TradeMasters USA
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Honesty
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Quality
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Cost
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Support
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Verified Trades
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User Experience
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Summary
TradeMasters USA appeared to be a legitimate, trading system provider. However, on August 15 2016, the CFTC declared an emergency injunction against the company. Apparently, the huge returns and massive profits were all a fraud. The account statements that the owner of the company provided to prospective purchasers of the system were all faked, cherry picked, and fraudulent. It turns out that the owner of the company, prior to 2013 had never traded a day in his life. However, Ninja Trader brokerage and Ninja Trader Ecosystem trumpeted his supposed success and legitimacy. A complete and total fraud.
User Review
( votes)Thanks for reading today’s review of TradeMasters USA
What is TradeMasters USA? The company is a trading system provider that works exclusively on the NinjaTrader platform. The cost of the system is $3,995, with an additional monthly subscription fee of $499 per month.
As per Archive.org, the company appears to have originated in late 2013.
The company maintains the following social media profiles: Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
The listed address for the company is 6550 South Eastern Avenue, Las Vegas, Nevada 89123. However, a search of Google maps reveals that no such business currently occupies this address. However, you will find at this address, two legitimate businesses: The Hot and Juicy Crawfish Restaurant, and The Psychic Eye palm reading and bookstore.
The company maintains a prominent listing on the NinjaTrader Ecosystem website.
The TradeMastersUSA.com website reveals no information on whom actually owns the company.
Contacting TradeMasters USA
During the month of December, 2015 I reached out to TradeMasters USA via a series of emails and telephone calls. I explained that I was from TradingSchools.Org and that I would be writing a review. Unfortunately, the company ignored all emails and refused to return phone calls.
New Ferrari with day trading profits
Several weeks later, I once again reached out to TradeMasters USA. However, this time I used an alias and described myself as a struggling trader and recently retiree. That I was looking to learn how to trade, supplement my fixed income, and sincerely needed help. Almost immediately, I began to receive responses from a person named Mick. He explained that he was a full time professional day trader of over 20 years, was a money manager, a hedge fund manager, and had mentored many traders successfully. He also explained that most of the students and purchasers of his trading system were currently, consistently earning between $5,000 and $30,000 per month in trading profits.
He also explained that he was one of the very few trading educators with 100% authentic trading account statements. And that we would be willing to share his account statements via screen share software to those that were sincerely interested in becoming a full time professional day trader. However, he would not be willing to email his account statements because he felt that it might break various laws and financial regulations. I explained that I would be more than willing to immediately send him the $3,995 system fee, but that I just needed to verify his performance claims. I explained that I had been burned in the past and that I just wanted some authenticity. He agree and very enthusiastically complained about the multitudes of scammers preying on the vulnerable.
Next we screen shared and Mick produced a spreadsheet with the following performance summary. He explained that this was his own actual trading performance, and it was 100% legit.
[table id=40 /]
I drive a Mercedes. Are you impressed?
As you can see, this looks quite impressive. Only two losing months in the past two years. Month after month of positive returns. Everything looked great. But I explained to Mick that anyone could produce a fancy spreadsheet, what I needed to see where actual account statements. He said no problem.
Reviewing Account Statements
For the next 20 minutes, Mick began showing screen shots of various account statements from several different brokerages. Admittedly, some of the account statements seemed to match the performance summary. However, he was moving so rapidly and quickly shifting from account statement to account statement, that it was difficult to match the performance dates. It made no sense as to why he maintained several different brokerage accounts. As he quickly moved from statement to statement, the presentation had the feel of a street magicians card trick, where the card disappears and then quickly reappears in a different location.
The more I attempted to slow down, takes notes, and ask questions of what was being shown, the more Mick made me feel “slow”. As if “normal people” 
should be able to immediately see the legitimacy and value without such effort and examination. As much as I wanted to truly believe, something kept biting away, warning me that something was just not right.
I next explained to Mick that I needed an extra day to think it over, and that I would call the next day.
Closing the deal
The next day, I contacted Mick. But instead of looking for account statements, I decided to ask a few questions regarding the logic behind the trading system. And this is where the wheels began to come off the wagon.
Anyone that builds trading systems should be aware of terms like Profit Factor, Drawdown, Maximum Adverse Excursion, Distribution of Returns, etc. To my utter amazement, Mick was entirely ignorant of basic statistics, computer coding and trading system terminology. When asked which computer code he developed his trading system, he embarrassingly fumbled through the question and explained that he had a team of programmers that helped him. When asked about the logic behind the trading system, he stumbled into what can only be described as word stew. It was one of those embarrassing moments when an ignorant person makes a monumental attempt at sounding smart by piecing together fancy sounding words.
The red flags immediately went up. I was dealing with a fraud. This guy knew absolutely nothing about trading. My safety valve had always been the implied credibility of account statements, but this guy had suddenly destroyed that assumption. I was dealing with a true knucklehead that had somehow cobbled together these account statements, from god knows where, and had somehow stumbled upon a trading system from a 3rd party. He just packaged it up and sold it as his own Super Secret Trading System.
Day trading on the beach is so easy.
Next, I asked him if he had thought about getting a review from TradingSchools.Org. He got very upset and explained that TradingSchools.Org was just a “pay-to-play” website where you had to pay for a positive review. That the owner of that company was nothing more than a felon that had served time in prison for fraud (he finally said something truthful!). He refused to be extorted and manipulated by that crook. Secretly, I had a good laugh.
A positive review?
This past February, I flirted with the idea of giving TradeMastersUSA a semi-positive review. In spite of the extreme ignorance of the vendor, he was actually able to cobble together a few trading account statements. But in the end, I decided to not write anything at all. There were too many unanswered questions.
Many readers complain that I should not waste my time writing about these small trading vendors, its not really worth the time. They want to read about the bigger vendors. But I disagree. Even the small vendors deserve a review. In the case of TradeMasters USA, I felt it was just a matter of time before this guy blew up. Only a matter of time before his ignorance caught up to him. Apparently, I didn’t have to wait very long.
Commodities Futures Trading Commission
On August 15, 2016…the CFTC filed an emergency injunction against TradeMasters USA. Under court order, the company was frozen. The CFTC is alleging a massive fraud. The following is a pretty good read:
TradeMasters USA complaintsIf you read this, you must be pretty amazed. The following are a summary of the CFTC’s allegations:
- Account statements were falsified, some where “cherry picked” from actual customers
- The “real time” results were all fraudulent misrepresentations
- There were no “trading coaches with 20 years of trading experience”
- The testimonials were all provided by paid actors
- Prior to 2013, the owner of the company had never traded, nor had a trading account
- Owner of company admitted to CFTC investigators that he had purchased the system from another vendor
Wrapping things up
In total, Mick sold 36 copies of his magic trading software for a total sum of $155, 626. Some readers might be reading this and thinking to themselves, “its just 36 idiots that got suckered for $150k”. But I would like to counter this argument. Sure, its “only 36 people”, however think for a moment if the average person lost $10,000? Now we are talking about a serious amount of money.
What if one of the victims were your elderly father, or your spouse? And you discovered that Mick had convinced them, to allow him to trade their account, and them Mick promptly lost $50,000 of the families money. Most assuradely, this is probably what happened. Else the CFTC would not of stepped in so quickly.
Perhaps the CFTC is going to start taking a stronger position against the amount of fraud that is mostly perpetrated and enabled by Ninja Trader? Perhaps this is the first in a wave of enforcement activity?
Well, that’s it for today. Thanks for reading. Sorry for yet another sad trading story. Don’t forget to leave a comment below.
hi, how can I download the pdf to my computer?
another con
As far as I can tell, Ninja does poor vetting/due diligence of prospective ecosystem members. A case in point is Trading Futures in Action, run by the notorious mortgage fraudster turned Trading Titan (LOL), Robert J, Amico. NT didn’t have a clue Amico was one and the same person who admitted to the fraud and spent lots of time in federal prison. I understand after getting tipped Ninja asked Amico for his date of birth and SS number to run a security check and Amico failed to comply with the request (for fear of being discovered) so NT decided to separate themselves from TFIA.
I guess the people at NT who are responsible for screening don’t know how to use Google.
This review strengthens suspicions against the biggest names in the industry, there’s a close connection between Ninjatrader and CEO Ray Deux and Futures.io owner BigMike. I’m suspicious of all Futures.io sponsored products: Jigsaw trading, Al Brooks, Futurestrader71, marketdelta, KJ trading systems, Topstep trader etc.
It makes me wonder why the guy is in Ecuador now. I find it hard to believe he would just flee the country. Maybe there is some tax advantage but the internet service was reported as crappy. But yeah, I don’t think any of those futures.io sponsors trade for a living either.
THANKS!
He got me good for $5000. I will share any insight with regulators on any of these frauds – I have quite a list. This one deserves some nice cell time.
George – please file a complaint to the CFTC if you haven’t already done so. I did for a particular vendor (as did many others) and he was eventually charged a little while ago. See link at the end.
It takes time and it is a slow process, but the CFTC needs ALL the help they can get.
http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7268-15
Yep, I remember that thief. Ninja Trader Ecosystem was trumpeting him like Christ into Jerusalem.
The root of much of the fraud in this industry can be traced right back to Ninja Trader. I check their ecosystem once per month and its amazing the crap that they allow to happen. NinjaTrader brokerage could care less.
This is the founder of Ninjatrader https://www.linkedin.com/in/raymonddeux It says he traded from 2000-2003. I assume he blew up so he decided to start selling an overpriced platform. Most of the interest in Ninjatrader is from coding of useless Ninjascripts to sell to new traders on sites like futures.io. Their $1000 program is pathetic compared to TT or Multicharts.
I don’t doubt NT Ray is a failed trader but as an owner of both platforms Ninja and Multicharts I disagree with you- I find Ninja a much better platform.
I think that their decision to only support their brokerage sucks though and I agree that their ecosystem is a big pile of crap.
If I did not have grandfathered Ninja licenses I could still use with other brokers I wouldn’t even look at Ninja today.
Now that I think through your statement – You may be right- If Ninja’s business model is to simply recruit new cash and traders via their eco system and have them spend their $$ in tools – commissions and training it is a short sighted business model.
Perhaps NinjaTrader Ray has contributed to the Clinton Foundation for protection from the CFTC.
“Perhaps NinjaTrader Ray has contributed to the Clinton Foundation for protection from the CFTC.”
He does not have enough money to buy that kind of protection. Only Capos can do that.
I have the Ninjatrader platform and I still like it where I’ve done my own coding and modifying of indicators and strategies. The charting options and customization is better looking than many platforms but it can get extremely slow to initially load and refresh with inefficient coded indicators. But as a business, their ecosystem list of partners seems to be circularly targeted to get as many to purchase nt indicators and nt itself. The ninja pool seemed to evolve and expand since 2009 or so due to exposure and sponsorship in popular retail trading forums.
On it.
This guy is a real scammer , fraudster kinda like trumps University scam…most of these rooms are like trump U scams..
##Perhaps the CFTC is going to start taking a stronger position against the amount of fraud that is mostly perpetrated and enabled by Ninja Trader? Perhaps this is the first in a wave of enforcement activity?##
My guess is that this guy got the attention of CFTC because he started to manage accounts.
good article and comments on sham trading gurus.
http://www.jltrader.com/2016/07/18/cautionary-tales-about-trading-gurus/
ms. kawamura looks like another “she can trade” hottie. Too bad Emmett missed it! her site seems to be down since after feb 2014. (There’s still Alla Peters of alphawavetrading.com )
web.archive.org/web/20140208004311/http://www.kawamurafinancial.com/
A good example where the authorities got involved. In the review the guy seemed to only show screenshots of account statements without logging on to the brokerage so that leaves room to doctor or falsify them. I recall in that recent WT video where Ross dumped some cash spoils of the room in a live account but yet never showed the part of the statement which would show the amount was profit gained in a month. He couldn’t wait to switch from the broker site to another site showing supposed trading results fast enough. Unfortunately it’s not just the 36 sales of the repackaged software, each of those customers probably paid at least one to three months of the $500 monthly fee in addition to their trading losses. So the vendor could have had a total of $54k of extra fees in addition to the initial sales. The worst reviewed could be WT where they have hundreds of people in their monthly churn with who knows how many hundreds of their worthless courses sold as well as the terrible amount of trading losses in total.
Good review. Thanks.
Their website is still up. Shouldn’t a CFTC complaint bring them down? Here’s a link http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7429-16
Nope. The court order is a complete freeze. If they remove anything, including pulling the website down, would constitute a destruction of evidence. Jail time.
This order is really important because the CFTC took a very proactive stance on this guy. They caught him in the act of committing fraud. Normally, these guys put up a site and then disappear within a few months later. Then of course they reappear on Ninja Trader Ecosystem as yet another certified educator.
Am curious if a Federal Prosecutor picks up this case and pursues a wire fraud case. Easy picken’s.
Unless of course your name is Hilary Clinton, in which case you can destroy/erase email messages that are part of an investigation, and still have the FBI and Justice Department say that you lied but then decline to prosecute, and have uneducated fools licking your hinny to get you elected as president of these USSA.
Give it a rest…this isn’t the place…
There shall be no rest for the weary. It is always the place to talk about criminality and treason, especially of someone who wants to be president.
To be fair, Hillary’s profile should also be fib-fitted to the golden mean diagram on ts, lol.
Ninjatrader still lists it. Maybe they haven’t caught on yet as this review is fresh.
http://ninjatraderecosystem.com/Partners/Educators.php#80
More thoughts about the review. I noticed the guy said it’s common for people to be scammed which seems to be part of the standard “playbook” of these frauds where they say that understand your “pain” and frustration but of course say they are different and the real yellow brick road! Also the photos of the guy and his happy life. I wonder if that lady with him realizes the depths of his fraud. I wouldn’t be surprised as today it seems whole families and sons and daughters are swept up into this stinky business like it was legit as seen in several prior example reviews on ts. Sign of the times.
Now gone from Ninjatrader forum.