I was a member of Trading Zoo now Edge Traders since the summer of 2007. I was attracted to the trading room because the performance that Sam Baum posted daily on his website was fantastic and he claimed those were trades taken in his own, not a simulated, account. I don't think he had more than 2 losing days.
Although I never had much success trading his methods, he often mentioned in the room that he ran a very successfull hedge fund and was making over 10% a week and would accept new clients to the fund (Magnolia Capital) with a minimum investment of $100,000. He was entitled to earn 25% of the profits which I thought was fair given his track record from the website. When I spoke to him about it he said, "I actually trade a bit more comservative than in the trading room, but the results are still excellent."
So, in August, my family invested over $100,000. The results were good and Sam earned a bit over 17% and then another 5% in September. Although these resluts were not as strong as those posted on the Trading Zoo website, we understood and were pleased since we expected him to trade more conservatively.
Then In November, Sam Baum lost almost 68% of our investment in a single day! Like always, he traded the S&P E-mini, but this time with no stop loss to preserve our capital. We were shocked and angry because he didn't even have the decency to tell us of this disasterous trade—his broker e-mailed us.
When we finally spoke to Sam, the so-called trading guru, he begged us to let him get our money back and since we were so deep in the hole, we agreed. Well, that was our second mistake. The very next month, December, he lost almost 36% and wiped out our and the other fund members' accounts. Millions of dollars evaporated from Magnolia Capital
Something didn't smell right about this, because the results that Sam posted on the Trading Zoo website for both November and December were truly great.in fact, there wasn't even one losing day! How, we asked ourselves could he trade so well in the trading room and so miserably for his managed accounts when the methods were supposed to be more conservative? This didn't make sense and we couldn't get a straight answer from Sam.
Are we crazy? Ask yoursef how a man who traded so stupendously in an Internet room with his own money, lose so much money for his clients? Why in God's name would he not trade exactly the same for his clients as he traded for himself, since he was making money for his own account hand-over-fist and posting those results on his website as a marketing tool to sell more people to join his trading room? It maked no sense whatsover. (You can find the results for Trading Zoo on Internet Archive: Wayback Machine site.)
Well, we came to the conclusion that the trades posted on the website must not have been real trades at all, but perhaps "paper" trades; in other words, they were make believe and no real money was at risk. When we asked Sam to show us the statements to match the Trading Zoo results with the posted numbers, he refused.
Subsequently, we learned that Sam Baum doesn't even exist and this con artist's real name is Edan Ahahrony. Now he closed up shop at Trading Zoo and reopened a new trading room called Edge Traders.
Whatever you do, don't give this man any of your money to manage on a discretionary basis. He'll probably lose it all like he did to ours.
And finally, don't get sucked in by his hokus pocus trading wizardry you see in a free trial. You will never be able to replicate his trades and now that I think about it, neither could he with other people's money. There is really no rhyme or reason for the Edge Traders methods. It's a ruse. Most of the student there are losing money trying to be like Sam (or Edan, or whoever he really is).
We were scammed and ripped off. Shame on us. Learn from our mistakes.
Magnolia Victim
London
United Kingdom
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