Ahhh . . . breathing space!
The latest edition of http://www.whatreallyprofits.com/ is done and dusted after typing at the speed of light last week. According to my publisher’s schedule it should be dropping by the end of the week. I dedicated some space this month to recap on the progress of systems and products since I first reviewed them. This was a great process to go through and it was pleasing to see so many things making money since I first looked at them.
Elsewhere I’ve reviewed what I consider to be the best book on spread betting for beginners. Perhaps better than many expensive courses. Also after lots of requests I’ve reviewed Currency OptionsInsider and a suitable brokerage account to go with it.
Finally I go over a method for trading the Opening Range Breakout on the FTSE, S&P 500 and Nasdaq. It’s so simple and from my research and live testing it appears to be incredibly profitable.
Thanks to everyone who’s been in touch about the latest big promotion doing the rounds, Pure Matrix. It is indeed a version of the Market Matrix which is a version of The Delta Phenomenon.
The difference appears to be that Pure Matrix is applied to intraday day trading and deals with cycle timing, whereas Market Matrix is applied to end of day trading.
One reader has very kindly sent me a summary of his experience to date with Market Matrix and Steve Copan. Market Matrix is a bit X files with its market timing based on cycles.
The pros and cons of cycle timing and Pure Matrix
Now I’m still more Scully (the sceptical one in X-Files TV show) than Mulder on this one. Cycle timing is very subjective and can be back fitted if the predicted day is missed. Elliot wave was famous for predicting the ’87 crash, but you hear less about the other numerous predictions that were just plain wrong. However, this isn’t everyone’s experience and I’m sure you’ll find the following as interesting as I did.
Over (with sincere thanks) to the aforementioned Market Maven reader:
“Well, I bought the DVDs a little while ago but couldn’t make head or tail of them. I then encountered a guy who traded using matrix and knew Steve. He came to my house to spend a day with me – for a few hundred pounds, and did make things much clearer. Specifically, he showed me why he – and Steve – thought that July 19th 2007 would be a special day, and a major turning point – most probably a high.
This was on the 4th of July I specifically remember as we had a software problem and couldn’t ring the office in the States. The charts we were looking at were the S&P500 – Steve’s favourite. So, he told me he was long S&P until the 19th, then would go short. I personally waited till the 19th, then went short with a stop just above the high of the 18th/19th (they virtually had a joint high give or take 1 tenth of a point) which was a fairly tight stop, so I could do a reasonable size bet without huge risk . . .
And down the market went!
I made a 5 figure amount in days, and would have made a lot more if I’d held it a bit, but there’s something about wanting to take your profit when you’re 12 grand up!
Anyway, this certainly got my attention and fairly shortly after I was contacted by Steve Copan with an invite to a training day – called Matrix, final destination or something like that. The price tag was a whopping 5 grand, so at first I thought no way, then I thought “Hang on, you’ve just made well over twice that” so I went for it.
The one problem with Steve Copan and The Matrix is that it’s all really easy, simple, and obvious… for him!!! For us mere mortals, interpreting it all is, frankly, a f***ing headache.
The point of this day was to clarify everything, and to be able to make intraday trades with a very high success rate. I can’t go in to any more detail with regards to content of that day, as we all signed confidentiality/non-disclosure thingies, which I intend to respect; suffice to say I went away with my head spinning and more bewildered!
He clearly is a genius, as opposed to the many who wish to appear to be, often pinpointing highs like this (strictly speaking the absolute high was on the 18th, by 1 pip, though the highest close was the 19th, so if you were trading from the close, this was the best day) with accuracy, and you can follow how he does it, but because it’s a little different each time, it’s hard for most people to duplicate.
He is having a “get together day and piss up” (I quote!) in two weeks, just for those of us who went to the 5 grand day last year, which promises to clear up the confusion. Again, everyone from various corners of the globe are getting on planes to go; (personally I’m just taking the car!).
The day trading he taught us has had mixed results and is, obviously, more demanding on one’s time; I’ve therefore gone back to the old fashioned way of longer term trading, which does make money, but takes longer to make.
Does Delta work? Yes, with hindsight anyway, but you never know to the day.
Matrix points work on the same time cycles as Delta, for example one cycle, referred to by Copan as MC1 (matrix cycle 1) is every 4 lunar moths. That’s the same as delta so I’m not giving anything away here.
The difference is that he has re plotted the points with a shed load of historical data to make them more accurate. The precision comes from Fibonacci and Lucas etc, some of it good old fashioned stuff, and some of it Copan’s own twist which seems to make it work, meaning that he is sometimes able to predict the day of a high or low, and sometimes even the price – give or take a few points.
In terms of “matrix” and “pure matrix” – all the same, just different marketing terms as far as I can see anyway.
So does it work? Well if you are Steve Copan – yes! He certainly seems able to predict at least a handful of major lows and highs in advance.
And if you’re someone else? Well, I was able, on May 18, to look at a chart of the FTSE, and conclude that we’d either just had a high, or that it would be one more trading day. Though that’s the only one I’ve worked out with close accuracy (everything pointed to 16th-19th, and only two were trading days!) – and it certainly wasn’t in advance. It did enable a very profitable short, and has made me look very clever at the tennis club when I mentioned to a few people on Tuesday 20th of May that “the market would not break yesterday’s high for quite some time” (In fairness, I didn’t know it would be this long!).
In an ideal world, he’d just have an email service telling you what trades he’s taking so that people can duplicate them, but he doesn’t. Something I hope to persuade him to do when I see him next. I wouldn’t hold your breath though!
The best thing to do with Copan’s work in my opinion? In his new book is a final chapter called Trading With Matrix. It DOESN’T get you in on the day of the high/ low. But I would say that a non-genius CAN make reasonable money from it so long as they are not an idiot and they possess the other essential ingredient – the discipline to follow it and stick to the rules; something many people can’t.”
Survey answers
In last week’s email I asked if you’d be so kind as to help me by filling in my online
survey about what you’d like to see me write about. There was a great response
and some interesting results, especially with the open feedback you took the time to
provide.
Here’s a summary of the results, remember there was more than one option available to each question so the percentages are not absolute.
1. Which products are you interested in hearing more reviews and features on:
Forex Systems: 19.7%
Forex Signal Services: 11.1%
Spread Betting Systems: 16.%
Systems for trading Indices: 14.7%
Systems for trading UK shares: 9.1%
Beginners guides/ basics: 7.4%
Perhaps no surprise here, with Forex and spread betting being the most popular products.
2. I’m considering more articles on longer term investing. Which of the following would interest you if any. You can have more than one answer:
Investing in property: 15.8%
Long term investing: 16.7%
Alternative investments: 17.0%
Retirement planning: 16.4%
None of the above really: 31.00%
Interesting that there was a reasonable response to the longer term articles and property etc, but 31% (almost twice as many who responded positively) said that none of those options interested them really. So if I do write anything on these topics, it might be in a special sub report or something separate.
3. What time frame are you interested in trading?
Short term day trading: 46.3%
Swing trading over days to weeks: 40.6%
Long Term Investing: 12.4%
Again interesting to see that day trading is king, but also that swing trading is also popular. I suspect this is because many people have full time jobs and want something they can trade outside of this.
4. The text responses are the most interesting in some ways as they show the variety of interests in Market Maven readers. Some wanted less reviews of ‘out of the box’ trading systems and more ‘how to’ trading methods.
Others wanted the exact opposite.
So, unfortunately I’m not going to please all people all the time. However, I will endeavour to take on board the clearest trends from the text responses. In this month’s WRP I’ve included reviews of some trading systems as well as a method you can use yourself, hopefully this appeals to all tastes.
My trades
Lots of systems on the go at the moment. I still thoroughly endorse TUFXP and it appears from your feedback that I’m not the only one enjoying it.
Elsewhere www.fx53.com continues to impress me, especially the GBP/ JPY trades which Kevin keeps a track of on his website. The latest short made a fair chunk of change with a haul of 507 pips. The Wizard is also bringing in trades with a great risk/ reward ratio at a fair degree of regularity. My EUR/ GBP short got stopped out for a loss of 123 pips, but my EUR/ JPY long made 489.26 and is still in the market.
My paper trades using the futures area are so far going well and I might progress to
some small real stakes trades soon. It’s bigger risks with futures and a bigger account required, but had I been using real money I would be up $2,489 on trades on cotton, wheat and coffee. Impressive stuff and perhaps could be spread betting. I just need to check the spreads.
I mentioned the Opening Range Break out method I go over in the latest What Really Profits. I intend to set up a blog to track my progress with this and other systems, more details to come next week. Yesterday made a £47.50 loss on the FTSE at £1 a point, +£62.40 on the S&P 500 at £4 a point and +£68.44 on the Nasdaq at £2 per point. No trade today as the FTSE had gapped down too far.
This week’s hot trading buttons
This week is relatively quiet with fewer top tier economic announcements. We’ve got US building permits and monthly PPI data in the afternoon. Wednesday release of the minutes from the last MPC meeting will be closely followed especially after the impact of last week’s inflation report. Thursday brings UK retail sales figures, with revised GDP numbers coming on Friday morning. The week’s hot trading ticket will be Fed Chairman Bernanke speaking on Friday afternoon.
Trading wisdom
“To whatever degree you haven’t accepted the risk, is the same degree to which you will avoid the risk. Trying to avoid something that is unavoidable will have disastrous effects on your ability to trade successfully.” Mark Douglas
