Video Transcript: Humbled Trader Review Part 2
In this video, part two of my review of Humbled Trader, I will go over the first section of her training videos. There are two major training sessions that are recommended when signing up for Humbled Trader. The first section is nine videos categorized as the quick start for beginners which is 3 hours and 40 minutes worth of videos. Plus I went over about a 34 minute pre-market video. I’ll go over my thoughts as I went through the quick start for beginners.
First video was an intro. to Discord which is 9 minutes long. And after the intro. video, I watched a video on a welcome walkthrough for Discord. I’ve been on Discord a few times and but I still get a little confused. So hopefully Humbled Trader–her name is Shay by the way–she’ll shed some light on that for me. She’s definitely energetic and has the ability to keep my interests. I noticed that most of the Youtube instructors have that skill. Within the first 30 seconds, she plugs her broker’s affiliate links, and there’s nothing wrong with that I can see that one of her positive attributes is her ability to organize information. And it looks like if you’re new to trading she has a pretty systematic approach to help you get started with her method. That’s assuming she has a systematic method and that’s what I’m here to find out.
Now she does a pre-market live stream every 30 minutes before the market opens. She mentions the guy named Oren that does swing trades and he has his own section in Discord. She has another area where she sometimes posts her trades and other people post their trades and charts and ideas. And then there’s Vince, Lewis, and Orain, and herself that are the moderators. And they have a special area where they’re the only ones that can post for people to see. And there is a day trader section, a swing trader chat section, and she has even a break room for people that want to talk about other subjects. And also there’s a question area that she asks that you go through the video information before you ask her questions. And this is where I might get some answers from Shay. And she says there’s no stupid questions but there are lazy questions that were answered in the video library.
I can tell that she’s been on Discord answering questions for a while based on how well the Discord channel here is organized. She also has a broker area question and a place to set up consultations with any of the mods available for annual members only. And there’s a recent webinar link area and a trading resource area. And she also talked about how to set up Discord notifications. And I like this information. I remember being in other trading Discord services, but I was not ever given a rundown on how Discord actually worked. And I kind of had to figure out everything for myself. One thing I noticed is that she mentioned Cobra as being her favorite broker.
Next was the introduction video. It was about 22 minutes long. It was a good intro. video. They introduce all the moderators and go over navigating the website. They promote the trading process and setups and that ‘there’s no rush be patient now and the profits will come later’. They share ideas so you can create your own trading process.
There is not an alert service, and without alerts it may be difficult to see if Shay is profitable. I do believe that the instructor should be profitable in order to teach others how to trade profitably. I mean that’s unless you just want to learn how to trade you don’t really care if you’re profitable or not. But we’ll see what I can find out. She also has ThinkorSwim scripts for charts which is pretty good. I’m thinking at this point this community, as they call it, is best for very beginning traders that are interested in trading socks. I’d be surprised if I saw anything about options here.
She also has a new trader week by week navigation guide. And she says start with paper trading and then move into live trading. Also right now I’m thinking they’re doing a good job about managing expectations. And I already know that this is not a place where I was promised the big easy trading returns. They mentioned being focused on controlling losses, as they look to make losers smaller than the winners, and they also said it’s not a good idea to turn day trades into swing trades. Now there’s also a video on risk management that she mentions here. And they say the moderators and community have a purpose to help others learn how to trade.
The next video is the roadmap for beginners it’s about 18 minutes long. And here she mentions that it takes four stages to get started along with the expectations around each stage. It’s recommended that a student trades at least 12 weeks for full time before trading live with real money. And at that point having any kind of expectations, she says students should start with a paper account to learn the brokerage platform. That makes sense to me. You also need to start tracking results with a paper account, and you can follow up with a moderator every month to make sure you’re properly on track. These stages that she refers to help you form a training personality. And this is all assuming that you will eventually find an edge and be profitable of course. And I’m thinking that I’m learning how to day trade, but I’m leery that I’ll be taught anything proprietary or be taught any kind of edge. There’s some good details on the plan to be a trader and a large theme of this video is creating low expectations.
The next video is about technicals and charting and it’s 1 hour and 24 minutes long. Now Shay believes that technical analysis is highly subjective–I do agree with her there. She combines fundamental analysis with technical analysis to increase probabilities and she looks at normal support and resistance levels. This information is very generic as far as charting information which is good for beginners assuming that technical analysis actually works. There’s nothing in the video that proves technical analysis works; it’s just going over some basic charting. So far early into the course I’m seeing very subjective data. I don’t see any concrete rules to use and so far everything I’ve seen, from the sales approach to all the beginner info. on Discord down to the latest video, Shay avoids concrete rules. And without concrete rules how can consistency be achieved. I say it can’t.
I did see a rule here about looking at the previous high of the prior day. Looking at her example I see her reason to go long on the chart and the stock did go higher. But then when she moved forward looking at a different area of the same chart, using that same pattern, I see the same reason to go long but after that particular pattern the stock went straight down. So I’ve seen the same pattern where it worked and I’ve seen the same pattern where it didn’t work and that was all in her example. Now she admits there’s no concrete rules when trading and she repeats a lot that everything is highly subjective.
The next video was called ‘Front Side Back side’ and it was about 20 minutes long. The Front Side is really just the up trend and the Back Side is really just the downtrend and based on higher highs and higher lows if you’re long. And this was identifying the trend. And you know my question is: how do I pick a trigger to enter and exit? You know maybe it’s later in the course. But so far there’s nothing even close to being proprietary or even promised that there’s going to be anything proprietary in the future. And when she was using an example she had to use different stocks and time frames to find good examples because after a successful example in trade number one (for example as she continued down the chart there were examples where the trend was temporarily broken and then it continued). So if she traded this part of the chart it would not fit into the trend and could have caused premature exits at a loss. Then re-entry for another loss due to a fake reversal. Basically a whiplash situation but she happened to skip over that section of the chart and found another area with a more smooth channel for her next example. She goes on to explain why things happen in the past on a chart and i’m still waiting for something actionable or maybe just a way to predict the future or the way that she predicts the future of what’s going to happen on a price chart.
The next video was a trading journal and it was about 18 minutes long. It’s a way to track your behavior to see what setups are best for you and what mistakes you make so you can avoid those in the future. And she says that you can find, for example, the best trades you make and correlate it say to the best time of day. And I think just because you have more winners at 10:00 a.m does not mean that this is a repeatable process. It just happened that your winners were around 10:00 a.m. for a while. I don’t believe this is a consistent thing but this can get you down a serious rabbit hole and give you a certain belief that will take a lot of time to prove or disprove. And the longer you try to approve or disprove things or do the detailed research the longer you will stay with her as a subscriber. And I’m starting to see a pattern here.
Now there are many many details in this course. For example, if you have a trading goal in order to reach your goal there’s about a thousand ways to approach your goal. This makes it difficult to narrow down what to do first and how to create a trading system. You may have an instructor attempting to go over all 1,000 approaches, but without any concrete rules the instructor can use any of the possible 1,000 approaches as an excuse as to why you’re failing. The instructor can say the reason you failed was approach #887. They’ll say did you think of that when you took the trade? So without black and white rules, students spend their time making mistakes or losing money while the instructor is never to blame. First of all, it is not possible to follow all of the 1,000 approaches. As they can contradict each other. And second, as you keep changing your approach you stay as a subscriber because you keep making new mistakes. If Shay has avoided all the mistakes herself and can prove that day trading works she would clearly be making money. If she was making money she would share her P&L.
Okay, the next video was how to control risk; was about 11 minutes long. And she talks about a risk reward ratio of one to three. That’s the first time I ever heard anything about that. And there’s also a decent spreadsheet tool to help you determine sizing when trading–which is pretty good I like that. And she also uses hindsight as she explains different potential trades using a chart.
The next video is called beginner long setups. It was for an hour and 48 minutes and it was done by Louis. And again, O hear the common theme here: that it takes time to build experience and a trade plan. And this whole course is based on the premise that there’s an edge in day trading and that edge can be used to become a profitable trader. You know all the data sounds solid and it all looks good in hindsight. I would like to see proof that it works on a consistent basis and so far i have not found any proof. Now this video on setups is very subjective in my opinion. By looking at many different factors like a one minute chart, then a five minute chart, then a daily chart, then the volume, then make sure that there’s a news story oh and then you’ve got to make sure you have the setup. And again I hear ‘be patient and you’ll learn how to trade’. That’s really a common theme to the business model, in my opinion. And it creates a situation where traders will stick with trading even after they’re losing. They just need to be patient and just find that one tweak that’ll make it work. And of course they need to save subscribe to do that.
Now there will be a small percentage of subscribers that will make money. Just like taking 128 people in a heads coin toss competition. You want to flip, you want to get heads. 128 people will flip heads and then there’s 64 people left. Flip again there’s 32 left. Flip again and then there’s 16. Then there’s 8 and finally you’re down to the last 4 winning coin flippers that flip heads every time. Of course there’s going to be people that make money; but will it be consistent. For example, they started this coin flipping competition over do you think those 4 people that won will be the same four people that win again in round two? In other words, there’s no consistency in making profits in day trading, in my opinion. And that’s only my opinion. And I always have people comment on my channel that they know somebody making money day trading but it’s not them and it’s not anyone willing to share their P&L with me. If day trading worked, I would think that after 2 years of asking for proof that someone would have come forward by now.
Now as far as this model here, the Humbled Trader model, there’s always more to learn and there’s nothing really concrete so you should stay subscribed. And if you’re losing money, as long as there’s no hard black and white rules, you’re always searching for that little thing that you’re missing. When you’re losing money and you need to say subscribe to find that thing. That was pretty much the beginning 9 videos for the beginner trader. And then I also wanted to look at a pre-market. I wanted to see what she talks about, what Shay talks about, before the market opens. I wanted to see if there’s anything actionable so I watched her pre-market video one day last week and I noticed she does use third-party scanners. She looks for stocks in play, meaning the big movers. One thing I notice is that she adds multiple support and resistance levels. And this makes things difficult because if your first support does not work what do you do after that? So you cut your losses or do you hold until the next support level. I don’t know and there was nothing about money management. I haven’t seen anything on money management yet. She said try to piece the fundamental and technical analysis puzzle together. And there are many subjective variables
to track according to our system. That I agree with. And I have not heard anything concrete as far as trading rules; of course, I haven’t heard anything actionable. She mentions to always have an upside and downside plan. And this means the stock could move higher or lower. Which is what I already knew, and I think a lot of people knew before they started this course.
You know I can get this kind of commentary from anywhere like CNBC and many other places. I wonder what Shay, herself, is trading but there’s no mention of it. She mentions what she is not trading. From this video, I’m getting a lot of this two-sided action. You know the guys on CNBC say “well it could go lower but then it could also go higher”. You know I’m hearing a lot of that kind of stuff in this pre-market video. I’m looking for a more specific commitment, a specific reason, to commit to a trade but she only talks about what happened in the past not what will happen in the future. She mentioned that she spends 2 hours a day before the market opens every day putting her trade plan together. And then I assume and she’s in front of the computer the rest of the day day trading. I’m just thinking “wow” my Synthetic Dragon Portfolio requires about 5 seconds a day and about 20 minutes every 2 weeks or so. My main takeaway here was that she could have used this video for any day of the month. It was not specific to any actionable event on that specific day. If she just recorded the same general information, I don’t know if I could tell what day it was.
Now there are literally 296 videos in the library and 9 videos in the resource center. And one thing I’ve heard several times is that there are no stupid questions just lazy questions. And this gives me an idea of the business model. What she means is if you have not gone through the training videos (296 videos) then you need to go through them before asking questions. Now I just went through the first 9 videos and it took me 3 hours and 40 minutes, but I’m not eligible to ask her a question yet? How long would it take to go through all those videos–months and months? That means I’ll be a subscriber for months and months before I can even ask a question? Now I know there’s more training to go through. And I’ll be the first to admit I’m not going through 296 videos. And I hope I’m not being lazy but I am ready to move on to the next area of my review. In Part 3 of my review, I will attempt to ask Shay the 16 questions I always ask for course instructors. I’ll ask in the Discord channel and I think this will be interesting.
Now if you’re interested in trading options I put together a free proprietary options trading course, and you can click the link in the description to get the course for free.
LINKS MENTIONED:
Link to my FREE Proprietary Course: https://real-pl.com/landing-page-1/
