NOFT
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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
NOFT or Ninja Order Flow Traders is part of the latest and zaniest craze in technical analysis…Institutional Order Flow Analysis. What exactly does that mean? Apparently today’s trading hipsters all seem to be able to make big bucks taking advantage of hedge funds and large banks. Just buy the magic indicators and you will be able to miraculously witness the hidden actions of the big players. Unfortunatley, I have yet to find even a single one of these miraculous order flow traders that can produce a verifiable track record of trading success. NOFT has zero track record of ever producing a profit with their magic indicators, and the funded trader program is basically a none functioning pipe dream.
User Review
( votes)Thanks for reading today’s review of NOFT Traders. What is NOFT? Ninja Order Flow Trader.
What is Ninja Order Flow Trading? Quite simply, the company believes that a substantial trading edge can be revealed by analyzing trading volume, both accumulation and distribution throughout the trading day. The company also believes that they can exploit, monitor, and decipher the intentions of “large institutions”. They believe that they can teach people to how to consistently make money by learning how to exploit these relationships.
Order Flow Trading is nothing new. In fact, several companies have now developed sophisticated trading platforms that specifically analyze how volume moves through the exchanges. Order Flow trading indicators is currently the hottest fad within the technical trading community. This is really not that surprising, every few years a hot new way of looking at the markets explodes onto the scene. These trading ideas will inevitably grow old and tired, and then they fade away. Only to be replaced later by yet another technical analysis fad. Order Flow Trading is currently the “Kim Kardashian” of the trading world. Over the years, these trends change and educational providers are quick to create new trading products that promise riches and wealth. Unfortunately, this rarely happens. Lets take a look a just a couple of technical analysis trends over the years.
During the 1980’s, the era in which Japan dominated the world economy, everyone wanted a Japanese car and every kid wanted to be a ninja. A very clever marketer named Steve Nison noticed this trend and introduced the trading community to Japanese Candlestick charting. Steve did quite well for a number of years giving seminars on these supposed secretive and mystical chart patterns. Of course, we later learned that Steve Nison never traded successfully his entire career. But he was one heck of a great marketer and he sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
Trading educators are fun to watch in that when one trading educator starts making a lot of money selling some magic indicators, then the rest of the educators quickly pile in and attempt to grab as much of the market as possible A perfect example of the Japanese Candlestick craze was how Steve Bigalow came onto the scene after Steve Nison, and Steve Bigalow claimed that his Candlesticks were better. The spat between Bigelow and Nison eventually became comedy, where Bigalow would teach seminars and give lectures wearing only a karate outfit. Bigalow wanted to be more Japanese that Nison. Apparently he felt that wearing the karate outfit gave him more credibility.
During the 1990’s, the big trend was stochastics. George Lane was supposedly the originator and he offered a live course for $3,000 that supposedly taught the secrets of stochastics. Back in the 1990’s, before the internet, folks used to get on a plane and fly to various destinations to learn these magical trading techniques. I once flew to Wisconsin in January 1992 and spent a cold and depressing three days of my life watching old George trade is magic indicators. Unfortunately, I spent $3k to learn from old George. Later, after George passed away…all the secrets were revealed. George Lane never once had a profitable year trading. When I look back at those day’s, why didnt I ever ask George to see an account statement that proved that he actually traded? I guess I wanted to believe so badly that George could deliver me to the promised land of get rich quickness, or maybe I didn’t want to be rude by asking for proof that George traded.
In the mid 1990’s, after George introduced stochastics and was doing great with seminars and educational packages, an army of educators jumped on the band wagon and began selling stochastic learning packages for thousands of dollars. Just stop and think about this for only a moment, you can now quickly open up any trading platform and quickly place a stochastic indicator on any chart and it costs you nothing. But at one time, to get that indicator on your chart, you had to spend thousands of dollars for the calculations and the education on how to read the calculations.
Of course, now that we have back testing software, we can now quickly back test the stochastic’s indicator on a chart. Unfortunately, testing has revealed that stochastic’s is no more, or no less predictive than simply flipping a coin. However, for a good 10 years, stochastics was the hot thing for trading educators to sell. At that time, they were the “Kim Kardashian”. The educators made a lot of money, but the traders did not.
Order Flow Trading
Order Flow Trading is currently the hottest trend that educators are exploiting. Unfortunately, my reviews of order flow trading educators has not been very kind to this now popular form of technical analysis. Lets take a look at a few examples:
Trading The Tape. This guy claimed that he could read the order flow of the big institutions and that he was earning huge profits. He would be willing to show you his trading secrets for only $1750 per quarter. Unfortunately he turned out to be a fraud and a charlatan. No verifiable track record of trading whatsoever. In fact, he even refused to trade live in his very own live trading room. However, after the trading room closed, he always had profitable trades that happened during the evening hours. I call these types of trades mystery meat trades. The educator stuffs his performance resume with things we cannot easily discover or evaluate.
Market Delta Trading Room. A very nice piece of software that is based upon order flow and the footprint chart. The trading room is moderated by Anthony Drager, and he is considered to be an expert in order flow trading. As much as I personally like the software and the company owner, I found that the demonstrations of trading order flow to be useless. The trading room moderator, from all of my recordings and requests to verify trading performance turned up nothing that proves that this method works.
Trade Order Flow. This is yet another trading room and trading educator that specializes in deciphering the secrets of the, “institutional order flow”. For only $12,500 this educator will be more than happy to teach the secrets of order flow trading. However, this educator also turned out to be an outrageous con where the educator claimed she was making $10,000 each month because she too had learned the secrets of order flow trading. I later discovered that 6 months prior to her becoming an outrageously successful order flow trader, she was actually driving an ice cream truck around Long Island, New York. Hilarious stuff folks.
Emini Volume Trader. Yet another charlatan that claims that he, “will show exactly what the large money players (Institutions/ hedge funds) are doing and when they are increasing or decreasing their size of net open positions”. This guy turned about to be a complete and total buffoon that posted a fraudulent track record, lied about his trading success, and was caught red handed pulling off the scheme in over 20 hours of video recordings. Yet, still he persists in spreading more financial destruction and disappointment throughout the trading community.
The one thing that all of these characters have in common is that they claim that they can read institutional order flow through the use of an indicator. They believe that they can clearly see what a large institution or hedge fund is doing, and how to profit from their actions.
Friends, I am going to tell you something. For some, this might sound shocking. The banks and hedge funds that manage billions of dollars of investor funds are some of the smartest and most clever people that you will ever find. They have nearly unlimited resources and employ the best and the brightest computer engineers, scientists, physicists, and experienced traders that are complete and total killers. Do you really believe that you are going to buy an indicator for $12,500 from a lady that drives an ice cream truck around Long Island selling frosty pops, and she is going to tell you exactly what these financial killers are doing?
Over and over, time and again, I write reviews about trading educators that charge thousands of dollars to teach Joe and Mary Sixpack from Cleveland Ohio how to beat the likes of Renaisance Technologies. They claim that they know what these institutional guys are doing and how easy it is to beat them at their own game. Well, I implore you to read the many articles about RenTec and other firms specializing in high frequency trading. These are the people that are trading against you in the markets. They have hundreds of lighting fast computers, located in the exchange data center, trading in one and two lots trades, looking to capture nothing more than $1 or $2 in profit each trade. They don’t just crap out 500 block orders that you can exploit. They don leave a footprint whatsoever, everything they do is subtle and cold and calculating and ruthless.
The difference between the big prop firms like RenTec and these order flow educators? RENTEC publishes results. They make profits and they let everyone know about it. On the other hand, can someone please find me even a single one of these mystical readers of institutional order flow trading that is making verifiable profits? Where are the fucking account statements of you order flow assclowns? Ask these order flow idiots to see an account statement that verifies that they have ever made a profit with their whack-A-doodle and they only offer some recorded videos market replay. Where are the account statements you institutional order flow assclowns?
Assclown: One, who, through the fault of his parents conception, is a skid mark on society’s collective underwear.
Order Flow Trading: Like a venereal disease spreading ignorance?
Venereal disease spreads quickly. It hops from partner to partner. Some partners know that they have a venereal disease and yet they continue to sleep around, and with malice of forethought they simply refuse to treat the disease. They are focused on only their individual gratification, their own personal agenda, their own selfish needs. They care not about the partner, only about themselves. I would consider most trading educators to be the types of people that callously spread the disease of ignorance. Like a prostitute, for a price they are offering the illusion of gratitude, the promise of pleasure, a release from pain, the fulfillment of an unattainable or unrealistic fantasy.
In all of the trading educators that I have reviewed, all proclaiming to be able to divine the future from institutional order flow, not a single educator has been able to provide any proof that this method works. No account statements, no trading from the DOM, no trading from the charts. No proof whatsoever. So why does Order Flow Analysis continue to persist?
Why Order Flow Analysis Will Persist
The root problem with anyone offering order indicators is that they cannot be back tested. Its hard to quantify. Everything is subjective. There are always these well displayed examples of how there was thin volume at the top of a price range, and then volume surged and so the price continued higher! Unfortunately, there are just as many cases where the exact opposite happened. Order Flow Analysis is simply too subjective and interpretive. One person’s “flush out with high volume” is another person’s “flush out continuation pattern followed by a reversal”.
One of the people that I like to talk to about trading indicators and trends within the trading industry is a world famous trading educator, and a pretty good trader by the name of Larry Williams. Many of you know him, some do not. But Larry is awesome and he gave me an awesome quote, “Order Flow Analysis Indicators are like prisoners of war, beat on them long enough, and they will tell you whatever you want to hear”. Larry is awesome. “If these hsutlers know what the institutions are doing, then why in the hell are they selling these Order Flow Indicators? Hell, just make a ton of money and keep it for themselves”. I love Larry Williams.
The bottom line is that Order Flow Analysis will persist for some time, simply because it cannot be quantified. Its illusory. Its nearly impossible to back test. Its a squirrely and squishy idea that is nearly impossible to prove or disprove.
Order Flow Analysis is a trading educators absolute nirvana. The educator, usually quite deceptive and clever can literally find thousands of supposed examples of where order flow and volume became unbalanced and profits are easy. He can create hundreds of hours of video recordings that purport to show examples of when it worked and how well it worked.
For all of the hundreds of hours of videos that show supposed examples of when the institutions where “easy pickings”, none of these order flow educators can show an account statement that proves that their methods can earn a nickel in real time.
NOFT
I have spent quite a bit of time talking about the latest and greatest indicator fad know as Order Flow Trading. Lets talk a moment about NOFT or Ninja Order Flow Trading. The company is owned by Christian Hoffman. Many of you have heard his name, he has been creating all sorts of trading software for several years now. Some of you might know of him through Ninjacators.com. Christian is a very clever guy. He gets it. He has made a nice career out of programming the losing ideas of retail traders into various trading platforms. I would consider Christian as a guy that understands that the retail trader is going to always be looking for a new indicator, and he is more than willing to code it and sell it. Nothing wrong with that. Recently, Christian and myself had a very open and honest conversation about NOFT and the industry in general. I found Christian to be delightfully honest, full of humor, a good attitude, and willing to debate with me a range of issues.
The first and biggest question that traders want to know, does NOFT actually fund traders? To date, NOFT has funded two traders. However, NOFT is basically a new company that has been in business for only a few months. It appears that they are attempting to blend into their educational product a sort of TopStepTrader program. But lets be completely honest, the NOFT funded trader program costs $4,000 just for the educational product, and then the trader must pay an additional $299 per month to potentially qualify for a funded account. Is this really such a good deal? NOFT, TopStepTrader, or anyone else running these funded trader schemes, I feel are just living on borrowed time.
What does a funded trading account with NOFT really mean? In speaking with Christian, he was completely honest in saying that he was not currently very comfortable with the funded trader idea. In fact, we both agreed that the funded trader program, at this time was more a side show than a functional entity. To date, I have uncovered quite a few trading educators offering a supposed funded trading account, only to discover that the funded trading accounts were just a marketing gimmick. Christian did not want me to get into the validation and authentificaton aspect of this portion of the NOFT business. My heart tells me that he knows that its a gimmick, but that everyone else is piling into the funded trader marketing gimmick and he feels left out.
In addition to Christian Hoffman, there are also a few other employees of NOFT. There are three salesman/educators by the names Troy Epperson, Kai Whitney, and Jonathon Moore. A quick search of Troy Epperson reveals that he has been selling trading products for over 10 years. In fact, I had a three way conversation with Troy and Christian that I found to be useful and honest. Troy is apparently the most experienced trader at NOFT and so I got right after him about personal trading performance. He was honest and very candid in describing his current duties as more of an educator and not as a full time trader. Most of the educators that I speak with just lie and tell me that they are making fat profits each day. But Troy just came right out and said that his current focus is on helping new traders become successful with his product.
Another salesman is Kai Whitney. He is a sort of a newbie trading educator. He originally got mixed up with the now notorious Global Trade Room. However, the con artist in chief, Simon Joseph unceremoniously fired Kai Whitney. Apparently Kai was not dishonest enough and Mr. Joseph is only looking for people that are willing to rob their own grandmothers. I have to congratulate Kai for getting fired.
Lastly, the final salesman is Jonathon Moore, whom is currently listed as the Director of Trading Education at Ninjacators. Not sure if Jonathon and myself are related.
No Bad Reputation
Part of the process of writing these reviews is running the names of all involved parties through the Google meat grinder. Looking for any dirt or negative postings on sites like BigMikes, RipOffReport, etc. All of these guys have been around for quite some time, and I would of expected to find more dirt. But not that much exists. A few gripes here and there. But I could not find any prison records, CFTC fraud convictions, NFA fines, SEC violations, etc. Pretty clean actually.
No Trading Records Or Proof Of Concept
Anyone that reads my reviews knows that I am real pain in the butt about verifying the trading performance of the educators that operate these trading rooms or selling trading educational products. As much I as personally like the openness and candor of the guys at NOFT, still I have nothing to verify performance. No account statements, no simulated trading results that I can independently verify, no nothing. Its frustrating for me becomes sometimes I really like the folks that I speak with, but as an advocate for the general public, its my job to be nasty and demand performance.
Another problem that I have with NOFT is that there is no live trading room. You simply pay the fee, and then gain access to hour upon hour of training videos that purport to show the mystery of institutional order flow trading in action. Am I calling the guys at NOFT hustlers and scam artists? No. But if a person is going to plunk down several thousand dollars to learn these amazing secrets, then they should at least have one person on staff that has a solid, legitimate, and verifiable track record that a potential customer can use as benchmark.
I have to give Christian a bit of credit for offering a couple of deal sweeteners that potential purchasers might find of interest. The first is that he is offering a 15 day refund period. If you are not happy, then you get your money back. ?The second is that NOFT has an interesting trading review program where a trader can submit their daily trading records and one of the staff at NOFT will individually critique the trades that were executed using the NOFT method.
My overall recommendation is that traders should avoid NOFT until one of the educational guys can provide proof of concept. Proof that this stuff actually works. Perhaps this review will inspire them to get on the ball.
Unlearning Bad Ideas
One of the problems with not verifying that a trading concept like NOFT actually works in real time is that the customer, after spending thousands of dollars on the educational product, and after losing yet thousands of dollars more attempting to convert will have to unlearn what they have learned. One of the coders that I speak with, whom specializes in creating custom indicators and trading systems loves to tell me stories of customers that will spend and spend in hopes of validating an idea that they purchased from a trading educator or read in a trading book.
Brokers also tell me of the same phenomenon where a customer will open an account and trade a faulty idea, with a proven negative expectancy until they go broke. They come back later and refill their trading account, hoping that the idea will finally hit pay dirt. The cycle repeats until the customer has destroyed several trading accounts, and then the customer goes looking for yet another trading educational product. Of course, there is always yet another trading educator waiting looking to sell his magic trading secrets.
Wrapping Things Up
Another day, another trading educator with zero track record. Normally I would smash up an educator like this, but I simply have no proof of any fraud. But that also does not mean that folks should enthusiastically throw their money at this product. Perhaps this review will inspire this educator to get busy and attempt to prove to the trading community that this order flow stuff is the real deal.
Thanks for reading and dont forget to leave your comments below. Also, if you know of any “Order Flow” trading rooms that have verifiable performance, then please leave a message below.
And where are the haters? Usually I get a lot more trolls willing to hurl insults at me. Please trolls, come back!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Hi, G7FX.com, NVFOREX you tube, states he is the only order flow trader that has verifiable results on MyFxBook.
Thanks for the enlightenment! It amazing how a lot con artist are exploiting the ignorant and gullible rich-quick minded newbies and even old traders!
I strongly believe there is no holy grail or magic bullet in Forex trading profitability. No shortcuts……
My humble advice is: learn and practice. Practice makes perfect…it may take years but you will succeed, if you Persist.
check neurostreet.com Sean Kozak : owner. Michael Black and Raul Rivera (the last two offer account statements)
Very cool and Honest.
Unbelievable and extremely educational. AND what a laugh!!! Thanks Emmett.
Lol. Thanks
seems like these guys are a lot like Order Flow Analytics. If you don’t have the right L2 data, trading with order flow can be rough bro. this why I always like to get a free trial first. try b4 you buy. I hear cra cra stuff bout how bad NT can be messin up my flow while I try to make it rain with my luvly dough. all the best dudes. order flow to the max YO.
Christian Hoffman is indeed a fraud. I know because I worked there giving webinars about how to trade and use the Noft tools and then webinars about options. Also, the company still owes me $4,000 dollars from when I left in October 2017. Actually, they asked me leave. I think it was because I would not portray the Noft indicators as a way to “Get rich quick, own a mansion and a yacht and have to only work a few hours a day.” This is their marketing and it is absolutely false. The indicators are mostly copies of other indicators that have been around for at least 40 years. Many of his indicators and the so called “systems” were never backtested or even used by Noft staff.
Regarding the options, my webinars focussed on how to use different option strategies, the risks involved and how to make adjustments. That was not sexy enough for him. In two weeks he and the marketing department developed the Breaking News Option Strategy. There was no backtesting, no REAL trades ever done with the system and no positive results. The example trades he used were cherry picked from hundreds of trades that did not work. He simply put 4 or 5 rules together and said this is a system. He is a prgramner, a marketer and a fraud in how he represents the success of the indicators and the so called systems he has.
Not to terribly sure this will be honored…
I fell for the cheesey marketing ( https://www.noft-traders.com/order-flow-pro/ ) after a bad day trading. Was soon thereafter telephoned for an upsell call to the Institutional Edge System.
Wish I’d done due diligence prior to risking $3000, as getting some kind of a response to emails and phone calls requesting exercise of the “100% Ironclad Order Flow Pro Guarantee” have fell far from satisfactory from NOFT.
Purchased on January 5th, refund requested January 10th; so far, not a peep out of NOFT-Traders. Each passing day confirms my suspicion that these people are just another group of charlatans.
Stay far, far away from these fraudsters.
No sooner did I post this, did I then receive an email indicating that my refund request would be honored. Coincidence? Time will tell.
Update: Have not received the refund per the guarantee, and have filed a complaint with the NY AG.
A trading educator not backing his “money back guarantee?” Such a thing is NOT POSSIBLE!!! LOL.
First time across a savior review site in the midst of useless forex courses/cons educators OCEANS in a world we live in today!!! Love your work!!! Thumbssssssss!!!!
Emmet, you only give a 3 star out of 5 for honesty to NOFT, yet you state in the beginning of your article that the owner is entertaining and honest. Why only a 3 star when you consider someone being honest?
Wow I didn’t realize a community of people who suck at trading existed. So let me get this straight, this page is about schools for aspiring traders and the aspiring traders decide what does and doesn’t work? Lol this is like a little leaguer asking his coach for proof about batting technique. Why would the student judge the mentor?
Clearly orderflow is the most relevant style of trading in existence as there is nothing about it that is lagging. If you have 500 buy market orders on the offer and 200 market orders on the bid, maybe the odds are better than 50 percent the next tick will go up? SHOCKING
You idiots are part of the 95 percent who fail for a reason and it won’t change
Really? This is all you know about order flow:-))
haha dude what the fuck are you talking about, ever traded live?
The mission of this site is to reinforce the consumers’ right as students to vett the mentor as someone who actually can trade live perferably for a living. Especially as these so called mentors, gurus, educational providers sell an expensive monthly churn for a room averaging $300/month or hotdog combo packages costing int thousands with some in tens of thousands. But as this site has seenand exposed, 99.99% of these con artists could not as RobB would say, “trade their head out of a paper bag”. So they are proven to be just the same as 98% of retailers who lose in the markets, except they tried to deny and hide that they are trading losers by making money by fooling dupes in a churn income stream.
Hello Random,
If your gut says yes, please contact me.
Thanks,
Larry S.
ttrader26@ymail.com
Hey! Thanks for the review about NOFT. I’ve been around the trading community for quite some and have a verifiable 7 year track record compiled by one of the most reputable CPA firms in this industry. Why do I point this out? Because, you state that Larry Williams is authentic. You state that you check everyone out..BUT you didnt mention that Larry Williams was dinged by the CFTC for a fraudulent system and as a money manager lost most of it before shutting the program down. He and one of his well known contemporaries, Jake Bernstein also was censored for his lies. How come you missed that?
Hi Emmitt, thanks for being a great resource, e.g., googling ” [eBook] Follow the Money review”. Your comment “George Lane never once had a profitable year trading” is astonishing . So much so that a citation or knowing from whence came such published info would be quite helpful. Please
How do I reach Emmett by phone, skype or email?
Kai Whitney, John Reisinger, Troy Epperson, Christian Hoffman are not real traders as Epperson and Hoffman admitted (i.e. they do not trade their own system). The CFTC database has no record of their licensing.
As for their supply/demand software, it’s just another marketing scam, like all the rest – it does not work. Their 2-week guarantee ends before you realize their $5000 software does not work, but now they’ve got your money.
Better to go with one of the real order flow software providers that’s been around for awhile at $150/month to see if you can make it work.
What NOFT is doing is selling a concept that sounds good – supply and demand – but does not work. It sounds good and is easy to sell because it’s not indicator based trading. They sell it against indicator trading.
Have you seen their hard sell website? Looks like it was put together by a used car sales guy. Buy Now! Act Now! Steep Discounts (but only if you Act Now!). Right Now Only! Hey guy, what are you waiting for? Don’t you want to get rich??
If you really want it, they will discount down to $400… but that’d be $400 out the window, and you’d have to act now!
Emmett,
Any update on NOFT, have they been able to verify their system?
Going, going… gone. What an informative review! Emmett Moore, you deserve a prize for investigative journalism.
Thank you very much for this information. I just sat through a tedious 4 video sales talk and summarised it as well). Some aspects sounded very interesting (sofisticated). Agian thanks for the revelation!
Correction! I meant the RIGHT side. Please correct original post
The problem with most of these trainers and their videos is they’re trading or explaining from the center of the chart. Whereas I’m trying to trade from the left side of the chart.
There seems to be a number of prop shops that use order flow and DOM ladders as a means to trade profitably. One in particular called Futex in London UK. They have been around for a number of years and seem very reputable. There are plenty of others. They too run training courses and are very open about the fact 95% of order flow readers will fail. Its a skill, a talent that’s difficult to master, but for those that do, the rewards can be very satisfying. Order flow trading is how the pit traders succeeded in their day. In the book “hedge fund market wizards” there are guys there that wiped out their accounts several times whilst learning how to interpret order flow but once they ‘got it’ they never looked back. Nav Sarao was trained at futex and he made 40 million usd over three years. Spoofing or not (all institutions and HFT guys do the same) Point being he was trained in order flow and wouldnt have been offered a position at Futex had he not mastered the order flow reading skill. So can anyone explain why they think order flow trading is not possible or is even a scam. Sure i dont think an order flow indicator can be packaged to be profitable but learning to read the order using intuition and wait for setups to trade should be possible for those willing to learn what do you think?
If anyone here has the balls to show their track record using order flow, it is welcome or else like everyone is thinking, it’s just a scam. We have no interest in how much you make. It’s about performance and results and sharing that it’s potentially profitable in the long run with some edge involve.
Emmett,
Thanks a lot for posting what likely most people do not want to hear. Having been in the industry 20 plus years, personally designed over 200 fully automated systems and numerous custom indicators, it is indeed a field that very few people succeed in. It takes a lot of mental agility, discipline and a solid method to earn your keep actively trading. Keep everyone informed.
Well said MT.
I grew up bass fishing with my dad. We always had a great time.
We won many trophies over the those years. [my mom still have a few displayed in her sewing room.lol].
There were days when we couldn’t get a bite, My dad would say “water looks a little murky,we should try this”,or “the sky is overcast,we should try this”,or “a cold front is coming in,better try this”. Anyway,many times it worked,sometimes it didn’t.
When it didn’t, we always went back to a plastic worm. Why?
That is the lure we had the most confidence in. That confidence was there because we had the most success with. We had the most success with it because we knew that lure the best. We knew how it worked,how it was intended to work. Even “special” techniques to use at certain times.
I hope you see where I’m going with this.
Indicators,systems and strategies are all “fishing lures” designed to catch fish. Some are simple and easy to use while some are complicated and overly ridiculous.
Find a “lure” you have confidence in and learn it forwards and backwards.
I started trading in 2002,day trading options. Wow,that was tough. The thin markets had the local’s [market makers] advertise one thing then we I tried to get filled he would pull it away. Back and forth we would go. I blew that account.
Then a friend introduce me to Forex. OMG,the things I would like to say about the OTC market but don’t have the time and space. I would call it a scam but they tell you up front,albeit in small print, “your broker is counter party to your trades”. Why not play poker with your cards turned around for everyone to see.
Blew 2 accounts [after getting up over 60% in 4 weeks on the second one,only to see it disappear plus 10% of the equity in less the two weeks. Didn’t realize it at the time but I was put on “manual execution” after getting up] before I got it thru my thick scull.
I was so disgusted I walked away from the markets for over a year.
I came back because I knew people were making money and “what one man can do,another man can do”. This time my trading friend that I started with in 2002 had moved on to the futures market.
I put on my first futures trade in 2013 after SIM trading for a couple of years to find “my lure”. Bleed money for a while till I found a way to “work my lure”. That was Risk Management. The bleeding has stopped but the advancements are slow coming.
The point is ,trading is not complicated but it isn’t easy. Or else the huge potential would not be there.
Find your “lure”. Work it.
But use “safety precautions” when on the “water”.
As a fellow bass fisherman, I love this comment. So true.
Hi Emmett have you done a recent revisit of NOFT. Have they improved at all or is it same thing..Sell the sucker to all the suckers and make money that way rather than trade. Ninja Trader seems to back NOFT …doesn’t mean a lot but there is still there with them
Ok so orderflow…
It is quite broad in terms of what it can encompass? Like in previous comments, people have referenced jigsaw tools, orderflowanalytics etc. The way i look at it is that it comprises three main areas: 1) Orderflow Indicators, 2) orderflow reading direct , 3) orderflow tools.
Taking number 2) first > I regard this as pure orderflow reading if you like. You have an broker account (e.g Tradestation, IB whatever), you look at stocks,futures etc and you have the DOM/level2 box showing all orders in the market and you have time&Sales showing all the trades which are being transacted. Then you observe the DOM/Level2 alongside Time&Sales to guage what is happening with that stock…e.g. lots of people buying but the price is absorbing on the offer, you ‘think’ that this means the stock is inherently weak, so you go short. A simplistic example, but that is the sort of thing I mean.
This observing of the ‘tape’ is what used to go on in old days (if you believe everything you read about the good old days) and apparently is the “base principle” of what moves prices. Also a lot of it is ‘feel’ and ‘intuition’, hence the old adage of ‘watching the tape for hours and hours until you get a feel for what is happening”. So you can’t just learn some skills in week long course and dive into the market and read the tape like a pro.
Taking number 1)..in my opinion these indicators are circumventing the ‘taking time to read the tape’ process by supplying an indicator which does the job for you. And of course being what we are, we like the idea of not putting in the work and the indicator will do it for us. However, a couple of things immediately pop up. If reading orderflow is a discretionary skill, how has that been programmed into the indicator ? The people who have created the indicators I would imagine must have a history of reading the tape/orderflow and have developed the skills required to actually read the tape in the first place and then somehow converted this into a set of logical rules which an indicator needs so that it can be programmed. From my own personal experience, I read the tape (or try to..lol) but no two days are ever alike. Sometimes absorption on the bid takes you on the right road, sometimes it kicks your butt. Its only a part of the picture…so what is the overall market doing ? , earnings season ?..stock has gapped for no reason ? (i.e. what is the context in which you are reading the tape). Alongside this we have the alogos jumping in and out for pennies, we have dark pools (of what I have no idea…but the very term gives me nightmares..lol). I am hard-pressed to be convinced that indicators will handle all this.
Taking number 3)..These in my view take the raw tape and just convert the data into more ‘easy on the eye’ graphical view. So rather than look at streams of numbers going thru on the ticker, you can look at things like green and red power bars going up and down etc. Essentially it is the same thing, but I guess presenting it in such a way which makes it ‘easier’ to view and therefore by implication you can get up to speed quicker in terms of learning how to read the order-flow. Something to be said for this idea in my book. Because I would imagine the vendors are just saying , “ok we know the tape is hard to read and fathom out,but here are some tools which may make it easier for you”. So they won’t make you profitable on their own, but if you configure the tools to your liking then you have a better chance to ‘see’ what is going on. I still reckon though that you need to put in the hours to see if you can make these work for you, by which time of course you will have spent $. Also hard to review i would guess because of the subjective nature…one person may swear by a tool…another may just see flashing numbers and colors and think “no chance of $”.
Anyway…nothing specific on NOFT, but just my thoughts on orderflow in general. It will be interesting to see some further reviews on this area…And p.s. if you prove that this “tape reading” malarkey is also just another big scam, I am going to be so mad. I will give up…burn all my trading books..and just watch TV rather than trying to learn about trading..lol.
Lol tape reading, time in ssales, Dom trading isn’t a scam…
You can make money scalping it.. A lot of day traders just use ladders as you say.. Getting the feel for quick moves.
Again as you say its subjective and requires screen time to get intuitively trading it… Like every other form of trading really… Ie I know a good Elliot wave Forex 5m scalper lol
The risk with scalping for 3,4,5 ticks is you need size to make it worth while… And you’ll take a lot of 1,2 stops… So your win\lose ratio has to be over 70% IMO the learning curved is higher compared to chart trading
Hello Emmett, can you review order flow analytics? Their trading style looks attractive. From his daily video, he always show how to setup the trade and it show chart trade with live account.
This guy FT71 is probably the best on reading order flow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0np1Almp24
If you want to see him trading live register for this tomorrow event:
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4607544529089485570
Much respect for Larry Williams, but I had to laugh about his critique of someone selling indicators. How many indicators has he sold, how many books about indicators? Maybe he’s laughing up his sleeve at the educators following in his footsteps.
NFA fines Larry Williams for not reporting to potential clients that, while his personal account in a promotional 1987 contest was very profitable ( a gain of + $902,599 ), his managed accounts for clients lost substantial funds ( – $6,122,281 ). This constituted deceptive and unbalanced promotional material and disclosure statements. Details in William Gallacher’s book Winner Take All.
Footnote — In July 1988, the Larry Williams Financial Strategy Fund was launched, followed in March 1989 by the World Cup Championship Fund, managed by Larry Williams, Jake Bernstein and two others. The 1988 fund lost more than 50% of its clients’ equity in barely one year, as reported in the October 1989 issue of Futures magazine. The 1989 fund also lost more than half of its original equity by May 1990.
Larry has quite the history. Actually, I really like Larry. Want to know how I met Larry? When I was released from Federal prison, I had a probation officer. As luck would have it, Larry was convicted of tax dodging and was assigned the same probation officer that I had. We met in the waiting room of the probation office. Too funny. And pretty sad.
Larry does an annual forecast which is really good and a very entertaining read.
But yes, you are right, much is made about his World Cup performance….but little mention of the subsequent failures.
These are the competitors of TST and looks pretty okay at a first glace:
http://www.mescapitalgroup.com/
Unsettling to see MEScapital in cahoots with GTR. http://globaltraderoom.com/get-funded/
Very Unsettling.
What’s the problem with MES Capital since it is risk-free?
Emmett … why do you still have Topstep with a 4.8 rating?
Emmitt, Has your love affair with TopStep ended? Saw the light, did ya?
Ugg. Sometimes I get this stuff wrong. Really wrong.
Not to be off topic (is there a TopStep thread here?) but I have to admire the creativity of some of these vendors. TST is a prime example of seducing undercapitalized traders into paying for the right to loose fake money in SIM–the very thing they’ve probably been doing for years for FREE–with the carrot of getting a funded account that is so restrictive, you’d have better luck surviving a noose around your neck as the horse runs away under your ass. Emmett, you should, among other things, write an expose on TST now that you’ve seen the true light.
Any thoughts on these guys?
http://elitetradershub.com/
they using logix platform wondering if they are the same as NONKO
http://www.orderflows.com/special/index.html,
If it was not so sad I would say these testimonials are hilarious. With his $3K account after the 2nd week of trading he is making money hands over fist.
If I am ever elected president I will pass the truth in vendors selling trading crap law. This guy will be brought in front of the judge and when he can not produce any brokerage statements confirming his testimonials he will be shot on the spot.
Sorry, if too harsh, but I am so sick of these scum bag vendors and there BS testimonials. This crap is why 95% of day traders lose money.
I know, its amazing. What is crazy is the amount of people that fall for these petty hustles.
Of course, I have to laugh at myself because I am one of those people!
Those video testimonials look like bad acting trying to follow cues and script. It reminded me of the warrior trading 300k testimonial. Looks like there were no prior customers willing to do a positive real testimonial. Hopefully in the future, some of these testimonial actors will come out and admit they were plants. Or even the various site chatroom plants if they are not the vendors themselves. Hope “netpicks” is on the list for reviews.
This guy from Orderflows.com gets lucky for 3 days in row as the Dorman statements proves: http://www.orderflows.com/special/index.html
But still I want to see 30 days of trading not only 3.
3 days? Thats it? Though this is clever marketing for sure.
Actually are 4 days..as you can see at the end of the page I provided.
Agreed. Look at this joke of a testimonial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW39PjyedIU
Did you find this review helpful? Yes No
OMG that it the most hilarious fiverr gig review I have ever seen. “In only two weeks, trading only a single contact (he said contact instead of contract) I was able to earn thousand of dollars everyday before I go to work”. My god, these scammy trading vendors have no tact or sensibility. Does anyone actually believe this nonsense?
lol. I’ve seen that video before. It looks like outside of a fifty year old state college campus. And the guy’s “acting”..horrendous.
Thanks Emmett for review and Amarjit and other for good comments. You guys forgot to mention the real diamond “Astrology” trading with stars 🙂 heard it is 95% accurate. I am sick of using the lagging indicators and wish I know how to use Astrology which is based on 3000 years old Hindu Philosophy (stock market is too new for that) :). I wish Emmett should do a review on that in the near future.
I still think part of order flow (TPO/Volume profile) still have little edge over other lagging indicators, also VWAP and related tools are better choice as TAs. Rest all is garbage.
About Larry Williams.
NFA fines Larry Williams for not reporting to potential clients that, while his personal account in a promotional 1987 contest was very profitable ( a gain of + $902,599 ), his managed accounts for clients lost substantial funds ( – $6,122,281 ). This constituted deceptive and unbalanced promotional material and disclosure statements. Details in William Gallacher’s book Winner Take All.
Footnote — In July 1988, the Larry Williams Financial Strategy Fund was launched, followed in March 1989 by the World Cup Championship Fund, managed by Larry Williams, Jake Bernstein and two others. The 1988 fund lost more than 50% of its clients’ equity in barely one year, as reported in the October 1989 issue of Futures magazine. The 1989 fund also lost more than half of its original equity by May 1990.
All true. Larry is has definitely had a colorful career.
You know, he has had some really good years as well.
Maybe true about Larry Williams but only under-scores what you have said many times. Trading is ugly. No one makes money every day/week/year. The real problem for the retail guy that wants to learn to trade is that there is no one (?) out there who can trade successfully and is willing to teach what they do. Keep looking Emmett. We all hope that someday you will find that one rare jewel.
Thanks for your effort
Again,
Another great Job Emmett.
FOr anyone interested , Big Mikes Trading Forum (Futures IO), there is a COMPLETELY FREE Order Flow indicator that is part of the FREE GOM package.
Products are:
GOM Volume Ladder
Volume Ladder Metro Edition.
DO NOT BUY THESE OTHER PACKAGES, until you use and learn the free one.
You will find all these bullshit ORDER FLOW / Footprint packages nothing but customizations of the free one.
what is ‘orderflow’? .. it’s a buzz word.
order flow can be PA, isolators, DOM etc etc.. volume profile etc.
jigsaw (ladder/ DOM) trading is not a scam, it’s not the holy grail either.
TST, scam not a scam? I don’t think it’s a scam, i think it’s legit.
However they advertise to noobs that pay to demo trade..
but is a dumbass noob is willing to pay, then that’s better then actually waisting capital… so I wouldn’t call it a scam.
Sure they make up rules as they go, but hey, it’s their money, their rules.
Interesting write up, but I’m left wondering what you get for 4k? somethings are worth money.. ie access to people.. preferably real traders… but yeah, this guy sounds more like a web marketer then a trader.
Golden Zone Trading is another hot steam pile company offering order flow magic. They will be happy to show you their trading results on an excel spreadsheet. Good grief. Or you can watch a few cherry picked videos. This is getting to be ad nauseam.
In another update, Back to the Future Trading has the newly released Orion Indicator based on geo-thermal heating and cooling. I have to laugh at this because the Flux Time Cycle Markers with it’s 30% win isn’t good enough. Hey I was stupid enough to buy the BTTF crap in my days of ignorance. It now lays in the indicator grave yard.
What the heck, maybe I should market a hot new fad … the Green Scheme Indicator … based on renewable energy. You know, green colored website, green lines and dots, add it some green power gibberish, and then I can just rake in the green.
lol!!! Hilarious. I love it.
Looking at GZT, it’s “Now Only $4,995 USD” for their “navy seals” mastery trading program. And the usual canned “testimonials” page. http://goldenzonetrading.com/testimonials/
One day there will be a historical reference to the successor of boiler room scams. The “vendor scam” wild west of “teach yourself trading” snake oil of the first half of the 21st century. And all their tricks of sim screen swapping, canned testimonials, and limit order smoke. Only the HFT “robbers kings” made off with the millions and turned out fortunes. During the sad years of the worst depression since the great depression and how the government skewed the numbers for false hope.
GZT does have a live room where Sean trades in front of you using chart trader. So you can see his entries, targets, stops, etc. There are often “free trial” days so you can watch how Sean trades. I have done about 5-6 free trials with them. Some people like his style and some don’t. But at least you get a “preview” before putting any money down.
Hello.
No affiliation to NOFT, in fact never heard of them. But this orderflow angle is interesting.
A quick aside, the constant barrage of scammers and non-provable sellers is hope sapping.
Indicators can be be pretty much debunked by backtesting.
Orderlow could be going the same way.
Price Action ? ..perhaps that’s just another fad.
The big banks and hedge funds as you say are ruthless.
Does make you wonder if there are any people out there (I mean retail traders) who are actually making it in this game and competing against the big banks, hedge funds etc. Where are the Luke Skywalkers of trading who are doing well against the Empire ? Is there a David to the Goliath ?
Wouldn’t it be great if we could hear some stories (provable) from retail traders who are profitable. I don’t mean like they should reveal their methods or anything, but maybe it could inspire others to keep at it. I would imagine most readers here are looking for help in their endeavors. So obviously it helps when the scammers, frauds a etc are exposed so they don’t waste their hard earned money, but the rarity of successes is demoralizing.
As you mention in your article, indicators were the fad back in the day..so everyone piled on board. Then of course all indicators are “lagging”…price action is the way to go. Up jumps a plethora of price action rooms, educators. Then its “trading is an auction, so you need a sense of order flow to make it”…up jumps orderflow indicators, trading rooms etc. Alongside all this we have “trading is 90% psychology and only 10% method”…up jumps a plethora of mental mentors, train your mind to be a trader, tons and tons of psychology books etc etc etc.Then it’s “trading is like a business” it can’t be learnt in a couple of weeks in a room, you have to work at it…so prospective traders put more hard work in an attempt to “get it”. Then its “the best traders are discretionary, you can’t box trading into set systems of rules” ……so it doesn’t matter how hard you work..you still won’t get it. Round and round it goes.
Anyway, I was going to post something about the orderflow angle. But I’ll do it later when I have more time and feeling a bit more positive..lol
What a great comment. Wish you would write for the blog. You definitely “get it”.
Thanks for taking the time to write. Hope to read more of your comments in the future.
Emmett
Is it just me or is the VIPERT RADING SYTEMS logo in the background on all of this website?
Random paid ads that run outside of Emmett’s control over which ads are displayed. Annoying contrast to this blog’s mission. Those ads are not sponsored by TS.
Another good point about the latest fad. In the last seven years or so we’ve seen price action, footprint, volume profile, renko bars, and now orderflow. Just before that was “AdvancedGET” using Elliot wave 4 to 5 promoted by optionetics. Looking forward to more orderflow site reviews such as nobsdaytrading and jigsaw orderflow tools.
Jigsaw has a trading room. At the beginning they were publishing their results which they don’t anymore. The results were so hilarious (like one or 2 trades per day and +/- 1 tick profit/loss) that I wondered how in the sky is Jigsaw hoping to sell his product when potential customers are seeing those results. At some he point realized himself this and pulled off these results from the webpage.
Am working on a review now. Have gotten a lot of negative feedback. But at this time, I need to hear from the company. Am specifically looking for someone at that company that has verifiable results using their indicators.
Good to hear a review of jigsaw is coming. Thanks. Interestingly on investimonials it literally is 98% 5 star reviews out of 100 reviews. It would be interesting to see a product on investimonials which isn’t typically greater than 90% canned reviews for once. So many people seem to have good things to say about it. However $50/month was added on a few years ago I think and I wasn’t willing to go for it so I stuck with gomi’s tools, which btw is not free actually. You need have elite membership on BMT/futures.io access and download it.
Did I miss the Jigsaw review or has it not been done, and why?
Damn it. Emmett “lost it” on this review. Even TopStepTrader legit business took a blow. The indi “industry” would be looking vastly different today had Emmett been looking these pretty indicators under the hood years ago. It is a watershed here and now. I threw $97 at ninjacators a few years ago. Now it’s worth $0.97.
Thanks, Emmett.
I “lost it” sometime ago. Writing about all these trading hustlers has been a trip through financial purgatory. God’s way of making me pay restitution from my scammer days of the 1990’s.
so it is best to avoid ninjacators all together and just use the current indicators from any trading platforms?
Actually, if you really want to learn about trading, you need to think about it like a casino thinks about how to profit from its customers. You need a statistical edge. The vast majority of these indicator salesman is that they cannot provide any sort of proof that their indicators contain a statistical edge. What is a statistical edge? Contact Kevin Davey at KJ Trading Systems and purchase his book. This will put you on the path to profit.
nice, I’ll them out 🙂 I believe I saw a review about them on your site. I will also check out their book as well. Thanks for your opinion.
OrDer flow tools such as noft can give an edge there are back testable
Patterns that occur such as reversals,pullbacks to Hvn,etc..it’s not something you can learn in a few days..what order flow CAN show you is where volume occurs inside a bar how you interpret this is where screen time is needed..
Going to start putting a lot more focus on the “Order Flow” educators. I am hopeful that someone emerges, with a verifiable record of performance. Maybe the NOFT guys can cobble together some verifiable performance? Right now, its just interesting conversation.
Emmett, Have you seen their most recent 4 videos on 4/03/16. titled “A True Leading Indicator – Trading with Institutional Money Flow”. They now go by the name “Institutional Edge System”. The videos aggressively promote their system and the big bucks made by their traders. No evidence of such results as you requested. If you need the link for the videos please let me know. Thanks so much for all your reviews.
Hi Emmett,
Could you please send me the link
Thanks