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[PipMeHappy]

This is a surprising thread, defo didn't expect this when I logged on.
@mark1111 have you any more info that you can add? I don't see much wrong with using a demo account but I  do get your point. It would be good to hear from scruffy, I'm sure there's a good reason.

@Sharkie  let us hope that Scruffy answers quickly or it may seem like an admission of doing exactly what @mark1111 brought to our attention...

[BWS]

I just dont like people claiming things that are not true

Agree with you 100% @mark1111 this industry attracts far too many of the wrong type. Not saying @thescruff is a bad 'un but it would be helpful to hear his side.

[PipMeHappy]

Hello everyone, this is now late evening on Wednesday and @mark1111  posted his video evidence on Monday morning; further to that, our admin @Caesar wrote to Scruffy to ask for clarification: there has yet to be a reply but I hope it will come soon... Having watched just the first of Mark's videos it clearly shows the different account number being used in Scruffy's video when he shows the trade history, which does beg the question "Why are they different?".

Thankfully I have successfully spotted and avoided scams in the last year, ranging from fake bank SMS messages to fake-threatening HMRC calls, to fake BT answer 'phone messages, and more. I am one of those people who puts the 'phone down on fake/sales people the minute they start speaking, without saying much more. I feel sorry for everyone who falls for these criminal schemes and I know that eventually I could be got at, because we all have a weak spot where we trust our instinct and think that what we are seeing and hearing (e.g. the person or institution that we are in contact with) is genuine. Some scams are run by legit/regulated bodies, including banks, so what chances do people have? We are all potential victims of fraud, and all we can do is due diligence: do your checks, do not agree to anything except after seeing the small print, etc.

Scruffy could be an example where we trusted his low-key appearance and presentation as a sign of a genuine trader sharing his ups and downs with the community...

In the name of transparency and truthfulness, I would like to post one of my older videos, posted almost exactly four years to this day, where I publicly show how my account blow-out happened and what my thoughts were on my future in trading:

I think that this is what I always strive for, honesty, because without this level of honesty we could be just like any other fake guru out there - and I am not accusing Scruffy here, I am making a wider point.

Stay safe
Do your due diligence
Trade for life
PipMeHappy

[PipMeHappy]

@mark1111  Good God, I was looking up stuff about Scruffy on Google and chanced upon this thread:

https://forums.babypips.com/t/youtube-traders-real-or-fake-what-do-you-think/379555/214

Mark, I have to give it to you, you and 'Cavaliere Verde' (=Green Knight) really tried your best

but some members truly cannot accept that someone charging for 'education' like this is somehow

dubious at best. . .

Anyway, you did your best...

PipMeHappy

[eddieb]

I spotted that thread earlier this week, as with here I find it disappointing that Scruffy hasn't defended himself.
I was a bit surprised that some of the people who defended scruffy then said they hadn't watched any of his videos, sort of undermined themselves saying that.
The sooner we hear Scruffys side the better, its not helping letting it drag on like this.

[mark1111]

Hi Everyone

Sorry for not responding sooner .I didn`t receive any notification emails from the thread.

@PipMeHappy .Yes I got a different attitude over there lol,hence why on my first post I didnt want a repeat of the same .Interesting though some of the defenders of him messaged my privately after and said they have egg on their face when they did realise the deception.

I know you all want to give him a chance and wait for a reply but I am positive it wont come..There is nothing he can say to make it good .If you read all the babypips thread you can see nothing is fabricated or wild guesses , its all facts.he hasnt shown up there in days no here so unless he makes a new account and goes incognito I doubt you will see him again

Mark 

[Kim]

Hi Everyone

Sorry for not responding sooner .I didn`t receive any notification emails from the thread.

@PipMeHappy .Yes I got a different attitude over there lol,hence why on my first post I didnt want a repeat of the same .Interesting though some of the defenders of him messaged my privately after and said they have egg on their face when they did realise the deception.

I know you all want to give him a chance and wait for a reply but I am positive it wont come..There is nothing he can say to make it good .If you read all the babypips thread you can see nothing is fabricated or wild guesses , its all facts.he hasnt shown up there in days no here so unless he makes a new account and goes incognito I doubt you will see him again

Mark

I for one really appreciate your posts Mark. Its good to be reminded that we need to be wary

[Caesar]

.I didn`t receive any notification emails from the thread.

Hi Mark,
Apologies for that, you should have received an email each time someone mentioned you. I'll get that looked into.
Thanks for the update, as others have said we haven't heard anything back from @thescruff  yet.

[mark1111]

Hi Caesar

No ,it was all my fault not yours or the site...I didnt have both accounts clicked for my emails so I was only receiving emails on one of my accounts so thats why I missed them.

Mark

[Kaitsu]

I know you all want to give him a chance and wait for a reply but I am positive it wont come..

I am disappointed to say that I think you are right about that. I have been in occasional contact with him for some months, mainly about non-trading topics, and I can say that he has never said anything that suggested he was not what he appears to be.

He does not actually offer a trading system for sale as such but his videos do contain a lot of useful trading concepts and thoughts, which are useful to Newbies. For example, the need to prepare in advance thoroughly so you know what you are looking for,  e.g. what instrument, where to enter, where to get out, stop when you have got what you were looking for, etc, etc. In other words, a lot of useful comment that one would expect from an experienced trader.

However, when one starts selling the product as with that so-called Scruffy squad (? is that right?), then one becomes accountable for the product that one is vending - adn that simply is not happening here! - hence my personal disappointment.

To be honest, when this thread started and the first vague post appeared, my first thought was that it was directed at PipMeHappy, because he is (openly) trading on demo and is looking to possibly be a fund trader. But because I have "known" PMH on forums for some 5 years now, I know it could never be him and therefore suspected a one-post troll here.

Even though I have been a trader for over 30 years, it never occurred to me that Scruffy could be the target! There have been occasions and some results/claims which have raised my eyebrows, I never suspected that his trades were anything other than genuine.

I have written to Scruffy twice now about this, but only received a reply to the first email. In my opinion (which I have already been told stands for nothing) it should be a simple matter for Scruffy to put this right if there is a misunderstanding somewhere, and, if one is selling goods, then there is also an obligation to address it and promptly.

The saddest thing is that threads like this always tend to be the longest threads on forums. Positive threads on real trading issues always tend to fade away from a lack of interest. Strange really.......

[PipMeHappy]

Good to see you popping in, @Kaitsu

While I have everyone's attention I wanted to say sorry for not putting up more analysis videos, it has been quite busy
and I have actually stopped trading demo for now because I have 886 trades to analyse and also I am revising for the December
exam (Chartered Market Technician, Level 1), plus being a dad, teaching, etc. That is plenty for anyone! But I also genuinely
do not have much to say because I am not keeping my eye on the fx market as much at the moment, just taking a look at the charts but not really going deep. I am actually hoping to make room for some metrics analysis to see how I have done in terms of trading, and trying to perhaps quantify my trading strategy in terms of what my decision-making process looks like and whether it can be tested. For a backtesting/signal-testing novice, this is a huge field to get into, but there is support out there and I have at least some ideas as to how to get a foot into data analysis of my own performance. As I lack practice in this field, I will have to do a lot of gruelling work, which is quite time-consuming, assembling/formatting data for analysis, e.g. working out daily P/L from
the list of all trades, then putting that data into FundSeeder to access their analytics, and also (one of my ideas) to plot it as a .csv import as a chart line (closing P/L data) in Optuma against the EUR/USD, DXY, SPX, EUR/TRY, and XAU/USD lines, to spot any tendencies, i.e. when did my equity curve benefit from momentum and when from flat/ranging conditions for each of the assets that I traded? I could then also look at how well I did trading my strategy, which is generically speaking better suited to trading
from one round-number level to the next within historic levels, and is therefore not very well suited to securities like the SPX and EUR/TRY which have historically just continued tracing new highs (which makes previous price points TA pretty pointless and most 'overbought' RSI fail, though of course Elliott Wave theory and Fibonacci expansions can have a place).

So this is what trading should look like, and I have been negligent in doing this legwork for such a long time, maybe because I needed my first profitable year to give me confidence that I had a reason to invest in this area. Now I do, and I have developed a real desire (though time is a great enemy in this respect) to develop my quantitative analysis of my strategy.

I am just saying all this because when I looked at the video with Patrick Boyle I saw how much the trading gurus out there do NOT talk about the hard work that one should do, and just say 'buy here, sell at this line, make money'... Every trader interviewed on a podcast like Chat With Traders or Better System Trader uses quantitative/data analysis to get to fine-tune their trading strategy: this is the only way, in a data-driven era, to become credible (to yourself first, and to others if you intend to go professional/employed in this field).

As for Scruffy, a lot of TA like that is okay, of course, but what needs to happen is that people also get educated in analysing data from their own trading, including volatility, Sharpe ratio, Sortino ration, de-trending data, using Montecarlo simulation/randomisation, etc. Without all this one is truly swimming in the dark, and I am just becoming aware of the huge benefits that this (boring, difficult) work can bring to one's trading.

I wish that Scruffy could come and speak for himself... it is a sorry thing to see here...

Trade Safe
PipMeHappy

[PipMeHappy]

Scruffy has made more trading videos on his YouTube channel, the latest less than a day old.

He is alive and active on social media...but will not pop in to say hello on here...

 

[Gazza]

I have watched his latest video, well the first 2 minutes of it before switching off.
He had hardly starting speaking before there was a popup asking if you wanted to join 'The Scruffy Squad' for 'Exclusive videos and strategy'
In my book that means he is selling, not teaching nor sharing as he would like you to think. All his talk about wanting to share these videos to help others is total BS- he's in it for the money, just like thousands of others.
I agree with @mark1111 and in promoting his videos with titles like 'Easy Money', 'made £xxx in a day', etc should have been a big red flag.
@thescruff has had plenty of time to respond and has decided not to, that tells a story in my view.

As the saying goes, 'If it looks too good to be true, it probably is'

[PipMeHappy]

I have watched his latest video, well the first 2 minutes of it before switching off.
He had hardly starting speaking before there was a popup asking if you wanted to join 'The Scruffy Squad' for 'Exclusive videos and strategy'
In my book that means he is selling, not teaching nor sharing as he would like you to think. All his talk about wanting to share these videos to help others is total BS- he's in it for the money, just like thousands of others.
I agree with @mark1111 and in promoting his videos with titles like 'Easy Money', 'made £xxx in a day', etc should have been a big red flag.
@thescruff has had plenty of time to respond and has decided not to, that tells a story in my view.

As the saying goes, 'If it looks too good to be true, it probably is'

Agreed. What a shame.

But if you want real traders, try to find any of the names from something like the Chat With Traders podcast... These are people with real profiles, some running funds etc. You will not find them posting stuff on YouTube or posing in the Bahamas with a Lamborghini... They probably never get to have holidays as they are too busy running their fund...

[Kaitsu]

I am taking a "contrarian" position on this issue.

I have rerun quite a number of Scruffy's videos and, regardless of the accusation that he is using a demo account for his trades, there is a considerable amount of very valid and useful information in them for both beginners and others.

He is not selling any system or training course, and watching his standard videos is totally free. If someone wants to buy a coffee or pay the small monthly fee for other services then that is entirely their choice - and they can always cancel their "squad"  membership after a couple of months if it doesn't seem worth it and it won't have cost more than £50 - so we are not talking of any major rip-off here!

Personally, I am not concerned about where his trades are made or whether they are live or demo, the value in his videos is about trading in general and about keeping one's feet on the ground and head out of the clouds. His comments on various indicators are perfectly sound and he clearly speaks from his own experience.

So I am still a subscriber there and will continue to be - and I will continue to refer to some of the points he makes in other posts.