Market Delta Review

Market Delta
  • Honesty
    (5)
  • Quality
    (2)
  • Cost
    (2)
  • Support
    (4)
  • Verified Trades
    (1)
  • User Experience
    (1)
2.5

Summary

A excellent piece of software that is unfortunately accompanied with a poorly executed trading room.

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User Review
1 (4 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)
Pros: An excellent piece of trading software, a robust and stable trading application.
Cons: Trading software comes with a not very useful live trading room. No live trading, no dom present, no track record for the trading room moderator.

Thanks for reading today’s review of the Market Delta Trading Room.

What is the Market Delta live trading room? Market Delta is actually not so much a trading room, rather it is a software program that specializes in trading off of the footprint chart. I have known the developer for several years, and this review is not really a review on the software itself, but rather a review of the recent addition of an educational trading room that is now an optional purchase. The monthly fee for the trading room is a modest fee of $99 per month. The trading room is moderated by Anthony Drager, and this review should be  mainly confined to only what I was able to record inside of the live trading room, and the general experience of the live trading room.

Before I jump into the review of the live trading room, let me take just a moment to give my general opinion of the software…its great. The developer, Trevor Harnett has devoted his life into developing a world class piece of software. The software program is a stand alone program with world class features that have been endorsed by some of the futures biggest brokers in the business. A broker would never simply endorse any piece of software unless they were confident that the software is not going to cause any blow back. The Market Delta software program is robust, stable, the trading execution features well documented, reliable with fast exchange connectivity. Furthermore, I have spoken to several brokers that maintain large and active books of clientele. By speaking with actual brokers that have to deal with software issues on a daily basis, I can tell you that any complaints about Market Delta trading software are few and far between. And when bugs are discovered, the software engineers at Market Delta are quick to make improvements to the code. Once again, I want to make sure that readers understand that Market Delta is a very good piece of trading software that is well engineered.

Market Delta Trading Indicator

Market Delta Footprint Chart

Footprint Chart

Market Delta’s  intraday “footprint” charting came onto the trading scene about 10 years ago. At the time, it was groundbreaking. I remember the first few months it was released, at that time I was personally trading through Interactive Brokers and still in the phase of trying to find the perfect indicator. Every trader goes through this phase. As traders, we get into the trading game and start using indicators, and are fascinated by all of the cool and interesting things that indicators can do. Everyone usually begins using a moving average, then a stochastic, or a keltner channel, then we start to drift into the more esoteric like chaos charts, moon charts, or gann…it all leads to more and more complexity. But we never quit exploring new ways of looking at the markets simply because its fun and interesting to see what others have created. Like the universe itself…I rather suspect that the universe of available trading indicators will also continue to expand into infinitude.

My personal experience with using Market Delta’s footprint chart was a short love affair. I used it for 3 months. I found the charting to be very pretty and interesting. But very subjective. In fact, very often I would email Trevor and ask him, what do these charts actually mean? And how should I use this information to make a profit? And specifically, how does Trevor use his own software? In a nutshell, I could never really define an edge, nor could I test the hypothesis that the footprint chart contained some sort of statistical inference. Of course, years later I would learn to program and discovered that all indicators are pretty much the same…useless at the forward application of price prediction.

Market Delta Expands

Over the years, I have watched Market Delta expand from a “one trick pony” piece of software that only displayed a footprint chart, to a robust trading application that includes multi-tiered entry and exit algorithms that fully integrate with many brokers. They have also added all of the fancy indicators that every standard indicator package now employs. In addition to indicators, they have also added a back testing and system optimization module that allows the building and deployment of footprint charting. This is both a boon and a curse.

Why is the addition of a back testing and system optimization module both a boon and a curse to the footprint chart? Because back testing has opened up some real scrutiny as to the viability and true differentiation of a footprint indicator vs any other indicator. The conversation has expanded from, “hey that footprint chart allows me to see inside of a bar chart” to “does seeing inside of a footprint chart test out on historical data”? In my opinion, in the past 10 years since intraday footprint charting has been introduced, I cannot name a single system that has been able to produce a result more or less effective than any other indicator. That does not mean that it does not exist, but I cannot find a trading system offered through any of the usual vendors that are auto trading a system.

Perhaps this article will spur Trevor into action. Perhaps he is aware of some commercial systems that have had effective and positive outcomes that employ the footprint chart. I hope he reads this honest critique. And I hope he does something.

Evaluating Market Delta and Footprint Charting

Since we are left with only a collective soup of differing opinions on whether footprint charting is effective or not, I was hoping that the Market Delta Live Trading Room would give us some guidance on the effectiveness of foot print charting. A live trading room is the perfect venue. Market Delta can employ their best and most proficient trader to highlight and showcase the effectiveness of the footprint chart. For all of these years, I have been waiting for someone to get into the mosh pit of real time markets, and show me what Market Delta footprint charting can do.

How else are we to judge the authenticity of a trading method? Its one thing to read about why a method should work, or to look at a carefully selected group of market screen shots, or watch a carefully rehearsed video that shows a stream of perfect trading set ups. But it is an entirely different animal when real trading is on the line for all to see. And so I attended the Market Delta Live Trading room, in hopes of getting my long lingering questions answered.

Market Delta Trading Room

During the weeks of May 4th through May 15, I signed up for the Market Delta Trading Room. The trading room offers a two day free trial. During this period, I used several consecutive free trial periods using several different alias’s. Each alias used a different IP address and at no time did the Market Delta Trading Room know that I was using Camtasia screen recording software to record the trading sessions.

In total, from May 4th through May 15, I recorded nearly 30 hours of live trading sessions. The end result? Not a single trade was called in real time, nor was their ever a trading dom present on the screen. Rather, the entire time period was filled with conversation that I found essentially useless. The worst part is that the moderator somehow seems to muster the energy to talk non stop. And since no trading dom was present, or any trading from the charts was present, I was forced into listening to and scrutinizing each and every spoken word that occurred inside of the trading room. I kept waiting and hoping that a trade would occur. But not a single trade. Plenty of opinion. Plenty of sound. But no money making. No risking of money. Just a lot of talking. Very frustrating. About as useful as watching CNBC.

I have to give credit where some credit is due. If a person were a complete newbie, then a person could gain some interesting perspective on potential market happenings. But to a person that has to parse, record, and then write about actual trading events…I was bored out of my eyeballs.

On a final note regarding the room, I was a bit frustrated about no live trading during the May sample period. Perhaps there were no good setups? Perhaps the moderator only takes one or two trades each month? With this in mind, I signed up for one last review June 15 and June 16. Unfortunately, more of the same. Plenty of conversation but no actual trading. Below you will find a 10 minute snippet of the live trading room. This video snippet was a random selection taken from many hours of footage.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I really did not want to drag the Market Delta trading platform into the muck along with the poor quality of the Market Delta Trading Room. Again, the owner of Market Delta is a nice guy that loves his software. I get that. However, the addition of an educational component really opens up scrutiny to the central thesis of whether a footprint chart is very useful. Yes, Market Delta has all of the other indicators that we all know about, but the foundation of the Market Delta platform is built upon the premise that the footprint chart is a uniquely useful indicator that gives us some sort of a quantifiable edge.

The trading room is the showroom for that edge. And as far as I could observe, that edge was never on display. There was no live trading. Rather, the trading room was more an extended sales presentation of the software. I hope that Market Delta reads this review, makes some changes and provides a more robust presentation of why a person should consider using the software. Hopefully, I can revisit the trading room at a later date and observe some real trading. At the end of the day, what matters most is real money profits, and not another fancy indicator.

Well, that’s it for today. A pretty boring review, free from the usual controversy. Please leave your comments or suggestions below. And once again, this is just my opinion, if you are reading this and you are a current user of the software, then your comments would be extra appreciated.

 

27 Comments

  1. ivan September 18, 2018
  2. ben p May 21, 2018
  3. Rene Pohland March 12, 2018
  4. majormongo September 12, 2016
    • Stray Dog September 12, 2016
  5. Shawn June 26, 2016
    • Emmett Moore June 26, 2016
    • Goagal June 26, 2016
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  6. Jean June 3, 2016
  7. MD trader January 12, 2016
    • ben p May 21, 2018
  8. Brian P December 19, 2015
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  10. Steve December 2, 2015
    • Emmett Moore December 2, 2015
  11. Sam December 1, 2015
  12. Ben June 30, 2015
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  13. Emmett Moore June 23, 2015
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  14. John Carper June 23, 2015
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