Many people had bad experience with forex training courses. They paid a high fee to get the training and lost money in the trading activities (as the methods are not reliable). Here is an exception. This student still lost money, but he felt that the training provided was worth the money spent:
Dear Mr Tan,It would be my pleasure to share my experience with you.
Let me tell you upfront that I am not yet profitable trading forex. Please allow me to explain why I was still happy with the course.
I took up the forex training course with X in December 2010. At that time, I was retrenched for about 3 months and was unsuccessful in finding a new job. With time on my hands and not knowing what else to do, I attended a few forex sales seminars and eventually signed up with X. I paid about $3000 upfront for the course.
Before I signed up, I had already educated myself on forex trading. I was aware that there were forex training providers who created the impression that forex was easy money. X was honest about what forex trading was really about. This convinced me to sign up.
The course started with 2 days of classroom training over the weekend. This covered the theoretical knowledge needed to trade forex. After the classroom sessions, students are entitled to attend regular tutorial sessions for 1 year. The tutorial sessions were officially on the evenings of Mondays and Wednesdays. During each session, the Chief Trainer Y would conduct an analysis of one or more currency pairs to demonstrate how he applied his techniques and then pointed out potential trades. This would be followed by hands on session during which students learn to apply the techniques on their demo accounts while Y would go around answering questions. For those who have the time, X was open daily for students to go in and trade with other traders. Y would conduct two analysis for the students; once before London session opened and once before NY session. As I did not have a job, I went in daily, from afternoon until night. During these sessions, Y would analyse a currency pair and point out potential trades. I found out over time that most of his trade calls were good and resulted in profitable trades. However, it was a different matter when I did my own analysis and took my own trades. Most of my trades turned out to be losers. Faced with Y's successful trades and my own unsuccessful trades, it became obvious to me that it was not the technique but the trader that was the problem. I spent practically all my weekdays at X until I found a job in June. When I was there, I found Y to be genuine about helping his students. I was using air-con, Internet and electricity for free. Although I could not go into X anymore because of work, I still joined the Wednesday sessions via webex meetings. This was something additional that Y provided. I didn't have to pay a single cent after that initial $3000 payment. In fact, I wondered if he could be profitable like this. When I saw your online survey on forex and a comment that all forex courses are overpriced and useless, I knew where you were going with this. You probably heard feedback from unhappy people who felt that they were cheated by forex schools. Hence, I felt I should provide a balanced view. There are indeed forex schools that use questionable tactics to sign up students but there are genuine ones too. Evaluating whether a forex course is good based on trading results can be tricky. This is because forex trading techniques are easy to learn but it takes time and experience to learn how to apply them correctly. It takes time, discipline and effort and is not a get rich quick scheme. Like in any business, only a small percentage eventually master the skill to become successful. I personally found that it is quite safe to trade forex. I am still working on my forex trading skills. I have heard of people losing lots of money trading forex but it was usually because they could not follow simple trading rules that would keep them safe. For example, students are taught not to trade large amounts until they are successful with paper trading or trading with mini accounts for a few months. Another rule is that you are not supposed to risk more than a small percentage of your capital per trade. However, there are many people who simply could not follow these simple rules. Mr Tan, if you have read up to this point, thank you for your patience! And thank you for what you are doing to help ordinary Singaporeans!
11 comments:
"Like in any business, only a small percentage eventually master the skill to become successful"
Now that's fair comment! Can't argue with that.
If only this testimonial from a satisfied student would appear in X's future advertisements ;)
Ex-salesman,
Jared Seah
It's good to hear a different perspective.
Alexander Elder postulated the 3M model of a successful trader/investor;
When the MIND (psychology) of the trader is in harmony with his (trading) METHODS and MONEY MANAGEMENT (position sizes and leverage).
It takes time and effort to master trading skill and to be eventually profitable. There is no short cut and 3 days course are just a primer to the LONG journey to become a successful trader. I emphasize the word LONG because it takes years to hone and master trading skills.
This is a very informative video and it is started circulating in facebook and forex discussion forum since yesterday.
"http://vimeo.com/31528550"
In this video, there is a local forex coach who is trying to send you a message that
1.He can trade without looking the chart with accuracy greater than 60% for over 40 consecutive attempts
2.The accuracy will be improved to over 90% if he does look at the chart to make a trade call.
3. His strategy is Proven.
It sounds amazing and unbelievable right? I m not interested in finding out whether his skillset is real or not and I just assume it is real.
What I m trying to tell you next is some proven mathematically theory which is probability, I believe most of you learn probability in secondary school.
Lets begin a "A story of an amazing penny"
Everyone should know how much a penny worth! Let us play a probability game with this amazing penny. The rule is very simple, you flip a penny and guess it is toss or head. If you get it right, the value of the penny will be double. For example, if I guess it right in 3 consecutive attempts, this 1 penny will become 8 penny (1 to 2, 2 to 4 then 4 to 8). Got it!
After 30 consecutive attempts, the value of this 1 penny will become 800K SGD if I guess it right each time. If you don't believe me, try to take out your calculator to check it out. What if I guess it right in 55 consecutive attempts? Woo, that 1 penny will become a very very huge amount, how BIG? It is equivalent to 2 times of Bill gate and Warren Buffet's fortune added together. Isn't it an amazing penny.
Now if you use his strategy to trade a micro-lot FX account, you will become the richest man in the world within 24 hours. Does this DREAM sounds very amazing?
The experience of most people trading in forex has been negative, i.e. they lost money. Those who make money represent the minority, perhaps less than 10%. It is difficult to trade forex and speculate against the big hedge funds (who have the financial power to move markets). The trader also incur the cost of spread and commission, and will end up being the loser. It is not easy to master the skills. The trainer cannot pass this skill - so the fee spent is going to be largely wasted.
Dear Mr Tan
Thank you for the enlightening post. I am aware of who school X is, it is a small and humble school and not a fanciful one, what i like about this school is that it provides one year support with no additional cost, I like that after my extended period of work commitments , the trainer P is always happy to see us back to learn . and it is definitely a good school but it is NOT the one in the video above as I attended the course by school X and at the moment still joining them for the weekly webinar. I don't believe in get rich quick scheme like 'become the richest man within 24hrs etc'. I've attended many workshops prior to this but i found that this is the most honest one as they don't hard sell and never told us that we can be richest person in the world within few days or few months etc.
In fact, they actually told us that if we don't follow the rules in trading, we are just like gambling, can get burnt.
It is unfortunate that marketers latch on to every website and opportunity to do false marketing and sales.
The school X as afore mentioned by the consumer in this blog is a school that teaches in such a sense that it encourages safe handling of the skills handled to handle one's own money. There should be more such schools and be encouraged rather than sales and marketers who tout get reach quick schemes via magic tricks.
Forex is a de-centralized market where trades take place in different liquidity pools or dark pools worldwide 24 hours, bank trader is trading with the counter party within the own interbank market based on credit line, retail user has no way to join them, the price(quote) that we saw on our retail trading platform is actually the dealer from the bank makes price to your retail broker, therefore the bank can capture a risk free commission from your retail broker which in turns transfer this cost to you. All those amazing trading skills that your FX coach presented to you is more or less useless to the bank trader because they are trading based on the liquidity flow or front run the market by using high frequency trading server/algo. The price movement on your chart is the result of a trade execution between the buy side and sell side, while your coach is busy on teaching you how to analyzing those chart pattern to do a buy or sell, the bank trader can actually see who is buying /Selling, how big is the volume and whether this order can move the market by accessing those big liquidity pools which your forex coach cannot . That's why you never see the bank ask their junior trader go to attend the local forex school or hire your forex coach to train the bank trader, the skill they are selling to you is just not fitted for the bank trading desk. Also just one question, let say your forex coach is really that good, what happens if he teaches you his skill at $4,XXX SGD , few months later you go to run your own FX school by offering the same skillset, how this coach survives? Also don't anyhow trust those marketing materials/ testimonials from the school. What supports the coach to make a claim likes the strategy yields 25% per month or the accuracy is 70%, who can justified it? Even the most successful hedge fund manager in wall street ,John Paulson, dare not to say this to his institution investor while he is managing few hundred billions fund.
Forex is all about leverage, to get rich with small capital, you need to use a high leverage, otherwise you trade those minlot account is just wasting time, making 10 dollar per trade if you win and you need to spend a lot of time to watch the chart/economic news everyday since the forex market is moving very fast, can you afford such time with your daily work unaffected. After 1 to 2 years trading, you realised you are either in breakeven zone (excluding the school fee) or get few margin calls of your mini accounts, or luckily with few hundred dollars profit and decide move to a standard account, just one black swan event, your standard account got a margin call. The coach will encourage you to continue to trade to improve your skillset or comes back for a new course with an improved strategy while he is sitting in a new purchased Ferrari
Margin trading may not suitable for everyone particularly those retiree/ household wife because you are either living with your saving or no steady incomes monthly ,this group of investor should look for a fixed income product
Every individual FX traders I know get burnt sooner or later.
Couple of them used computer with special algorithm to do automatic trading, couple of months into the trade their principal got wipe out completely.
Those who trade manually with charts and forecasting tools last no more than 1 month.
From what I know, banks make about 1-2% each day from foreign exchange risk free. They just match up buyer and seller and take the difference as service charge. Something like money changer at Orchard Road.
How to get a license to become a money changer? Maybe it is easier to make money this way and you do not have to attend courses.
Just finish watching this video http://vimeo.com/31528550 I m not interested in what kind of a car he is driving or he paid it in full or not.
I m wondering what ISO9000 has to do with a Forex School? ISO is not a relevant organisation to justify how good is the trading strategy from the school. I m not here exporting something to EU countries which I need to have a CE mark or ISO standard. What they should show is a certified live account for a period of time to demonstrate the return of the portfolio. Also how to verify the coach is using the same strategy that he taught to the student to trade his account?
Hi,
Forex course training is essential if you want to learn how to do foreign exchange trading the correct way. An education in Forex trading is an extremely important part of your trading experience. Thanks a lot...
Day Trading Secrets
It is really important to undergo forex training since it can serve as a guideline for the people who want to enter foreign exchange. In this way, it will be easier to determine if what is the proper way to expand more income.
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