to trade or sell ur own signals?

[jgerousis]

Many signal/system sellers face this question: If your signals/system are really as good as you claim, why do not you trade them yourself? Many sellers could not answer such question, or stay still not knowing what to say!

I am not going to defend system/signals sellers, because many if not most are scammers. However, there are real honest ones. Some of those real honest ones fail at some time. Some continue to win.

Now stop for a while. Think for a few seconds. Assume for some moments that you, as a trader, discovered a system which works very well; A system which is a winner; A system which accepts losses, but overall is a winner. A profitable system which makes 200 pips a month on average.

Now ask yourself a question. What is better, to trade this system yourself and never tell anyone about it? Or sell this system/signals for other desperate traders?

A good marketer can find 200 subscribers for his system at a rate of 100 USD per month. This will bring an income of 20,000USD per month for this seller. Let us be more pessimistic, suppose he could only bring 50 subscribers. Then his income would be 5,000 USD per month.

This income comes stress-free. He is sure about his systems, but there are some losing months, however his system makes 200 pips per month on average. (An average promising system.), but why put himself in stress. Maybe he is not disciplined enough to follow his own signals? Maybe his system needs a 25,000 USD account to pass the biggest drawdown, and he is not willing to put such an amount in trade.

So, my opinion on this matter is do not attack system/signals seller just for the sake of attacking. Do your own diligence. Beware, maybe 90% of signal sellers are either scammers or do not know what they are doing. But there are a few signal sellers out there who are honest and provide a good reliable service. As you read those lines, you yourself could have a good system, or you yourself could be a good trader, and all of you know that there are 5% of traders who are winners. So why should not one of those people have a signal provider service? There exist such people who provide it.

Finally, the only thing that could protect you from scams is doing your own diligence, read ratings at other sites, read the signals seller own forum, pose questions, and conclude the result.

[scorpion]

Excellent writing!

I've coded some profitable EAs for 3rd-parties that are being sold on the net, so I have nothing to attack system sellers. But often I find it skeptical when I see the systems advertised as "yield 700% a year", "1000 pips monthly every month", "make money guarantee", etc, but none could provide at least 6-month trading records, untouched, to backup their statements. Without actual records, I wonder how they came up with the number written in the ads.

What i'm saying is that honest sellers should prove it that their systems are making money as advertised, by posting their actual trading records to third-party site like collective2.com.

[jgerousis]

Scorpion, you are absolutely right. For me I would never believe in back tests at all. The system seller should provide live forward testing, using collective, fx auto or anything else.

Although Backtests could have been real, and the system seller was honest, however, the real test is running the system in a forward testing, for at least 6 months, so as to make sure that this system has not been curve fitted or tweaked to give the most profits in that previous period.

Regards
Yanni

[nicesurf]

Signal provider normally makes more money from selling their signal than make their own pips. He...he...he...

Nic

[awsl]

those signals can be good, provided you trade opposite of what they propose!
LOL

[jgerousis]

awsl, this is not the case always. Because sometimes, the signal provider would have 3 positive months and then another 2 negative, then 2 positive then 4 negative. What would you do in that case?

[bunglungchingdong]

Yes selling signals is a 0 risk income which of course is why there systems are not as good as they say from the begining because there is risk just like any other system that is free.
If they are selling it that means it "might" make a profit, hit and miss like all other, and is why they dont wish to risk there own money using it.
In reality if there system was so good like advertised in there false advertising they wouldnt need to bother selling it.
Thats 100% logical and there is no argument to it whatsoever, even made up lies do not answer that question "why are you selling it then".
Most ive found are nothing more than newbies that have found some thing to market and always lie that they are so experienced etc, alot have lost money trading there system and are trying to make it back

I think trading financial markets is hard enough without a bunch of sharks floating about trying to take more money off people from giving them false promises.