Is Forex Peace Army a BIG SCAM ? Part 1

Beginner Questions
1

Well Traders,

I am not sure if FPA really filter the reviews being posted on their website, especially the negative ones. For me, I seem to have lost my confidence in their reviews as it looks to me manipulated and biased. I just wonder if anyone else has the same experience.

I happen to come across a service by the name Happy Trader, visited his website as he claims to have 100% profitable system, read reviews on FPA, most of which were in support of Happy Trader and then felt it would be worth asking him certain questions and do some research if it really is a good service. I sent this guy an e-mail regarding my questions and in reply I received lines that did not answer my questions at all instead he suggested me to go and spend some time on Babypips for my learning process. In short I realized that what he was trying to hide were asked in my set of questions and he might have felt uncomfortable in answering those. I am in no way trying to discourage anyone who wanted to go for his service, however one should be aware what kind of trading style he follows and what drawdowns and basic SL he allows before he call it as a failure. I mean come on that is the most basic info any trader might want to know about before falling into any such services. Then why to hide those and at the end stating 100% profitable system. He told me to look after and study more on Money Management part and I proved it that it is only because of my MM calculations that I needed this info as it will decide the lot-size I would be comfortable to trade with and the kind of pips his system can generate thereafter to support for his subscription cost first and then my earnings at the end of the month. Imagine taking extremely less lot-size and making 200 to 400 pips a month. Well on pip count that is fine but what about the bottomline $$$ that you got at the end of the month. Every trade will somehow become profitable after some period of time if traded with slight knowledge of how market reacts. However a good trader is one who allows lower DD in his trading style and that is what I requested from Happy Trader as a potential customer that he somehow never revealed to anyone, I am not sure about the subscribers for his services.

Alright, after this I decided to put these questions together with my comments on FPA on 22/05/2010 and at that time total reviews shown on the FPA for his services were 147. At the time of writing this note I saw the total reviews went up to 148 and the last reviews was posted on 10/06/2010 after my review that was written on 22/05/2010 but never posted. What does that indicate ???

BIASED REVIEWS
MNIPULATION
SOMETHING SUSPICIOUS
UNRELIABLE FPA REVIEWS SERVICES
MISDIRECTING PEOPLE WHO TRUST FPA REVIEWS
In Short CHEATING, SCAM whatever you may call it.

Following is the script of my e-mail to Happy Trader and his reply below my questions.

My service is only * USD a month. I am in the trading live throughout the day providing updates on market conditions and trade setups. If you are looking for a sure win system for *USD a month I’m afraid that I am not aware of any such system. Forex trading is high risk.

From reading your email I get the impression that your expectations are unrealistic. No service is able to provide what you are looking for and even those with successful records are unable to promise you that you will be successful. Past performance is no indicator of future gains.

I suggest you use a demo account for 6 months and study the free content found at Forex Trading Online: Foreign Exchange (FX) Currency Trading Made Fun It is a very good free educational site.

Good luck and remember forex is very high risk and no service can promise you fortunes.

On 17 May 2010 10:56, Shaikh Yusuf <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Happy Trader,

Thanks for your replies and time.

Now final 2 questions to clear my mind.

1: I had been looking at your Trade Tracker. Now the dates being mentioned in these Trade Tracker represents Date of Open Trade or Date at which these trades are closed. Also could you tell me as how long do you normally keep a trade open (on an average basis).

2: I also went through comments on FPA regarding your services. While most of these comments seems to be favouring your services, I am more inclined to know if these words are true as mentioned below.

"Don’t want to rate as I haven’t been with them too long. Signed up a while ago but although people seemed to be making pips I didn’t like the trading Style, large stops was a big issue for me.
I got slighly confused with his notepad of open trades where there was draw down of many 1000’s pips. Not quite sure what was happening but it wasn’t for me. "

“Not for the faint of heart as the strategy often requires holding open positions with huge draw downs, essentially trading without stops. Recently closed a JPY trade for a small 40 pip gain but not before the trade went -600 pips”

While I evaluated from these reviews is the fact that your trades can give results only after big DD and I am sure you manage to keep these trades open only because you intend to open smaller lot-size in these trades thereby applying proper MM in a way that the risks are controlled effectively. If that is so then a gain of 2000 to 3000 pips in a month with low exposure (to cover for the risks associated with bigger DD) may not justify the cause of earning potential as the traders are always exposed to the risks of higher DD (600 pips) as mentioned in one of the reviews on FPA and that does not permit to trade sufficient lot-size if not many. This was the reason why I asked you to be specific in terms of average SL that you apply to your trades and your reply to me regarding the same was not very clear, I am sorry about not understanding what your average SL on these trades are. Like in my case, I use avergae SL of 30 to 40 pips and I am specific about that. LIkewise I would be happy to know what SL I will have to encounter once I sign up for you services. Is it going to be 50 pips, 100 pips, 200 pips or no stops at all. I am asking because I want to know if I am prepared to take that kind of risk and at the same time if I am lowering my risks by taking lesser lot-size, am I really going to generate income? These are questions I must have an answer for before I commit myself to availing your services.

Hope the intent of this e-mail to you is clear and you may help in resolving my confusions towards certain aspects of your services I am not able to understand.

Thanks once again ‘Happy’ as I eagerly await your reply,

Cheers,
Yusuf SHAIKH

— On Sun, 5/16/10, Support <[email protected]> wrote:

From: Support <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Subscription Inquiry…
To: “Shaikh Yusuf” <[email protected]>
Date: Sunday, May 16, 2010, 4:56 PM

On 15 May 2010 16:29, Shaikh Yusuf <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Happy Trader…

My name is Yusuf SHAIKH, I am from Australia, currently in India. I have gone through your website and find your services attractive. However I have few questions before I could plan to join you finally. I am full time forex trader and I trade fo living. However it is just that I want to grow on my skills, I thought of joining this group. My questions are as listed below.

1: Do you have any specific trade setups and specific time that you trade with ?

The schedule can be viewed from the website.

2: Do you share these setups and your experiences with them openly in the room or these info are kept secret to you only?

Not sure what you are looking for here… I discuss each trade setup openly. I don’t have many secrets :slight_smile:

3: Coming to Trade Signal: How much in advance do you anticipate market reaction and provide signals to the subscribers, like 2 hour before, 30 minutes before or on the spot. I mean I just want to know whether I am prepared to take every signal or not. The idea is I want to test your system for each and every signal else I won’t have an idea of practically applying it to real time scenario. So, I just want to know my preparation time, hence this question.

If time is a factor, concentrate on the economic indicator release which we trade in the room.

4: How much do you normally wait against your trade till it become profitable to you? In other words, I am asking about the maximum heat you are prepared to take on a trade. Just forget about 2% account balance logic at the moment, or consider it this way. Assuming that I have my account balance as USD 2500 to begin with. Now if you say SL @ 2% of account balance max. implies SL of USD 50. Now consider you are in the same trade with obviously bigger account size and the trade goes against by 80 pips and then reversing in your favour for 37 pips. Due to your bigger account size, you are allowed to keep the trade open whereas for me it is closed. Ultimate result is profit for you and loss for me. I am just wondering if that is the way you mark all your trades successful and count them at the end of the month as pips earned. I am also anxious to know how could you get 1 pip profit on few trades as shown on your website, maybe BE. In all cases don’t you think it would be good idea to speak about how many pips of SL you have put so far while trading on an average. This will allow traders to decide what lot-size they can trade thereby limiting the max. risk below or at 2% of their account size. This transparency is required as it helps in determinig the lot-size. Saying 2% SL does not serve the purpose for me as my account balance cannot be matched to yours or any other trader. I hope I am able to put my point convincingly. So, can I have an idea of max DD in terms of pips (and not in $) you have normally attained an are ready to face before seeing GREEN?

My system is based on a % system. Providing that your broker allows for small positions you will be able to follow our system. Obvioulsy the smaller your account…the less money you make.

5: Do you provide SL and TP together with your trade calls and also an idea to manage these trades in case if it start going against heavily?

SL and TP is based on the size of your entry. We have a money system which explains this. If you are looking for sure win 100% system with set TP and SL that you can follow regardless of the size of your entries good luck LOL
I’m charging 200 USD a month, you should keep that in mind.

6: Do you add to your positions to average a losing trade? Also do you add to positions for a winning trade?

I am a successful trader and provide education in the live trading room. In general I do not see adding as a successful strategy. However, there are times when averaging in can be a successful strategy for exiting losing positions as break even.

7: Are the members kept informed well in advance of your intent when you plan to enter or exit these trades?

yes

8: Do YOU trade in your LIVE account with the same trade calls you provide to your members?

yes

I know these questions maybe irritating but it serves the purpose of identifying the truely dedicated and committed service and I am looking for value for my money like everyone else as I got cheated with some hyped results and committment as adverstised by some of the service providers and hence I thought of learning on my own than depending on someone else. However this is a long procedure and does not allow me to do that as I said before, I trade for my and my family living. So finding a good service is inevitable and you are on my list. You look good as I have read the reviews on FPA, but I want to know the answers for the questions asked above before I join you. Hope that makes my intentions clear and reasonable.

Will be pleased to see your replies as soon as possible to make up my mind.

Cheers,
Yusuf SHAIKH

There are no sure win systems.

contd - Part 2

1 Like
2

continue from Part 1

This would clarify and justify too the reason of my frustration and this post here. Where in above lines did he answer my questions in clear words.

Now the following lines were my so-called reviews or questions I have TRIED to be posted under FPA reviews after the above event of exchange of e-mails as I have my rights to do so independently on such so-considered unbiased FPA services and unfortunately never got it posted there.

Reason - I am not sure, you decide.

HI Happy Trader and Subscribers of Services…
I am not a subscriber of this service and hence would like to know more about it from traders who already subscribed. I have gone through the reviews for Happy Trader on FPA,
both positive and negative. However I still have few questions in my mind and upon asking the same to Happy Trader by e-mail to him, I was replied with something that does not
answer my questions at all. Now the question still remains as I still have this point in my mind that if the service is good then why not join it.
Hence I thought of posting my questions here at FPA so that it can be answered straight rather than any other attempt to hide the facts.
1: I had been checking on Trade Tracker on Happy Trader’s website. The trades are shown here with dates, results, comments etc. Well done on that as it looks attractive.
However, I want to know that the dates mentioned on Trade Tracker represents Trade Open Date or Trade Close Date or both. The confusion arises because I am keen to understand
whether these trades are being kept open for very long time and are being closed on the dates mentioned on the website under Trade Tracker.
Straight and simple question and need straight answer. Are these trades mentioned on Trade Tracker represents Intra-day trades being opened and closed the same day and
during the session as mentioned or these trades are being held for long time and closed on these dates? Happy Trader kindly clarify as I did not get an answer to
my e-mail to you.
2: I asked Happy Trader about what average DD in pips (not is Dollars) is being seen by him so far while he applies his concept to trading and also what is his usual SL.
I was not answered directly rather I was asked to focus more on the Money Management part by trading appropriate lot-size, which is OK.
Now I ask the question this way. Assuming that I plan to begin trading Happy Trader’s way with initial deposit of USD 2500.
I already see what pips per month he is able to generate that seems more than good to me. However my question is what would be appropriate lot-size to achieve this goal
considering the account balance at USD 2500. This question is also important because unless I am informed about the anticipated DD or SL that can be treated as normal heat
that is acceptable, how would I be in a position to determine with what lot-size can I enter the trade. You see MM. Its fine to say 2% of account balance but then that 2%
may be different for different account balance and more than that different for different lot-size. I hope you get my point. If you don’t want to sher your SL or DD its fine.
Tell me what lot-size would be suitable to take all your calls as mentioned on your website assuming that my initial balance is USD 2500 ?
3: You don’t seem to have a fixed SL and TP, Correct me if I am wrong. Now if that is the case, do you inform your traders to exit the trade the moment you realize that
it should be closed, let it be profit or BE or anything. This give rise to one more question. The profit that you register on your website is representing the max. profit
that your trade has seen or the profit locked-in once you say “Close or Exit the trade NOW”. For example you called a trade open that is running in profit at any given instant
for 57 pips. Now assume that this is the max. the trade has seen since it was open. The trade started reversing thereafter and came back to a point where it shows only 13 pips
in profit. If you keep your traders informed about exit and do call for trade exits as well and call this trade exit at a point when it was reading 13 pips profit after having
seen max. 57 pips in profit, what do you register as your profit on your website? 57 OR 13?
Well, I have these queries at the moment to Happy Trader or even the subscribers of the service. The questions are very simple and straight and I tried to explain the situation
well to avoid any confussions. I am interested and hence need straight simple answers.
This is just a suggestion to Happy Trader:
Won’t it be reasonable to share your ALL OPEN TRADES with ENTRIES at the end of each day after the close of NY Session to make your service more clear and avoid such questions
as above? In a way it will also build confidence among others who are seeing your system thereby increasing the number of your subscription, you see.
Thanks for your replies.
Awaiting eagerly.
Cheers,
Yusuf SHAIKH

My concern now is not regarding Happy Trader services as I have no plan now or anytime in future to join him and this is my personnel decision based upon my experience and research and in no way represent any recommendations not to join his services.

My concern is WHY FPA is behaving like this ???

I would appreciate comments on that if at all there is any reasonable reply from FPA, welcomed.

Cheers,
Yusuf SHAIKH

3

I think you win the longest spam award.

4

LOL :smiley:

Ain’t that the truth!

5

You guys actually read all that? I just took one look & could tell it wasn’t worth reading within the first 3 words of the thread.

I rather spend my bored time reading something productive.

6

Thats a bit too much for me. I stopped after the first couple sentences.

7

In my opinion, if a site makes a big deal of providing unbiased independent reviews of other services, and then removes all of the bad reviews of services in which they have some financial interest, this amounts to criminal fraud (Fraud - Wikipedia). It is about time a criminal investigation into the forex peace army operations is started so that it can be determined whether this opinion is true.

8

TL;DR,
Im reading FPA reviews frequently, and this is not the first time someone accuses this reviews site of fraud. Im sure there are some interests, but FPA is a high traffic forum, so i find this “logical”.
The thing is that people read a lot FPA reaviews, and whether they are true or biased, they affect someones decision, especially if he is new to forex.
That is why the best thing to do is use multiple sources before investing to something :wink:

9

Like everything else - take it with a BIG PINCH OF SALT

But what I mainly find is that most of the genuine reviews are from people that have just finished their courses and are all excited by the nice training people on the other side of the email and the prospect of making a nice big pile of money, not having an idea what on earth is in front of them yet.

Also, people don’t want to admit to themselves that they can’t trade, so you wouldn’t want to give a negative review because that means you are a failure, but it’s not your failure it is their failure for not having the answers to help you properly.

10

Isn’t Felix (the founder of FPA) in jail for fraud? I can’t remember the details, but that is what I seem to recall.

If your searching for a “service” to provide you trade calls, I think you’ll lose your account pretty quick.

Good luck

11

You will find a lot of unsavoury facts about “Felix” (fake name, of course) at Yahoo answers.

See Is Forex Peace army and forexbastards.com a SCAM ? | Yahoo Answers

12

I find it darkly comical to be told that my “newbie” status (having made only 30 posts over the last 2+ years, often user feedback aimed at improving the quality of the site) means I am awarded a penalty point for including a URL in my post. I am amazed that I appear not to have done so in the last 29 posts, even though I did not realise it was verboten. I know for a fact that I have included links to PNG images of forex charts in the past, so perhaps there is some sort of policy of deliberate confusion of users in place of which I am not aware.

A polite suggestion - a computer is just as capable of preventing a user from using links as allowing them to and sending them an automated message afterwards, and it would be more user-friendly to do so.

Regarding the main issue I referred to in my earlier post, I know of several examples of products that have nothing but positive reviews on forexb** and where disgruntled users have complained that their factual negative reviews have been deleted. It is documented that this tends to happen for products in which “Felix” has a financial interest. This is in stark contrast, for example, with the policy of the reviewpips.com site to not remove reviews without a more substantial reason.

13

It is one of the longest thread I have ever seen in my entire life!

What a long story to be explained here…

Forex Peace Army is quite well known to people… as for whether it is a Scam… who knows…

Even Maddoff, such a huge investor, is found to be scammer only then… :frowning:

14

I used to post and visit FPA forum quite a bit and they do some good work in trying to help people who have found themselves in difficulty, and I might add they don’t charge a penny, so in that respect I don’t see how they can be accused of scamming.

I have however become more and more disconnected with the site due to the owners recent ramblings into religion and spirituality and IMHO some rather dodgy recruitment drive into a select club.

The sycophantic replies and postings to all this stuff has left me rather disenchanted with their readership which is why I joined this forum which seems to have a more down-to-earth membership.

15

The answer to this point is that it is scamming to encourage people to subscribe to (very expensive and dubious) services using methods which are to some extent deceptive. People have been convicted of fraud for using forums in a way which deceives people by making them believe they are reading unbiased views when they are actually reading views which are being written (or, in this case, selected) by those who make money from the services being reviewed. If you have 50% positive reviews of a product and edit it so that that becomes 99% positive reviews for example, that is deception.

16

Can you provide some evidence to back up this statement?

17

Hello,

Not that I’m trying to defend FPA here but I will say this: I’m just sorry that when I started trading I didn’t take heed of some of the reviews posted about certain brokers. I lost a LOT of money with a certain broker. True: it was largely due to my lack of experience etc. but the broker in question SURE helped me along (not being able to close out profitable positions but no problem with losing trades, platform going down, slippage that was WAY beyond what would be deemed as reasonable, that type of thing and, after all these years, it has been proved and documented that the broker in question is INDEED nothing other than a ‘bucket shop’ and have even lost their licence)!!!

But: it’s like ALL websites dedicated to this business. You have to develop the ability to be able to sift out the REAL issues i.e. you have learn to ‘read between the lines’ as it were. I check the FPA forums often (mainly because I have to field any posts about us) and I can tell you that there is an ALARMING amount of posts where it’s quite obvious that the trader has lost money for a variety of reasons e.g. NO risk management or not understanding slippage etc. and is now looking to blame the broker. In MOST cases: the broker had nothing at all to do with the loss.

I must admit that I found Felix’s latest posts a bit ‘too much’ for me but hey: it’s my choice as to whether or not I wish to take heed of his advice and input and / or PAY for the privilege.

I guess what I’m saying is that FPA does have it’s place and, for the most part, I think they do good work by providing the review forums.

Regards,

Dale.

Edit: I just have to note this though. There is NOTHING that anybody on the Internet can provide to you for a fee that you cannot get RIGHT HERE for free. There are a bunch of guys here that are only too happy to help out where they can (not to mention the vast amount of information that’s available to Babypips members for free).

Also: EA test results mean NOTHING and, quite frankly, if you’re going to allow an EA to trade for you, find something else to do with your money. An EA is NOT the same thing as those automated trading systems that the likes of Goldman Sachs etc. utilise. Those systems cost MILLIONS of dollars (not to mention the fact that their OWN servers are in the same ROOM as the NASDAQ’s own equipment)!!! Get the picture???

18

In answer to the request from forexdawn2010, I have come across several people who have bemoaned the fact that they have attempted to post a negative review of a product in which Dmitri Chavkerov (alias Felix Homogratus) has a financial interest, and had it deleted. For one example, if you search google for [B]forex4noobs kingforexsignals[/B], you should find a nicely presented video showing exactly how valid negative reviews of products in which Dmitri has a financial interest are blocked in order to artificially inflate the average rating of his products compared to competitors’ products. I repeat my opinion that this amounts to fraud.

If you want more information, I would suggest sifting through the results of a google search for Felix Homogratus or Dmitri Chavkerov, with a detached viewpoint.

For the record, I should point out that I have no financial interest at all in any forex service, but trade forex for a living. I merely have a strong natural aversion to injustice and those who rip people off, even though I have not been a victim myself in this case.

(I agree with the previous poster that the negative reviews of brokers etc. posted can be useful. But that is no excuse for the manipulation described.)

19

To cut the long story short.
Felix was wanted in US by the FBI for forex scams and for false documents (in order to stay in the US), but he left the US.
I dont know if the reason he opened FPA is to scam or mislead people into opening accounts to forex companies and if hes getting any rebate or smthg from any brokers.
The fact is that FPA has tons of traffic and the reviews there are read by hundreds of people that want to learn about forex. The bad thing is that most of them have no idea about forex…

20

Ok I’m not going to get into an inter forex forum bashing match on hear say and gossip, people that are concerned by this will have to make up their own minds, as dpaterso says previously:

“I must admit that I found Felix’s latest posts a bit ‘too much’ for me but hey: it’s my choice as to whether or not I wish to take heed of his advice and input and / or PAY for the privilege.”

This may be of interest to some, truth or lies? you choose.

http ://www.tradeprofits.net/the-truth-about-forexpeacearmy-an-interview-with-bill-k]The Truth about ForexPeaceArmy – An interview with Bill K.