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I have been following a lot of the videos posted by SMB and SMB Futures and see a lot of value in their presentations. I am in need of a new chat room that is not populated with a ton of noise and distraction. Has anyone else joined their slack room or does anyone else have another perspective they could share,
Thanks,
Mighty
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I joined out of curiosity after seeing a webinar of his. He trades predominantly Crude Oil as do most of the people there, plus a few NQ or ES traders.
Merritt plus a lot of others post their premarket hypotheses, mostly based on Market Profile levels. It is usually fairly busy for the first couple of hours then dies off.
There are badges for Trusted people, SMB students/mentees. I have never been in a chatroom before and some people sound very competent but there is also a fair few new people shouting out their trades and asking really basic questions. There are multiple rooms though, one just for live market talk analysis then the other more general one. Merritt recently mentioned he has thought about banning trade calls, where people simple type in where they just goy long or short without any reasoning or analysis, which would be good. He is also strict and kicks people out at the drop of a hat if they are disrespectful or just repeatedly annoying.
Personally I am going to cancel after three months simply because I don't look at in real time, I usually read it the following day and found his recap videos interesting to watch but otherwise don't really use it.
Having said that though I think it is worth a look, especially if you trade Crude.
At the end of the day though, it will only cost you $7 a month so just try it and see.
You do not win as a trader, you just get to play again the next day. If that game doesn’t appeal to you then you should not trade. Gary Norden
Hey Matthew,
thanks for the response. I have ended up joing and have found some positive take-aways from being in the SMB Futures Room. There more I can see how others do it and the more tricks of the trade (work ethic, accountability ect . . .) hopefully the better I will become.
I have only been in the SMB chat for a short time, so time may adjust my thoughts but it hasn't been a place for lively conversation. For the most part it is a repository for morning prep sheets and daily report cards with the occasional market discussion. I am glad I joined and will stay for a while longer hoping to glean more insight and contribute what I can.
I’ve been a subscriber to the SMB Futures slack room for almost a year, at $7 per month there is definitely plenty of value there. As a member of the room it’s up to each individual to get the most out of the room. Ask questions and seek answers.
From my experience in the room there is minimal input from senior traders and much of the time the room feels like it’s the blind leading the blind. While Merritt does show his preps and trade idea’s from time to time there is no consistent format within the room as there is in other rooms. When I joined the room about a year ago, he was doing regular live streams and reviews, he no longer does this. At the start of 2019 he started doing regular end of day reviews, outlining trade idea’s and potential ways the day could be traded, this has also ceased. Sometimes he is very active in the room with reviews and trade idea’s and at other times he is almost totally absent and his contributions are minimal.
I also felt the room was continuously being used as a sales marketing tool for the SMB courses on offer. I consistently see quotes like: my students are killing it today or I’m proud of my current mentee class as they nailed it today.
When I asked simple questions on where a level came from I was often told it was a market profile level using various time-frames and that there was no easy way of explaining it, and all is explained in the MP and Mentee courses.
While these sort of comments are great too see, I feel it’s all a sales pitch. I recently spoke to one of the mentee’s who has completed the profile course and the mentee program and he tells me (at time of writing this) that non of the trainee’s or mentee’s are yet to consistently trade the firms capital. Most struggle to pass the tryout. This is worrying as my understanding is that more than 90 people have completed the mentoring group classes as offered by SMB Futures yet the two traders who are trading the firms capital did not come through the educational arm of SMB. This is a worry.
I certainly will not be paying the big money for these courses with that sort of strike rate.
For $7 per month it’s certainly worth a look. Just be careful of the up-selling.
Has anyone done SMB Futures Tryout? What FCM do they use? Are payments processed with no issues? Any other thoughts whether it is worth signing up for this program?
After having a chance to review Merritt's daily CL prep reports & videos via subscription to the SMBF Chat/Trade room, I decided to purchase their Market Profile course (cost = $1,450). Yes sir, it is not cheap but I will chuck this down to the 'you get what you pay for' category. IMO, the levels Merritt shares are pretty darn good. Not a whole bunch of lines but, after reviewing a few months of these daily prep briefings, the levels are pretty accurate in providing market context and, in conjunction to his 'hypos' (i.e. plan a, plan b, plan c) commentary, quite actionable.
Overall, I am glad I pulled the trigger and purchased the course. The course was very informative, although if you are already a Market Profile student or trader, there are lots of information included with the course that you will already be familiar with such as Auction Market Theory (AMT), 'Poor Highs/Lows', POC, single prints, etc. However, my primary purpose in taking the course was to discover what methodology/techniques Merritt was using to create the levels he shares in the chat room daily prep videos/briefings.
In the course, Merritt explains in detail how he uses Market Profile to come up with his daily levels. Additionally, he goes to great lengths in explaining Market Dynamics and provides the '10 Laws of Market Dynamics' which I found to be very useful and applicable to day-to-day trading.
In conclusion, I believe that I was able to obtain the knowledge, and with practise, the skills to create my own daily levels and get a better feel of market context as a result of taking this course. SMBF also has a Futures Foundation Course which I am considering purchasing as well.
Regards,
Ricardo aka 'PilotTrader'
P.S. BTW, if you are a Market Profile student of Dalton, Steidlmayer, and others, and feels 'Day Types' is what's it all about, you should be aware that Merritt does not subscribe to this concept at all and thinks day type is worthless, just FYI.
Hi @Sheen - for clarification, are you asking about the tryout experience, or, what happens after you pass the tryout?
The tryout experience is straight forward. I think their trading rules are reasonable. The firm is reputable. Splits are not as good as similar alternatives. If you pass the tryout, though, you're on their desk and not a lone wolf on your own. That means you'll get access to training and mentoring, which could be a significant benefit to someone's development as a trader.
For clarity, I am not on their desk, but, know someone who is. I have completed SMB Futures training and mentoring and it's superb.
As a former SMB Futures mentee and owner of their courses, I'll rate Merritt and SMB Futures.
First, if a friend came to me and said they wanted to learn how to trade futures (CL or ES specifically), I'd tell them to forget about it - unless they were willing to go through the Futures Foundation program to learn. I do think it's that valuable.
There are a number of different courses available from SMB Futures. I think the only one worth doing is the Futures Foundation. The Market Profile course is good, but, it's only a single, small component to an overall trading methodology employed successfully by Merritt and other SMB traders. And, you get that as part of Futures Foundation. As @PilotTrader alluded, Merritt's approach to Market Profile is quite different than anything you'll get in the market. And, no, you can't find it on YouTube or reverse engineer it from any SMB videos. It's proprietary and the approach is legit.
Let me explain why Futures Foundation is likely the way to go.
Prior to the Futures Foundation course, Merritt offered a group mentoring program, which also included the Market Profile course as a pre-requisite to mentoring. It was during this program that we learned a complete approach to professional trading. This included full exposure to how Merritt evaluates long term bias, identifies key value areas, determines entry and exit criteria, etc. More importantly to me, we learned a programmatic approach for developing discipline in trading, which has resulted in a HUGE improvement to my trading. We also received group and personal coaching from a legitimate consistently profitable, professional trader.
The original group mentoring program was much more interactive in nature. Over the course of several months, we learned new principles each week that built upon one another. Our mentor sessions were part learning, part coaching. As the result of feedback from his students, myself included, Merritt created a video series that explained the learning component of his whole approach taught during mentoring. Futures Foundation has its roots in those mentoring sessions and brings all of that interactive education together into a single, consistent course - something I would have loved to have first so that I could have taken better advantage of the group coaching. (And, to be clear, I did NOT purchase the Futures Foundation course. I had already completed mentoring as well as the other pre-requisite courses and felt that the course content would be repetitive.)
SMB Futures training is not without its drawbacks. I found the chat room more distracting than helpful. I think everyone would value the chatroom differently, though. I don't like the distractions, but maybe others want to be connected while they trade. However, connecting with other traders who evaluate the market similarly outside of the chat room was superb. At the time, those meetings between students was highly encouraged and I have no indication that that would have changed.
Another negative for me was the lack of support around mindset. But, that's more of an unreasonable expectation on my part than a fault of SMB or Merritt or the program. The program gives a nod to psychology, but, I found the material too high level to be actionable for traders struggling with persistent mindset barriers. Merritt did not seem to weight psychological issues heavily or with great importance. I likely overweight mindset and trader psychology. But, if you're looking for that from the program, you probably won't find it. And, I would say that my best trading is beginning to happen now after completing a coaching program following my time mentoring with Merritt. The combination of those things are game changers for me.
As for Merritt himself - he is an excellent coach and teacher. He is appropriately encouraging when warranted, but, has absolutely no qualms about calling out your mistakes. He does this in a way that makes you want to be better and is not out to demean anyone at any time. He expects you to try and to work toward excellence.
Hopefully the context I provided gives people enough information to decide for themselves. I'm happy to answer questions publicly or privately.
PS: I am not currently a participant in the chat room and have no commercial connection to SMB Futures or Merritt Black.
