I understand that there are issues between different people outside this forum, and conflicts and criticism between them. We just don't want it here.

We can only exercise control here, and we mean to do so. It is our intent to bring the temperature level of this thread back down to the level of a rational discussion. Part of that is the prohibition of the promotional posts we have had from one member. Part of it is bringing down the level of the reaction to those posts.

Members who have an issue with anyone on this forum should report it to the moderators using the Report function and let the moderators do their job, not seek to police things themselves. Use the octagonal icon at the top right of every post, or the "Report this Post" selection on the dropdown when clicking the user's name.

There are rational ways to disagree, that do not involve a counterattack. They are also always more convincing. Before anyone posts, they should be sure that their post will make some real positive difference to traders who want to know something about this vendor, and whether the post fits normal forum standards of professionalism.

Let the mods take care of the puff pieces and promotional pitches. There will be no more of them.

Bob.

As always, the problem of toning down a thread like this is that people simply stop posting. I know/knew nothing of Vinny and his chat room. The charts posed obviously represent a complex computer program, but they're incomprehensible to me without a great deal of study. The person who revived the thread suggested last week that he'd record his trading this past Monday and post a detailed report on it. I thought that would be interesting and useful--and I note that it hasn't happened yet and therefore likely never will.

One common theme in futures.io is that anyone recommending a vendor is hit with a standard sort of diatribe. The questions raised are good ones--why is the vendor offering a system if he can trade so successfully? Why is he charging so much? He MUST be a crook of some sort, flimflamming the yokels. Problem is, there are many reasons why a vendor would sell and teach but not trade. Lack of capital. Lack of discipline. Lack of the ability to actually trade his good ideas. Impulse trading or trading out of boredom. Bad money management. I know one trader who had to stop--he was good, but he was grinding his teeth at night and couldn't sleep for fear of what the overnight markets might be doing to his positions. Teaching/training can provide a stable income; trading can be a wild crapshoot, with good years in which you're King Kong and bad years when you worry you'll be sleeping in a van down by the river. If you have a family, you have to take their views into consideration too. In other words, there are reasons a normal human being with some good useful ideas may teach them or sell them rather than trade them.

But the emotions run so high about these issues that it's hard to find such good people. They do exist--but I won't mention any, since that would automatically produce accusations that I'm some sort of shill myself.

One last comment. I once sat in a chat room for a few years with a good trader. He had a system. He taught the system. He traded real time. But he didn't follow his own system. He explained in detail "Let's take this trade here with a stop at x and this exit strategy." He'd take the trade, and a few minutes or seconds later he'd say "Hm. I don't like how this looks. Get out now." He was a real trader. But how do you teach or explain that kind of feeling or behavior? Those who tried to follow his trades did badly because of such stuff. But he made consistent profits.

jneedle 

As always, the problem of toning down a thread like this is that people simply stop posting. I know/knew nothing of Vinny and his chat room. The charts posed obviously represent a complex computer program, but they're incomprehensible to me without a great deal of study. The person who revived the thread suggested last week that he'd record his trading this past Monday and post a detailed report on it. I thought that would be interesting and useful--and I note that it hasn't happened yet and therefore likely never will. One common theme in futures.io is that anyone recommending a vendor is hit with a standard sort of diatribe. The questions raised are good ones--why is the vendor offering a system if he can trade so successfully? Why is he charging so much? He MUST be a crook of some sort, flimflamming the yokels. Problem is, there are many reasons why a vendor would sell and teach but not trade. Lack of capital. Lack of discipline. Lack of the ability to actually trade his good ideas. Impulse trading or trading out of boredom. Bad money management. I know one trader who had to stop--he was good, but he was grinding his teeth at night and couldn't sleep for fear of what the overnight markets might be doing to his positions. Teaching/training can provide a stable income; trading can be a wild crapshoot, with good years in which you're King Kong and bad years when you worry you'll be sleeping in a van down by the river. If you have a family, you have to take their views into consideration too. In other words, there are reasons a normal human being with some good useful ideas may teach them or sell them rather than trade them. But the emotions run so high about these issues that it's hard to find such good people. They do exist--but I won't mention any, since that would automatically produce accusations that I'm some sort of shill myself. One last comment. I once sat in a chat room for a few years with a good trader. He had a system. He taught the system. He traded real time. But he didn't follow his own system. He explained in detail "Let's take this trade here with a stop at x and this exit strategy." He'd take the trade, and a few minutes or seconds later he'd say "Hm. I don't like how this looks. Get out now." He was a real trader. But how do you teach or explain that kind of feeling or behavior? Those who tried to follow his trades did badly because of such stuff. But he made consistent profits.

I'm not trying to be difficult here but frankly the only way to know if a trader is good is to see him trade a live account through all different types of market regimes, contexts, and structures. After that a full forensic audit must be done on all his trading accounts along with a sworn affidavit from him saying that he has no other trading accounts.

jneedle 

As always, the problem of toning down a thread like this is that people simply stop posting. I know/knew nothing of Vinny and his chat room. The charts posed obviously represent a complex computer program, but they're incomprehensible to me without a great deal of study. The person who revived the thread suggested last week that he'd record his trading this past Monday and post a detailed report on it. I thought that would be interesting and useful--and I note that it hasn't happened yet and therefore likely never will. One common theme in futures.io is that anyone recommending a vendor is hit with a standard sort of diatribe. The questions raised are good ones--why is the vendor offering a system if he can trade so successfully? Why is he charging so much? He MUST be a crook of some sort, flimflamming the yokels. Problem is, there are many reasons why a vendor would sell and teach but not trade. Lack of capital. Lack of discipline. Lack of the ability to actually trade his good ideas. Impulse trading or trading out of boredom. Bad money management. I know one trader who had to stop--he was good, but he was grinding his teeth at night and couldn't sleep for fear of what the overnight markets might be doing to his positions. Teaching/training can provide a stable income; trading can be a wild crapshoot, with good years in which you're King Kong and bad years when you worry you'll be sleeping in a van down by the river. If you have a family, you have to take their views into consideration too. In other words, there are reasons a normal human being with some good useful ideas may teach them or sell them rather than trade them. But the emotions run so high about these issues that it's hard to find such good people. They do exist--but I won't mention any, since that would automatically produce accusations that I'm some sort of shill myself. One last comment. I once sat in a chat room for a few years with a good trader. He had a system. He taught the system. He traded real time. But he didn't follow his own system. He explained in detail "Let's take this trade here with a stop at x and this exit strategy." He'd take the trade, and a few minutes or seconds later he'd say "Hm. I don't like how this looks. Get out now." He was a real trader. But how do you teach or explain that kind of feeling or behavior? Those who tried to follow his trades did badly because of such stuff. But he made consistent profits.

@jneedle, every point you made is good. Unfortunately, the majority of vendors don't come through with their promises, which certainly is why there's so much skepticism (and often hostility) about them. Sometimes the hostility is justified, sometimes not.

I am also not surprised by your story of the trader who was consistently profitable and who didn't always follow his system if circumstances warranted. I think this is very common, actually, and I don't think it can be taught. I think it can be learned, but by doing, not by someone showing you how. But I think this is true about everything in trading, ultimately. Others can help, and vendors can too, but only up to a point.

As to whether this thread, in being toned down will also become inactive, well, it might. Things had gotten to the point that there was nothing but outright sales pitching on one side, and intense reaction on the other, and things had to be toned down, in our estimation. I don't think that you were ever going to get anything but more sales come-ons, but we won't know that now.

You can always, if you wish, go over to Vinny's room and see what is going on there. You might like it, for all I know. If so, then the sales pitch would have been successful to some extent, anyway.

But we have to maintain the forum as a sales-free zone. We have seen too often, over too long a period, how vendors in search of customers will do nearly anything, and claim nearly anything, to see if they can vacuum up a few new customers from this membership, which is a great resource for them, pre-selected for an active interest in trading (and often, money to spend and an interest in learning). We want reviews to be real ones, based on actual experience by someone not connected with the vendor or following the vendor's party line.

This is an old thread. You can go back and see what others have found with this room in the past, what their real-world experience has been. Probably the vendor is not too different now.

But this is only possible in an environment where the reviews are, as much as we can make it, made by real traders with no stake in the vendor they are reviewing and who give their real experiences. So this is our goal. Hopefully, we aren't too far from it, too often. But we have to call them as we see them.

Bob.

But you don't really need to know that the trader is successful at real-life trading. You have to know his ideas are successful. He might be a drunk or an a-hole or totally unreliable--but the ideas presented can be tested by you without paying any attention to his personal failings or virtues. Everyone trades differently (unless you're simply using software to duplicate a trade mechanically). The goal is to get some ideas and adapt them so they work for you. At least, that's my goal.

Bob, you're right. Let the commercial players pay for an ad, or just offer support for their products here. You've got a tough job distinguishing the shills from the enthusiastic customers at times, though. We all appreciate what you're doing! I've been a moderator in other forums and it can be a thankless job, where whatever you do angers somebody even though you have the best intentions. Thank you!

jneedle 

But you don't really need to know that the trader is successful at real-life trading. You have to know his ideas are successful. He might be a drunk or an a-hole or totally unreliable--but the ideas presented can be tested by you without paying any attention to his personal failings or virtues. Everyone trades differently (unless you're simply using software to duplicate a trade mechanically). The goal is to get some ideas and adapt them so they work for you. At least, that's my goal.

Yes, but sometimes people are just outright trying to defraud you out of any money they can get.

For instance, here he is directing members in his room to hide the fact that they're trading sim. Ironic given the spat he had with DayTraderParadise on YouTube a few weeks back.



If you post a loss or blowout he becomes abusive, and actively discourages people from posting it in the room.



Eventually members start to think they're being deceived, and start talking to each other. So you just aren't allowed to PM each other.




This is just the tip of the iceberg. He spends so much time trashing me that when his members leave they often come and apologize. So people give me logs like this almost every week. What I see does not look like someone that is just a bad vendor. That's someone that knows he's selling shit. But as long as he can sell a few people a month he can make a living from it.


Some day I hope the FTC or CFTC goes after this guy. When the newspapers start writing stories about it people will ask "how was something this crazy allowed to go on for so long?" And I'll just point to this thread as exhibit A. Some people just don't listen no matter how much information you show them, and apparently we're more concerned about the "temperature of the thread" than we are about actually protecting traders from fraud. But you know me. I can't help but call it as I see it. Posting logs is plenty factual so I don't see what's heated about it anyways.

TWDsje 

apparently we're more concerned about the "temperature of the thread" than we are about actually protecting traders from fraud. But you know me. I can't help but call it as I see it. Posting logs is plenty factual so I don't see what's heated about it anyways.

Actually, we are concerned about not bringing an internet free-for all into this forum. Looks like we didn't exactly succeed.

Vinny has gotten these kinds of reviews from the early days of this thread. It looks like he hasn't changed.

I think anyone reading this thread lately will have formed an opinion of the room just based on the recent attempts to plug it here. I don't think that the blatant sales language, total absence of real information and incomprehensible charts impressed anyone favorably. But who knows? Some people must find it appealing, or there wouldn't be a room there. Maybe they think there must be something to it, if there's that much being claimed, and that many mysterious markings on a chart. With colors! Maybe all that stuff means something. There is, after all, still a sucker born every minute.

Overall, there's been enough about Vinny here lately, pro and con. Maybe it has served a useful purpose by helping to wake some people up about what to expect from extravagant vendor promises, and maybe not. But yes, it's time to cool it down now.

Bob.

Analytic 

I'm not trying to be difficult here but frankly the only way to know if a trader is good is to see him trade a live account through all different types of market regimes, contexts, and structures. After that a full forensic audit must be done on all his trading accounts along with a sworn affidavit from him saying that he has no other trading accounts.

Does anyone actually know a successful trader?

All this talk is making my think there aren’t any successful independent traders, that all this is a scam to let the big institutions get individuals money. I know I don’t know any successful traders but surely there are some.


Sent using the NexusFi mobile app

58LesPaul 

Does anyone actually know a successful trader? All this talk is making my think there aren’t any successful independent traders, that all this is a scam to let the big institutions get individuals money. I know I don’t know any successful traders but surely there are some.

Quite a few members of this forum are successful, some intermittently, some have been for a long time, some to a large extent. Sometimes they have or have had trading journals as they learned, sometimes they haven't. Some were successful when they came here. Most will tend to keep quiet as they succeed, but you can read between the lines if you read enough posts.

If your question is about traders who are in the business of giving advice and teaching trading and selling things, the answer is less easy. Probably some, I would say. The issue is always simply, if they are so good, why don't they just make their money from trading alone? Well, maybe they aren't wealthy from trading but can still trade profitably. Or maybe they can't. Some probably can still give you good ideas and help you in your own progress, some not so much.

People expect too much from a trading vendor. They expect to get the keys to the kingdom and then to be rich for ever after. Not the usual thing, I would say.

You'll get different opinions on the subject, which should be expected, and different ideas about how to know if someone is any good. My view is you don't know without trying it out, and since few are really going to come through, and none are free, you probably should try very seldom, if at all.

This is why there are reviews here. You'll be better off if you have had some information from real traders who have actual experience with the vendor. Frankly, probably very few who offer their services will pan out, but that's in the nature of the business.

By the way, it has nothing to do with "a scam to let the big institutions get individuals money" -- big institutions don't bother with selling trading advice (well, brokers do, but that's another thing; they just want you to generate commissions.) This advice/training thing is a small-time mom and pop industry as a rule.

Bob.