I still recall I was coding the Barros Swing on MT4, that’s where I got to know one Ray Barros’ mentee (who is also a successful trader and teaching his own course) and also got to know about Ray Barros. From then on, I attended his free presentations (hosted by brokers and charting software providers) and read his book: “The Nature of Trends”.

From the presentations and his book, I sense that Ray is a what I call a engineer trader. He is a discretionary trader but his material is very objective. For instance, he teaches how to grade our trades to tell if we are following our trading plan. He advocates the expectancy formula as the holy grail of trading. He uses a lot of statistics (you can always hear him saying “standard deviation” in his presentations). Having a engineering background myself, I feel that I can connect with his teaching, looking at numbers and statistics and formulae. Hence, I signed up for this course. He meant to come down to Singapore to conduct the course initially (he does that once every year), but due to personal reasons, the course was changed to a webinar instead.

More about the course:

• Website: http://www.tradingsuccess.com/hos.html (This is the website for the webinar, not sure if he will be coming down to Singapore to conduct the course in the future, you may want to email him)
  
• Duration: 4 days (7.30pm to 11.30pm on Saturdays and Sundays)
• Cost: S$800 (the webinar cost US$750 but I paid the live seminar price)
• Held at the comforts of my home using Omnovia, no software installation needed
• Ray went through some practical tips, particular using Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), to psyche us on learning trading and highlight common psychology barriers during trading and how to get around them.
• Ray brought us through on how we should keep our equity and psyche journals. He even provided a equity journal template to help us along (a fairly complex one too).
  
• Finally Ray taught a trading system based on RSI (nope, it is not the normal way that most people use it). The main objective is to trade and cultivate the good trading habits as taught as well as practise position sizing and trade management. The trading system can by applied to any timeframe and any instrument. The statistics of the system are in the HOS website.
• I get to download and keep the recorded webinar video and review them unlimited times
• I get samples of trading journals, Ray’s equity journal spreadsheet and other reading materials.
• There is 1 week of personal email support by Ray after we have reviewed the recorded webinar video
• Thereafter, we can join his past students in a forum or something (I haven’t reach that stage yet) and continue discussion and seek assistance
• Ray also introduced a new mentoring webinar following this webinar to hand hold students in putting what we have learnt in the HOS webinar to practice.
• Ray also has another advance course.
  

jmot’s Takeaway

The webinar answered many of my doubts, including how much capital should we start with? What instrument can we trade with such a capital size? Ray has mathematical formulae as answers for my questions. I find the webinar very good value, considering there is such in-depth discussion on trading psychology and trade journaling. Come to think of it, no educator I come across so far go to such lengths in explaining trading psychology and traded journaling (with such a complex spreadsheet), and at such a low price. I get to keep the recordings and can review them again and again.

Downside is, learning through webinars takes some getting use to. Webinars are more one way. In this case, Ray Barros is the only one talking. We ask questions by typing them out in a chat box. The content is jam-packed and with only Ray speaking, things can get dry at times, especially when it is 11pm at night. Also with webinars, one may be distracted easily. Well, at least I was distracted by my kid at times…Then again, there is the recorded video to help us along.

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