Saturday, January 13, 2018

Review of Trade with Mr. X .com


I've been a member of www.tradewithmrx.com for several months now and I was one of his earliest followers on twitter.  I was very impressed by first the quality of his tweets and then his free youtube videos and I encouraged other traders to check them out.


I joined his paid site the second month it came out and I've gotten a ton of emails / twitter messages from traders asking me whether I thought it was worth the $200 a month.  For that reason, I thought it would be helpful to provide a review of the service and my experience with it.

Initial Skepticism  

Experienced traders are naturally suspicious of big claims.  We've all seen so many charlatans pop up at every bull market with bold claims.  Despite the quality of the videos and tweets, by nature, I'm skeptical of big claims and  displays of what I call "trader porn" e.g.  big houses and huge trades--  Tim Sykes, Jason Bond type characters.  That said, the initial videos were excellent and thought provoking so I brought them to the attention of some trader friends in the spring of last year-- you can see I expressed my skepticism in doing so back in April 2017:
"@[] did you watch the Mr. X videos I posted?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-54yBOmCMw He claims to have made a 100 Mill as a hedge fund manger . Obviously, internet claims are suspect, but it is fun to watch him work, he is in the "right stocks." He's repeatedly been saying he's 200% long right now with 100% in TSLA. He'll only be in 5 to 6 stocks at once."


As another trader recently asked for my opinion put it:

"Now I’ve been around the block for some time(35 years) as a trader and in the markets, so like @[], my radar goes off when I see an anonymous promoter in shades, with a black shirt with one too many buttons unbuttoned, producing YouTube videos from a glitzy Vegas condo and touting that he’s one of the 1% who has figured out the mysteries of the market.  Add to that the fact that he was reportedly a successful hedge fund trader and has a large personal bank roll, but now he is selling retail investment services.

...Having said that, I’ve watched his public You Tube videos and he seems earnest and open. The trading information and market observations described in the public videos seem congruent with my beliefs about and experience with price action and volume. So I have been intrigued to join his site, if just for a month or two, to have access to more of his hopefully in depth videos on supply and demand and institutional sponsorship, but I have been hesitant to do so."
After being a member of his site, I can honestly say that Mr. X. is the real deal. This is some of the best education a trader can get in the market.. and I say that as someone who spent a year at the CBOE and had formal training in trading.

I think a lot of the skepticism of Mr. X's is because some traders have a misimpression about what Mr. X was actually saying and incorrectly interpreting tweets as believing that Mr. X's was suggesting that he always right. Quite the contrary, Mr. X is wrong a lot and he will freely admit that. The best traders in the world are-- they are just better at realizing when they wrong and correct much quicker than the rest of us.  Mr. X cuts his losses  and reverses his mistakes very quickly.

But he Made So Much Sense

Despite my initial skepticism, Mr. X's approach was very logical and made sense to me.  I was probably 65% of the way there in my own thinking and I had developed setups that would put me in the same stocks and even with similar entry points.  However, I didn't really understand the market forces which caused my setups to work sometimes in a big ways and other times not at all.  Mr. X explained it perfectly with the concept of maturity.  You can see how it worked out very well in the trades he shared on his public twitter feed such as AAOI $60s to $100 in just a couple of weeks and why he sold at the highs at that time.

The Tradewith Mr. X Service

At $200 a month the price is higher than most services directed towards retail traders.  Mr. X has stated that the price is a filter to steer away less serious traders so that he would have the ability to give specific and personal feed back to his members.

 My initial thought was that I would join to check it out and figured that $200, at worst, was worth it to watch the 10 + hours of the crash course videos.

I'm pleased to say the service has exceeded my expectations in every way.

What you Get

In addition to the crash course videos there is a library of market cycles and historic winners.

Library:

In these sections, Mr. X explains how the evidence of supply and demand would have allowed us to buy, hold, and sell the stocks.  I personally do a ton of chart research in historical winning stocks and love the library.  X typically covers 1 or 2 stocks a week.

He also has an "Advance" selection where he covers other tactics such as how to identify and trade shakeouts, gaps and other material that is extremely helpful.

Watchlist

Every week Mr. X updates a watch list A and a watch list B.  In all honesty, most experienced growth oriented traders will have the many of the same stocks on their watchlist.  The big difference is how he analyzes the watch list and points out all the fine details of the stock where the danger points are, how to trade it, where it could pull back and still look normal.

Portfolio
Mr. X lists his positions as well as the % of his portfolio each one holds. After reading everything thing there is to read on trading and swing trading, this was a game changer how someone could hold some positions so large with such conviction. ... and then if it didn't act preciselylike it should cut it without a second of hesitation.

Trader Alerts
Mr. X has a private twitter feed which member get alerts when he enters or sells a position.  These alerts are timely as he will often indicate before the market is opening that he plans to buy XYZ stock at the open.  In other words, he is not front running an alert to move a stock like some other services do.  Moreover, the stocks that X is trading are not the type of stocks that our buying will move.  Rather they tend to have large floats with institutional support and not some low float garbage.

After he takes a trade, X will usually put up a video of the reasons why he took the trade and the fine points of the chart that most traders overlook.

Emails

Mr. X invites member questions about stocks and I have pretty regularly taken advantage of that invitation. I have always gotten prompt and detailed responses to my questions.

What it Tradewithmrx.com is and is Not

Trade with Mr. X is not a stock picking service where he runs some scans and calls out xzy stock is breaking out.  There are 100s of such services out there but I doubt any of those traders have much conviction in their trades.  I've seen X go up to 70% of his account in a single stock but explain in excruciating detail how he will manage the risk.  I recognize those types of numbers will cause most retail traders's heads to spin.  This not  a swing trading service.  I've seen him take position and cut it because for 10% gains the next day because of risk management and essentially toss the trade aside when other services are publicly bragging about nailing an 8% gain in the same stock.


Trade with Mr. X is an educational service that is aimed to teach us to be great traders.  The service is directed at getting 100% gains in stocks.  I knew that before I joined, what I did not realize was how much work goes into hitting the right entry.  I've seen Mr. X go after the same stock 5 or 6 times to get an entry right at the boiling point.  He did it with SQ-- which he took down nearly a 100% gain on a large position.One member had over 300% gains last year so its working.  I personally did about 25% in the two months I've been a member despite this being a pretty rocky period in the market.

Conclusion

I highly recommend the service.   Despite the higher than average price tag, it delivers more value than other services.  Tradewith Mr. X has improved my anywise and my eye for charts has gotten much better, I've improved my mental game, and I'm hitting the long ball.






Ode to the Home Run

This year I've made the following trading plan to guide me this year.

2018 resolutions: 
A. Possible outcomes for trades (1) small loss; (2) push; (3) huge winner. 

I can't be a home run hitter If I'm content hitting singles so I've taken the small win off the table I am perfectly willing to take a break even trade after I'm up 10 or even 20% on a stock to get a 50% or bigger gain.
B. No partial sales: If I'm in a huge winner, I'm not going to minimize it because I'm insecure in my trade.

Taking partial profits turns a home run into an average trade. The psychological comfort of "locking in" some profits is too costly. Every year only a few trades will account for the vast majority of the return. The other small wins and small losses cancel themselves out or are insignificant so I need to make sure that my big wins make as much money as possible.  
C. Build positions at pullbacks to moving averages.

I need to think differently than everyone else and not be positioned with the crowd. The crowd buys obvious breakouts.
D. Target 100% + moves.

A truly leading stock should be able to at least be able double from its base. If it can't do that, it is an also ran. I will be in leading stocks based on price and volume and I must give them a chance to work.

I recognize that there will be times when I may need to step aside in a stock to manage risk, I will view a re-entry as a continuation of the original position.

E. Aggressively Manage Risk.

There's no point to hit home runs if I give up runs on defense. A break even trade after being up 20% is acceptable. A .01 loss after being up 20% is not. I've had "wins" this year already that other traders would brag about, but I've taken the position off not to lock profit, but to manage risk. For example, not enough cushion for upcoming earnings.



Why I shifted my philosphy and trading plan

2017 was a successful year for me as I posted decent profits mostly from swing trading. I also realized that there were limitations to my approach that would keep me from being a great trader.

The approach I had used in 2017 was to identify strong stocks buy the breakouts using a fishhook setup or a slingshot (on the pullback and then swing those for gains on) Take profits on the way up.

For example, my most profitable trade (or series of trades, which combined according to my brokerage statements was a 108% return) was in AAOI:


I hit the entry perfectly (Fishhook entry) , added size and phased out. I got tons of "atta boys" from my trading friends which include some of the very best swing traders (guys that are asked to speak at national seminars).  Yes, I made quite a bit of money on this trade, and on the original  position I took at 63 as well that I took another $9 out of but I realized that in some ways this was a terrible approach  for several reasons.

The biggest mistake was I treated this as just another trade.  An AAOI type stock will come around only 4-5 times a year,  had I traded it better, this stock alone should have given me triple digits on the year $30 to 100 in a liquid and holdable stock. But I only had a normal position, which I minimized by selling on the way up with partial sales.

The second problem was I fell victim to my own psychological needs. At the time the position started running, I remember thinking that I was doing a great job because I was up over 10 points and I would usually start selling with a 10% gain and now I'm up 30%+.   This type of thinking is flawed. It was the fear of losing my paper gains that caused me to sell when there was no reason to.

I, like many traders, had (yes I'm using past tense) a problem holding our winners.  For me, it was this need to constantly hit winning trades.  We talk about our win rate, average win, average loss, % of R.  I used to track that shit religiously.  I would sell a stock (like AAOI and some others) simply because the numbers would look really good on my spreadsheet.

You know what looked good on my spreadsheet? A $7 point gain like this:


But the spreadsheet would not reflect how terrible of a trade my $7 point win in TREE was:


Nonetheless, many traders talk about how important it is to hit singles.  Bullshit!

Every baseball fan know that Giancarlo Stanton was the home run champ with 59 homers but who hit the most singles? --  Crickets.  That's because no one gives a shit.  It's the long ball that makes legends

So while the singles hitters are going keep celebrating their "wins",  I'm swinging for the fences this year. I'll foul off dozens of pitches in the process, and I won't care.  My defense will be excellent and I'm going to continue crush the damn ball when I get my pitch.. 

I'll let the other guys count their singles, this year I'm tracking only my home runs. 

Here's number 1:
I recognize this is a gambling type stock but wow did I like that chart. I sold through the $30 break for a big gain.


Good speculation,

Scot1and