Anyone using the Bill McCready futures trading secrets course.?
Any insight, results, info would be appreciated.
Thanks
Ok here goes...
Initiated the system back in August or September of 2008. The intro webinars are impressive given the basic foundations of momentum, Elliot Wave basic principles and the 3wave nature of all trends.
The system is based on dual timeframe tick chart concepts like nearly all other common sense systems.
The indicators are trend following common indicators tweaked with uncommon parameters plus one proprietary indicator that is inherent in Ensign Charting software that must be used. (On a separate note Ensign is an excellent well designed powerful charting platform that must rank as one of the best ones in the industry).
The FTS method relies heavily on indicators rather than price action (the chart is heavily overlaid with indicators - it's nearly impossible to "see" the tick bars behind all that information).
It is information overload.....I took about a month of testing and market replay (live replay is possible on Ensign). Went live and promptly lost my shirt.
The indicators must be followed heavily on both time frames....and after going into a retraining mode for another 3months went live again and stopped trading after I blew out my account completely.
This is a an intensely focused, very visual pattern recognition system that works well with visual right brained NLP approaches...I had periods of excellent performance followed by horrendous days of stop outs that were relentless and gut wrenching.
Accounting for changes in market volatility I suspect a "better" trader than myself will have "better" results.
I have not been able to adapt with changes in market pace (for example a transition from a strong trend day to a NR7 narrow range day or chop....chop days are horrendous).
I am reluctant to be negative about the method...there are so many things about it that are very powerful....I suspect that my rigidity and left brain logical one size fits all approach has seen a temporary end to my trading career. Although, Bill has been very helpful in his support so far.
Having said that, the method is optimised, it is meant to work on the ES mini and tweaking must be done to fit other Minis and/or other markets.
It does however work brilliantly on long term daily and weekly charts with default settings. With clear simple and early notifications of trend changes or trend continuations.
The course material is comprehensive although haphazard and should be better organized chronologically as it doesn't quite flow very well....and must be read 2-3times to get a sense of flow of information.
However, Bill stresses that actual screen time (of course) is essential to understand any method as a key to any good trading strategy.
For me this has been a challenge, I have continued been able to reel off substantially profitable days and even weeks on the Ensign simulator but unable to repeat that on live trading...
Again, if that is part of my mental failures to implement what does seem to be a decent trading method I do not know...yet....
It's back to the drawing board for me......however I have no question this is one of the most discretionary methods I have seen....it will (based on the setup rules send more 4-6trades at the very minimum every single day...) the trader must use very high focused levels of concentration to discard all but the most highly probable one of them.
As such it's hard to qualify this as a method based trading strategy but rather as a "style". As far as styles go you either "get it" or you don't. If you do (as Bill says...but who is to know..some of his other students do absolutely get it) then you "should" have an edge over other traders.
But if you don't (like me I suspect) then you blow out your account (3times now).
Practice, practice and more practice is key but I suspect there are methods out there more suited to "non visual pattern recognition lacking left brainers" like me out there.
I can't recommend it (it's too discretionary and has extermly sensitive indicators that are often too twitchy) and on the other hand is a very powerful tool for someone of the right aptitude so I can't dimiss it either.
In the end, this is rather inconclusive for readers but I can't be more forthright than this. Hope it helps in creating a picture.
Adding an image from his public site (so I can't be accused of sharing prop stuff!) down below.....this is a pretty "clean looking chart and I wish all the daily live charts were as clean as this.)
