Comparing Christos Avatar Trading with Other Trading Workshops

Since I have attended the Christos Avatar Trading (CAT) VIP room in the spring of 2011, I have attended other trainings and purchased other trading systems for futures contracts and here is a quick summary of my findings.

Day trading and in particular Futures trading is hard and very risky.  The hardest part about it is not learning a system for trading since there are plenty of them out there that are very simple and many are for free.  Most trading books document a number of systems that are profitable. 

The hardest part about day trading is getting in the right frame of mine.  I have learned many systems now and I know that all of them are profitable to a certain degree.  However, the hardest part has been controlling my emotions and staying in a state that allows me to take a trade when I need to and make profits when I can.  I have come a very long way over the past year after going through some painful times of losing money.  I am happy to report that my losses have gotten smaller by the month, but I am still not profitable.  However, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and two of the things that have helped me greatly to get here is the book “Trading in the Zone” and doing some energetic healing by a number of energy healers out there.

With that in mind, I continue to feel that when comparing the CAT training to others out there, I find that CAT does not give you much in terms of system, mental, emotional, or spiritual preparation.  Toby’s style (the founder of CAT) of coaching leaves a lot to be desired. He is not responsive and illusive in his interaction.  He also misguides people by telling how easy it is to make money and lures them into his class with all these YouTube videos of him making successful trades. Notice that he never loses money!

I found a number of other trainers to be much more effective and responsive that CAT and explain things clearly and guide you one step at a time. They are also very realistic in expectations and show you the good and the bad in their trading and open the cards for you to see.

The CAT trading system that I learned is the Trading Authority Spitfire system, and I believe that system has merits, but Toby did not know how to teach it and hardly answered questions straight forward.  However, the folks at the Trading Authority do a good job of answering questions and training you on the system and you don’t need CAT to be in the middle to purchase the Trading Authority system.

So, I still would advice people to look around for better training and coaching and regardless where you go be prepared for a tough road ahead. Very few people are born good traders and the majority will have to lose a lot of money before becoming profitable, and I know I have.

Latest Christos Avatar Trading Youtube Videos

Toby Alexander posted today on Youtube 10 trades under the title "Trading with Your Ascended Master Self" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=087tlYnrjuE&feature=related) as part of a marketing campaign to sell either online coaching or workshops. Although it is difficult to verify if these are ten consecutive trades since there where large time gaps between many of them and Toby is trading only 1 contract instead of his usual 8 contracts (possibly to allow for multiple trials with minimal loss), I will give Toby the benefit of the doubt that he got lucky this time with 10 consecutive winners (with a 75% probably of winning in each trade, which is pretty high as is, the odds of getting 10 consecutive winners is 5 out 100). With that in mind, here are my comments on these marketing videos and what's behind them.

Toby claims that he can teach you how to get in touch with you higher self so that you can ask your higher self whether or not to enter a trade.  Toby does not seem to follow a consistent trading system here although he is showing the indicators from the "TradingAuthority.com".  In the online class that I took with Toby, he insisted that we must follow a system and he was teaching us the Trading Authority system which we had to buy through him for $1,500.  Why is he moving away from that? In fact, many of the trades he took are going against the trend which is a no-no in the Trading Authority system.  Is this a sign that Toby could not teach this system to others? Does he really have a system or is he just following his intuition plus momentum while he is trading?

In the class I took with Toby he tried to teach us how to get in touch with our higher self so we can better predict the outcome of a trade, and we just did not get it! In fact, one of the students, named Alex, has been with Toby for over a year, was continuing to make mistakes and had fears entering trades.

What does “being in touch with your higher self” mean? Toby claims that it is an energetic connection with another dimension of your being that is much wiser and more knowledgeable. Although I believe that our deep being is a more intelligent and intuitive being, I don't believe it is a higher dimension of our self, but rather it is our true being without all the noise of emotions and thoughts in our bodies and heads.  Toby's method for reaching this higher self is following some protocols with sounds and images, but they do not work - at least not for me and for the many students whom left comments reflecting their lack of progress.

The only way we can get in touch with our higher self is to heal our pain and rid ourselves from the emotions and thoughts that block us from being present – being in the now.  Although Toby seems to be able to be present while trading, based on my experience and observations in the VIP room, he does not know how to teach you to do the same.

Should you Re-Enter a Trade using the SpitFire Model?

One of the inconsistencies that I found in the mentoring I received by Toby Alexander in the Christos Avatar Trading VIP Room is his stance on whether or not to re-enter a trade in the Spitfire system.

A brief background, the Spitfire system provides you with a visual signal to enter a trade when a trend changes direction (uptrend to downtrend, or downtrend to uptrend).   Also, if you get stopped out for any reason during a trade and the trend direction does not change, you may receive other signals to enter a trade in that same trend direction.  These signals are the TraderTrend bars.

As you may guess when you enter a trade in the middle of a trend your probably of a win for that trend is lower than if you enter the trade at the beginning of a trend.  So, the win/loss ratio will be lower.  However, this should not mean that you don’t enter the trend, since some of these trends continue for a long time and provide a big profit opportunity.  It is a matter of trading style and rules.

During the beginning of the Christos Avatar Trading VIP room webinars, I asked Toby about re-entry rules and he said that you can take these re-entry signals.  When I created my trading plan I wanted to include a re-entry criteria and Toby told me that it has a low expectancy and that he does NOT use re-entry rules in his trading, so I did not either.  However, in one of his YouTube postings that he shared with us in the VIP room tilted “Live 6E Trade May 9, 2011 $2600 Profit” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7jeGS7pVNk) he clearly entered a trade using the re-entry rules.   When I asked him about it and how that fits in his trading plans, he ignored my question.

Based on my experience and in my opinion, whether or not you take the re-entry signals depends on many factors and including your exit criteria, your trading style, and the chart at the time the signal is provided.  If you have other insights into this, please share them.

A 3-to-1 Win/Loss Ratio?

One of the big sales pitches of the Christos Avatar Trading VIP program is that Toby Alexander will show you a system of trading that will give you a 3-to-1 win/loss ratio.  Toby never shared such a trading plan with the room attendees, at least not explicitly, and every time I pressed him to give me guidance on trading rules with such high expectancy, he never answers my question and if he does he would tell me that I need to create my own trading plan and back test it.  Although I agree that I eventually need to do that, I believe that mentors are suppose to save their clients time by guiding them and directing them in quickly finding such trading rules – which the CAT program promised in its marketing webinars.

So with regards to such trading rules, I have yet to back test all possible combinations of entry and exit criteria on the four instruments that Toby trades mostly (namely, the NQ, ES, 6E, and 6B), so I don’t know for sure if there are such trading rules with such high win/loss ratio. However, I will share here what I found and if you have experiences yourself please share them as well.

By using the SpitFire system I was able back test a trading plan that has an 0.8/1 win/loss ratio. This plan is simple, enter on a yellow dot and supporting TraderTrend bar, and exit when a price structure is broken.  I looked at some of the back testing done by others, and found the highest profitable ratio to be 2-to-1 win/loss ratio if you follow a scalping model (enter on yellow dot and supporting trader trend bar, set a target of 2 points and stop of 2 points).   If you are patient then this system may work well, but don’t take my word for it since I was not the one who back tested it, but do you own back testing on it.

One thing to remember is that the profits for this system on any trade is very limited since you have a fixed target, and most trading coaches will tell you that you need to make your profits run (make the most of your winning trades) for you to be a successful trader, and this system does not allow you to do that.  One of things you can do is trade more than one contract and have the first contract with a fixed profit target and let your other contracts go further, which comes with disadvantage that you will be stopped out more often on these other contracts and lose money on them, and thus reducing your win/loss ratio.

How did you like the Trading Authority Spitfire System?

The Trading Authority develops a number of trading systems that provide repeatable visual indicators for traders to take trading signals and exists.  One of the systems they have is the Spitfire system which is meant for day traders and it provides very clear entry and re-entry criteria in trades and a number of potential exist criteria.  From doing back testing on some of the entry and exist criteria I found the system to have a positive expectancy (i.e., on the long run you will make money if you are consistence and follow the rules).  The key as in any other trading system is to follow your rules and be consistent.

I personally found that introducing me to this system is the best value that I received from the Christos Avatar Trading (CAT). CAT is a reseller of the Trading Authority’s Spitfire system and provides a discount on it.  However, you don’t need to attend the Christos Avatar Trading room to purchase this system or get training on it.  You can buy it either through the Christos Avatar Trading website without the VIP room or find it through other resellers or direction from TheTradingAuthority.com website.  I found that the free training videos the Trading Authority provides on their website are excellent.  I suggest that you look into them and possible download their free trial for the system.

Here is an example chart showing a potential trade using the ES mini 3000 Chart that you could have taken using the Spitfire system that is very profitable.  This trade follows simple rules (sell short when you have a yellow dot and a red TraderTrend bar, and exit when the price goes above the Fibonacci line by 0.25 points).  Note that this is just an example trade, and you WILL have many trades that are not-profitable, so use with caution.



Is Christos Avatar Trading a Scam?

Not exactly!  Toby Alexander, the founder of Christos Avatar Trading is an entrepreneur who found a way to make money in a niche market and he jumped on the opportunity to do so.  The CAT VIP Room and mentorship does provide some value and I believe, if Toby has the ability to help the CAT program attendees he probably will; however, based on my own experience being a member of the VIP room for 2 months as well as my experience attending numerous trading seminars and training, what the Christos Avatar Trading VIP Room and Mentoring program offers is not worth the money that he demands for it.  This is for a number of reasons including: (1) The program did not deliver on everything it promised; (2) I consider Toby Alexander not to be an effective trainer and coach; and (3) Toby often sends mixed messages about trading rules that creates confusion among the VIP members.

One of the main things for me that Toby Alexander promised in his free marketing webinars for this program is online trading demonstrations.  During the 8 weeks I was in the program, there was only one time that Toby entered a trade online and it was mainly to demonstrate the use of Ninja Trader, and that trade was a loss.  He posted about 5 recordings for online trades that show how much money he made on these trades. I found these recordings to be mainly a marketing ploy and did not provide much educational value for trading students.  Also, another promise that Toby made in numerous online free marketing webinars is to provide a trading plan that has a 3-to-1 win/loss ratio and sometimes he throws in a 4-to-1 win/loss ratio.  I did a lot of work trying to find this trading plan and pressed Toby hard to share it with me so I can back-test it and he never did.

The Christos Avatar Trading VIP Room is not well organized and has a bunch of files that you can download and either read or listen to recordings.  He provides some files that show a step-by-step action plan on what to do during his program, but they are often overwhelming and if you do all the steps in this program you will find yourself spending 3 hours each morning just going through his protocols without a sense of direction.  His sample trading plan was from a prior student and it was 10 pages which seems cumbersome for a newbie.

Regarding all the energetic clearing and DNA activation protocols that Toby prides himself by and which I will address in more detail in other posts, I still do not have any evidence that any of this works, and in fact, there is some evidence to the contrary.  After 8 weeks in the program, I was the only person who created a testing plan and performed back testing on it and I don’t attribute my action to the protocols.  This is an indication that all the other attendees still have fears that are stopping them from moving forward.  Further evidence to the lack of effectiveness of these protocols is that Toby took under his wing an inspiring trader by the name of Alex who joined the program over a year ago to personally train him in order to demonstrate that anyone can be taught how to trade. A year later, and as Toby discussed with him publicly on his Thursday Live seminars, Alex was still full of fears, making mistakes and is not profitable in the market.

Although after 7 weeks being in the program I was his “best” performing member, since he publicly said many nice things about the trading plan and back testing that I had done, I still found many inconsistencies in his teachings (will be detailed in other posts), and when I confronted him about them he either ignores my questions, or gives me a simple answer “yes” or “no” without explaining in detail the inconsistency that I noticed.  

So, all in all, although I don’t think it is a scam, I think you can find a lot better training some other places including free training on the website of the company that creates the system that Toby uses, i.e., TheTradingAuthority.com.  Look into this carefully before you decide since there are no warranties on this training and no refunds.