PipStop

I can’t think of any lower forms of life than those who steal and then try to profit off it.

In the online trading industry, especially within Forex circles pirating is rampant. Expert Advisors for the MetaTrader4 platform are the most popular targets – the act of decompiling these strategies then recompiling them to use.

I receive communication from all over the world. Recently I’ve begun receiving emails from a “Jack Ross” (an obvious pseudonym) purporting to be able to get you any system you want for cheap. The following is a recent email (sent July 9):

Dear subscriber,

if you are searching for any forex system and you cant find it or you dont want to pay big amount of money to get it, just email us with its name and we will try to make it avalible for you.

just try us........

best reagrds

jack ross

Then on July 11 the following:

Dear Trader,

New: we added Forex Derivatives EA. We offer it for just $20 instead of $97 in the market…. YOU SAVE 485%!!!!!!

For more information about this system check http://www.forex derivative.com/

Vest our website and don’t waste your money again http://www.forexfreesystems.com/index_files/ forexsystems1.htm

For further information please do not hastate to contact us at support@forexfreesystems.com

Best regards

Jack Ross

Not only is this guy stealing (and I have corresponded with him a few times – he is very cloak and dagger and doesn’t give out information easily). Not only is he stealing these strategies, but he’s passing it off as the actual strategy and people might buy it as such only to have it affect some unsuspecting sucker’s live account.

So what do you think? I think this guy is pretty gutless.

Quiet honestly people who have no business being in the business are trying their hand at the Forex brokerage business. At least in the case of GallantFX it puts names behind the company – and some do have experience in the industry. So it’s really not the same thing as SummerStreetFX – but their ties to Sunspot Capital puts them in the same boat – in my eyes.

In the case of SummerStreetFX – well you’ll see that one of their folks – Anthony – has added me as a friend on Facebook and I have subsequently let him know how I feel about his company (and come on Anthony – billions? Please). They’re talking out of their asses and frankly a Skype message sent to me by a Dana O’Keefe who purports to be a Managing Partner with the company which makes this Referring Broker (to Sunspot Capital – try to find anything on them) seem much more substantial than they actually are.

From Dana O’Keefe:

We are liquidity providers. In my opinion we have the best feed. It has 6 prime banks with a Straight Pass Through to these banks. We have eliminated the Dealing Desk and have leveled the trading field for all those retail and institutional clients having to Trade against a desk.

We are look for opportunities in Affiliates, Money Managers, Self Traders that want to build up their business and become more sucessful through our Trading platform with the 6 prime bank feeds.We have complete white label solutions for IB's that want their own Independent Brokerage to white label solution for the introducing broker that only raises 20,000usd in new monthly deposits. Yes you get paid for your clients and its above market standards typically.

We can customize a solution for all independent traders except a fixed spread. Can not fix the spread because these are bank feeds from the bank and we do not have a dealing desk.However, the spreads are tighter then most fixed spread companies that offer them under normal market conditions.

Those that want to invest but can not trade themselves we have a 3 FOREX Trader we use. They have been very successful, There are three different risk profiles for each trader depending on what your risk tolerance is and how you want this part of your currency portfolio traded.

Just got off a Skype call with my friend Rodolfo Festa Bianchet in Italy (it’s mid-afternoon here and way too late over there) and he let me into a couple of things.

The most important is his charting platform which he is taking the beta wrapper off of in the coming days (three to be exact). He’s calling it Trade Interceptor a robust Forex charting platform which is multi-feed (Dukascopy, FXCM, FX Sol, and his own feed) and comes bundled with TrendRisk, which is a SUPER analytic.

He’s been working on this for a few years now and I was able to watch the genesis of this at that time. A lot of hard work has gone into this – although Rodolfo is quick to realize that this isn’t a finish line – it’s really the start of something he hopes will be significant. It’s a great product.

He also mentioned a new FX magazine that he’s started, which is currently on its second issue (it’s a quarterly publication). It’s still very young, but it looks like they’ve done a pretty bang up job of putting this publication together. And it’s aptly named FX Trader Magazine.

I love Seth Godin.  And this is a video that Nikhil actually forwarded to me which really makes you think about the power of influence online and his take on online “tribes.”

There is no fine line, really. It is a clear, dark, thick black line between trading and gambling. If you can’t see it, you should take a step and revaluate things before you lose your accounts.

People like to talk about the “is trading gambling” thing, but again they are two separate things.

Can you gamble within trading? Sure you can, it happens all the time, just like in our lives we gamble with all sorts of different things. We gamble that we’ll get to a destination faster by driving faster (only to get a speeding ticket), we gamble that we can hit that green in 2 on that par 5, but we come up woefully short on that second shot and hit the water hazard, we gamble that everything will be alright on the north shore of Oahu despite there being weather reports for clouds and rain.

So are there gambling characteristics that can come into our trading? Heck, yea there are. But trading in it’s proper form is reliant on rules and success is dependent on following those rules. Of course the market is not beholden to your will so despite stacking the probabilities in your favor you’re not going to win all the time.

That’s where I get into the talk of money management and … we’ll stop there before I get out of hand.

It’s been a hectic time the past couple of weeks. Two weeks ago I was gone to Utah and Texas on trading related business and last week I used as catch-up and follow-up.

Met some great people who are doing some good things.

In Utah some of the folks who I met with were:

- Javier Paz who is doing some wonderful stuff (filling a necessary niche) running www.ForexDataSource.com where he provides independent rankings and research on retail Forex brokers. Much more substantive than the run of the mill broker “rankings” websites out there, especially Forex Peace Army – which has gotten better than it’s Forex Bastards days but is still too anonymous, and too questionable. Javier seems to have the experience and perspective to provide the service the industry needs.

- Jed Norwood with www.ForexStrategySecrets.com. Jed’s been around for a bit and it’s always interesting coming across niche services such as FSS. With the direction we’re going, I think there is great opportunity to help Jed in his endeavours.

- Marilyn McDonald who is the VP of Customer Experience with InterbankFX. The last time I visited the office in Salt Lake City (Oct. 2007) they were still growing with just shy of 100 employees. Now they have 176. If they weren’t doing some good things they wouldn’t be growing like they are. It was nice to catch up with Marilyn – if there is one thing about her – it’s that she’s connected with others in the industry.

In Texas a couple of my meetings stood out – and Austin was my destination – it’s a great place with lively nightlife – although I’m not a “nightlife” guy:

- ProAct Traders. Scott, Jim, Bob and an appearance by Jerry in the middle of a very important day for his family. It was a great visit because they truly believe they have the best charts with the best proprietary analytic to trade Forex. They really are passionate about what they do and about helping people. Customer service is something they stress and it is apparent in what they do.

- Rockwell Trading. Visited with Markus and Rollie. This is a solid outfit and I was impressed by their ethos. I think a passage on the About Us of their website spells out what I understood perfectly, and I look forward to working with them. Markus also gave me his book “The Complete Guide to Day Trading” and I’ve got to say that especially for the newbie, this is a clear and straightforward book that is a necessary read.

Rockwell was launched to fill the void of quality trading education in today's industry. Our company, our methods, and our products are based upon years of first-hand knowledge and experience when it comes to live trading in today's markets - including floor trading - and we are 100% committed to making sure that our students are the ones who benefit from this. Our goal is to give our clients an edge in this business, allowing them to trade successfully at a level that most traders in the industry have never reached before.

There were more folks, and more things that I did (some of which I posted on my family blog), but that’s a shorty of what happened and who I saw. I have to thank everyone who I met for their time in welcoming and sharing with me.

The mission here is clear and I’ll share more as we move forward. I’ve just had some inquiries into possible investments into what we’re doing and a request for formal business plan – so I figured why not go beyond the map in my head and on my office white board .

I’m going to be on the road for a variety of reasons over the next week.

It’s basically all booked for me, but I’ll be meeting with traders, current and potential solution partners, and potential investors in Trading Metro.

My destinations are Utah and Austin, Texas – so if you’re around either areas and you’d like to get together, just contact the office and we’ll see if we can make something work! There’s nothing better than meeting those in the online trading industry and seeing what synergies exist to further help traders.

I’ll see if I can get a little camera and take some video of my week.

I like Rob Booker. I really do. And I’m happily married to my wife, so it’s not that sort of like. He’s a nice fellow who in my dealings with him genuinely wants to help people.

But this past week he sent out an email for his Australia seminar, pumping it by saying that his friend Kurt Hanks set a goal of making 50,000 pips in 30 days – and ended up making 67,000 pips.

I have issue with the general nature of the hype, because I even get to thinking gosh I can make 50,000 pips in a month! Actually I shouldn’t even say I have an issue with it – I find it more curious than anything else. It’s a eye opening, attention grabbing way to push people over the edge to come I suppose.

Watching people do great and outsized things is super. Looking into their accounts, asking them questions of when, where and why, and having them explain to you how they do what they do.

At the end of the day I wish Rob would focus more on “YOUR OWN SUCCESS IS DEPENDENT ON YOUR OWN TRADING METHOD.” There is only a certain amount you can piggyback off someone else. And there has to be realistic expectations. I wonder how many of these traders who show up to Rob’s “big” events actually can make small – but consistent gains. If they aren’t able to do that but they get to thinking that all of a sudden they can go for the aggressive riches – it just doesn’t jive with me.

But then again, maybe I’m totally out to lunch?