The Trading Zone

The Trading Zone
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  • Verified Trades
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  • User Experience
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1

Summary

Yet another trading Guru with absolutely no record of ever trading successfully. Greg Weitzman wants us to give him $5,500 to learn how to day trade, and yet he simply refuses to provide even the minimal amount of proof that he trades successfully himself. The live trading room is a complete joke. No trading DOM present on the screen, no trading from the charts, no record of trades called inside of the trading room. A complete and total waste of time.

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User Review
4 (8 votes)
Comments Rating 0 (0 reviews)
Pros: Absolutely nothing to recommend.
Cons: Zero proof. Owner of company refuses to verify that he trades successfully. Live trading room is a complete joke; no DOM present on screen, no trading from the charts, no records of trades called inside of the trading room, no account statements to verify the veracity of owners claims of trading successfully. Avoid.

Thanks for reading today’s review of The Trading Zone

What is The Trading Zone? The Trading Zone is a day trading education company that is owned my Greg Weitzman. The site has been operational since 2003 and I would consider this to be one of the older educators on trading scene. The Trading Zone has three educational products available for sale: bronze 6 month membership at $2,700, silver 1 year membership at $3,700, and gold lifetime membership at $5,500.

Each of these educational products comes with open access to a self paced, home study course that includes basic concepts in technical analysis, tape reading, money management, and trader psychology.

In addition to the self paced home study course, there is a live trading chat room that is moderated by a person named “Gator” or Larry. The concepts that are taught inside of the home study course are meant to be used in conjunction with the live trading room. The more a person spends, the access that the person received inside of the live trading room.

Who is Greg Weitzman?

greg weitzman The Trading ZoneDuring the month of November, 2015 using an alias, I reached out to Greg Weitzman and asked for proof that he has ever had a successful career as a day trader? Unfortunately, Greg could provide absolutely no proof of any trading success whatsoever. I explained to him that I was ready to send over my $5,500 for the lifetime membership, but I just needed to verify that he could actually trade successfully himself. He refused to provide any proof, instead he fell back on the age old excuse that he could not show me his trading statements because “that is illegal”.

Is showing trading account statements illegal? Absolutely not. In fact, many reputable vendors show trading account statements on both their websites and in private viewing. A quick look at my website and you will see various vendors that have absolutely no problem showing that they actually trade with a real money account, and with the methods that they teach. Its preposterous, rediculous, and absolute nonsense that “its illegal” to show someone that you can trade successfully. Some of my favorite vendors that have no problem showing trading statements is WatchHimTrade.com and B12trader.com.

As many of my readers already know, I am a cooperative witness with the CFTC or Commodity Future Trading Commission. I remember the very first time that I asked the CFTC investigator if it was illegal to prove that a person can trade successfully by submitting trading account statements? The investigator laughed at me and asked why I would even ask such a question. During our conversation regarding this topic, the investigator kindly explained that any educator or signal provider must disclose whether performance summary is actual or hypothetical, and in addition must include the standard summary that past performance is not indicative of future performance.

The bottom line is that anytime a trading educator tries to toss that BS line that they cannot show trading performance, then this is a sure fire clue that they are trying to hustle you. Don’t fall for it.

Regardless of Greg Weitzman’s complete and total BS excuse for not showing any sort of personal trading performance, I continued with the review.

Who is Larry “Gator”?

Larry Larry is the moderator for the live day trading room. From the biography posted on The Trading Zone website, Larry proclaims himself to be an ex floor trader at the Chicago Board of Trade. He claims 18 years experience. How true is this? Its hard to tell. Anyone can write whatever they want on a website. I can proclaim to be Mickey Mouse and a super bowl winning quarterback, but its obvious that I am neither. With Larry, we dont really know the truth, but at least we have him inside of the live trading room, and we can watch how he conducts himself.

The live trading room should serve as the ultimate test of  trading performance. If Larry could produce a verifiable, and winning track record, then maybe The Trading Zone has something going on.

Before I attended the live trading room, I emailed Larry “Gator” and requested any sort of proof that he could trade successfully. Once again, he could provide none. I asked him how could I possibly spend $5,500 for his trading knowledge, accumulative experience, and teaching if I could not verify that he had actually ever traded successfully? He could produce no proof. Instead, he simply asked that I watch him trade live inside of the live trading room. Fair enough, and so we proceeded with his offer to watch him trade.

The Trading Zone – Live Trading Room

From November 15 through December 6, we recorded the live trading room in its entirety. All recordings were obtained by using several different alias’s and captured using Camtasia screen recording software. In total, we captured approximately two weeks worth of live trading. What did we see? Almost immediately we had problems. The first problem is that at no time did we see a live trading DOM present on the screen. Nor was there ever any trading from the charts. Everything was done verbally by Larry “Gator”. To give Larry some credit, he did give the audience entries and exits on stops and limits. The trades were easy to follow. And Larry does have a voice that just sounds like he knows what he is talking about. To be honest, I quite enjoyed listending to him talk.

Another problem that I have with Larry is that he keeps absolutely no record of his trades that he calls inside of the trading room. He can call a trade in the morning, and then you can ask about this same trade only a few hours later or on the next day, and he has limited or no recollection. This creates a problem because I could not build a track record of trades.

Furthermore, Larry is not trading with a live account. Instead, Larry is only trading with a simulator issued through Transact Futures. I find this particularly troubling that Larry, with all of his years of trading experience does not actually trade live. Instead, he expects his students to simply trust him, and to trade their own live trading accounts based on nothing more than trust and hope that Larry is a good trader.

The Trading Zone

One more thing that I find troubling about Larry is that he leans too hard on “Pit Action”. What does this mean? Larry came from the trading pits in Chicago and his individual experiences place a higher emphasis on what is happening in the pits. On several mornings, Larry would become loud and excited because of “large institutional money was flowing into the SP500 trading pit”. However, I have no idea what Larry is talking about. I checked the daily volume of the SP500 trading pit and the daily volume barely hits 10k contracts on a good day. However, the ES500 mini contract regularly hits 1,800,000 contracts during the trading day. Yet Larry somehow believes that the trading pits in Chicago (which will be closed shortly) somehow still move the markets. Sorry Larry, but I have some bad news for you…the trading pits are irrelevant. All of the trading is happening on electronic markets. But Larry spins this stuff in the trading room with such confidence and excitement that you cannot help but want to believe him.

Larry is not attempting to be deceitful or be dishonest. The truth is that Larry’s pit trading experience is simply not relevant to today’s electronic markets. Larry sort of reminds me of my late grandfather. During my first school dance, which was the 6th grade in elementary school, I had no idea how to dance. But my sweet grandpa decided to bestow upon me his “old school” dance moves from the 1920’s prohibition era. Yes, I practiced his moves with great vigor because my grandfather was the smartest and most awesome guy I knew. However, when I showed up for the dance…nobody was dancing like the way my grandfather had taught me. To say that I struggled is being generous to my grandfather. The truth is that my grandfather’s experience was from another time, and what he had taught me was no longer applicable. I get the same feeling with Larry, he is attempting to teach from the perspective of a pit trader. Unfortunately, the pit traders have not been relevant since the 1980’s. Once electronic trading hit the scene in the 1990’s, then everything changed.

I would love to give Larry the benefit of the doubt. I would love to believe that his old school, pit trading mentality is still relevant. However, since Larry has no verifiable track record, no live trading account in which he trades, and no record of the trades called within the live trading room…then why should I, or anyone else pay attention to what he is saying or teaching.

If Larry were trading a live account and gave me a private viewing of a minimum of 4 months worth of trading statements, then I would be the first to pay him $5,500 for his trading wisdom. But as it stands now, he has absolutely zero proof of any trading success whatsoever.

My brother has a saying, many of you are probably not aware that he is a retired FBI agent, and an exceptionally smart guy, anyway he loves to say “garbage in equals garbage out”. In other words, when conducting an investigation, if you put garbage in the investigation, then you can expect to get garbage out of the investigation.

Garbage In = Garbage Out

When selecting a trading educator, there has never been a saying more true than “Garbage In = Garbage Out”. If your educator cannot trade successfully, then how can you possibly expect to take his methods and expect a better result for yourself? Too often I receive emails from readers that describe to me horrible experiences with other trading educators. How they paid thousands of dollars for the “advanced mentor” program, or the lifetime access to the guru program, or the mastery program, and they later learn that the trading educator simply cannot trade. Their stories arrive daily and although the words are different, the story is all the same. They paid and later discovered that the guru was just a charlatan that masqueraded as a successful trader.

Very often, I ask these folks if they would like to write a guest post on TradingSchools.Org. So they can share their experiences and warn the trading community. The most common response that I receive from these folks is that they do not want to write anything bad towards the guru/charlatan because they do not want to lose the lifetime access to the educational materials.

Folks, if you purchased a trading product and you later discovered that the guru was actually a charlatan, then you need to simply accept the hard and cold truth that the methods taught are going to only lead to further pain and frustration. If the guru does not trade, and cannot provide no proof any trading success, then whatever you have purchases or whatever stories you have been told is not information based upon fact, but on truisms.

If the trading educator cannot trade successfully, then he is inserting garbage into one of various holes or insertion points on your body. Inevitably, this garbage is coming out, and its going to look even worse than it did going in.

Wrapping Things Up

Another day and yet another trading guru with absolutely no record of trading success. The Trading Zone is quite simply a complete and total waste of time. None of these clowns are willing to provide even the most measly morsel or proof that either can trade. I would love to come back a write a new review based upon some of sort of verifiable proof, but I have a feeling that Greg is going to cling to that BS excuse of “its illegal” for me to show my trading records until folks finally stop buying his BS.

What typically happens with vendors like The Trading Zone is that the reviews that I write are so painful and deliberate that they are forced into providing additional disclosure and showing the bare minimum: a trading DOM and a track record. Guys like Greg wont do it until this review follows him around like flies follow cow manure. He will cling and cling and hope that I simply fade away, but it wont happen. I will keep writing about him until the entire trading community knows the BS that this guy is pushing.

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to leave your comments below. Even the haters and trolls will find that their voices are heard.

35 Comments

  1. Benjamin July 22, 2019
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