is the legal side which might be tricky, but I am sure you are in good hands there...
Users reviews are great in general. And I can see this more formal version as a great addition to futures.io (formerly BMT). I bought some real rubbish in my time. My fault be being naive and in a hurry. (I bought and some good stuff too - but that was more luck than judgment).
As a user of futures.io (formerly BMT) I can see only upside.
But... if futures.io (formerly BMT) was my business I would be wary. There may be an outlier that could undo all the benefits derived from the others. One disgruntled vendor who gets all upset and legal who has deep pockets and a score to settle. That would cause you (Mike) distress and possibly costs too. And things change, bad vendors can become good and vice versa. Looks like it would take time to manage the application process, appeals, users, etc and the time (=cost) would rise exponentially as the interactions between these parties increased. Could turn into a real bun fight!
The risks in my view, whilst unlikely, are potentially greater than the payoff and (again if futures.io (formerly BMT) was my business, which it isn't), I would perhaps just include some of the new features in the existing user reviews section, and ask the futures.io (formerly BMT) community to help police it.
I would not be trading today if I did not stubble across futures.io (formerly BMT) a few years ago. It has (and I am not exaggerating here) changed my life. I thought I could 'master' trading on my own and I was very wrong. futures.io (formerly BMT) is my educational, mentor and sometimes support group. So Mike, please don't take my comments as critical, I just put myself in your shoes and saw some potential downside.
It has to be done - and its a great idea. ... but recently a few organizational issues have been highlighted on futures.io (formerly BMT) so you need to take them into account. (e.g. I'm not saying that you can't have a month off ... but ... yikes ... isn't it even a bit scary that it concerns me ?? )
Firstly - it is of great value to the community to have a quality system and an evaluation system in place. Yes. Put down the smack.
The program as I see it is not about slapping the bad boys but rather highlighting the good ones. Not all vendors are bad and indeed a lot of members want to pay for good stuff. Therefore any sort of review process helps with those choices is good. Therefore the "Certified Trustworthy" idea is good. I've worked on a lot of those partner programme type things in the past and the issue is that they tend to become revenue sources themselves ... and therefore a bit silly. I have to smile sometimes at the Ninjatrader new partner announcements.
Secondly - to the outside world - futures.io (formerly BMT) looks like the very personal view of Big Mike himself. This might have been part of the past but I'm sure that this thread is part of the process to make sure that it is not all about your personal opinion.
Some of the recent things in the futures.io (formerly BMT) vs ET thread were an example of the unnecessary noise. You can dispel these false accusations by putting some transparent governance in place.
futures.io (formerly BMT) processes like:
Advertising:
- How do I become an advertiser?
- How are advertisers screeened?
Webinars:
- How are webinar presenters chosen?
Vendor Status:
- For members, what does the "vendor" status mean and what can and can they not do on futures.io (formerly BMT)? What must they do to help out ?What are the requirements for being a vendor (must they have a website? Must they clearly say what they are selling? Must they clearly say how and why they are helping on the site?)
- How can a vendor/member advertise ?
Certified Trustworthy:
- How can a product supplier go through the review process?
- How do they pay for this and what do they get out of it ?
- What are the risks to them and (If they pay ... and get the thumbs down .. will they get publically slagged off ? Are there restrictions on this ?)
Underlying this can be the sentiment and the philosophy of running things that you have already put in place in an amazing way. The futures.io (formerly BMT) - be nice, be helpful, don't shout ... or whatever it is you have put in place. Google called it "do no evil" ... and you surely have something else on a fridge magnet that guides ... ... (with respect!)
To the outside world it sometimes seems that everything relies on Big Mike. That may or may not be true but if you are going to go Certified Trustworthy then ... you need to have a structure in place that you can rely on. You need good and well balanced procedures (not just good judgement), reliable people to do due diligence, a published and transparent structure so that when the lawsuits come (and they will) that you can show that you have taken responsible decisions and followed published procedures. Dare I say it ... you need a sort of board structure.
Putting down the smack is sometimes what is required but you and futures.io (formerly BMT) do not need to take too many for the team.
This program can be done but think about it another way for those of us that rely on futures.io (formerly BMT) - we don't want you to fall on your sword. There are words of caution and encouragement for this initiative.
Perhaps a "certifiied trustworthy" rating could also be accompanied by a secondary rating similar to how Movies | Movie Trailers | Reviews - Rotten Tomatoes does it like their official site "certified" rating and then a community "audience" rating or a summary of a set of ratings however it's done.
Per Pap's post about need for transparency. Maybe a separate rating level for the degree of transparency. It may or may not factor into the overall main trustworthiness rating but still be available for individual scan by members.
The degree of transparency could be something like:
1) No records of past performance.
2) Listed performance records.
3) Listed performance records and verified (proof of performance matching method).
4) Listed performance records and verified live account (however done.)
I would think having a certified rating with some summary rated secondary caveats and opinion polling from the membership would help with the openness of the ratings yet not be overly spread out as to make the ratings meaningless. The secondary ratings could also serve to gather member votes, maybe anonymously as preferred, as many don't post and comment on the vendor threads yet they are viewed often. And of course the usual "firewalls" to prevent duplicate ratings and loopholes which has already been done reasonably well on futures.io (formerly BMT)'s vendor product threads.
I have no issue with reputable vendors having a little more freedom on the site (@DionysusToast comes to mind) as long as they do not sell any "signal" type products or services and make NO claims of profits on their site. I think it will be a ton of work, but I really don't think futures.io (formerly BMT) should be linked to anyone claiming to make you money.
First of all, I think it's a very good and honorable idea to try to separate the good from the bad. I am also of the opinion that too many bad vendors/scammers are out there in our industry and something needs to be done about it.
However, I've tried to put myself into the shoes of a vendor when I read your posts.
Some comments here:
I'm not sure many vendors would do this. When it comes to money things get critical. I know that this is exactly the point, but I doubt that this will work. But you can try.
This sounds like a lot of power to very few people and there is a lot of discretion involved. I'm not judging you or any of these private futures.io (formerly BMT) members, but I don't think that such structures work long term (!).
A much better approach would be to emphasize more the regular member reviews, i.e. in theory any futures.io (formerly BMT) member could post a review regarding a vendor (not only a selected group of members) BUT Big Mike and a selected group of futures.io (formerly BMT) members watch out for fake reviews from the vendors themselves or by their competition. One idea could be to just allow reviews if a futures.io (formerly BMT) member has already posted a minimum of 50 posts on the forum over a certain period of time, so that the "oh I've just registered with futures.io (formerly BMT) and saw this thread about vendor XYZ and just wanted to tell everyone how they helped me with my trading"-reviews are sorted out.
Even if not all fake reviews are detected, I am sure the average review of many shows which vendors are better/worse than others.
I think the term vendor is to broad, as there is different types of products being sold. Off the top of my head you could break this down into educators, indicator sellers and newsletters.
To meet the guidelines of a free trial, I feel someone selling and indicator/add on or newsletter will happily oblige. You can easily delete the indi or unsubscribe from the newsletter, but someone selling a propriatery method or education might find this hard to do as viewing one trial class (or however structured) may give away enough of the info that you might not sign up?
Also seeing as how 90% of traders fail anyhow, how can a vendor be rated if the statistics say (if it's even a valid method) that the odds of successful students is against them? Many on this forum say that what works for one might not work for another.
For those selling an education, extra points awarded for having a phsychological segment in the material?
I think @mattz said it best that education is a framework to build on. I personally am the product of two vendors plus futures.io (formerly BMT) when it comes to the daytrading method I'm working on. It was a process of mix n matching ideas, not one educator per say.
....if Live accounts can be shown there will be more participation).
