***PLEASE READ UPDATED REVIEW***

Trading Mission Review

Today’s review is a futures day trading room that I originally discovered back in August of 2014. At that time, the trading room had been in business for only 2.5 months and my initial screen recordings showed promise. However, the trading room had very little history, a rough looking homemade website, and the head trader was a guy from Puerto Rico. Now I have to admit, I have not met many people from Puerto Rico and maybe I carry around a few racial stereotypes of the average Puerto Rican. In truth, people with a heavy latin accent remind me of my gardener or maid. Please excuse my ignorance and subtle bigotry. Lets jump into the review.

Last September 2014 I contacted the room owner, Carlos Diaz and managed to get a free trial for a week. During the trial week, I recorded approximately 23 hours of live trading. The following week, I again contacted Carlos with a pen name and a new email address, I again requested a free week of the trading room. The following week, I recorded approximately 26 hours of live trading screen recordings. Since the trading room was new, I put the 49 hours of screen recording aside until January.

My Initial Assessment

Carlos reports his trades on a spreadsheet that his embedded on his website. Of course, we have seen many spreadsheets from many different trading room vendors, and have learned that they are mostly worthless, made up nonsense. So, my approach is to review the screen recordings and then match up the trades from the spreadsheet that the moderator posted. Specifically, I want to make sure that the moderator is not creating a “live” trading video from a recorded playback of a previous market session. This is an old trick where they have the market session recorded, they then execute trades over the recorded session, of course they know where the turn points will occur and hence produce amazing  trading results. The next thing I look for is to see if the trading room vendor is placing his trades directly on the chart or directly on a DOM. This gives me an idea of whether the moderator is posting trades clearly and concisely, where the rest of us can actually copy what is happening.

During the two week trial period, I live recorded and was able to clearly identify 14 trades in the Crude Oil contract. The gross profit for the crude oil trades was $1080. For the ES emini 500 contract I recorded 4 trades for a gross of -$325. The total net profit after commission for the two week period was $645.

During this two week trial period, I was actually quite impressed with how well the trades were clearly called  and executed on the charts. Another impressive aspect was how the trading day never lasted more than two hours. And I was receiving no pressure to purchase any subscriptions or trading products whatsoever. However, since the trading room had a very limited track record, I decided to come back a few months later and conduct a follow up review.

December 2014 – Continued Review

I returned to the Trading Mission trading room on December 1st, with the intention of having my assistant in the Philippines trade on a simulated account from December 1st through December 12, if she produced a positive result, then I would trade my live account from December 15 through December 19.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous about my assistant. Firstly, she is located in Cebu City, Phillippines and her english is not perfect. How would she perform on a simulator while the room moderator was speaking with a latin american accent? To my surprise, she executed each trade with perfection. With the ES she executed 5 trades for -$25, and with crude oil she executed 15 trades for a gross profit of $1750. After commission paid, my assistant netted $1625.

Trading LIVE

I was really impressed with how well my assistant performed on a simulator, and since I had over 100 hours of live trading recorded and verified, I was comfortable trading my live money account. However, during the week of  December 15 through December 19, I had to visit relatives in Idaho for the Christmas holiday. And so, I decided to let my 13 year old son, who lives at home with his mother, trade my live account on my behalf. I dont this very often, but I trust him (mostly), and he has his own account that he trades every morning before school.

Anyway, he traded Trading Mission with my live account and reported -$100 in the ES on 4 trades, and +$1060 on crude oil with 15 trades. A pretty good result. I gave my son half the profit, which of course he quickly squandered on Xbox games.

What I Like About Trading Mission

There are several things that I really like. The first, and most obvious is that I made money and put forth little effort. I also find it very impressive that my assistant was able to replicate the trades, considering that Carlos speaks with an accent. My teenager was also comfortable taking trades and he mentioned that it was super simple because Carlos trades directly off of the chart. With a chart present, and the open orders sitting on the chart, things are easy to understand. Carlos also is not frenetic about moving around profit targets and stop losses. The few exceptions would be when he decided to just close out a trade at the market. These market orders to close an open position also included the average slippage of one tick, which would be considered the norm.

Another thing I really like is that Carlos Diaz is a trader first and a marketer second, not even a close second. In fact, he is a terrible salesman. No fluff or nonsense with this guy. He just trades. I have seen and heard hundreds of these trading room moderators come and go, Carlos Diaz is a skilled trader and a not so skilled salesperson. He lets his trading do the talking, the results speak for themselves, and I can confirm that he definitely is pulling the trigger on his trades.

Another thing I believe that is quite remarkable is that he offers an interesting money back guarantee. Of course, there is no money back on any losing trades, but he does offer an unconditional money back guarantee. For whatever my opinion is worth, I do believe he would honor it. He has shown me nothing but honesty, reliability, aversion to risk, and a heart of compassion to attendees within the trading room.

Well thats it for today. Its nice to write about what I believe to be a good trader and a good person. Best of luck with your trading. And dont forget to leave your comments below.