ClayTrader Review
- Quality of Education
- Price
- Credibility of Educator
ClayTrader is a day trader who sells educational courses on technical analysis, level 2, options, forex, and other trading topics. ClayTrader markets himself as a normal guy that doesn’t drive a Ferrari or live in a mansion. The frontpage of his website says “I’m not a hot-shot Wall Street trader, but thanks to the stock market, I’ve gained the ultimate wealth: being my own boss. Let me help you achieve your freedom.” While I commend his honesty, there is something to be said about his position from a marketing standpoint. He pitches himself as the “anti-guru” while pitching the same products as the gurus he reviles.
Clay sells 14 training courses, and an “inner circle” subscription product which includes chat room and newsletter access. His most expensive course is $397, and you can get all of his courses for $1,997, which is significant, considering the average trading guru charges that for one course.
In this article to discuss ClayTrader, his services, products, and Clay the person.
Who is ClayTrader?
On ClayTrader’s about page, one can get a better idea of who Clay is as a person. He’s a 33 year old family man who quit his job at Honeywell through stock trading. He pays additional lip-service to his “anti-guru” persona, which probably plays really well with traders who are sick of seeing gurus flaunt their sports cars and women. One red flag I found, however, is the fact that he doesn’t disclose his real name. I understand his desire to keep his personal life private, as he does have a family, but, most people are uncomfortable giving a man hundreds of dollars without knowing his name.
Track Record
When the topic of trading gurus comes up, the discussion shortly arrive at their track record. What’s Clay’s annualized rate of return? What’s his lifetime gross trading profits? What did he clear in 2017 pre tax? Well, ClayTrader doesn’t disclose any of that information.
One should always keep in mind that in the regulated financial services space, disclosure isn’t a choice. Among the first questions one usually asks a potential financial advisor is about their track record. Should you treat your online trading gurus with the same rigor? That is up to you.
Chat Room
One can get access to ClayTrader’s “Inner Circle,” which gives you chat room access, for $99 per year. Relative to his industry, Clay’s prices are quite cheap, as $99 will only get you 1-2 months of chat room access from most other trading gurus.
I spent a few weeks watching Clay’s chat room while trading and watching the markets. After spending time in a multitude of chat rooms, I’ve developed somewhat of a critical lense towards them, some are atrocious, while others are amazing, supportive, and worth your time/money.
Clay’s chat room is full of friendly daily regulars who exchange trade ideas and alerts day-in-and-day-out. It was especially exciting to see that members of the room were actually contributing, and not just asking questions or giving useless information. In order to fully appreciate the chat room, you must be familiar with Clay’s trading “lingo,” which requires you to purchase his courses or go through tons of his YouTube tutorials. You’ll see technical levels, catalysts, and potential setups all called out in the chatroom. If you get one actionable trading idea per year from this chat room, it’s paid for itself.
Courses
Clay’s training courses are his bread and butter. He has 14 of them, and I’d venture say that they account for the majority of his business’ revenue. Of all of his courses, Robotic Trading seems to be his most popular course. The broad theme of Clay’s courses is removing the emotion from your trading and becoming one with the charts. The subject matter of each course is a subset of technical analysis. Whether that’s breakout trading, short selling, or mastering level 2, everything has to do with technical analysis.
In his Robotic course series, and throughout all of his courses, Clay emphasizes the importance of “being a robot,” or not allowing human error, emotions, or bias enter into your analysis. In his view, one would ideally program their brains to trade a certain way and allow that code to run on autopilot.
Personally, I have gone through his Robotic Trading Skill Sharpening, Risk Vs Reward Trading, Trampoline Trading, Shorting for Profit, Volcano Trading, Robotic Trading, and Mastering Level 2 courses. Of all of them, I have only found Mastering Level 2 and Shorting for Profit to be of significant value, because these topics have much less freely available information on them.
In Mastering Level 2, Clay effectively explains the market microstructure aspect of understanding level 2, as well as the psychology and goals of each market participant, and how this shows up on level 2. He goes into how to spot market maker activity and profit from it, how to spot the large institutions hiding their size, and how to spot naive retail traders (who are usually late and can be a contrarian indicator).
In Shorting for Profit, while not offering any proprietary material, Clay spends hours talking about short selling, the psychology of it, and various short setups. He takes the liberty to name common short setups like “Ruthless Short,” “Disgruntled Short,” “Dream Crusher Short,” “Dead Cat Bounce,” and “Broken Window Short.” The reason for this course having practical value is that short selling is not that popular in the trading community, and much less in-depth information is available on it. I’ve definitely made my money back from my purchase of Shorting for Profit, as I’ve successfully traded the “Dead Cat Bounce” (name not his), countless times.
My gripe with ClayTrader’s training courses is that the material is all so basic. In the majority of cases, the material in his courses can be found on Investopedia or similar sites. While this can be said about many trading courses, this is especially true in Clay’s case. Other trading gurus use their trading experience to give first hand nuanced advice about these concepts, showing their past trades as case studies, explaining their psychology while in the trade, and pointing out their rationale for their entries/exits. Clay’s material, on the other hand, feels too clinical. He even shows himself looking through scanner results for case study examples, rather than pulling from his own trade history.
Final Thoughts
One should note that Clay doesn’t make any big claims about his trading returns, career, or lifestyle. Only that he quit his job through trading. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him make any concrete statements about specific trades or activity. Because of this, it’s hard to be overly critical of his business model. He isn’t flaunting sports cars and models and selling a dream lifestyle. Further, his prices are actually quite fair, relative to the industry.
However, most of the content that he sells can be found for free in the form of Investopedia articles, Youtube videos, and clever Google searching. There are even fully fledged free courses out there, like Adam Grimes’ course, which goes much further in-depth, and clearly pulls from firsthand experience.
This isn’t to say that Clay isn’t good at explaining concepts or doesn’t go in-depth, just that’s it feels to clinical if you’re an experienced trader. New traders who want all the content wrapped up in one course will get their money’s worth, if the money is expendable. Traders living paycheck-to-paycheck with tiny brokerage accounts are better off spending the extra time to search for the information individually.
Pros
- No hype
- Clay is a great educator
- Excellent community and chat room
- Competitive pricing
Cons
- Feels too clinical
- His track record isn’t shown
- Other free options are available
I find clay trader to be a Nusance on several boards . Often times I’m reading boards and get bombarded by his charts,
I’m suspicious of any person doing business where there’s no way to reach them physically or give their name to their clients
He’s a scam. I am a victim. Not friendly. Don’t buy NOTHING he sells, it can all be found for free.
The guy seems nice on the surface but is a total Bully .
He spends his day selling you his expensive product
I agree with bully and fraud statements 100%
A true POS in my book
If you are making alot of money qon day trade… Why do you have to make videos and sell education… It does’n make sense
This is the comment from Clay when I questioned his risk management and strategy. He went personal instead of addressing my concerns… ” I will defend myself against bad/false ASSumptions, to which you are making, but with all due respect, I have 4 young kids way cooler than you are who will choose to spend my time on, not someone such as yourself who trolls YouTube making false ASSumptions. Take care.”
Pretty rude for someone who tries to sell trading strategies
What’s the website/apps he used for all his trading days?
He is a snake oil salesman. He is only interested in selling his course. If 2000 people buy in the minimum level he makes a million dollars. His trading trick is scalping fast moving stocks, usually against the trend. He often lets stocks run dollars against him, yet I rarely see him make dollars in his favor. He will watch a stock run 5 dollars to make a .25 cent scalp in the other direction. Any time you question his poor decisions or point out a big move he missed he deems you a “hindsight” trader. He is no better than those seminars that tell you how to make millions in real estate. Why would anyone who can make millions in real estate teach a class on how to make millions in real estate???? Because it’s easier to fool people into thinking they can make money in real estate and charging them for it. Stay away from Claytrader.
I work with a 40-year-old multi-regulated Broker, and our Chief Currency Analyst took a nice long look at his videos. We wouldn’t recommend buying any of his courses. After seeing hundreds of Youtubers claiming to have “quit their day jobs” and are now full-time traders (which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true, or that they do not have “night jobs” instead), it’s about time people do their proper and unbiased due diligence about channels, websites, people and their credibility. If someone did truly have a great product that was honest, works well, and is reliable, they would register a proper business, and would certainly want his full name labeled on it with bright neon lights. We’ve actually spent endless hours looking for Trading Educators who are honest and truly know what they are talking about, and people would be surprised that we’ve only found a handful on such a big platform such as YouTube.
I am actually admiring Claytrader whenever he publish new live video. Not just him but every famous traders like HumbledTrader, Rayner Teo, and MoneyGrowersPH (in my country). They all have different approach and techniques, so was I. And trading is something we have to rely in our own learnings and experiences. And the way we learn from it, the more we will become profitable. I admire everyone of them, but for me, I think it is not necessary to avail their offers because we can actually learn anything for free and it is just a matter of experiment, backtesting, and results. I don’t care if they are scams or not, I just enjoy their contents and somehow learn from them.
I’ve been a member of CTU for a few years and have always found him to be very friendly and the other regulars in the chat room as well… Was also on a skype call with him and his co-host Chez for the podcast and they were super friendly! No idea what some of you guys are talking about 😀
He is a scammer and took my money.His platform is all lie
He is legit and a great coach, a one-time low price for a lifetime of access. The responses of those commenting here play the victim card to a “T”.