Death, taxes and failed Zulutrade providers

[sniper012]

Some people will never learn. I imagine that most people who trade would like to trade for a living. This being the case, you have to have long term success. Zulutrade is an awful vehicle in which to do so. I don't know of a single signal provider who has remained in the top 25 for any real length of time. Can anyone name one provider that hasn't crashed within 2 years? I doubt it. Zulu is like a revolving door for reckless signal providers. They have a system that seems to work for a while and they get all these members to follow them and at some point down the line, all the money you may have made over the course of months, gets wiped away in a matter of days or weeks. The provider has already made a ton of money during off of his followers during the time he was winning so what does he care if he eventually destroys your account? All he has to do is reappear under a new name and all the suckers get to lose all their cash again. The provider Kama-spot is the latest provider to ruin accounts. He had $20 MILLION in live money following him and now he's down to $2 million after a long string of terrible losses. LowestDD, Fly on The Wall, the list goes on. These are all providers who had massive money following them on zulutrade and they all eventually lost it all. There's a new up and coming trader now. I can't remember where he's ranked but he has only executed about 57 trades and he already has $2 million in live accounts following him. He'll eventually be number 1 and then he will implode the way they all do.
One commonality among all of these providers is that they don't use a stop loss. I actually don't have to go any further than this because any professional trader would never trade without a stop loss. The next thing I tend to see is that these guys don't trade the way a regular trader would trade. For example: let's say you want to go long on eur/usd. You would buy your lots, set your stop and limit and wait for the result. The providers on zulu would buy 1 lot at 7am, another lot at 7:05, another at 7:09, another at 7:12 and so on. The reason they do that is because they get paid per executed trade. If you are a follower of X provider and you take all of those trades, Zulutrade pays the provider for each one of those trades even though they are all on the same currency pair and are executed within minutes of one another.
Learn to trade yourself. It's pathetic to read the comments from some of the signal provider's followers. A lot of them are practically begging the provider to get out of losing positions. Begging the provider to trade better. Begging for updates on his positions. Don't ever put yourself in that position. Trading is about financial freedom and following providers on Zulu will not provide that.

 

[trendie]

The tragedy is that when people are offered the option of sorting the providers, they tend to sort by "Percentage Returns", or whatever is the equivalent.

When they should be sorting on other metrics such as longevity of trader and system, or relative drawdown, etc.

If you could get a graph of numbers of followers, or money being handled, it would correlate closely to percentage returns, and hardly any other metric.

But then again, its mentality.
The people who blow their accounts themselves by taking disproportinate risks, tend to outsource their mentality to those think the same way.

Once the penny drops, about risk, reward, longevity, etc, such traders either do it themselves, or seek out those other traders who trade similarly, if they wanted to have someone else trade on their behalf.

Myfxbook tells a pretty similar story.
Good observation though. Its something I have noticed myself.
The fact you've made the observation is a good sign.

 

[wackypete2]

Professional traders who can make slow , steady returns would never make any money from zulu or other signal sites. New followers only look for the "high fliers" who are making huge returns. The SP's who blow up are only providing exactly what the target audience is looking for. Why blame them? Most of them aren't even using live accounts so they are not even blowing up their own money. In all honesty, if I would ever even try to be a signal provider looking to actually make money from it I'd probably do the same thing as most of the other providers....and eventually blow up. Unfortunately, I have this nasty disease called "conscience and morals".

Peter

 

[sniper012]

Professional traders who can make slow , steady returns would never make any money from zulu or other signal sites. New followers only look for the "high fliers" who are making huge returns. The SP's who blow up are only providing exactly what the target audience is looking for. Why blame them? Most of them aren't even using live accounts so they are not even blowing up their own money. In all honesty, if I would ever even try to be a signal provider looking to actually make money from it I'd probably do the same thing as most of the other providers....and eventually blow up. Unfortunately, I have this nasty disease called "conscience and morals".

Peter

I say why not be a signal provider? Don't you think the follower is just as culpable as the provider? They're the ones losing real money. If it was just as easy as going on Zulu, we'd all be billionaires.

 

[wackypete2]

I say why not be a signal provider? Don't you think the follower is just as culpable as the provider? They're the ones losing real money. If it was just as easy as going on Zulu, we'd all be billionaires.

The follower is the only one responsible for 100% of his money, NOT the provider. There's decent money in being a provider if you really don't care about your followers blowing up (live accounts) when you do (demo acct).

Simple strategy: Demo acct, high leverage, martingale, no stops. Your returns will give $$$$ signs in potential followers eyes, until....

Don't get me wrong, I think many of the providers are scumbags preying off the greedy, but that's what the market wants.

Peter

 

[neil]

Professional traders who can make slow , steady returns would never make any money from zulu or other signal sites. New followers only look for the "high fliers" who are making huge returns. The SP's who blow up are only providing exactly what the target audience is looking for. Why blame them? Most of them aren't even using live accounts so they are not even blowing up their own money. In all honesty, if I would ever even try to be a signal provider looking to actually make money from it I'd probably do the same thing as most of the other providers....and eventually blow up. Unfortunately, I have this nasty disease called "conscience and morals".

Peter

Many of the clowns following "signals" are the very people who seek great returns for feck all effort. It is these clowns that signal providers feed on.
What is amazing is that there are so many clowns and gullible persons out there that think signal providers are going to make them rich.
At times the T2W experience is rather like watching a crowd rushing around trying to locate the holy grail. It's a pursuit undertaken by many ever since markets began. Snakeoil suppliers to the stupid I suppose.
But Wacky, you are correct; If one had no conscience or morals then peddling dreams of easy riches would be a profitable occupation due to the high number of "suckers" out there

 

[scose-no-doubt]

How do I sign up to this signal providing lark where I trade demo and get paid for idiots following me?

 

[D70]

A local idiot with nic "robbert" will be along very shortly to tell you how great it is and how he makes all his income from zulutrade.

Enjoy.

 

[Trader333]

How do I sign up to this signal providing lark where I trade demo and get paid for idiots following me?

Idiots ? Don't you mean "loyal customers" ?

 

[VielGeld]

The follower is the only one responsible for 100% of his money, NOT the provider. There's decent money in being a provider if you really don't care about your followers blowing up (live accounts) when you do (demo acct).

[...]

Peter

I think this stuff could work. If these sites implemented some strictures for legitimacy and cut down on dubious practices, we could see some value in them. Then again, don't real traders stick to their own accounts or open up their own funds... ? I'm not sure there's anything of interest in these sites for them.

Anyway, sites like Zulu aren't open at all about the stats they post. Providers tend to show better returns than actual performance.

A local idiot with nic "robbert" will be along very shortly to tell you how great it is and how he makes all his income from zulutrade.

Enjoy.

He won't be. I just banned the guy an hour ago.

 

[wackypete2]

I think this stuff could work. If these sites implemented some strictures for legitimacy and cut down on dubious practices, we could see some value in them. Then again, don't real traders stick to their own accounts or open up their own funds... ? I'm not sure there's anything of interest in these sites for them.

Anyway, sites like Zulu aren't open at all about the stats they post. Providers tend to show better returns than actual performance.



He won't be. I just banned the guy an hour ago.

I left you some feedback on the other thread. All in good fun, of course!

Peter

 

[scose-no-doubt]

Idiots ? Don't you mean "loyal customers" ?

Sorry, yes of course that's what I meant. Do you have one Johnny?

 

[Hakuna Matata]

Get paid for punting? how do I get in on this sh1t?!

 

[InviertaBien]

Some serious accusations indeed. But there's a lot of truth in them. Most traders at zulu use extremely risky systems, like unlimited grids, adding to losing positions, trading without stops or with very wide ones, disguised martingales... The system favors that because in effect most followers are looking for very high returns and wont even consider following a traditional, safer trader, with moderate returns and the usual periods of drawdowns. Followers at zulu won't even accept a moderate, short term dd above 5% without protesting.

Another problem is that it's too ease to open new signal accounts so many of them reach the top positions in the ranks by sheer luck. If you have 500 new account at any given time, at least 50 of them will have very good results, but not necessarily because of a good system.

Having said all this, I must add that there are still good signal providers at zulutrade, if you know how to search for them and evaluate their history. You have to make your own assessment and not trust too much in zulu ranking. If you do your homework, you can certainly be profitable at zulutrade, just don't expect wild returns or to become millionaire in a few months.