ForexSpirit

Conor and Mary’s latest venture is Traders International, following the trades of Franz Shoar in the Alert room.

It costs $5k to join TI, whereupon they have a training course and mentorship chat room that can be used.  The e-mini S&P 500 market seems to be the main market focused on.  Five grand seems to be far too much for learning a new set of basic trade setups, especially since they don’t currently accurately mirror what Franz does in his Alert room.

This seems to be the main negative against this company: the signup fee is just too much for what you get; especially for someone with my current level of knowledge and experience.  I would be paying the $5k just to gain access to the Alert room.  The initial fee contains three months access to the Alert room, after which it is $400/month.

Franz’s trading method is based purely on catching counter trends.  He uses a lot of military type terminology for his setups.  He recommends having a $20k account to trade from, using a broker who offers $500 margin per lot during the day (positions are never held overnight).  This allows for 40 ‘bullets’ (lots), but only 20 will ever be used at once.

At the start of a trading day, two ‘bullseye’ ovals are placed on the chart, one above and the other below the opening price.  These seem to be equivalent with pivot points; the expectation is that the market will reverse once one of the bullseyes are hit.

A limit order is placed at the outer edge of the bullseye (market orders are never used) for one lot.  A profit objective of two full points is set if the order is filled.

If price continues into the bulleye, another one lot limit order is set at the center point of the bullseye.  The profit objective price is adjusted to a level that results in the same dollar profit from the two open lots as from the initial one lot aiming for two points.

If prices continue to trend then the next entry is with three lots (the ‘warfare’ entry), followed by five lots (’terminator’ entry), and finally the ‘terminator 2′ entry with 10 lots.  With each new entry, the profit objective is adjusted to go for just the profit that one lot over two points gives.

If you raise your account equity to one million dollars then Franz will give you the formula for his bullseye and other entry levels.

The high joining fee really does not appeal to me, especially not at this stage when all my HYIP and auto-surf programs seem to be imploding.  The focus on the e-mini S&P caught my interest though and resulted in me going back to my DiNapoli book, to see if it might be applicable to this and other e-mini markets.

My renewed focus on trading and my initial positive results trading my demo forex account made me feel that spending some money on a decent charting platform to investigate the e-mini market was justified.  I therefore bought Trade Navigator Gold with the Coast Trading Package (DiNapoli indicators) which cost $795.

Genesis change an initial $99 a month for real time data; $20 extra for forex data and $20 for CME e-mini data, and finally $45 a month for the D-levels (which also gives access to the DiNapoli forums).

Serveral days were spent reacquainting myself with TradeNav and the DiNapoli indicators.  I still think it is the best set of charts patterns and use of technical indicators that I have come across.  I think I will even continue to use the detrended oscillator to help identity extreme overbought and oversold conditions.

The majority of the chart patterns have a significant price thrust as part of their initial setup.  Since these type of thrust moves do not seem to happen all that frequently, it makes sense that multiple markets should be followed.  But which ones?  Something to be asked about on the DiNapoli forms.  Would the thrust scanner add-in for TradeNav make the process less time consuming?  Especially since the dollar value of a single pip move in most futures markets means that much lower time frames would need to be looked at, so as not to exceed risk parameters on a small equity account.

My gut feeling is that too much effort and time (for screen watching) is needed to make this a viable way to make profits for me.  The BWILC methodology does not require pin-point entries and exits, while the DiNapoli way does (where potentially short-time frame randomness is not as great in the futures make as compared to forex).  BWILC requires a focus on one market, versus needing to monitor multiple for DiNapoli.  The relational analysis component of BWILC requires paying attention to fundamental news releases (and any major well known technical based price levels), while DiNapoli is, at heart, purely technical.  Fundamental news items of the multiple markets could also be followed to gain a better understanding of them, but this obviously greatly increases the workload.

My initial enthusiasm of going back to DiNapoli and investigating other markets has been dampened.  I will continue to monitor the DiNapoli forums and post questions over some of these issues to see if there is a way to make it work.  I think, though, that I would be better served by maintaining my focus on EUR/USD, and to keep all current and future funds set to trade forex.

It is healthy and educational to evaluate alternate trading methods and markets, as it results in a greater depth of knowledge and experience which can only benefit the trading that I am currently doing.