Does anyone really make money trading futures?

Does anyone really make money trading futures?

I am just wondering.

I know I don't. I have tried all the indicators and the chat room gurus, and none of them make money.

I have a suspicion that a lot of the chat rooms for emini trading are just for hobbyists and market enthusiasts and not for serious traders trying to make a business out of trading.

For any new traders out there please be very cautious of paying anyone to mentor you or signing up for training or a chat room. From what I have seen the only people making money in these deals is the mentor, the chat room owner or the author of the training manual.

I would love to hear from you if you are a successful trader making 20% off your account or better over the past year. I know only 5 to 10 percent of traders are supposed to be successful, but I am beginning to think that zero percent of traders are successful over the long haul. Certainly anyone can have a streak of luck and rack up a few good months where they dramatically increase their account size, but these people are normally big risk takers and eventually they blow out their accounts by taking the exact same risks that help double their accounts in the first place.

Thanks in advance for any response.

Unfortunately, no matter how 'pure' hunterone's intentions may be, it is going to have that look. But I just noticed another thing. Just as you meant no direspect to hunterone, I mean none to you here whatsoever. Another thing I notice in many scams is that when someone does this bait and switch, it is frequently followed by a new poster who points this out and plays the role of the one doing the warning. That person almost always has that post as their first post on the forum.

I'm not saying you are doing that, only that just as what hunterone is doing looks like the bait and switch, so does your follow up. Go back through all the threads in here and see how many times that happens. My guess is it is because it creates discussion, sometimes painting the counterpoint producer as bad or vindictive, and keeps the thread 'hot'. Many times Guy revealed it was one and the same person doing both sides.

The problem, then, is that it is hard, if not impossible, to gain any useful information from a forum in many cases. That's the main reason I have my free but restricted access forum, where none of this takes place, just targeted discussion on a methodology that all the people in there are working on. It is impossible to do this in a public forum, because so many people come in to bash, and it becomes all about that, and not the targeted work and discussion. I guess my point is, I'm kind of discouraged about how useful forums really are, given how much work the major posters put it to them...

Wow, try to be helpful and next thing you are a used car salesman or worse. As I said I was asked to teach. I do not have a website ,book,adds in magazines etc etc.
If nobody wants to pay for my time then I wont be teaching anyone. If everyone thinks I am asking to much and says no thank you thats fine. Doesnt matter to me.
There are many folks out there that want to be able to trade but havent done so on a profitable basis. Some asked for my help why shouldn't I give it? Why shouldnt I be compensated for my time and knowledge?
At the same time this is not an easy thing to do. I have no idea how long it will take to teach someone.I am basing what I charge on the number of e-mails I received. I am charging based on that number.
I learned things about myself and my trading by calling trades for others.I have taught martial arts as a hobby for several years. My skill greatly improved after I started teaching. Students ask questions that I never thought of. Some looked at things in ways totally different than how I do and opened my eyes to other possibilities. I expect the same thing to happen if I teach others to trade. So I expect my trading to get better from teaching. I also get personal satisfaction from teaching other's.

I have found the same thing once I wrote my books and started mentoring.

I couldn't agree more, though, in what you say about as soon as you try to help, you get attacked. I started a thread in my public area here at mypivots because someone from here asked about my books at another 'famous' forum, and after no answer for many months I stumbled upon the thread and asked my forum members to comment honestly if they thought they had anything worthwhile to say. One did, and a total firestorm broke out. Shill! Plant! Salesman!, they ripped him to shreds. After months of no activity, within minutes of him posting they came out of nowhere and went wild. He's one of my best students, too, and was only trying to tell his honest opinion. By the time I checked back to the thread the moderators deleted the entire thread off. That's why I usually just hang out in my 'protected cave' of my private forum, away from all that nonsense.

I guess there are so many scammers out there that there is just no way for anyone to post any comments about anything and have it be useful information. I know everyone says 'statements' all the time, and I have voiced my opinion long and hard on this on other threads here, but they are so easy to fake, to me, they would mean nothing. Nowadays middle school kids can reproduce currency at home good enough to spend, so how hard is it to make a statement that is phony, especially when all you get to see is a scanned version. C'mon.

This is all on another thread, but then you get into trying to find a broker who will answer the phone all day and discuss someone else's account. Maybe they exist, but after talking to many, not one said their compliance dept would allow it, even if written permission was granted. And how about independent auditing? I just read a case of a hedge fund manager busted because his audited statements were fake. Same easy, on the printer fakes any middle schooler could do. Then you have to call the auditor, and you can bet they will be billing those hours to the account holder...

Point is, I see why things are the way they are, but I just don't see any good solution to doing due diligence on someone's performance record. And even if one could, are they implying they can bring you to that level with one (or more) training session(s)? If not, other than knowing the person can actually perform at that level, what good does that do anyone, given the goal is to decide if money spent will bring value, and how well the person can teach the method, and how well you can learn it, and are suited to it, is not addressed at all..

Ah, the dilemma continues...

Jim I understand and dont disagree with what you are saying. For me personally once I responded to the thread I had a responsibility to see it through. If I said I can make money trading but didnt offer to demonstrate than I would have been a jerk. It would have been teasing people with a little 'I am better than you' or at least that how I looked at it. When someone said to me," I really want to trade and have been trying for a long time and have paid for courses but still cant make money will you teach me what you do?" I didnt see I had any choice but to offer to teach them otherwise again I would have felt like a jerk. I also knew I couldnt charge them what I would give up in a weeks worth of trading. So the only way I could teach them and not lose my shirt was to offer to teach others at the same time.

Jim as always, you raise some key points... and I agree the whole topic really poses a dilemma for the industry.

It is my view that just because someone can trade profitably, does not mean they can teach someone else how to do so as well. With that said, it may be helpful to look at the extent the trading of the students improves as a result of working with the mentor/teacher. Of course this leads back to the dilemma of verifying the student's progression under the mentor.

The CFTC / NFA takes the view that if a vendor is going to solicit or charge compensation based on any claims, those claims better be independently verifiable. Of course they have an advantage, they will not take your word for it, they will simply go to your broker with a subpoena.

Hunterone/Jim Kane

I was only pointing out facts as I saw and meant no disrespt to any of you as system vendors.

Hunterone, how much will you be charging to learn your system and what do you think is the learning curve?

I don't want to spend too much time on all these issues but why can't Hunterone do the following:

Post his ideas and concepts after the market closes or when he has time. Seems simple enough, this way you can make all the money you want from trading and still help others. Seems to satisfy both needs:
Make money and help others


It's very rewarding!

I was able to sit in for 45 minutes and didn't get to witness a trade being initiated , only exited at a small profit. While I was there Hunterone answered all the questions and seems like a nice guy.

Perhaps Mypivots can set up a room here that Hunterone can filter...this way he can delete the problem posters.......what do you think?

Lots of great stuff here and always room for more

Bruce

voodoo1,

No offense taken, I was merely trying to point out how complex the issue is, and how easy it is for a legitimate comment to be of limited use, since the real scammers factor all that into their elaborate ruse in a well thought out good cop bad cop routine.

Bruce,

Over at another forum, some of the traders post real blotter run or screen caputure's of there order enter screen. The caputures show the daily p/l and how many lots the trader has been trading. You can see how the scammers are they post once and then go missing for a month until they have another winning day.

The onus should be on Hunterone to prove that he is trading 21 lots in the ES and that he averages $267 per contract, those are his stmt's not mine. Hunterone has been trading 21 lots for several years by his own accord and has Cbot/Cme experience.

So therefore showing us screen capture of his trading blotter trading 21 lots at the end of the day for a couple of weeks should be no problem for Hunterone, before people really make a decision to pay hard earned cash.

I mean no disrespect to anyone and am conveying what I think are facts or a valid arguement.

It seems that the exchange of "free" ideas is the way to go. It eliminates all the hassle. I personally don't care if somebody is trading 21 lots or 2 lots or not even actually trading. One never knows where a good idea will come from that will help make them a better trader.

I could tell you that I was looking to get long down at the 1456 area in the S&P ( as posted on another thread..lol) but who really cares? Now if I tell you that I was looking to get long because the Value Area low was 56.75 and the overnight low was 55.75 then that has so much more meaning....I gave you the reason..perhaps there is something to learn. That's what we are here for!!

I believe PT-emini mentioned how we all post for different reasons..some for ego, some for accolades, some to be helpful, some to get clarity and some to generate business....some of us post for blended reasons.

I'd like to see Hunterone step up and say " I am a swell guy and I don't mind sharing my ideas for free so I can still trade in real time". After all he also said that he learned more about himself when he taught Karate so he will probably be a better trader for it too even if he isn't compensated by paid members.... it's a win/win.

To be fair to him though it seems that he has already satisfied his intent from the beginning of this thread which was to show people he can make accurate market calls. If he trades them or not is another story and probably irrelevant. Some may be satisfied by "watching" him for 3 days in paltalk....once you cross over to charging people then my personal standards go up quite high....but to anyone just posting ideas then it doesn't really matter...

I still like the vendor who allows you to sit in their paltalk room as often as you like ( even months) before you lay down your money. More should follow suit and I believe that sets a high standard. I think most are impulsive and can't wait to get in on the "action" so I would doubt that many sit there for months before joining....smart marketing though...they know their customers...

Jim Kane ( or someone) mentioned that this just all may be a plan to stir up interest in Hunterone so I'll be waiting to see how this unfolds...There's enough trolling at Elite..we don't need that here.

Bruce

I consistently profit from futures/futures options, but it took me a long time to figure out the best way for me to do so.

While a set of trading rules is very important, I have found that it is just as, maybe even MORE important, to develop "trading callouses" from getting your butt handed to you repeatedly along the way.

Here's the thing: Any set of rules will only work until they don't. It is normal human psychology that there will come a time (again and again) where you deviate from the rules because A) you have had a string of losses, B) you have had a string of wins and now you have a loss and can't believe you're really supposed to "lose this one," C) you get greedy, D) you get scared for whatever reason, or E) any one of a thousand other things that will cause you to screw up.

I had ups and downs for many years until I thought I had it figured out and had a couple of years of really solid profits. I had my own private island picked out :) (not really, but I did have a condo in mind O/N an island). Then came the financial crisis of 2008 and I learned that while I had a generally good strategy, because times were good I had not developed an appropriate risk control system.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars later... (and that didn't take long at all!) I learned the hard way that my strategy was woefully inadequate when the unexpected happened. It took me a while to brush myself off, but eventually I did.

Since sometime in 2009 my cumulative returns are somewhere around 450%. Over the past 9 years I've found that proper risk control continues to be where I tend to fall short, so I've had some choppiness during this time. About two years ago I tightened things up some more to try to make for a smoother equity curve... this mean that, theoretically, my losing months should NOT be as large as in the past, but my winning months will also not be as large as they were in the past.

That's okay though -- even my cumulative success over the past 9-10 years, when averaged out by month, comes to < 2% a month. I suspect that 2% a month, long term, is about where I'll stay, but the ride should just be smoother along the way.

A return like that may or may not be enough for a particular person--it is for me--but keep in mind if you want to shoot for the stars there's a really good chance you're going to eventually crash land back on earth. It really does come down to being adequately capitalized and having a reasonable return be "enough" for you. By all means, trade even with a small account, because you need that experience to get to the point where you'll know what you're doing when you have the larger account. Just don't expect to turn a tiny account into a massive one along the way or you will probably be disappointed.

-PDG