Good points
I dont think they have ever claimed that the system is the holy-grail and executes perfect trading and umlimited profits. In fact, I've gone through the existing trades in play and some are negative but are more than outweighed by positive ones.
I agree that the moving average chart will have given you a strong indication of a bear market, and that getting to that point is relatively easy with a few charts, technical indicators etc. I guess if people feel confident in their own trading abilities to be able to spot the medium-to-long-term trends and put their money down on that conviction then its pointless to spend money for someone else to tell you what you already know.
I think what LS seem to be doing well, (for me anyway) is manage my risk, per trade, and money management so that you can participate in several trades at once and yet minimise the chance of getting blown away if one goes wrong. That plus refining entry and exit points (even if the long-term trend in commodities has been down since middle of last year, there have been huge spikes and volatility which will have created interim opportunities to take profits and re-enter trades and more favourable levels) If you simply used a two-moving average (a lagging indicator by some distance) you might give up considerable amounts of potential profits (i.e. getting in late and out late).
I also fully agree with you that charts and technical indicators matter a HUGE deal. I dont think LS are putting their fingers in the air and taking a punt. Their systems, as with 99% of the 'systems' out there is one built almost purely on back-tested technical analysis with various conditions that they assume work well to trigger trade entry and exit points, manage stop-losses and over the long-run generate good profits. The appeal for me was getting access to the system for a very affordable £147 per month to try it out, rather than paying upwards of £4000 for other systems such as many of the FOREX ones which nobody can ever tell me work or not.
I'm only a few weeks in but its going well and I've already more than recovered by £147 in subscription, and I'm only in 3 trades (out of a possible 44). It takes time to get your bank up to the right size to take on riskier trades and when I started there were 27 trades already in play. I tallied up the entry prices versus today's and only one was losing, and the 26 that were up, were more than 4000 pips in profit. At a conservative estimate at £1/2 per trade that's better than your ING account or some crappy mutual fund in this environment.
Importantly for me I'm not just executing the trades and switching off. I'm reading like mad on technical analysis and developing my own backtesting ideas using pro-realtime charts (part of the advanced features in IG Index) to both understand the trades LS are generating and develop my own ideas.
Bottomn-line, its a low cost approach to getting started, trialing out the ideas it generates and can be cancelled at anytime. I'm very skeptical on any trading system generally (god knows they are many promosing the earth) so I wanted to spend the least amont to find out if it works.
I've been impressed with their customer support and service too, and the regular market updates explain the strategy and what signals the market needs to generate to move something in our favour.
I'll keep you all posted as the months go on, but I'm happy for now. The system is now up 29% for 2009 and we are not even through Q1. Compare that to other investments and I think you'll agree its attractive
Cheers[/QUOTE]
