[Freddie]

I know a lot of you follow John Carter and Hubert at Trade the Markets. com. I've tried the 2 week trial but really is not long enough to determine, in particular, the benefit of the live trading room. During that 2 week period I was just trying to get familiar with some of their trading systems and how they use them and did not pay as much attention the the benefit of the live trading room.

I'd love to hear any comments on the live trading room, it's benefits and drawbacks or why you like to use it or not use it.

Secondly, I did find a lot of the videos on the website and the discussion forum useful. It does appear to me that the systems that JC and HS use are not written in stone and that they tend to follow / modify continually and use a lot of discretion in when to take the trades.

Just trying to figure out if it is worth signing up for the live trading room and newsletters. Given that I'm only trading 1 or 2 contracts at a time, can I really benefit / get my money back on the $400 or so of monthly cost?

thx in advance for your help, comments and feedback,

Freddie

[notouch]

I definitely wouldn't pay $400 a month. Hubert seemed to lose more money than he won when I was in the 2 week trial but he fiddled it to make it look like he was winning. He would trade in quarters but only ever talked about his profit in points which is misleading. For example he would open a trade and all 4 quarters would get stopped out for 10 points. So if you're trading 4 contracts that's a $200 loss (not including commission). Then he would open another position and take half off at 5 points profit, a quarter off at 10 points profit and the final quarter may be stopped out at break even. He would claim this as a 15 point profit so according to his figures he was 5 points up for the day. In reality of course he's only made $50 on the first half and $50 on the next quarter and nothing on the final quarter so he's actually $100 down on the day. I wouldn't give money to someone who fiddles the figures that way.

[Freddie]

Notouch,

I never noticed that but I did notice and tried to question JC on the stop loss system that he uses. You basically need to do better than 2 to 1 in terms of winners ( and that's hitting all targets) to losers to just break even.

JC, likes to uses 1/2 at +5, 1/4 at +10 and 1/4 +20 with 20 pt stop. You loose once and on 4 contract your down 80 pts. You need to win the next 2 at 5,5,10,20 or 40 pts total for each trade to just breakeven. I find that hard myself to get this type of return.

Are you an active trader and if so what would you suggest is a good way to get your % winners up? I've been live paper trading (I know the pitfalls of this form) to get a feel for my software, the enty points and taking profits at least for now. Once I feel confident I'll go live and hopefully not have my profits drop too much at that point.

thx,

[notouch]

I'm not benevolent enough to tell you exactly how I trade but this forum is a great place to learn decent trading techniques.

Tread carefully following these guys. I wouldn't take their advice as gospel, but merely as a guideline to start your own journey into the wonderful world of daytrading futures.
Keep in mind, for the money they charge, you'd think that the level of support would be better than what many seem to think is currently offered.
They also have taken and "modified" indicators such as the TTM Squeeze and TTM Trend from the tradestation forum to offer them for sale at a hefty price too. Guess that's capitalism for you, eh?
Remember, if you follow these guys blindly, your profits may vary!

[Freddie]

Thx Cooter,

No I'm not following them blindly but looking at their systems, doing my due diligence and backtesting and forward testing them and modifying them to suit me.

[torero]

One of threads in this forum, I ran some backtesting on the TTM and the results are less than convincing. You have to take into account indicators work at time or another. And these services work at one time or another. You have to find that works consistently in order to stay alive. Always view things with healthy skepticism and go slowly toward your goal. There are more pitfalls than you imagine on the road ahead. You have to imagine likely events before they even happen (I'm paraphrasing Bruce Kovner here).

Spending money on these services are OK if you are really learning something. My opinion is learn the strategies, techniques, methods on your own and find what fits you and your personality and financial situation. Then if you must, get a mentor (paid or unpaid) to guide to the rest of the way. This is more valuable than getting a strategy at $400 a pop (because you will be disappointment). Getting to a strategy that finally fits you may take many months if not years (1000 indicators out there and counting), by that time going from service to service, you'd be broke. All strategies will work at one time or another but the mentor to guide you through the period when the strategies don't work is what really counts.

[Freddie]

If you follow the TTM strategies as in JC's book then they are not going to work or you've got to have the ability to take 100 pt YM losses hear and there. I backtest the strategy, look at where I can modify to improve my results and reduce the "burning hoop" factor and the forward test it in real time on a demo account that I have. Seems to help and also allows me to get a good feel for each strategy, the gut check needed in each one and what variation is returns I should expect so that I don't end up jumping my auto stops/ targets.

thx,