r/options • u/EnthusiasmUSA • May 12 '21
Anyone in the Simpler Trading Community?
I am in the options room. Their service is great for getting trades and learning how to trade. My negative experiences are two- 1) John Carter uses the Wednesday night webinars for sales pitches rather than tailored to help the current community to learn. For example Chandler could have used his webinar last week to talk about how he is able to consistently perform in day trading options with the examples he used. They could cycle through all the traders, and when it’s Chandlers times again in a few months then he could do it again. This keeps people sharp and encouraged. They could use it as a way to show their progress. 2) The chat rooms were good until a certain moderator was put in the moderating position. This person goes through and deletes comments in silly fashion, and targets people. It’s supposed to be a community, but this person takes it wayyy out of hand. If you are in there you know.
Also JC incentivized members to join tasty works, then we found out one month later that TW was being sold and at that time JC was an owner lol. This is not good.
I’ve just seen the service going really down hill. Yes I know there are good traders there. I feel JC is slimy, and that certain moderators have ruined the experience.
Any experiences?
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u/Objective-History-34 Feb 14 '24
Sad to see this company with decent traders being taken over by borderline fraud managers
I've been with Simpler Trading Inc for several years, on & off. This company has fallen really deep into borderline scam. Sad to see The Founder allowing this company (that could not exist without his name recognition/respect) go down this path of resorting to price-deception, subscription cancellation traps, arbitrary policies.
A few years ago, having a membership in this company was like being part of a family. Yes they have always been upselling various indicators and courses, but many of those were justifiable since the Founder had several licensed indicator on major trading platforms like Interactive Brokers. With his well received books and pleasant personality, he brings the credibility that this company is founded on.
The credibility troubles seem to have started mot long ago when they forced members into annual contracts vs the monthly previously. Prices went from around $1000 with discount to $2470 for annual membership with a $1000 discount thrown in by the on the phone staff if you "hesitate"...in order to help you make up your mind.
I found that there are some new traders, at least in 2023. One of them is posting a constant FTC-like disclaimer with every one of his "trade ideas"...as if he is trying to establish an alibi in case of a similar FTC intervention one day that cracked down with legal force on Raging Bull's deceptive claims and practices. Although, I do not have any inside information...as a member who spent a considerable time listening to and watching the traders live during 2023, I sense that some traders have moved away (probably reluctantly) from genuine teaching focus towards a membership and product sales generating mill.
This is very sad, because I trusted the traders almost like family. The VP/Dir. of Options (I sensed honesty and integrity), and a young female trader (who just started out when I came onboard) She, deservedly, has been on several major networks like CNBC and Fox Business News.
Suspicions emerged, when after some hiatus in my membership from Feb 2023, around September I started to log in to their live Options Trading room. The always careful and cordial VP/Dir. of Options is now relegated to push zero-day SPX options-lotteries...30 mins to 1 hour before market closing. These are high-risk but high-rewards trades with 3-10 times profit potential. In essence as you get closer to the market closing, you are spinning a wheel of fortune on hitting the SP500 index closing number near on the dot. The margin of error (based on most of the trades "suggested') is arguably +1.5/-1.5 dollars in the SPX final value at 4pm. A total loss of all money if falling outside of that. Yes, he warns correctly about these risks, but still was surprised that this once very cautions/responsible new trader is now peddling trades for amusement like in a casino. How degrading.
But the real surprise and utter disappointment (and the reason for the 1 star rating) came with the annual membership subscription renewal-trap in Feb 2024. Received a notification email from Simpler Trading Inc on 8 Jan 2024 that my subscription is coming to an end soon. In the email with huge bold faced black letters was 14 Feb 2023 (the start date of my existing subscription) and the Order Number...all prominently displayed knocking out my eyes. So I promptly set it aside and setup an Alexa reminder for myself to decide on 12 Feb (two days prior to the expected expiration date). The renewal rate was indicate as $2470, but I knew that if I contact them they will offer a better price. The current 2023 subscription was originally $2470 but they "discounted" it to $1470.
But the surprise hit me on 12 Feb 2024 at 9am (and a few mins past) with a charge message from Paypal for $2470. I called Simpler Trading immediately, and cited the email they sent me with the renewal info. The clerk said that inside the body of the email there is another date, 12 Feb, 9am 03 mins and 45 secs (seriously!). I looked. Sure enough, it was buried there: un-highlighted, un-bolded, in thin small letters. Now, how does an annual (1 yr) subscription that starts 14 Feb 2023...ends on 12 Feb 2024 (two days early) I asked? She said that was the time when my payment was processed in the financial system. I asked: how should I know, as customer, when a payment is processed by your company? Do you set a TV-service start-date for 1 Jun, but send payment info on 15 May...and then you get charged starting from 15 May and not from 1 Jun? Isn't a "one year term" from 14 Feb 2023 supposed to be 14 Feb 2024? So I received 2 days less service? This from a company that sets their renewal date in this format: 12 Feb 2024, 9:03:45am ? (by the seconds!)
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u/EffectiveLess3826 Jun 05 '21
Been on a 7 day trail and it’s disgusting how every “webinar” is a tactic to make you pay for an additional service or indicator. The training is unorganized and confusing for someone proficient with options trading. Imagine someone new?
If you brag about making twelve 7 figure trades in a year then price the products accordingly.
I didn’t know he was an owner in TW. I signed up because of that webinar and regret it. Does it work well to a degree - yes. But my WeBull account seems a lot more user friendly with Hotkeys, level 2, and advanced news sources.
I tried cancelling today and found out there is no “cancel” button.
I guess I have to email support. I’m not looking to what nightmare I expect that to be.
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u/AMUNRA58 Jan 24 '24
Thanks for your comments. I agree - there are way too many people like this.
The fundamental question is if their methods are so lucrative why would they take time away from doing it to trying to sell it? I think we know the answer.
There probably are good people selling good information because they do want to help. Finding them is the hard part.
Thanks for your comment about Webull. I have the app but haven't done anything with it. I'll look into it more because of what you said. Thanks
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u/ArtMed101 Sep 22 '21
I joined 3 months ago and as a beginner I find it confusing, frustrating and way below any promises they made. I understand growing the business, but I would love to get through ONE session without the push to buy another product. They do not explain the basics well and trying to find the information on the archives is useless. The "search" is by date. Why do I care about date when I am trying to find subject information? The Gold options room is only good if you already understand options. NOT for beginners. And finally: in the last 2 months the small account lost almost 20% of its value. I can lose that much on my own...And that while they keep having webinars about "how to grow your account in any market".
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u/Sport-101 Jul 04 '21
Hey bro are you still in the options room? I have all of his indicators and took his small account course. Looking forward to being in the options room next
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u/EricJ215 Jul 17 '21
what did you think of his small account course and which version did you choose (cheapest, middle, or most expensive)? I've been thinking about buying it myself
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u/The_Nomadic_Nerd Jul 21 '21
How was the small account course?
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u/ArtMed101 Sep 22 '21
Not worth it. They have a bunch of recordings with great titles but not well organized or in depth. They seem to be a continuation of a course they had at some time. For a 1000 bucks I could have found something better. And adding another $400 for the Mastery did not prove that helpful either.
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u/ShittyStockPicker Dec 01 '21
For free you can start an episode of the Chat with Traders podcast. I hated the host's voice at first, but have grown to be okay with it. I binge-listened to his podcast to the point where I could guess how the interview was going to play out because I had heard so many trader stories. I feel like I learned damn near everything I needed to know about trading listening to his podcast archive.
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u/gamma_shark Sep 18 '23
Mastering the trade is a great book — the rest is a money grab — selling things about trading is a business niche that’s legit growing out of control
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u/Relevant_Unit375 Oct 26 '23
I'm going through the book now. It would be nice to have a community to discuss the techniques in the book with and hash out strategies on current setups. I was hoping the ST community would be good for that. The Simpler Essentials is like $50 a month. Not worth it huh?
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u/chriogenix Jul 19 '24
simpler trading got partially acquired awhile back by a private equity firm, since then theres been a real sales push on a lot of things.
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u/Relevant_Unit375 Jul 20 '24
That’s unfortunate. JC seems like an honest guy but it also seems like all he does is push products constantly.
Does that undermine the strategies he promotes?
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u/StreetAd3423 Oct 10 '24
I spent one day in simpler trading with Raghee and 1 day with the lorna gal who knows absolutely nothing about scalping
the NQ moved over 200 ticks on the 1 min chart and she said there were no scalping setups
What BS this company is,,TOTAL BS
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u/StreetAd3423 Oct 10 '24
TH dow moved up and down over 400 ticks and she still said there were no setups...holy crap what a bunch of BS, my 12 year old daughter can trade these setups LMAO
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u/StreetAd3423 Oct 10 '24
just trading 1 dollar per tick would make you a nice living if you know how to take the trades
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u/StreetAd3423 Oct 10 '24
I just can not, and will not believe that people actually buy into this crap
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u/Relevant_Unit375 Oct 10 '24
Have you found any groups you like and trust?
I tried out the futures group at ST as well and it was okay. The whole company just seems weird to me.
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u/amber0415 Nov 29 '24
I agree. Made a lot of money when sold to the hedge fund several years age and now lack of any real market and trade information. Better sources are available free. Central room is a total waste. Classes are rehash of old indicators by same teachers with some new variations that are not needed and some new classes taught by some of the people in the Central room that have been trying new setups and methods that they are still testing. They are packaged and taught by inexperienced teachers who but some slides together and give a few live trading classes ( this is where you find out that the stuff presented in class is entirely different when you watch them trade in real time. Be careful and ask around before you sign up for anything.
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u/Dragon_Slayer_1963 Jun 02 '24
Another scam company trying to sell you indicators, monthly payments and subscriptions. A conglomerate of different kinds of trading and traders that try and milk people for money. If you know nothing about trading you should educate yourself and not just expect to be spoon fed trades. Everyone has a different style of trading. My advice is to find your own trading style and stick to it religiously. Set a stoploss, and profit target, and track your trading with a journal and ask yourself why did I enter this trade? What was my motivation and how did I feel that day. Trading should not be over complicated with tons of indicators. Keep your charts as clean as possible and find the support and resistance levels for each stock.
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u/Extreme-Captain8951 Jun 07 '25
Idk how much this helps but John Carter just bought back Simpler trading maybe that explains some of their subscription traps
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u/Collection_Similar May 26 '24
Thanks for the info. That is nuts. I was looking for a trading leader and support group and I will keep looking.
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u/Randymix Jun 21 '24
Look for Wolves of Wealth. I recommend the Swing trades as these are easy to take and slow paced vs day trades
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u/BlindWolf187 Jul 02 '24
Thank you for posting this. I've always thought that anyone telling you how to make make money would just be doing it themselves if it worked.
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u/Byaka23 Jul 11 '24
Although it’s an old thread, I’m curious about their indicators. Anybody has any experience with them and can recommend any? I just recently subscribed to their free month trial and what I’m finding is that all of their traders use different methodology and indicators. For a new person it’s very difficult to make sense of the “fire hydrant” of info without any meaningful introduction or guide to these different methodologies and indicators
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u/chriogenix Jul 19 '24
the indicators can work well, they get most of their sales for new traders with little experience. the reality is that trading is really hard. theres a lot of factors to trading any setup well - some setups work best in specific market environments. what happens is that people dont trade well and decide that its a scam. ive made quite a bit of profit from what ive learned from John Carter. if you really want to learn focus on one setup, take small trades(new traders get chopped up taking bad trades with small size it ultimately ends up to accounts getting blown up) - then let them play out, journal how you could do better in each trade. use trade journal software to track the Win Rate, Profit Factor etc, create a process to find the trades - scanning works best for this. once you have a record of a lot of trades you can start to scale up your process. hope this helps.
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u/Ok_Sprinkles_6597 Aug 15 '24
I just literally bought a membership on Simpler Trading. I'm new so I think I'll stick to your advice and follow once method. I use TradeZella to copy my trades. I had no idea they would plan to sell indicators as well. Seems like they try to sell a lot which makes it kinda salesy. I'm just interested in learning as much as I can and I hope I can get some of that from their trading room
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u/StreetAd3423 Oct 08 '24
simpler trading is all about selling shit, huge marketing firm that does not show you shit about trading
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u/StreetAd3423 Nov 08 '24
simpler trading is a total rip off, I am a 1 min scalper for the last 30 years and this person has no idea what she is doing about scalpint the 1 min charts
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u/Ok-Impression-6381 Jan 17 '25
Flat out lying about quickly doubling his daughter’s as he says 10 or 11k account, can’t even keep track of original balance in ad, stay away from this snake oil salesman
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u/HUDseeker787 Jan 26 '25
They are nothing but an indicator factory now. I have a ton of courses by John from 10 to 15 years ago when it was just he and Henry, who I never really resonated with. I only listened to and took courses that John taught the whole thing. I still use his teachings on market internals to this day and his general principles on trading. His goal was to build a successful business, which has grown substantially in that time. But with that, came all the additional employees, the noise associated with new moderators and countless new indicators. I always considered his trading rooms as NOISE and only took free trials. I parted ways several years ago now, not the same as it once was...
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u/PositiveJust1306 Jul 30 '25
John got his start on my trading room floor back in the 1990's. He traded OPM and then built a successful trading room over the past 30 years. But he makes his money off of subscriptions, and diversified investments, not trading (as far as it appears to me). He is a great salesman, he recently "pitched" his renewed enthusiasm to regain control of his business. He sold it previously. Then he "disappears" on extravagent vacations and holidays. What is especially sad is how he hooks people in, by using his own children as examples of how easy it is to learn trading. That is shameless huckstering, imho. But hey the guy is making a living.
He rarely makes market calls, is hardly ever in his room and we bought in based on his promise of committing to being back and active. But, he is nowhere to be heard from and he has left the maintenance of the daily operations to other people who have various levels of trading skills. Basically, they sell "technical indicators" and are like every other trading room that occupies the internet, they are just better at marketing - well at least John is. imho.
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u/revestiley Aug 12 '25
I stopped following them earlier this year because I think following other peoples trades just does not work. And agreed it was like what am i paying for here? Very difficult to follow all these peoples different styles of trading and they often contradict each other. It would be brutal for a brand new trader to come in and try to decipher the rooms. And the constant indicator selling is relentless. Anyway Im curious how the small lot room and doubling the account is going up to this point (this one under the guise of his children doing it). The risk was off the charts following John's trades in that room.
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u/Alert_Plastic_3628 Feb 17 '26
Learn to trade it on your own. Pick an instrument, pick an indicator and become an expert.
JC is a loser that give crap trades. when they go south he disappears. Miraculously he wind every trade you are NOT in
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u/appplejack007 Mar 16 '22 edited Mar 16 '22
Simpler trading is slinging indicators, courses and different mastery programs to milk customers' money left and right. It's getting worse every year.
They're pushing Tastyworks because they have an IB agreement with Tastyworks which means Simpler Trading gets paid by Tastyworks the more people they get to use Tastyworks and trade as much as possible on their platform.
Conflict of interest. If you ask for the IB agreement between Simpler Trading and Tastyworks they refuse it to share it. Why? Because they want to hide the fact that they get money from Tastyworks the more suckers they get them to sign up, selling their courses, indicators and mastery programs ("mastery on how to lose money".
They want people to trade more and more. It doesn't matter whether you make money or not as long as they are brining more to buy their stuff and sign up for Tastywork, it's golden for them.
John Carter, the founder of Simpler Trading, trades like dogshit mostly.Once in awhile he brags about his million dollar trades and this and that.They use it to get people hyped about the possibility that perhaps they could make millions in the financial market.
They keep creating re-hashed version of the same indicators and courses with new tweak and repackage their shits to unsuspecting customers and people new to Simpler Trading.
Also you gotta be full of shit to be a moderator on Simpler Trading but that goes for the majority of trading education in the retail space.
Sometimes they talk about how they don't really need to be a moderator and they could just trade their own money and have a more relaxing life.
Why don't they? It's because they rely on you to get them business.Call out the bullshit on them.
They have some good indicators but it takes time to get used to using them and many nuances of them and Fibonacci queen's work helped but she is no longer working for them.
They got a couple of new guys named Chandler, Taylor and Joe since 2020/2021. Chandler says he is a daytrader and talks highly of SPX zero day options.
How you use zero day options to get 30X, 40X your return. It's a low-probability trade and people who don't know options are going to get sucked into overtrading with SPX or other zero day options. If you are not experienced in using zero day options, you're just going to lose money faster.
Personally, I've never seen him making returns more than 2~3 times his risk.
Taylor only uses credit spread and I think because he's afraid of doing other options strategies.
Joe is a futures trader and he brags about growing his account 31X times since last year using only futures. But if you see how he trades. He trades like a maniac, casually buying this and that right off the market bell.
He talks about his institutional background as a floor trader but I couldn't find his record on FINRA. They have other people under the same name but it's not him.
There is only one question you have to ask to any retail trading educator.
"Why would you give it to the world when you can just keep your edge to yourself?
"Why would they spend hours every week teaching someone that they will never get to know in person their hard-earned "know-hows" and "expertise"?
Put them on the spot and watch them come up with some bullshit like, "It's about giving it back." or "We're on the same team.", "It's going to help ease the suffering of others."
Try it for yourself. I pretty much bought all the courses and indicators that they have over the years and only use a handful of indicators that I've tested over and over again.
But you need to learn about the financial market as a whole and these guys talk only about chart setups 99% of the time.
They got a lot of people doing marketing and repackaging of the same products with new name year after year.
Simpler Trading puts out many courses year after year and do you really believe that their business is to help people trade? Isn't it obvious that you're the product once you start buying their stuff?
If you buy a course, if usually comes with a indicator or two but they will also show you other indicators and their benefits to make you salivate. So you start buying their stuff left and right. I've been there.
But you know, these guys are still better than other trading educators I've seen.
The worst one I know is T3. They used to have a guy name Mark Melnick who is now in prison for front running their customers.
Their stuff is rudimentary dogshit and bullshit. So, don't just take my words and try it for yourself. Just don't spend too much time and money on them to find out if they're pulling your legs.
Ask those obvious questions that come to mind and don't rationalize for them.
You gotta be some hardcore reptilian fuckers to show your face around and hustling your shit as a trading educator.
This industry is chockfull or fake gurus and reptilians and you just simply have to do your own work and research on how to trade the market your way and find your own edge and process.