Would You Trust This Guy?

Beginner Questions
1

So I was in the neighbourhood of actually looking for a seminar to attend to, free of course, not going to drop money I don’t have.

I was looking at the Toronto branch of Online Trading Academy.

I was aware of them but they were a bit annoying in the sense that 2 years ago I would get phone calls to see what my progress was on my paper trade.

I signed up for their class tomorrow and I’m hoping to hear from the Legendary Phoenix Trading system master what he thinks but I take everyone else’s opinion just as serious, its because he has fireworks.

I got a phone call today to confirm what I wanted to learn I said forex he laughs. At first I thought okay lets see where this guy goes, he goes off saying why trade forex? I trade stocks, bonds, and futures. Then I had to think back to the gigantor monster you guys portrayed in the school compared to the stock market. I answered to him the forex market is a little more condensed I don’t like reading about thousands upon thousands of different companies to choose from and only finding out that maybe a not satisfactory percentage of them will even out let alone profit. He continues to say that the MACD and Stochastic system are garbage which I think is peculiar because referencing the Joe DiNapoli Book I read he swears by it and has the charts and graphs to prove his system but not only that Joe claims don’t limit yourself this is just one of many tools to use and you shouldn’t be completely dead set on the fibnodes etc alone.

So what’s your take?
Should I even bother attending this class despite the free’ness of it or is it a waste of time?

2

I go by two mantra’s :
1-Learn what you can from who you can. (it doesn’t matter if you like, dislike, trust, distrust, respect or no - you may just pick up an item or two that is useful to you)

2- Trust your gut. It sounds like your gut says this guy could be a nut. Probably then for you he is.

Good luck.

3

If it’s free then you have nothing to lose but your time. Trust no one in this industry.

4

I second that view.

5

Ah was wondering when you were gonna comment lol

I will check it out since I have not much to do tomorrow. Gotta do something until Aug 2nd

6

Ditto. Take the good and throw away the useless information.

I had an experience with a different company in Toronto. So just as a piece of advice, I once went to one of their free seminars at FCP, which really made them look like a top notch company, but there were nothing really outstanding in that seminar that you could not find here.

And I could tell for sure that the speaker (who was a teacher at the institute) was not a trader. At the end it came this pushy sales pitch that nobody likes and it kept with unstoppable phone calls for weeks.

Overall it was a good experience because I could do some networking, (yes, not everyone who attends is a newbie) and you can wet your feet on what’s going on out there regarding trading education. If you’re careful enough to not sign in right away for whatever product they want to sell, it could be a nice experience for you.

On a side note, I keep reading threads like this one asking for reviews on a specific course. While I’m sure there are really good ones out there, I cannot stress enough the fact that wathever you need to be a profitable trader is right here in this site for free. Sometimes I think the information in babypips is underrated, but I think that’s a natural path we all need to walk. The more you learn, the more you appreciate it.

Let us know how it goes!.

All the best.

7

Thanks for the response,

No I’m very objective with everyone I meet mainly because I know people are always out for themselves I’m already committed to oanda at the moment until I find a better broker but for the time being I just need to brush up and add more skills and tools to my arsenal.

I’m also highly critical of the person who seeks to teach me and I like knowing that he/she may not be the utmost best but they have the ability to show what they spew.

8

Update:

School in Question:
Online Trading Academy

Loc:
Toronto Division

Short Form:
-Pushy sales, I don’t know whether they just stuck me with the wrong guy or they just wanted to fill up an empty class
-Utilization of some old graphs from market crashes of 2000 and 2008
-Theorized and philosophic without putting any of the preaching in to practice
-Seminars all cost the same

Long Form:
I went there it was an office and their pitch was were not a fly by night company like rich dad poor dad etc they named a few I didn’t really care. I got a minor tour but I don’t know if it was just my placement or because the seminar was not geared towards forex. The man I got said I should trade options and I was saying well… I don’t have that load of money to make a lot of money. He said well the beauty of options is you only risk however much you put in and its tacked in with someone else’s larger order.

This was peculiar because I remember their subsidary, Questrade, Did the exact same thing when you bought a lot you put a order in for 100,000 units so 1 lot = 100k. They continued the day with telling us about the crash of 2000 and 2008 regaling us with stories about how they told their friends to get out. How they don’t use systems, this is a tricky area I’ll touch back in a bit, they would tell us about stock and how one of their graduates is approaching the 1 million earned mark (Keep in mind this school has been around since 1997!).

So the class began with a simple showing of his graphs of the TSX, S&P, and the NASDAQ. He showed us graphs that would cut off right before the crash like the one in 2000 and 2008. Saying how his math was able to calculate that this was going to happen and when to jump ship on the market. He later tried to re-emphasize his success by saying this is the chart of the graduates trading from January 2011 to now July 28th, 2011 They were at a 45% success rate with an average of $600 profit and $200 loss per trade. He obviously only showed us the successful ones and ignored my request to see what the losers were like.

Now he started going on about one of their grads reaching 1 million profit after taking his class since january he has already made around 70% profit off his investment so hes standing at 700k. At first being a person from a non-business background I think DUH, HE HAS MONEY, YOU NEED A LOT MONEY TO MAKE A LOT OF MONEY. The character in his story only traded 1 stock and it was AAPL no experience apparently got 1 million from god knows where, probably daddy’s trust. I leave your opinion up to your own discretion, but to me this is pure hookum. To my knowledge if their classes are so successful in making money by the way the grand total so far for all those students combined were 46k why is it only now that one of their students all from their formation in 1997. If they were grinding out successive traders.

As the class progressed people were being singled out to ask what they wanted out of the courses etc and if they wanted to specify. I got pulled and when they we were asked I put down forex hands down. I don’t want too many things on my plate I have no current interest in. They stick me with another options guy. EVEN THOUGH RIGHT NEXT TO THE GUYS OFFICE THE FOREX COACH WAS RIGHT THERE AND NOT BUSY. He asked me since I told him I’m a very objective person in the sense that you can say your system works but I haven’t actually seen you guys put down a live bid. He said it would be redundant because it would mean giving away their class in that one trade, yes and no, because to a person like me I wouldn’t understand much of whats going on or how this person got to the conclusion on when to buy and sell based on a “hunch”. It would of made more sense since it was a 3hr class to maybe put in a bid, then check on it each 1hr interval to reinforce your point.

He sat me down and kept pushing me towards options instead of forex saying forex is a dangerous market, leverage is your killer and your broker is your enemy, obviously I’m not that new, also that forex is a very difficult market to make money in and is a “poor mans” market in the sense that you can start even with 100 dollars. If I signed up for their class now since they have 4 options seminars vs the 2 forex seminars I could get a $2000 scholarship off the I think it was $7000 for a course. I asked him ok so whats the disadvantages of the options market. He said we’ll you only lose what you put in ( same as forex), Leverage can kill you ( also same as forex ), Margin wouldn’t kill you ( not the same as forex). So mathematically he’s only 2/3 but who knows I don’t maybe options that well… But remember what his counter part said he said we are only putting in a portion on top of a larger order we only lose what we risk but we are playing with someone else’s bigger order, sounds familiar? So to my discretion for risk management this would be highly risky so why would I let you risk your 200 bucks vs the other persons 99,800?

I may be wrong again I don’t know options but it is what it is and that was my take on all this. My opinion their probably good people to get an understanding from but their methods are the ones you have to be very very very cautious about.

Conclusion: Approach with extreme caution.

9

After reading your post and reading a little between the lines as well my conclusion is that you lost a few hours of time.

I’m surprised actually because I find Sam Seiden to be worth listening to, and he’s involved with the same company: Online Trading Academy.

Still, I can’t and won’t argue with your observations since you seem like a person with your head screwed on right. Save your money and consider this an interesting excursion into the jungle of trading teaching services.

It was interesting to get to read about your experience with them. Thank you.

10

Thanks for sharing. It was kind of the same experience I had.

Even though I don’t have first hand experience with Sam Seiden’s approach, for your comments and some other reviews I’d say he’s one of the most recognised mentors/traders out there, worth listening to as you say.

But I don’t find surprising that respectful people like him get involved with crappy companies. That’s the case of Chris Lori.

They probably make an alliance with a company with a legit purpose, but it ends being downgraded due to lack of a professional dedicated team.

I’d say it’s one of those cases where the message is really good, but the shoes are too big to fill for the messenger. It’s such a pity.