Oscar Carboni Snake Oil Salesman? YES! livewithoscar.com is a scamoperation

I have been keeping track of OMNI for a year and this are the results.

oscarsnakeoil — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 21:59:39 +0000

I have been keeping track of OMNI review for one year and my conclusions are short. There is no way you made money following OMNI to the letter. If you did make money, you most likely would have made it anyway.

Another conclusion i drawn is that looking back at OMNI review is that it the “last prints” used in the flash updates are impossible to get and that Oscar somehow is able to grab the highest tick with MIT orders. If you don’t understand MIT orders anyway, i suggest you to stay away from the trading game for a while.

Results

The results are available here for everyone to verify. From this data this chart, displaying the account value of an account worth 25k (5k more than what Oscar is recommending as minimum) , paying 50 roundtrip commissions ( the standard commission for a new account at Oscar).

50 r/t commissions may sound very high to some, very low to others, but for one year of following OMNI, paying 50 USD roundtrip means that you have to gain more than 20k just to get break even on the commissions. Translated: Oscar made at least 10k on you, risking nothing while you still haven’t made a dime.

The Deleted OMNI recommendation of the 25th of March 2010

The OMNI review is missing the recommendation for the ES on the 25th of March 2010. This was a losing trade, he got stopped out twice, quickly deleted by Oscar after the close.

Here is a screenshot of the old website where it was still available by a bug in the system.

Responding to alert members who missed the trade on the OMNI recommendation page got these replies.

oscar1 says to (17:25:32):
stupid asses

oscar1 says to (16:47:37):
you will need 10 thousand of you losers stacked up one on another to come close to a guy with my integrity
anyone know if there is a problem with recommendation page?maida says to (16:37:03):
looks like they got rid of the s&p recommendation

realtrader says to (16:39:54):
what was the s n p rec

maida says to (16:40:12):
not a good one

oscar1 says to (16:43:48):
what does that mean we got rid of a rec?

oscar1 says to (16:44:14):
all recs are archived and for all to see

oscar1 says to (16:45:12):
the rec out now is to continue to hold short beans

oscar1 says to (16:45:25):
as we are into “tomorrow” already

oscar1 says to (16:46:23):
basher comment

oscar1 says to (16:46:27):
its all good

oscar1 says to (16:46:33):
^&%$ me bashers

oscar1 says to (16:47:04):
those who are total losers at life always try to make others look worse than themselves

oscar1 says to (16:47:37):
you will need 10 thousand of you losers stacked up one on another to come close to a guy with my integrity

Well i still can’t see his ES recommendation.

Other irregularities in OMNI review:

Omniacs please read this.

oscarsnakeoil — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:24:09 +0000

Hello OMNIACS,

If you found this website via Google or someone posting it the OMNI Rooms, please take the time to read it. There is a lot of things that Oscar wont tell you, about his past, about how he gets to his entries, how much he charges his clients, what his performance.

First the entries, those are simple, they are pivotpoints. Oscar’s favourite pivot is the exact middle between Support-1 and the Pivot when he is looking to buy or when he is going to sell he will look for the exact middle between Resistance-1 and the Pivot. Sometimes he goes for S1/R1 or the Daily pivot when the market moved already over the midpoint during midnight trading. You can easily predict the omni the night before by chosing the pivot approximately 5 points from the print around midnight and as direction you can pick the trend from the day before. You can check it yourself, calculate the pivots or go to website where they do it for you like www.mypivots.com. The OMNI moving average is just a simple moving average, which Oscar wont teach you what the setting is. Most likely because he curve fits it continuously. The 89 and 49 period average seems to be popular with Oscar. In this screenshot, taken during a class he gave, he uses a 86 SMA, as shown while he accidentally left the bar open where the SMA settings were displayed. /edit: Oscar suddenly changed the name of the Omni Propietary Moving Average to the Omni Trading Academy Propietary Average, same thing same settings.

Second, how much he charges for his VIP Clients, this is always starting at 50 dollar round trip, i admit, you can negotiate this down with Oscar, but still 50 dollar round trip is hugh. At cheaper brokers like Mirus (Dorman platform) or Interactive Brokers you pay around 5 dollar round trip all-in. So calculate yourself, after how much time is premium room cheaper? Oscar gives out average 1 -2 trades a day. So after 8 trades you were better off just taking a premium account, you will be paying around 2000 dollar per 10k USD account. Is there actual benefit from being Oscar’s client? I and many others as shown below this post and on fadethetrade.com. People are complaining about no extra attention, no answer to simple questions about written disclosures about the costs. The 50 dollar is why Oscar wants people to call in to the office to ask the commissions. There is not much negotiation upfront, always pay 50 r/t the first month.

Thirdly, his past. There is a lot of vagueness at best. It start’s with an article in the New York Post.

“The move comes a year after Carboni failed to make enough money from trading to pay for his seat on the exchange, began missing mortgage payments and racking up thousands of dollars in credit-card debt.”

Also when you look into the New York Court, WebCivil E-Court database and search for Carboni. You will find a lot of court-cases between Oscar and Credit card companies like American Express, Companies who buy up debts and utility companies. Oscar always said that OMNI has fed him for 27 years, although he sometimes told that he got screwed by a companion. His NFA record shows he was registrated at a company called CAL financial corporation until 2007, when the company was barred by the NFA because they failed to uphold high standards of commercial honor and just and equitable principles of trade. I dont know what to think of it, it is vague at best. It is weird that a man who always brags that he can trade on his own got him in such severe debts and got him magically out of it when he started the OMNI trading academy. Which also is kinda vague, as Oscar’s has older trading websites, here , where he has been giving out trading recommendations for years without mentioning OMNI. Vague at best.

Fourthly, performance. Oscar’s biggest worst-kept secret. Oscar keeps for you a nice system called “OMNI review”, it got all the past OMNI recommendations, but you really can’t get a good overview from it without spending weeks on it. For example Oscar has a habit of not making a “We are stopped out” flash update lately, so you need to have a chart next to you of each contract to see how much he made/lost. Even if it has a stopped out flash, you cant tell how much you could have lost on such trade. Meanwhile the winning trades get lots of attention. There are a couple of spreadsheets that give a better overview of the performance of OMNI and it ain’t really good.

May June July August September October November December 17th of March 2009 to 16th of April 2009

From what i have seen it is, definitely impossible to make money when paying 50 dollar round trip, the best month i have seen was 3-4k per two lots and than you got to pay about 2k in commissions. If you are taking trading recommendations from your broker, you have to keep in mind that your broker might be giving those recommendations mainly to get commissions and not care so much about the actual profit/loss.

Oscar also might be paper trading, there is some evidence pointing in that direction: One screenshot made while he left open his Glance Desktop sharing, showing a paper trade account actively being traded. Why would a 27 year seasoned trader bother to manage a paper account? And the other a screenshot made during one of Oscar’s youtube videos, where he claims to be placing a real order.

Education, is an aspect that i think is totally lacking in Oscar’s trading academy. Sure he we learn you how to spot some channels and head and shoulders on a daily chart, but it’s so basic, nothing really useful. He wont learn you how he comes up with his entries, how he did his 688 projection (“Not a call traders, just a projection” quote Oscar’s video March 2009). And it isn’t really like it is real difficult stuff. His 688, was the 50% retracement between the 1974 low and the 2007 high. I wonder why a guy that says he doesn’t do it for the money and wants to teach people, protect people from sharks, hides so elementary stuff behind proprietary moving averages and weird jokes about his dog.

To conclude it, i don’t want you leave Oscar immediately, in fact i did speak to one or two OMNIACS who are genuinely pleased by Oscar, but these dont follow the OMNI trades exactly, but i want you to stay vigilant, keep a performance log yourself, look on other educations websites like investopedia, don’t ignore Pivots cause Oscar says they are outdated. Please keep thinking yourself.

UPDATE

A court case report about an event involving Oscar in December 2005.

Oscar seemed to be back on the floor in 2005 and was a filling broker in the metal pits on COMEX. In the fall of 2005 he was setting up to be Ira Epstein’s filling broker in the metal pits. Some pit broker’s clerk made a mistake that cost 390k USD. Oscar sent an e-mail to his friend Ira Epstein warning him to no longer send orders to RJO because they are too busy and that it would be better to have Oscar fill the orders. Somehow this email ended up at Bob Lake, an employee of RJO. He send the following email to RJO brokers.

“I do not do business with scumbags that try to generate business off other people’s perceived misfortune. This little prick can twist in the wind before he touches one piece of RJO paper. I am in the process of burying this guy in the pit and on COMEX in general, let’s see how good his fills are when no one will trade with him.”

This resulted in Oscar not being able to do business anymore on the floor and got “black-listed”. Then he sued Bob Lake and several employees for 20 million dollar in damages.

Anonymous

oscarsnakeoil — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:31:33 +0000

Closed my account with Livewithoscar because I was losing too much money. and because the trading hours were too much for me. I had started out thinking that I could just wake up in the middle of the night and take a trade, the problem is once in the trade sometimes Oscar will send alerts every hour telling you things are going ok, or nibble some more, or sell half, or sometimes just I will keep you posted. I can’t ever remember just getting a buy and sell flash. So with my heart condition that kind of keeps me out of the running for the all night trading sessions. I did talk to a couple people who said they were not taking Oscar’s flashes, but use Oscar as an indicator and they were making money that way. I was just waiting for the flashes and then trying to take the trades. But there were several problems with this method. The main problem is that Oscar will issue flashes and say nibble, or start to nibble. After a while I started to figure out that this means if you have a large account and trade say 10 or 20 lots then just buy 2 or 4 lots at this price. Because later you may want to buy at a better price a larger number of contracts. Also when he says to nibble, if the market goes up he will say sell half of your contracts here. So this makes it hard if you just nibbled with one contract. One of the other main problems is that when you are in a losing trade Oscar usually recommends doubling down. Only don’t call it that, and don’t call it adding to a loser. You can call it defending your position, but the bottom line is it will make your losers huge and then when you have a winner he gets out of half pretty soon. So this makes your winners about a quarter of your losers at the end. I also just never was able to get in sinc with his style of trading, he will usually buy sometime during the middle of the night and then frequently hold it until the close of the market, unless he gets stopped out. I am really more of a scalper compared to this, I was in and out. I really don’t like sitting in a postilion especially a loser for 14 hours. When it goes against me, I just want out. I am going to start working harder on my hook trades. Then suit my much better.

SkipperX

oscarsnakeoil — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 20:30:45 +0000

skipperx….My final say! says: August 21, 2009 at 7:25 am I found Oscar’s site, while looking on the internet, as I was interested in day trading. Man, I had no experience; I didn’t even know how to close out a long contract. I watched the videos, hung out in the Copper Room, and was sucked in on the bait dangled by Oscar, to enter the Premium Room. I would get to trade beside the great man, learn how he got in and out of trades, and also get the famed AD…which supposedly had an 80 – 90% success rate. So I ponied up my $50k, as I wanted to trade 4 to 5 contracts, because I wanted to be a ‘multi lot trader’. I set up a Dorman account, paying $50 r/t. I very quickly found that this was making the AD impossible; paying a 1 point fee on a 3-4 point trade, with a 4 point risk. Don’t add up! Anyway, I found others were paying below $10, and I cut the same deal with Oscar. I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about this. As the trades rolled by, my trading results RARELY matched the results Oscar was posting in his rec’s and flashes. I would never get the LOD’s or HOD’s, like Oscar. I would have many more stopped out trades than him, even following his advice. Something was just not right. Well, my account kept going in one direction, DOWN. $1k, $2k, $3k….$7k down. At the $7k point there were about $3k in fees to Oscar, and $4k in trading losses. It was hard to follow his advice in the chat room. If I got it wrong, it was because ‘I didn’t know how to read between the lines’. I saw an endless stream of people come in and leave, leave , leave. I just kept having this uneasy feeling….the secret OMNI entries; not being allowed to mention anything about STOP levels; the secret AD machine; not being able to ask Oscar too many questions without being labelled a BASHER, and being booted. And then there was always the same request by Oscar…”Please leave favourable comments on my YouTube videos, directed to new traders needing help”. Easier to get them innocent and foolish, ah Oscar? When I first found Oscar, I googled all over to find critics, there were none. Then I found this site. I realised all my suspicions were true. Many, many other people who had left, been booted, or were still there, were voicing the same concerns and complaints that I had. I started “bashing”…..it’s been pretty funny at times, but it’s run it’s coarse, like all things. Oscar’s time may be running out, he OMNI business may survive, but his reputation is doomed if he continues like this. Can’t fool all of the people, all of the time, Oscar. ALL the traders, which I consider to be any good, have left, in anywhere between 2 and 6 months. There are now 4 or 5 trading chat rooms, full of ex-Omniacs. The Premium Room use have 120 traders, now it’s down to 60 odd, maybe that will pick up a bit in September. The Gold Room is basically empty, and Oscar couldn’t give a shit about the Copper Room, as he gets no money from that Chat Room. The Copper Chat Room is used as a feeder room to up sell the other PAYING services. “Vpops” is the next latest and greatest up sell. Fair enough, everyone has to make a living. A business is a business. My concerns and criticisms are how money is made, at the Omni Trading Academy. Others have expressed the same views over and over again, here on this, and other sites. This site is not about ‘cry-babies or ‘bashers’, or ‘children’,….although there has been some of that. It’s about business methods, unanswered criticisms, and very, very poor customer relations. Once again, thanks to Danny, for providing this forum. I did learn basic chart patterns, trade set-ups, and how to handle a trade. I learnt nothing about why to enter or exit at a certain level….you are not allowed to know the secret of the OMNI. After studying many, many rec’s and entry levels in ES, NQ, Russell, Dow, etc….the correlation between the OMNI entry points and PIVOT point analysis, more than suggested that the OMNI is Pivot based. But, hey that’s Oscar’s secret black box Those reading this, and are going to join Oscar, please do. There are things to be learnt, but also be aware of some of the pitfalls. Now, this brings to one last point, and Oscar I hope you have the chance to read this……and it’s about an Omni trader from Italy, called Emilio. He was a wild, wild trader, throwing money all over the place. Lots and lots of trading losses. From talk in the chat room, it transpired that at times, Emilio had a drinking, and / or other related emotional problems. These problems, combined with out of control day trading are an explosive mix. Emilio ended up in a mental institution, to calm down. He wasobviously super, super stressed out. It was a time he needed to get better. Everyone was quite concerned for him. Really, not a time to be doing any trading. But, Oscar, kept taking his trades from the metal institution. That is just an unbelievable unconscionable action by you, Oscar. That certainly was the low point for me. I believe Emilio has since stop trading. I stand to be corrected on any of this. So that’s it from me, skipperx, over and out.

Wherchat

oscarsnakeoil — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:45:51 +0000

I initially attributed Oscar’s lack of customer service and infrequent trade setups to business “growing pains”. I realized that my experience with Oscar was not unique and I closed my Dorman account a couple weeks ago. My review of LiveWithOscar VIP account is: * Oscar as my broker, never initiated any communication with me in the month he had my account and never answered my emails. * Oscar’s initial telephone explanation of his commission structure for “OMNI trades” was vague and misleading when I opened the account.

I renegotiated — Oscar reduced the rate but then added other fees that we never discussed. * Oscar delivered the Premium Room service, but no more.

* The OMNIAC software was not fully functional without purchasing addons.

* Oscar never provided the service of a “personal coach” as advertised.

* Oscar did not “assess my trading style complete with personal training and mental conditioning” as advertised.

* Even though I paid the equivalent of 5 months of Premium Room membership in a month of commissions, my access to the Premium Room was removed immediately when I withdrew my account from Dorman. I emailed Oscar about the membership and finally received the long awaited response to an email . . . “There is no way to make all of you happy. For every letter I get like this I get dozens and dozens with praise for all we do for them. To those I will continue to work every day and night. All the best, Oscar” Like I said . . . Oscar’s business is booming, but it is not for me!

Lawrence’s Market Blog

oscarsnakeoil — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:44:47 +0000

f you noticed that the Oscar spreadsheet hasn’t been updated since 04/16/2009, there is a reason.

The entire spreadsheet covers the period of March 17, 2009 to April 16, 2009. A full month period to evaluate Oscar’s methods, strategy, etc. My conclusion, and you are welcome to agree or disagree (feel free to use the comments area), is that it is not possible to make (on a RISK-ADJUSTED basis) any significant progress with his trading advice. Now, if I keep going month-after-month, the results may change and I may change my mind, but the membership is $100 per month, and I can’t justify spending that money if I don’t have confidence that his system works.

Link to my Oscar spreadsheet

There are a few problems with his style of trading. I will talk about each in turn.

1) Trades are generally set up in the middle of the night and entries/exits during the evening are usually required.

This is purely subjective. You may not have a problem with it. But flash alerts come in the middle of the night. So depending on where you live, you may get a ‘ding ding ding’ at 2AM or 3AM or 4AM, etc. I am more keen on a day-trading service where I can get a good night sleep. Again, my personal preference.

2) Very wide stops.

I am scared of the very wide stops that Oscar uses. For the Euro trade, as an example, the entry on March 25 was 1.3508 and the stop was 1.3665. That’s 157 pips. At $12.50 per pip, that’s a $2k loss per contract! It’s enough to cause a lot of stress. I personally was not comfortable with the very wide stops that Oscar recommends.

3) Misses the Key inflection points / major trend changes.

Oscar has a system he calls the Omni. It tells him the price is going up (Green Omni), down (Red Omni), or Neutral. If Neutral, there’s no trade. He’ll say, Wait for a Sweet Spot, etc. But I have noticed the Omni tends to miss key inflection points or reversals. It is like trend following. If prices are going up, the Omni tends to be green. If prices down, Omni will be red. But it missed some key reversals that traders who employ more subtle techniques may catch.

This caveat is strictly my gut feeling. I am interested in other traders’ perspective on the ‘Omni’ indicator. Do you feel it works?

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Having said that, I have a theory about how Oscar trades. Please let me describe it and tell me if I make sense or if I am way off base. I am open to any kind of feedback.

First of all, the first order of business is to figure out if tomorrow will generally be an up day or a down day. So first order of business, Oscar tells you it’s going up and we want to buy on a pullback, or it’s going down and we want to short on a rally. I think the Omni is a simple trend following system, maybe using some elementary TA (moving average, parallel channel, head and shoulders, etc.). Since today is a down day, and we broke out of a bearish wedge going back to March low, I am pretty confident that tomorrow’s Omni would be red. ES closed at 837.50.

Second, once we have guessed direction, we need to figure out an entry. We know the ES ATR (average true range) is about 24 points. So we can say Short half the ATR or 12 points. 837.50 + 12 = 849.50. So I would say “Omni wants to sell at the 850 to 852 level”.

Third, add the other half of the ATR and you will arrive at the stop. 849.50 + 12 = 861.50. So I would say “Set stops above 862. Wide stops are needed for the evening session.” So that’s how I would set up the Omni trade.

Again, this is pure guesswork on my part based on following Oscar for a month.

If what I described is how these trades are set up, it’s a simple trend following system where you just add/subtract half the ATR to get your entry, and the full ATR to get the stop. So my conclusion is that there is no reason to pay $100 per month for this. The stops are too wide meaning that when there are losses, the losses are BIG. What I am looking for is more day trading service, where the Expert Trader says “Short ES right now and set a stop +3 or +5 handles away”. That person would be watching for divergences in things such as fast stochastics, MACD, etc., or he would monitor supply/demand indicators, or trend lines. There is never a good reason to have a 12 pt stop, if you know what I mean.

Based on my reasons noted above, his trading system is not for me. Please feel free to leave feedback.

final result

I made $212.50 before commissions. After paying the $100 monthly fee, I have a net gain of $112.50. On my worst day, I lost -$2,975 on March 22nd. There were 3 really bad days with daily losses of more than -$2,000. On my best day, I made $1,550 on 04/16/2009. I had 3 good days with daily gains more than $1,000.

Lastly, I received several relevant comments in the past month that I present to you without commentary or judgment (in the order that I received them).

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sadasdasd (unregistered) wrote:

Snakeoil salesman Oscar couldn’t even pay his mortgage with the OMNI…and you’re trusting him with your hard earned $$??? It’s sad to see him prey on newbie traders. No free money in this life people…well except the funds that Oscar gets each month in subscription fees from you lemmings…this guy is so pathetic…YOU’VE BE WARNED OMNIACS!!

emotions are IN!!….profits are OUT!!

-Former Prem member

http://209.10.98.182/seven/01162007/business/hot_commodity_business_zachery_kouwe.htm

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anonymous (unregistered) wrote:

Also Premium Member. At the end of the day you are accountable for your own trading management and should not blindly follow anyone. I am more than satisfied by Oscar’s professional demeanor , training, and market setups.
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johnny S (unregistered) wrote, in response to Lawrence_Chiu:

just saw your spreadsheet….today you took about 30 pips from the Euro 6E, and your stop was almost 200 pips?? Are u insane?

your profit and stop levels must be more symetrical or you’ll get really hurt in the long run.
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SIAD (unregistered) wrote:

Ha ha, that spreadsheet was very funny Lawrence. Theres a reason why Oscar trades a paper account only. LMAO. The turnover rate there is huge. People are not stupid, they come and go. The problem is that his a hole is just continuing to feed on newbies. How can this scam be prevented? Any ideas?
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gametheory wrote, in response to Lawrence_Chiu:

Lawrence, I know I’m new to your blog but I really enjoy it. Just wanted to say good trades with Oscar. You should be learning a lot from him, but be sure to adjust your risk tolerance to your account size.

When he is good, he is very precise with his entries. But when he is wrong, it hurts like a bitch. The best thing to do is learn the tips and techniques, and try to duplicate according to your own risk structure. My Rmultiple for any trade MUST be higher than 3 and I keep my trailing stops tight.
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MiniReaper wrote, in response to Lawrence_Chiu:

… That is my biggest problem with the way Oscar trades…the biggest loser is generally bigger than his biggest winner because his stops are too wide for daytrading IMHO. Today was a perfect example..he had a 20 pt stop on a daytrade with clear resistance on multiple timeframes…traders taking the trade had no chance to make money.
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gametheory wrote, in response to MiniReaper:

That is a good point. Simple mathematics will tell you traders with an inverse risk reward ratio are statiscally guaranteed to fail. One thing I notice about Oscar is that he is primarily a trend trader, he doesnt catch inflections well imo. The problem is that by the time he agrees with the trend, it is getting ready to inflect. But ocassionally his entries are awesome with a margin of error of less than 1-2 points.
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Lindasue

oscarsnakeoil — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:43:53 +0000

My, my, my, how word gets around. I just cancelled my premium room subscription so I am out of the closet. Happy DA? Here’s the story. My first couple of weeks with Oscar were pretty good. I was totally thrilled to find somebody to do the heavy lifting for awhile. I didn’t have a futures trading account and much of my trading capital was custodied in such a manner that it could not be moved, nor could I use it for futures trading. I followed along with Oscar’s recommendations using ETFs tied to the S&P 500. I began the process of opening a small account just to trade one lot and see how I felt about it. I went thru all the paperwork, asked everybody in the room how much the trade commissions were -’ ask Oscar’ was the reply. Talked to the staff — ‘ask Oscar’. When Oscar finally showed up in the trading room, I private-messaged him several times and asked — what’s the cost. He never answered me. So I’m a schmuck. Figuring it would ten bucks or so at most, I placed my first trade. The trade confirmation arrived and I nearly fell off my chair. The charge for 1 lot round-trip was $50. When Oscar showed up again in the room (mind you, you could wait around all day before the great man made an appearance), I sent him a private message saying that $50 wasn’t going to fly. He replied ‘k’ and closed the chat window. I kept opening the window back up, telling him we needed to have a conversation before I placed any more trades. He kept giving noncommittal answers and closing the chat window. I wrote that I was willing to pay $10 each leg. He wrote no prob. It’s all good. But you can’t discuss it with other room members. Don’t want a mutiny here. Most of the others pay $50. I didn’t put that in quotes, but it’s pretty close to word for word. I said I wanted an agreement it in writing. He said he had ‘guests in town’. I wrote that I wanted it by the end of the day. It took a boycott on my part of one week (not participating in the trading room) before Oscar contacted me. He was full of excuses as to why it had taken so long to reply. Friends in town, birthday party, etc., etc. He wanted me to let him know when I was ready to ‘rock and roll’. The thing that was missing was a written disclosure of trading charges but – I ‘had his word’ on it. The mechanic who takes care of my car gives me a written estimate before any work is done. The company that takes care of my lawn sends me a written contract. Would you not think that a broker, someone who can charge your trading account on a whim, should provide you with a written agreement disclosing costs associated with trading? Here’s another matter of ethics that I find disturbing. Why should Oscar give me a better deal than someone who has been there longer? Why did so many of the other members pay more only because I was willing to make an issue out of it. Is that fair to his other subscribers? Granted, $50 per trade is robbery plain and simple, but the charge should be the same for everyone especially for 1-lot traders. Perhaps a little higher for multiple lots, but a standard fee schedule, nonetheless, should apply. As I was in the process of opening my account (which now sits dormant at Dorman) my bullshit detector started screaming at me. It doesn’t work quite right, doesn’t always go off when it should, but when it does, I know I am in an area of highly concentrated bullshit. I really did have a few excellent first couple of weeks and was cheer leading just like the rest of the drones. I thought Oscar was the genuine article, but then it seemed like everything abruptly started to run off the rails. When he had ‘friends’ in town, he neglected the trading rooms altogether. I was concerned about placing a trade with a huge stop on it and then going to bed and hope for the best. What is that? I was concerned about people being chastised for making small talk — what are you supposed to do when there is no trade, no Oscar, and no making trades on your own, no talking about your own trades — trust in the ‘Omni’. When the ‘Omni’ was wrong or the trade was bad, it was always someone’s fault, like the dollar didn’t do what it was supposed to or you were stupid and didn’t follow directions. Manage your own trade!!!!! How do you manage a dumb-ass trade? As for making your own decisions regarding the trade, you are only encouraged to do that when a trade has gone wrong. Otherwise the message is ‘do what I say and do not question me.’ As for the spreadsheet on the net, I would say that’s a pretty accurate record of following directions to the letter. The quality of that record keeping also indicates that it was prepared by an intelligent person capable of following directions. I was tired of hearing how stupid the open room people were. One day when the ‘Omni’ was green Oscar was laughing because the ‘morons’ in the open room were short. Those ‘morons’ made about 20+ points that day while we in the superspecialVIPpremium room sat on our hands. People being banned from the room really threw up red flags for me too. No dissenting opinions were allowed. You could not talk about trading ETFs, most likely because then Oscar couldn’t dip his fingers into your till. I was personally called out on the carpet for trading ETFs instead of futures. Frankly, my business is none of his business. I was his boss, not the other way around. Oscar seemed to undergo a change in behavior over a small period of time. At first he was positive, I thought he was so cool — but things changed in a hurry. He would be absent from the rooms most of the day, then showing up late in the afternoon looking like he was ill (or had a hangover). One day he didn’t come in at all, had slept all day. Claimed to work all hours of the night analyzing the markets for us but didn’t often come up with a trade, and when he did, it usually did not go well. I must say, though, the premium room people were absolutely the best, nicest ever. I will miss them all. In a nutshell, I can echo all the negative remarks that everyone else has made. Chris is just a good guy, loyal to a fault. I hope he eventually joins us here. I waited to reveal my identity because I was waiting to see how things would play out. After submitting my first trade, I emailed Oscar’s office a couple of times to make sure the recurring charge was removed from my account. No action of was taken, of course, so I just sent a message to cancel my subscription. A few days later a charge for $395 appeared on my Paypal account for another months’ service. I disputed the charge and Paypal issued a refund. Now, here is what i said about the infamous and supersecret ‘Omni’ — i think it is a Twister spinner. Remember the old game of Twister? Red and Green are obvious, Yellow means maintain ‘neutral stance’ and Blue means up all night doing homework. Now translation — ‘neutral’ and ’stalking’ means ‘I slept all day’ or ‘didn’t feel like bothering with you morons today’, blue means no signal at all ‘wtf, I was up with my buddies all night’ drinking or gambling or whatever it is he does that makes him look like warmed-over death. Anyway, best of luck to all of you. I have never met a single one of you, yet I feel I have made many good friends and I hope we will stay in touch. I have also learned yet once again that nice guys (and girls) are pretty good at getting their pockets picked. Be careful and be skeptical. – Linda Sue

Anonymouse

oscarsnakeoil — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:43:22 +0000

Danny, I appreciate your review as it will warn other traders who are interested in joining Oscars “trading academy”. I have met Chris999 and he is a very nice person but I am definitely suspect of him. He is so completely enamored with Oscar (and its pretty evident in the fact that he is constantly praising and cheerleading O) that I have actually toyed with the idea that Oscar has him on the payroll. Haha, this is more than likely not true but still I wouldn’t be surprised. As for Oscars trading style it is definitely unique. After talking to many traders, visited many websites, and read many books, it seems as if a rule that everyone agrees on is not to add to a losing position; however, Oscar will frequently “defend” or “average down” on positions that are moving against his trade by adding to them. On top of this Oscars risk/reward characteristics are completely off. When trading Oscar will generally put stops around 10-12 pts away from his suggested entry level and will give a profit objective of 30 pts. It sounds great but it very very rarely ever plays out this way. If the market moves 7 points in your favor he will say “never too late to take a profit while day trading!” or tell multilot traders to exit “50% of their position”. Unfortunately if the market was moving against you he wouldn’t say to get out early or tell multilot traders to take off 50% of their trades off the table. Thus you are risking more than you are willing to make. If the above scenario transpired and the trade was initially in the green but then goes sour then he would typically say that the traders who didnt get out were greedy and place the blame on them. If he does manage/decide to exit the trade at breakeven then he will exclaim to the general chat that it was a winning day and traders were able to get out +7 pts. From what I saw most winning trades were around 8-10 point profits while most trades that got stopped out were around 13-14 point losses (the extra points i added to the stops are due to the way he exercises stops. If he has you buy at 750 then he would say “put stops BELOW 739″ meaning he wants you to actually set your true stop at 736.50 to 735.5) with more of the trades losing than winning. The afternoon delight trades O promised were extremely alluring as he said they were about 80% effective I think and that their target was a 6 point profit. From what I saw these AD trades were good about 60% of the time; however, most times the AD would only yield around 3-4 pts profits while the losing AD trades would stop out to ding you for around -6 points. After my 1 month gold and 1 month premium stay with Oscar I was down 35% not to mention the $500 I payed to be a member. During my stay I also learned very little because he only had maybe 2 classes a week and they were always very basic. On top of that you couldn’t truly exchange trade ideas with other traders in the chat because if you had any idea that was contrary to Oscars opinion then he would get upset with you. My advice for anyone looking to join Oscars crew is to save your money and visit free websites and forums where you will learn immensely more about trading than by blindly taking his trades.

happyhappy

oscarsnakeoil — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:42:34 +0000

My Experience With OMNI by happyhappy, When I joined OMNI as a copper around July of last year, I new nothing about futures. I learned some basic stuff, moved up to silver and started trading. Small account, shouldn’t have been trading. Made some nice easy money with no real work involved. Heck I was doing this part time. Figured it was time to move up to gold find how the heck a was making money. Did that for a month, made more money, moved to premium, mainly to get the prized AD trade. After joining prem room, I would take the occasional OMNI trade but I would always take the AD. The AD was HOT. It wasn’t always called but when it was, you would get 6+ and it was quick. sometimes stopped out but I was making good money. Of course some of the trades I took got stopped out. Chris and I got wirebrushed one day, traded on an FMOC day with Oscar and got stopped, the day chris blew up his account….those are the ones that stand out in my head. Their were others but I was making good money. I was training for a marathon at the time wasn’t taking all the trades, well after the Philly marathon(Sunday before Thanksgiving). Decided my account had grown big enough to trade 2-3 contracts seriously. Took alot of time off at Christmas and New Years… Jan was a so-so mouth, but the AD really wasn’t working IMHO. Feb rolled around, I was up and down in Feb didn’t make anything close to Chris but made some. The thing that I was really get sick of was the SUAT comments, people freaking out when we would shoot the bull, and the AD not working like I was used to. Stops are in, Emotions out, then why are you freaking out on the room. Its one thing to say that joking, but another to say it and mean it. That made happyhappy pissed… Finally decided to leave premium and go back to copper and see how I do…. I’ve come to realize that I was lucky to join when I did. If I was a single lot trader with a small account I probably would have blown it up. Risking 15 points and taking 7-10 point profit will not work.. As I recall Oscar at one time told single lot traders to exit when multi-lot take off half. So three weeks ago I decided to leave prem. I think I have written enough for now, will fill in blanks and such, as we go along, and keep in touch at this site. happyhappy

Anotherpremiummember

oscarsnakeoil — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:42:15 +0000

I wanted to add couple more points. I was thinking all weekend/ 1 False advertisement of Premium Room, There is no worthy lessons, Why we are entering, why we are exiting why we are selling or buying…. 2 False advertisement of Afternoon Delight AD Trade. The flashes are updated with winning ones while the losing ones are never advertised. 3 Vip Membership fees are not advertised anywhere. While a pour soul is paying 50$ per trade, the other is paying 20$. I can understand for 20 cars someone will pay less than the other but 50.02 is complete RIP-OFF. 4 Not providing written agreement to Lindasue 5 Breaking his rules by entering at said Chop Time, entering before a Fed Announcement, averaging down trades. 6 Lessons are only to show over and over old trades that were right and how he got it right again this time. Just to make small points but nothing that teaches really something that I can use if something happened to his Academy. 7 He keeps saying OMNI fed me for 27 years, how he owns this and that. Then what happened in New York… Why all the creditors with court orders. Additional to all of these points he is beyond rude, disrespects the members, acts like God. I still can not believe that we missed a 3 week rally while OMNI/Oscar was flip flopping and tried to get long on top just to be stopped. I have also seen the Glance Screen shot and I can NOT believe that he is PAPER TRADING…. The biggest selling point to me was, he puts his money where his mouth is. Too bad, as I have canceled my membership, out 400$ and quite a little more. I will never ever recommend his services under these conditions. And the worst is I am disappointed with myself that after watching him for 3 months, after seeing his disrespect in the open room and after brushing off his Bankruptcy, I still got sucked in and signed up. What I learned from it: Invest in yourself, buy good books, draw charts all day and night, paper trade and learn from your mistakes.