RS of Houston

Have any here utilised the services of R.S. of Houston, who are primarily U.S. trainers for the futures markets? Any experiences/views?

Sean

"the brochure sent by respondents to current and prospective students in December 1999 or January 2000 claimed that Thorkelsson was a successful trader, which was not true; his trading in seven futures accounts (three of which were traded on behalf of a family-owned entity) reflected net overall losses for each year between 1993 and 1999, except in 1996, where his single active account that year showed a net annual profit of $55. "

http://www.cftc.gov/enf/00orders/enfrsofhouston.htm

Thank you for that. Interesting reading indeed.

Sean

First of all, I did take the course along with the live trading sessions so I am well qualified to make comments about this program. Yes, the gov. did chase them down for false advertising but the gov. has chased just about everyone selling trading advice. So, hyped up advertising is par for this industry. Quite frankly, I am a better trader than Ron and Valdi put together. I learned their weaknesses and some of their strengths as traders while doing their course. Ron trades well when the market is dropping and poorly when the market rallies; this is because he is a perma-bear... he always thinks the world is coming to an end. Valdi is more willing to go long than Ron but has a primitive understanding of the markets. My main beef with the course was not the hyped up advertising but the lack of rigor in testing their methods. When I asked about the accuracy of a pattern, they would say it was 70 percent right but you could tell that it was a lie because they never tested their own patterns. There is no great mystery to the patters they use. You could read any book on technical analysis which gives you patterns for trend breaks, price retracement, and break-out patterns and you would have the R.S. of houston method. The only thing they added is a filter to confirm the patterns. In other words, they required that a bar closes above/below a trend line and then enter the market a few ticks above/below the high/low of the bar for a trend break pattern. The same requirement was used for the other patterns. So you can see that their methodology is not rocket science.

With all the negatives of this course, I think it is better than nothing. Most traders throw money into an account and start trading without any methodology. Futures trades usually blow through an account a couple of times before the idea about getting training dawns on them. I think graduates of the R.S. Houston course loose money at a slower rate than people who trade without any training. So just from this standpoint, I would rather have someone take a so-so course than nothing at all. I am sure Ron and Valdi would not welcome such a luke-warm endorsement of their course but it is the only justification I can find to recommend it. Nobody should be buying this course becuase they think they are learning from great traders because neither one of them are talented traders. Any significant money they ever got has been from teaching and not from trading profits.