Rob Booker Training

Simon

There is a reason why I am making these statements
Rob Booker has sold snake oil (which is a decent way of saying that he sold us something that does not work)
He taught more than 100 people that I am aware of …and he has been doing the same always
Rob Booker’s methods do not work…so simple.

If someone can prove that his method works !!! I shall believe not words but numbers

I am in regular contact with others of his group. and the result is…
people are being nice about it and not saying the obvious…

Rob (William) Booker is a snake oil salesman

There is nothing to like or dislike about Rob (William) Booker in the sense Rob is very engaging…very good to talk to and is a charmer. The question is “Does his methods work ?” No…and the problem is simple…Rob knows his methods do not work.

I repeat…there is Nothing personal about this.
Rob Booker has made more than half a million dollars in one year pushing Junk

I think part of the problem is that almost anyone with a few year of experience of backtesting could give you 5 methods that work(ed), and they could probably give you a decent rationalisation as to why the method is supposed to work. The method might even work for a while in the future.

If at some point the systems that Rob’s provided you with dont work as expected, then I’d highly reccommend reading 2 books to help put thing in perspective. Nassim Talab’s book, titled fooled by randomness, and David Aaronsons evidence based technical analysis.

If you are interested in oscillator divergence, then check out the articles on the trading naked website, the material there is light years ahead of anything Rob’s offering, and its completely free.

Hello to all!
I see that there is a heating debate about Rob and his methods, so I decided to give my honest review of what I have learned in my 3 years with him.

I started his first course called “Arizona rules”, and I was really enjoying it, even though it was a webinar based course, but it was advertised as a one-on-one course and it was a reason for me to be suspicious. But Rob wasn’t the reason why I learned so much, it was one of his assistants Trifanny Hammond who was answering all of my emails and answering all of my questions, looking at my backesting results. She separated from Rob, and month later I have found out that “Rob has moved from his AZ rules”, and that he is starting to trade something new, and it was the Pivot point method.
I have been with him for about six months, and I asked him a question what about that “support as long as you need it” which was advertised when I signed in for a course. I got the answer from one of his new assistants, that it is the basically the same form of trading, whether it is the moving average or the Pivot involved. So I asked him about “no expiration” help on the course, and for the fact that Rob hasn’t looked at any of my backtesting results. I was asked to submit my backtesting, and I got an email from Rob himself, and his answer was something like " Why are you not adding to your positions? The problem with most traders is that they are constantly looking out for some new trading technique, and they disregard their current results." That made some sense in a form that I am doing something right, but then again, my backtesting results are showing that I am making average 1-2% monthly on my trading, and it sounded (and it still is sounding) really poor.

And as a extra bonus I was granted the access to his new site which contained all of his new methods. So I switched to his new methodology, abandoning what I have done so far, only to find what some of you are already figured out. In a certain conditions his methods work perfectly, and without too much problems I had substantial number of winners, but then something had changed and I was stacking losers, which were bigger then my winners, so I was again at the beginning.
So I signed for his upcoming course for Pivot trading (beginning of the 2010), and the pattern repeated again.
We had a team leader which was responsible for looking at our backtesting results, and Rob was only teaching the webinars, so I had no feedback from him, and yes we are given the first part of the 2008 for testing, on which I managed to get awesome results. But my enthusiasm has quickly replaced by a stream of losing trades later on that year. So, yes, I do think that we are intentionally given a really good period for testing. His answer was that this is “only to get familiar with the system”, and that it is up to us to figure out how we can get out of the losers quicker. We are being given with a set of rules for managing the trade, and I personally could not find the balance between staying in the trade long enough to maximize profit, and getting out.
I ended either with a trade exited too early for a small profit, and just to watch the trade go in my favor , or a loser which was bigger then my small win…
I have made several mistakes that led my to lose 75% of my account on that method. In an interest to be honest, I could have spent more time backtesting, and I could avoid some of my losers. I had more than a 1000 trades backtested till then I and though that I was ready. That was not Rob’s mistake, I am taking the blame for it.
So overall, what I think of my courses with him?
I will never sign in again for another course with him. I get an email from him time to time about his latest and newest strategies, and I disregard it. Last email was stated" I will never teach this course again", and it was designed to appeal to our “fear of missing out”, and he never stated in his mail “Hurry up, or sign now”, but I think that the message was obvious.
Some of us formed the trading group, and we started to chat once a day, but that soon fell apart, after some losses. I stayed in contact with one member, and I have doubled my efforts in trying to find out on what works and what is not working, and I heavily modified the original rules. I am backtesting every day, and looks like I am starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
My last three moths were positive, and I had really good results, making over 20% this June( and I am still not taking all of the triggered setups) , and if this trend continues this will be all that I need.
I tried to be objective as I could, and I will be glad if someone can benefit from this review…
Best regards

Coffeeguy24

I am happy that you figured out the obvious.

Rob’s method is very simple. He develops a system and finds a year where it works and tells people to test that particular year. Most of his students are people with jobs and hence by the time the course ends…they have been unable to test more than one year and in particular that year

It is dis-honest for Rob to say…that the student has to figure out how and when to cut his losses or that the student has to customize the method…

This is not a subway sandwitch where people have to customize the sandwitch.

Rob intentionally and knowingly sells you stuff that he knows very well does not work.

It is as plain and simple as this.

I can’t help but give my comments on this thread… I have’nt attended any of the seminars or course of Rob Booker, but certainly I knew him because of his books and his previous speaking engagement in FXstreet conference. I actually read good reviews about him so I was really stunned about this thread.

I am not a newbie trader, been trading for years now… I believed that one of the most important things you need to do in developing your trading systems is back testing… This is to check the profitability and the winning and loosing ratio of your system. In doing so, you must always use the most current data in back testing, not just for the last 6 months but at least the last 12 months period till date.

I was really surprised to learn that Rob Booker is selling a system and asked his students to back test it using a data years behind… If this is true, then I believed this is not right (for the back testing part)…

Any professional trader with number of years of experience in the market knows very well that the market condition changes from time to time, and that your trading system might not work all the time, so you need to fine tune it from time to time as well by tweaking some of the parameters.

The right way to do when it comes to back testing a certain system is to use the most recent data available… Printing the most recent data is so easy to do in any platform and can be done in minutes. So I do not see a very good reason why someone would use old data to test a system.

While it is true that we are responsible for our loses, I do not fully buy this… If you are trading on your own, then it is all your responsibilty. But if you seek the help of so called professional trader to guide you in the right direction, paid him reasonably for his/her service then applied all his/her teachings, then at the end you have more loses than winnings then something is wrong. Because again the main reason you asked for help is to become better and not to be burried deeper.

In buying a product or service, it is normal that some will not be very happy about it, but this does not necessarily reflects the over all outcome. As a responsible mentor or trader, you should know the statistics of the result of your teachings, and if it does not look good, means more of those you mentored loose moeny than those actually making money, then something is not right again.

Well guys, this is a general comment and my personal opinions on how a professional traders and mentors should behave if they are selling themselves to the public… Have a great trading…

a) Rob William Booker knows very well that his method (he calls it Monday accelerator) works provided market is ranging.
I realised this after losing a lot and a lot of money…other people in the group just gave up (after losing a lot too)

There was a very smart lady who said…since I am in initial stages she played very very low…she lost or won 1 -3 dollars at a time.
Her analysis was …if it works…it should work even if your lot size is .1 K or 1 K or 100 K size.
So she tried for 3 months and then quit…so she paid $2000 for the course and in trading lost approx 100 dollars
whereas rest of the group (approx 60 people) lost varying amounts from 1000 dollars to 10000 dollars

Question is very simple…Rob Booker teaches a method which he very well knows does not work…!!!

I am only vaguely acquainted with Rob Booker. A long time ago when I was still new to this, I watched one of his presentations on the recommendation of a colleague. He struck me egotistical and arrogant and not the type of mentor I was looking for.

This week I got a email from Tim Bourquin and one of his videos was an interview with Rob Booker talking about the outlook for the Euro. At about the 1:30 mark of the video he is talking about quantitative easing by the Fed. Rob stated that he wrote a letter to Ben Bernanke about this situation and he didn’t get a reply. No kidding, like Ben has time for some pompous self important currency trader / author. That guy is a joke.

Key Misconceptions About Euro Debt - MoneyShow.com

Rob William Booker Keeps changing and re-inventing his methods.
He calls them different names all of them catchy and witty.
Monday Accelerator,
Bossilator,

The methods he teaches are all based on a simple thing.
He finds a period of one year where that particular method works for a particular currency
and teaches you that method.

However…whatever method he teaches…this does not work regularly…it always loses money !!!
He knows that his methods do not work…however he still teaches them and people all lose money with his teachings/techniques…so simple…

As a part time trader for years, I found Rob Booker’s comments in “Millionaire Traders” quite entertaining. He seems to share a lot, seems to be very honest about his trading approach.

First, my own experience as a Malaysian is that over the last 15yrs, I have seen Forex guru holding seminars time and again in KL, and none of them are profitable strategies taught. Some gurus from US, Europe, Aus, HK, China, Sg, Taiwan… u name it.

So my conclusion is, good traders will not hold seminar, and those that hold seminars are not good traders. There’s exception i’m sure, but I just hv not seen one. I will be glad to meet a good seminar guru really.

Its good to learn from some guru, and as a newbie, it gave us the leap of faith to go into the trading world. From there, we are on our own.

A lot of my friends ask me to share my trading ideas. I think good traders dont share much, and since i Share a bit, i’m not that good a trader afterall. But if anyone is keen, u can look out my name “Alex Siew” and see if u can find my blog.

I dont want to talk about myself, but just wanna comment on the frustrations of newbies. I felt that way once b4, felt cheated. Later on, i thanked those guru, for giving me the faith to enter the trading arena. Without their lies and false confidence, I would not have dared to even attempt trading.

= ) Realistically sharing … I think retail trading is for part time. No one should trade full time, unless they really hv enough money to survive the bad days. I view myself as a disciplined gambler / speculator. Thats all.

To Alex Siew,

You are perfectly right if you are talking about things in general.

I am talking spefically about Rob William Booker and only about him in particular.
He has many methods that he teaches.
He taught me Monday accelerator - which is a calculated method like a currency Robot which works only in a Ranging market.
He taught me 2 other methods which also do not work.
I attended a batch of 30 people - he also made a group of three of our batches.
All people (more than 100 students) made losses some of them made more than 10K losses
he charged $2K for each of his students
He knew that his methods do not work…
This to me is a person who knowingly targets newbies who do not know anything and intentionally teaches them things that do not work and finally everyone loses money except Rob William Booker.

Yes, i understand ur feelings. We experienced similar situation back in Malaysia, in 2005, when a self acclaimed guru named Clement Chiang from Sg came to KL and took USD$2K from 100 of us, and later all lost money. Then we are left in bitterness, and with no strategies that actually work. 99% gave up after a while.

So, my question to u is, how do u go on from here? Will you quit? Or will you research and try to create yourown strategy that works?

If u r keen to know what I did back then, i can tell u. I met up with 2 others who also lost money. We discussed on possible strategies that we have in mind, that may work. Then we try the strategies on demo, and we write down our strategies, and we try to evaluate each other’s strategy. if its a good one, all 3 of us will follow. That goes on for about 1yr, where among 3 of us, 1 quit. Surprisingly, the guy who quit was the one who has the most money. He’s a multi millionaire, just impatient to formulate strategy and keep testing it. He always test out new strategies with real money, and in the end when he quit, he lost about USD$100K. He wants an instant solution, and there’s none in the market that time.

Left 2. Its me, and another young chap from China who’s working in Sg that time. We didnt hv much real money to test on, and so we work full time job, and do part time strategy testing with a small real money a/c.

another 2yrs past, and the young Chinese chap quit. He got married, and his wife demands he get a “real job”.

Left 1. Thats me. I asked for a sponsor to sponsor my research, and I work for this guy full time, just to test strategies. I promised him I will try my best to come out with a good trading system within 1 yr. He paid me USD$1K per mth, and that kept me alive. He got me an office, and I stayed in the office for 1yr testing strategies 24/7.

1/6/2008 was when my 1st auto trading system was completed. We test run it with a small a/c of USD$10K.the system worked.

1/1/2009, we run the a/c with USD$20K. The system is still running live until today. If u r keen on the performance of that system, its in my blog, and my website.

Besides running auto system, I also trade manually, with a manual strategy that I created, and I post my manual trades on my blog for my friends to refer to and get some idea for their own trading. I dont hold any seminar, and i dont do any trade coaching. I think all traders should do their own homework and create their own strategies that best fit themselves.

Well, thats pretty much what i DID AFTER I GOT CHEATED BY A SEMINAR GURU. How about u? What will u do? = )

thank you for this info

where can I get this book from

hi, i have gone through lot of articles writtern by Mr. Rob booker. i sincierly recemending hid stuff to follow. let us stop estimating the person’s personality, lets follow the good things even from bad people.
recently Mr, rob article on Money management was opened my eyes and some what im in right track of earnings on forex.

thanks,
rajendra

This thread ended a long time ago. However I’d like to add my opinion.

  1. The statement that someone should work out where they will exit / stop-loss / let it ride is valid in my opinion. Everyone has a different risk appetite. However the fact of the matter is that this should be backtested. Everyone here no doubt has seen trades that would have been profitable stopped out. If people take a system, then manually interject and close trades out they need to accept the results will be different to backtesting.

  2. Using a robot / taking emotion out of it is a good thing, and as I understand it Rob recommends that. I don’t think Rob is alone in this. Anyone who has read Jack Schwager’s tome, “Technical Analysis of Futures Markets” would be familiar with this. As a side note, I’ve not heard of anyone criticising Schwager despite the fact he openly admits he doesn’t have the discipline to trade with his own money.

  3. The Subway sandwich analogy is silly. You aren’t risking 1k/10k/100k+ when you decide what ingredients you’ll eat on your sandwich. You are risking that when you trade. Are you willing to accept a large drawdown to achieve a portfolio beta > 1? Are you willing to watch trades that could have been more profitable go by when you exit at a profit target? None of this emotion is involved with ordering subway.

Market conditions change. We all know that. Markets trend strongly and markets range. Some systems favour each / or. Happy to be pointed towards a system that handles both.

In fairness to Rob, can he be held accountable if market conditions change? If you are an educator, lecturing for years this will happen, no? Would I be ****ty if this happened to me? Absolutely!

NewbieFOREXpips, you seem particularly angry at Rob. Hopefully 6 years later you’ve let it go. You’ve progressively revealed more and more information as the conversation went on. This leads me to think you are more involved than perhaps you suggest. That said, apologies if I’m incorrect - this is just the impression given. I can understand that when you had hopes and dreams of making great profits, it can be very disappointing to lose. I feel sorry for you, for what ever happened.

I don’t know Rob personally. I use one of his robots though, “Finch”. Will it work out in the long run? No guarantees however I’m pretty happy with how it’s working at the moment. I’ve linked my portfolio performance below. Noting:
a) Yes, it’s very small
b) Yes, it had a large drawdown early, take a look at how many pairs I chose to trade with an initial $200 deposit :slight_smile:
c) Do I think it will rake money in for the rest of my life, consistently? No. Markets change.

Most importantly, I offer this:

[B]How do we assess success for FOREX training[/B]

I’m Catholic. Many people criticise Catholicism by pointing to people who have done wrong. This is the incorrect standard to assess success. Let me explain why:

Whether Christian commits a crime, sin etc is not a measure of success for Christianity. You need to compare how they would have been if they were not a Christian. It’s about making people better people than they otherwise would have been, not perfect.

Shouldn’t we measure trading training along the same lines. It’s been loosely touched on, that a week training course won’t make you the world’s most profitable FOREX trader. I was trained as an Air Force pilot. It took over a year. Much of that was based around safety. Should a 1 week course in FOREX trading make your capital safe? No. You’re risking it.

Someone also mentioned they were disappointed with 1-2% a month. Take that. 2% a month is a fantastic return if you can get it compared to many traditional options. Of course the risk/return ratio may be way out depending on how you are achieving that.

Thanks for hearing me out on this old thread. Here is how I’m travelling. Wish me luck.

https://www.myfxbook.com/members/ScottMarshall/trojan61/1925113

Wish me luck :slight_smile:

Regards,
Scott

2 Likes

@Trojan61 Hey I’m wondering if you’re still trading the finch, I have a couple questions, please reply back when you can!

Hi,

Just started trading again. Withdrew the money before Christmas as I needed it when I moved house. Starting small again.

@Trojan61 would you say it’s something worth buying or?

Not sure how much it costs. $200 or something like that? Yeah I’d buy it again. Just remember simple mistakes cost. Check out my fxbook and you’ll see where I incorrectly and prematurely increased trade sizes. A few withdrawals too though.

Well said and excellent perspective.