My Experience w/David Marsh and eminitradingstrategies.com

For those of you who are considering David Marsh and his Emini strategy, the following is my experience after about a year of being around his room and having studied/traded his technique. All of the following is simply my opinion and based on my experience having traded his technique in the emini market.

My general opinion: David's technique is an EXTREMELY aggressive technique that is not suited to my style of trading. I don't trade his technique any more as the $5,000 test account I allotted was ground down to $2,500 in 60 days using 1 contract in the test.

The test: I was looking for a new trading technique that limited my time at the screen and wanted a system that trades the 1st hour of the NY session. I allotted $5,000 to this experiment, trading 1 contract with the goal of reaching $7,500 over 6 months or less and a loss limit of $2,500 no matter the time frame. Before trading live I used a simulator account to get familiar with the mechanics of the system.

The outcome: reached $2,500 loss limit in less than 60 days, walked away from this technique and followed his trading room for the next 8 months to see if other traders were having the same issues.

The detail: on many days I would make my target and walk away, but on the days where the market opened choppy, Dave's system took HUGE losses that wiped out 3-4 days of profit. If the loosing days came 2 or 3 in a row, an entire week or two of profits were swept away. Dave has a trading room where he will call out his trades as he is taking them with entry and exit call outs. He also has a slew of training videos, all in support of training his students. He does not cherry pick trades, he seems to be honest about the pros and cons of his technique. Some of the traders in his trading room were making his system work. I did, however, notice that the vast majority of the folks participating in the room were having the same trouble with his system as I was.

Summary: I think the win to loss ratio is WAY too high at 1:4 (2-4 tick take profit to a 6-8 tick stop loss). There are many different entries that Dave himself calls out in his trading room and unless or until you get his style, the system is not as simple as his manual and videos let on. I noticed many students openly say they blew up there accounts and were using the simulator to get some experience before trading again. In the end I went back to S/R trading on a 2:1 (or better) win/loss ratio that has worked for me for years.

I would not recommend the technique for any trader.

Trader9000- I know nothing about David Marsh or his system but am curious about one thing: did you ever record the drawdown on each of the trades, winning and losing? The reason I ask is that I, too, was experiencing the same problem with my own "system". I was getting frustrated as I would have a few great days and then get it erased by one or two trades. Then I started to record every piece of info about each trade, including the drawdown. I went back a full year and found that on the majority of the trades I had the right direction, but needed to give the trade a bit more room to move. So I loosened up my stops and my winning trade percentage soared.

As of right now I am at a 6 to 8 tick profit (depending on my entry signal) with an 18 tick stop. I have discussed my strategy with a few "professional" traders and they think I am crazy with such a big profit to stop ratio, but they cannot argue with my results.

Thoughts?

As with most trading systems the drawdown is quite frustrating. I have often thought about reversing
the rules and using the stops as targets. After all, depending upon commisions the system would then be profitable. Anyone else ever tried doing this ??

Summary: I think the win to loss ratio is WAY too high at 1:4 (2-4 tick take profit to a 6-8 tick stop loss). There are many different entries that Dave himself calls out in his trading room and unless or until you get his style, the system is not as simple as his manual and videos let on. I noticed many students openly say they blew up there accounts and were using the simulator to get some experience before trading again. In the end I went back to S/R trading on a 2:1 (or better) win/loss ratio that has worked for me for years.

Trader9000: I think you are a liar. I have been a student of Dave for only 3 months. I admit the volume has been low and I have been trading on paper on the sp500. I've been trading the Dow system with real money and am up over 390 points, per contract.

His risk reward is not 1:4. I question you even are a student. Any student with half a brain would know that nobody talks about blowing out trading accounts, and you would know that the risk reward is not 1:4.

He posts the chat room transcripts on the members site!

I've posted several posts about David and his system on this forum. It's not easy, to be sure. He never claims it is. He told my husband and I before he bought it's tough, but we make money.

I seriously doubt he is a novice trader as well. Anyone in his room knows he knows what he is doing.

Lynn W

Mods can you please kill this silly thread? We can see the *point*...

I forgot to add: I still use Dave's indicators for exits on a 900 tick chart. I find that his observations about price action to be interesting and quite useful.

I'm David and so is my wife...

Strange how a thread with 5 responses has a full five star rating.... oops, I should have said "had", I've just given it a 'fair' rating...:whistling

I have been using his dow trading system where he trades for you for a charge of course, only to say after a month he has done nothing but loose money for everyone. He will say he will somewhere get back into profit, but i find that he will do this after people drop out with losses and a new group on the waiting list joins in there place. So yes somewhere in time he will be up but at others expense. Anyone could do that. The people who would be new would never know how he has been doing. So if you are one on the waiting list, think twice.

2010bulldog said:

I have been using his dow trading system where he trades for you for a charge of course, only to say after a month he has done nothing but loose money for everyone. He will say he will somewhere get back into profit, but i find that he will do this after people drop out with losses and a new group on the waiting list joins in there place. So yes somewhere in time he will be up but at others expense. Anyone could do that. The people who would be new would never know how he has been doing. So if you are one on the waiting list, think twice.

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I 2nd that... I've been on the dow signal service since it started in April. My account is down 55% at the moment. A few small winners followed by massive losers. I asked him what type of draw downs he experienced in his 18-24 months trading the system and he said he has been down 100 ticks at times. Well, over the past month and a half, assuming he's actually taking every trade, it's down over 370 ticks or so per contract.

cshep said:

I 2nd that... I've been on the dow signal service since it started in April. My account is down 55% at the moment. A few small winners followed by massive losers. I asked him what type of draw downs he experienced in his 18-24 months trading the system and he said he has been down 100 ticks at times. Well, over the past month and a half, assuming he's actually taking every trade, it's down over 370 ticks or so per contract.

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Really makes you think doesnt it but from what i gather this guy is making good money
even though your not seeing a penny of it or never will. He has a 100% system of how he
trades and makes winners. I can see his system right now from the last 2 posts on this thread. He's thinking, 'Now front running orders would be no good would it because these orders are only small, so how do i myself make money without giving a sh1t about the peoples money im trading. I know i'll open a Spreadbet (Futures) account and il trade the opposite way to the way i trade normally. Hell ive proved to myself that i cant make a profit so if i do the opposite i'll make money on my own account. Im such a genius trading Other Peoples Money'.

Many of my families members purchased Dave Marsh's auto trader for the emini and we were not impressed. We lost quite a substantial amount of money. We have found another product since then and it is AMAZING! It is great and they even gave us a 7 free day preview to see how it works before we purchased. www.proequitytrader.com
It is HANDS DOWN the best I have seen/traded! So easy!

Thanks for the candid information, I appreciate everyone's input. Sounds like it is not for me...

You are so right. I did email him something close to this and his reply was I will not even reply to your comments. So there you go maybe if this goes around it will put a damper on his service.

gedward3 said:

Really makes you think doesnt it but from what i gather this guy is making good money
even though your not seeing a penny of it or never will. He has a 100% system of how he
trades and makes winners. I can see his system right now from the last 2 posts on this thread. He's thinking, 'Now front running orders would be no good would it because these orders are only small, so how do i myself make money without giving a sh1t about the peoples money im trading. I know i'll open a Spreadbet (Futures) account and il trade the opposite way to the way i trade normally. Hell ive proved to myself that i cant make a profit so if i do the opposite i'll make money on my own account. Im such a genius trading Other Peoples Money'.

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I too am down almost 50% of my account having David Trade my account........he said he was the guru.....but the results aren't backing this up. I wish he would have the professional courtesy to at least send out an email to his subscribers explaining why and how he down so much. It just doesn't make sense to me.....how can this guy lose almost everyday?

Yea this is really a sad blow and all he can say is that it is what it is and we will have to keep moving on. Well thats fine when you are trading everyone Else's money. I even asked him why he can't open up a talk site like the es so we can see what the heck he is doing. I don't know what he had going on the last number of months that he supposedly was testing this thing out. I am glad this is bringing people out of the wood work because before we were at only his mercy. I stopped the service as of the beginning of May and was going to see if something would change but its the same old story lose more and more money.

2010bulldog said:

Yea this is really a sad blow and all he can say is that it is what it is and we will have to keep moving on. Well thats fine when you are trading everyone Else's money. I even asked him why he can't open up a talk site like the es so we can see what the heck he is doing. I don't know what he had going on the last number of months that he supposedly was testing this thing out. I am glad this is bringing people out of the wood work because before we were at only his mercy. I stopped the service as of the beginning of May and was going to see if something would change but its the same old story lose more and more money.

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Yes....i couldn't take it anymore and just cancelled my subscription before being billed another 600/month.........

I feel like such a sucker.....I paid this guy 600.00 plus a 1500 sign up fee, to lose me $5,000 in less than 4 weeks......The thing that really burns me the most ...is that he didn't even have the balls to send out an email to his subscribers apologizing for his horrible performance.

thats exactly what I emailed him that we pay him all this money for him to lose more money. I told him its easy for him because he will have other hopeful's waiting to jump in not having any idea what to expect. His reply was I am not going to reply to this email. I also told him to at least repay everyone back the $1500 but of course he will not. I think we all feel like suckers. I guess its the same old story if its to good to be true don't do it. He just had me fooled by times past saying he had so many straight weeks of 40 - 80 tick winners and when he had a lose he made it right back.

How did you find this guy, what gave you confidence in him, why did you part with any money...are there no end of these type of dick head hard luck stories? I think I recall this "Call me Dave" guy on 'ere a few months back cruising for clients like a two bob whore, did you find him on T2W and consequently fall for his pathetic pitch? You all have only yourselves to blame...I'd like to say unlucky but you weren't, you were all just plain stoopid and lazy...hope this helps...

I found him on a web site I was reading about, I did buy his system and he did have a great win record on his live es site so I thought he would do the same on the dow. I am not lazy but stoopid.