I was watching a video on youtube posted by one of the instructors regarding some trade setups using their “income generator” strategy. It’s basically trading pinbars in the direction of the trend on a daily chart. I just can’t believe they’re charging 1000’s for this. I have to give it to that guy though, I wish I could sell basic forex strategies found on any forex site for a nice buck.
Have you taken the course, or do you just not like the marketing? I know that we are all different, but for my part I never felt part of a ‘selling machine’. I also received excellent support from them both during and post-the original course, found that the coaching transformed my trading and, contrary to your view, feel as though one of the real advantages of K2A is the way in which one is not just buying something off the shelf and then disappearing, but actually has the opportunity to maintain a relationship with them, ask questions at any point on any aspect of the training and actually feel very supported, which for me was a good antidote to the often solitary nature of retail trading. I watch the weekly webinar, for instance (available online but with the opportunity to ask questions afterwards) every week which gives me regular access both to quality market analysis done from a retail trading perspective as well as keeping my eye for the strategies topped up. So just in the interests of balance, I disagree with you pretty strongly. Personally I made a profit on my momentum coaching as the improvement in my trading more than covered the cost of it each month. So I guess we are all different, but if you have taken courses with them and are not happy then it is more helpful to people on this site to make that clear, rather than simply seeming cross at the email marketing and the price list, which anyone could do.
ST
I Couldnt Agree with the above poster more.
I was originally not going to do the course, but was convinced by talking to him on this forum.
The course is a COMPLETE rip off.
£2500 for a weekend course, when the markets were not even open, plus £80 a month for a ****ty software package called
eSignal.
These guys were so cheap, they didnt even put on any food.
NOTHING they ‘taught’ has been of any use to me at all.
There are many better places to learn about trading, this site being one of them.
However, after a couple of months, I can give people who are reading this some real tips.
Firstly, get an account with a reputable firm, such as IG Markets or CMC.
Fund the account with a small investment (say £250) then access the free educational seminars that these places offer.
Dont touch the money you have deposited with them, but just paper trade and keep going to the free seminars.
You will learn alot more for waaaay cheaper and you will probably meet some decent people.
I’m sure that what Knowledge to Action do is totally legal, because they seem like the kind of people who have lawyers crawling over everything, but it goes totally against the spirit of the law.
When I tried asking one of the teachers why he was teaching if he could make so much money trading. After about 10 mins of him avoiding the question, he finally said that income from trading (other than spread betting) is tax free as long as it is not your principle income.
So thats the scam people. The guys at K2A teach these seminars so they can screw money out of the gullible and also get tax breaks on any trading they do.
I certainly hope they fall foul of the FSA, but i’m not holding my breath.
If you are one of the poor unfortunates who has already paid them money, then my advice is cancel your credit card, since they will not refund your deposit, and if you say that you dont want to pay the rest, they will just take it from your card anyway, since they have the details.
I wish I could say that no one else will fall foul of these bastards, but I highly doubt it.
Dev.
Well that was a nice way to wake up. The alarm goes, I switch my iPhone on to get my email, and find that someone I have never met has called me names. (For the casual reader, to spare my blushes Pipzilla editted out this part of Dev’s charming post: [I]‘Simon Templar must either be an idiot or a sockpuppet[/I]’. Then went on to say [I]‘Oh and BTW Simon Templar, if you read this, you are a total sockpuppetting bastard. How the hell do you sleep at night pretending to be a decent person so you can screw people out of their hard earned money I do not know[/I].’)
(I assume that I am okay to requote that, that Pipzilla was sparing my feelings by deleting, as the word ‘b*stards’ was left in later on when not relating to me; apologies if not.)
Feel I ought to respond to that: I did not screw anyone out of any money, I don’t work for K2A, I gained nothing by telling you that I had attended the course and liked it. You asked for views on it, I gave my opinion - frankly, this is an internet discussion group, that is how it works, all one can ever achieve on here is gain a range of views or responses to any question and then pick their own course of action. I am one person whom you have never met: I do not have a duty of care to give you only advice that will work out well for you. I can only share my own experience and you make of that what you will. If I told you to jump off a cliff or stick your head in an oven you presumably would not do it, so don’t blame me if you did not get from the course that you selected (you had paid your deposit and attended the free seminar before you and I had any exchange on the subject) what you hoped to get from it and now feel that you have wasted your money.
I paid just under £2000 for the course. While mine was on weekdays, it does not actually need live access to charts to learn the concepts being discussed. It also includes access to weekly seminars online which have been invaluable to my trading. Two points on eSignal: firstly, they are widely acknowledged as one of the market leaders in terms of charting packages, the package is excellent, so to describe them as ****ty is just your personal bile and bitterness bubbling to the surface again. Secondly, although the charts for the K2A strategies come bundled with the eSignal package, it is made very clear that the strategies work on any charting package, the bundle just makes it easier initially. So any charting package would work, including the free ones. I have a good friend - met through the course - who uses the strategies but has never used eSignal. Personally, I started out with eSignal for ease, but intended to switch to a free package after six months, but in the end stuck with eSignal as I was such a fan and my trading income was ample to cover the cost. It’s the only cost of this most profitable business of ours, after all, assuming that one would have an internet connection anyway, so is not expensive in the grand scheme of things.
So you’re there to learn how to make money yet you’re worried about not getting a sandwich in a packet? Personally I had lunch round the corner in a very nice restaurant with a river view with some of the people I had met on the course. We sat in the sun, discussed trading, swapped contact details then went back into the course, refreshed ahead of the afternoon session.
Noone has claimed that learning on the internet is not cheaper and does not work. For me, I liked the pace with which this course got me profitable, and the opportunity to ask contextualized questions of people familiar with the trading style with access to supporting data and experience of teaching, as well as the ongoing learning available afterwards through the (optional) coaching and the online, weekly tutorials (included within the cost of the original course). As I have said on this site previously, we are all different and all prefer different approaches.
Nonsense. They charge a fee for teaching a trading method that brings consistent trading results in a variety of market conditions. That is exactly what I got from them, the ‘spirit of the law’ part is ridiculous.
Scam? These guys are pro traders, but you expect them to be teaching this course out of some wider belief in the betterment of man, as some form of charitable foundation? If they want a paying job that keeps them within the world of trading while at the same time enabling them not to pay tax on their trading income, why on Earth should that invalidate the teaching being offered? It does not mean that they do not enjoy the coaching, that they aren’t good at it, that they do not also get other things from it that are not delivered when sitting at home trading alone. Ironically, K2A’s founder now runs an associated charitable foundations raising money for charity - last year, the founder of K2A traded live from a helicopter while flying over London, raising money for charity (The Flying Trader, google it). Tough to fake that sort of live trading.
Don’t pay non-refundable deposits and then expect the money back. Get over it and take some responsibility for your own actions. You have no evidence for them taking the rest of the course fee, on top of the deposit, if you withdraw from the course.
They say up front that the deposit (£500 when I did it) is non-returnable. Whether or not you approve of that (I didn’t mind it) it is up to you whether you gave them money with that condition attached. If you did that and then regretted it, that is a matter for you, it is noone else’s fault.
Basically, Dev, your post just made me really sad. The course worked for me, I am still here a couple of years on, the vast majority of what I trade is still K2A strategies (I just took a winning trade on NZD/USD this morning - K2A strat, made me just over 1%, I took a trade on Monday, long on EUR/USD, made just over 1%, my third trade this week is a medium-term short on AUD/CAD, also a K2A trade - I’m up at the moment, but even if it stops out I am guaranteed to be up on my trading this week as I have banked nearly 3% on the other two trades. And I am doing this while doing the kids’ school runs, seeing friends, and generally having the work-life balance that K2A teach), I am a full time currency trader. I have no trouble sleeping at the night, thank you, as I am a good person who has only ever come on this site to learn and to help others, and to interact with other traders as one of retail trading’s few drawbacks is that it can be solitary.
I recall that you also mentioned your wife’s medical condition, I said that my own wife had the same issue a few years ago (issues with the discs in her spine), and that we had found a surgeon who had basically resolved the problem. I outlined what he had done and offered you personal contact details in order that you might explore whether that same thing would work for you, having discussed your situation with my wife. I did not have to do any of that. You did not even say thank you for the thought, which I found surprising. In light of your latest post here, presumably you thought that I was recommending some back street surgeon who would do a bad job and then give me a backhander? Not cool.
That doctor changed my life, as he healed my wife from something we feared would be permanent and was a real blight on our lives. K2A changed my life, as they have given me the skills to make a serious income while having a very nice work-life balance. In my previous job I worked seven days a week chasing criminals. Now I work when I want and spend a lot of my time with family. That’s what K2A offered, that’s what I got from it, that’s why I told you that it worked for me. There is no conspiracy, I am not pretending to be a decent person, I had no agenda and no benefit from giving K2A a positive write up.
It didn’t work out for you. Maybe you don’t suit that sort of learning, maybe you had too many preconceived ideas/too much knowledge about trading before going in so were not open to their approach, maybe you got a bad trainer, not as good as mine, and that made for a worse course, maybe you aren’t cut out to be a trader (it is a sad fact of life that we are not all suited to every career), maybe you wanted it on a plate and have not put the work in, maybe any one of a dozen other things. But coming on here playing the internet warrior, calling me names and presenting me as some sort of charlatan with an agenda? When you are not happy with the choices you have made and all I ever did was give my opinion on a discussion forum? You have embarrassed yourself. It seems to me as though you have anger/blame displacement issues, because nothing I did warranted the stream of bile and bitterness that flowed from you on this site.
You have no class, Dev, and in your position I would be far more worried about that than about the £2500.
ST
[I][/I]Imho, for every bad review you can find on a trading course, or in fact most types of these sort of courses, im sure there is a good one to counter act it… Frankly, the fact is that you will find more people will post online about bad experiences they have had rather than the good.
I have never taken a Forex course, but i have in the past attended and then gone on to pay for a property course - learning all about the different ways you can make money in properites… While i myself at the time was only about 15, and much of it was over my head, the reason i mention the experience is because of somebody i met there… While i didnt get to talk with him as much as i would have liked, he was in his own right an already successful property tycoon who told me he regularly attends many of these seminars… For him, he said a lot of them had shown to be a waste of time, not because of the content but simply because he was already established in that field and he knew a lot of the foundations… He told me he forks out thousands on these seminars regularly, because for him, even if he picked up one good tip, or something which helped his mentality towards his business, it was a worthwhile expense… Again, imo, that is a great mentality to have… Yes, he forked out a lot of money for the courses - [I]money which he could afford to spend[/I], but he deemed it worthy even if he learnt a single thing…
While i do not doubt there are many fake and scam courses out there, at the same time i think it partially comes down to the mentality of the individual taking the course…
In this thread you have two differences of opinion on the same course, im going to jump the gun and presume you were both taught the same material? In which case if the material was the same, then i can only see a difference in the mentality and actions of each person…
Happy Trading!
Sanj
Simon and Dev, I think you both need to get a room…now that I would like to see!!
After attending a seminar, knowledge to action apply a rude boiler room type style sales personal to call you. Very aggressive sales technique and I also experienced one calling me from there mobile. Typical type off sales person who is earning a big chuck off your capital for commission. Young rude and very frustratingly aggressive. Good luck if you attend a free seminar
couldn’t agree more. Strategy used by K2A is that you get sucked in by a series of courses. You do the first (with substantial investment) only to be told at the end of it - that (it is not enough) you need to invest more, to be better. Had you known this upfront; you wouldn’t have gone for the first one itself. You would soon find yourself out of pocket by a budget (of courses and trading funds) that puts you into hell-hole. With so many free webnairs the K2A guys appear to be quite tightfisted in comparison. It is easier to get some fx technical information from brokers than your own education provider. Be wary of K2A
The company that you are talking about on this thread and a number of others use the same sale tactics as a property company did some years ago, ( and countless others e.g driving instruction, plumbing training, the list goes on)
Gullible people kept signing up despite all the bad feedback and lost £100,000’s. I know because of friend of mine, after asking my opinion not to sign up (I have a property business), decided to sign up. She lost nearly £200k on flats in Birmingham through their schemes. The investment schemes did not stack up and valuations were doctered’.
Let me ask you a question: If your business had a lot of bad reviews, what would you do
A: Ignore them? If you were in business for the right reasons, B.follow up any bad feedback with a view to address it, C. threaten people or sites that allow feedback
The point I am trying to make is all these business have the same lifecycle, throw millions into marketing, making ridiculous claims, do not give value for money, no interest in their clients, constant upselling to more courses etc , close when it has run its course. They can close the company at any time and start a new one next day because the laws allow them to. There are NO penalties for this behaviour.
Why do they set up companies like this? Because it makes them a fortune. I am not against anyone charging and providing a service, [B]I object to the way people are treated and not delivered to.[/B]
But back to trading; people do not want to hear that trading will take a number of years to master, that it is difficult and not all traders will make it despite their best efforts; that message does not sell! So while people want a quick fix to everything in life, the majority of them will lose money and more.
However, I do not agree with the thought that everyone should learn trading from forums, websites and youtube. Everybody learns differently and there is a place for good companies to provide a service. There is a cost to learn to trade, depends how you spend your cash.
I mentor a few traders each month and 2 new traders I spoke to yesterday have read the hype and believe that they are going to be the ‘next big thing’ in trading in the next 6 months . I told them to come back when they are ready to work for it!
It is the human condition to hope
Mytrader1961
Just to address this point, I did the basic course and they never said this to me. Sure, there were other courses that I could go on, covering other styles of trading, more discretionary areas of trading, and I was given literature about these, but I was never told that what I had learned on the basic course was not enough. Some of the more expensive option are more programmes than courses, containing a number of components that take place over a full year. I never sat the further courses, and am profitable trading what was taught on that first course. I knew about the existence of the further courses on going in.
On the tightfisted point, I am now in my third year of watching weekly webinars which have taken my trading on dramatically - access to these is included free within my original course fee. They’re generally 30-60 minutes long, and available to download so I still have them all and have watched many several times. Between my original course, the subsequent coaching, the weekly webinars, my course notes and 11 hours of DVDs that I was given during the course, I have well over 100 hours (and counting) of recorded material, all about trading, all focussed on the strategies I trade. This is constantly updated to reflect the current market as the webinars are recorded new each week. All of this for my original course fee, plus an original fee for some extra coaching sessions. I have not worked out what I have paid them for each hour of learning I have received, but considering I am now a full time trader and before I met K2A I knew nothing I consider it the original bargain.
Like many things, this becomes better value with the more time invested.
Was I a profitable trader in the week following the original course? No.
Was that original course my first stage of a programme that has lasted years, which led to me becoming a profitable trader? Yes.
At the end of the day, that is what they told me they could offer in return for my course fee. Hence I am a happy customer.
I know that we won’t all agree, I don’t mind at all that we don’t, and obviously it is possible that mine was an unusual experience, but in my case I gave K2A money in exchange for my participation in a Forex education programme that I hoped would lead to my becoming a full time trader. And that is exactly how it worked out for me. I have a wife, three kids, a fourth on the way, and four properties - I wouldn’t muck about with this stuff, it’s important to me, so my point is a very simple one (despite the appallingly rambling nature of my posts on it!): in my case, K2A delivered absolutely on what they promised in exchange for my course fee.
ST
I think that praise of K2A is rather sickly.
Lol. I think that if I and a legion of others did it on a near-daily basis spread across a number of threads on the site using, on occasion, preposterously over-the-top language that I’d agree with you… but on one thread, in context, as a counterpoint to another’s view during a discussion of that subject I think that it is in keeping.
Obviously you dont want share and help towards the success of others.
How did I say that?! I was talking about K2A, you popped up with a joke reference to the other exchange, I responded in kind, now suddenly I don’t want to help others succeed?!? I share plenty around here, and help when I think I have something helpful to add, and that is entirely divorced from the separate discussion of ‘is there too much ICT/backslapping on BP, these days?’.
The fact that you have popped into this thread to bring that stuff into it kind of supports my point of view, to be honest!
Like who did you have in mind PPF???
It was a direct reply to ST, I’m sure he’s profitable, but I don’t see many how to’s.
Okay, well as you appear to want to be serious about this let’s have a serious answer.
First up, I don’t recall signing anything when I joined BabyPips where I committed to laying out a ‘how to’ trading plan for others to follow. The majority of members here offer individual pieces of advice and help along the way, but without hosting one, cohesive thread.
I realize that you have now sidetracked this thread away from its original theme and towards your current favourite subject, but I think that we can recall from this thread that I originally learned to trade on a course, for which I paid money. So it is not an option for me to start a thread on BP simply laying out the various K2A strategies and teach everyone to trade them for free. I would not last long, as the K2A lawyers would (quite rightly!) come knocking on my door.
But to counter your principal point - which for the record I found remarkably presumptuous - I believe that I am a net contributor to this community, I have certainly given freely of my time and what expertise I have over the past two and a half years in order to attempt to assist others in improving their trading. You can check my previous posts through my profile page here. There are 1800 or so, so it would be a pretty dry and dull task, but in between the general stuff you will find a lot of posts clearly made with the sole intention of helping others. Among other things I have: posted charts showing key levels that I am watching; explained elements of how I use S&R in my trading; talked about my use of Moving Average; talked through my approach to risk management; talked through my approach to money management; talked through how I use Fib as well as a number of other aspects of trading that probably don’t come to mind right now.
In addition to that, I get a LOT of PMs from members who have seen my posts and have questions. On a one-on-one basis I have shared a lot of charts, opinions, insights, generally been as helpful as I can be. I have had a lot of positive feedback from these people, thanking me for putting so much time in. A lot of people have thanked me profusely and repeatedly for the difference I have made to their trading. I won’t name names here as it would not be fair to draw them into this, but I get a lot of enjoyment from helping others learn to trade and I put several hours a week into just that.
So please, whatever you might think of my views on all the other stuff, never accuse me of not helping others or putting the time into others: that is entirely unfair and inaccurate.
In that case, my apologies, but come on, a 30 pip TP with a 30 pip SL, surely you can do better than that?
Okay. Just because I am less showy than some about my efforts does not mean that I do not put hours into helping others for no reward other than the feeling of doing my bit.
I’m not sure where the slightly confrontational tone is coming from, but to answer the question either I mistyped yesterday or you misread yesterday (you also put 30 pips in your email of yesterday evening) as one of my Intraday approaches involves a 20 pip SL and a 20 pip TP, I don’t trade a fixed 30 pip SL. It’s a set-and-forget thing that puts 1% on my account each time it hits TP, with a very high success rate so on that one, I don’t need to do any better thank you. I also trade other Intraday strategies with a higher R:R. The 20 pip one takes moments to scan for a setup and, in the right market, gives multiple Entries. It is about entering on a low timeframe chart, with the trades coming to fruition within a few bars. I trade a few different approaches to suit each mood of market.