Marketing and affiliations get slicker as people get more aware. Anything like this, preys on the hopes and fears of beginning traders. It is a violation of trust. But you cant prosecute anyone for being slick.
You can, of course, be very diligent. I emailed Tessearct, asking them their position sizing and trade management philosophy, the reply I got back was so laughable that it went into my trash bin.
But the reaction of a newbie wouldn't be the same. This whole thing reeks. Unless any such trial is either free or an immaterial expense to one's trading business, then, "for god's sake - please don't do it" rule applies
In every performance activity in the world, from school to business, verified performance data and full transparency is s must. We as traders have every right to full transparency, and we will never get it as long as we don't demand it.
I have no clue whether the others on this list as legit or not, but if that little voice in the back of our head says "be careful". Listen to it. My personal slant is, treat everything as scam unless they prove it to me. Its my money and career on the line. Not theirs.
Sorry Brian, I figured you weren't doing that anyway. It's a delicate balance to say that, while evolving as traders we must be open new robust ideas and thoughts that have stood up to scrutiny but its also seductively easy to get sidetracked into dubious material.
This often takes up a lot of my time, I give every vendor/trader/idea an opportunity to show whether they have something valuable to offer that is based on common sense. But the moment people get vague, defensive, offended or unprofessional its a dead give-away to be careful.
I think this also relates back to saying that while one should never change one's charts and all that, but once you have established robustness, it is every pro's job to probe for new ideas to enhance business profitability. To simply say that, one will never change one charts is bit parochial. If that was the case, I would have never found order flow......I am thankful I did
As one Mr Bruce Lee said.....Be like Water, my friend.
I thought since his article was published in Futures Truth, that might have given him a bit of credibility... perhaps not... is there a general caution in this community about FT information/publications? (I confess, I didn't do a search...)
Edit: Ahhhh... now I get it! I missed the JD title after his name... that gives him skill and license to mislead...
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So many of those magazines , whether print or email electronic form have ads and even articles by dubious vendors.
Like "moneyshow", "marketauthority", SFO, many others, and even that publication by now defunct and sham PFGBest at one point. Mostly in my email junk pile now. Maybe once in a while some tech analysis formula and/or coding by some Ph.D. on "Stocks and Commodities" magazine may be worth a look, but I had canceled my S&C subscription over a year now. Or was that a free multi-issue subscription from some promotion or another(?) , can't remember.
@Dagonet, I am currently finishing off William Gallacher's "Winner Take All". Along with Peter Brandt's "Dairy of a Professional Commodity Trader", this is easily one of the most valuable books in Trading I have ever read. In it, Gallacher rips apart the industry for its duplicity and lack of integrity. He rips apart several traders, industry figures, publications, pundits and so-called analysts. This includes Futures Truth.
He doesn't stop there, he goes on a rampage against trading systems and pedantic trading approaches that treat trading as theory. It is a glorious book in my opinion, an absolute must read that reveals why every who tries to sell or peddle must be treated with extreme prejudice. The whole subject of technical analysis as a science is held to question (rightly so).
He doesn't takes prisoners against Elliot Wave types, Gann types, Fibbers, etc etc.... chartists, data miners, statistical stuff etx etc.
While Peter's dairy is a message of why trading must involve simplicity and large RR, William's book is about questioning all of technical analysis as a science (so as to say that TA by itself is naked and fragile without some sort of holistic fundamental view or context).
Either way, these are not books of theory - these are books of raw experience, of blood and sweat and of failures and scars. These are books by men of action - and their message is provocative. They should be, in my opinion, essential reading. I wish I had found these books earlier.
Both of them, inevitably, and without surprise focus on the same essence of trading - context, simplicity, money management, robustness and survivability.
Even though I use Elliot Wave Isolation as a basis of my own trading, I fully concur with Gallacher about the fallibility of theoretical matter, no matter how good it may be. Only by trying to break everything does one get anywhere workable...."constant stress testing".
This Futures Truth business is insidious, you can put science or scientific sounding stuff to any garbage and and be taken seriously. Junk science rules! Cutting through the bullshit helps. Our first question to anything and everything trading should be...."tell me about the ways this can fail, then let me be the judge of whether I can live with its failures". Anything else, is fragile.
Hi Deucalion... nice to see you posting again... I enjoy your thoughts & perspective...
I stumbled upon Peter Brandt several months ago for some reason... the problem I have with him - admittedly not having read his book but rather having perused it on Amazon - is his website. Perhaps the "stunning fact" of the 18 year compounded average annual returns of 41.6% supported by an audit is true. Or "Put another way: The auditors calculated that, based on Peter's actual performance, each $1,000 of initial capital returned $334,817 during those 18 years".
Yet in item #6 in his book introduction, he says "I have absolutely no desire in this book to show how I can turn a small fortune into a large one."
Really? $1,000 turns into $334,817 is not a small fortune turned into a large one? Oh, and you can learn how to do that for the small sum of $6,900 (after a generous $1,000 discount) by attending his Trader's Boot Camp.
But the unpardonable sin (for you, I thought): he quotes Robert Prechter on his "about" website page!
Perhaps he's the real deal. Just seems a bit disingenuous to me...
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