Here is my review of Falcon Trading Guidance (Falcon FX) who is owned by Mark Hutchinson
I joined falcon fx after reaching out to a few of the key members who were largely active on instagram at the time, all of which said it was the best decision they’d made.
A lot were in very similar circumstances to me, and had left IP because it didn’t suit their personalities / styles, whatever you want to call it.
I liked the idea of what they were portraying, a simplistic approach to trading, no indicators, just pure price action and trendlines.
This was ideal to me as i’d just come from trying to force myself on complex analysis and complex entry styles.
The main premise of falcons teachings is to do with trend trading. This removes a lot of opportunities immediately to trade ranging markets, where typically markets tend to spend more time, instead of trending. Removing trading range-bound markets removes a great deal of opportunity, and from my experience, when you do actually try to apply trending strategies to range bound markets, you get hosed, so even if some are attempting to force these patternistic entries, they’ll have a hard time doing so.
Below is an example of their core teachings, simply put you are learning to recognise patterns and the behaviour of the price action. Simple enough, enter in a corrective pullback pattern, and ride out the huge gain in the impulse stage. Easy as that.
Like many others, I loved the idea of making these spectacular gains, because everyone loves a carrot dangling in front of them right?
This was great marketing from a business perspective because A) everyone loves simple things to learn, and B) everyone loves a big winner don’t they.
The problem (or genius depending on who’s side your analysing this from) is that teaching pattern recognition is, in and of itself, a never ending task. You will never learn repeated patterns which fall across different asset classes, or instruments, because they all move differently.
Additionally, placing too much emphasis on the very fundamental part of the impulse stage versus the corrective stage will actually mean you end up missing out on so much opportunity. Below is an example of USDCHF.
A great impulse down forms, with a lot of corrective nature following it giving falcon its bias to short because of the actual nature of the price action. You are taught not to trade against the preferred direction of the price action, in this case to the downside, so you are taught not to take long trades.
The above signifies why their teaching is flawed.
As the channel would be forming, falcon members will be watching marking on trendlines, and forever ‘evolving’ them as Mark puts it, which means once it continues correcting just move the trendlines to reflect current price action.
All red arrows denote failed short attempts within the channel because of the bias only being to the short side. Green arrows denote higher low entries which would’ve been perfectly valid to have gone long from.
My next point to make is the actual execution of the analysis itself. Trading pure price action is what big traders use as their first point of call, however I challenge anybody to find a hedge fund / prop firm / big bank who are trading on pure price action and trendlines without any other indicators or even basic support and resistance.
Support and resistance are not guaranteed areas of turnaround, but they are areas where a lot of traders will be looking. Trendlines are objective and can be drawn a million ways, thus voiding that area of mass psychology.
Big traders know who will be looking to aggressively short ‘breakouts’ from trendlines, and they know where you will be doing it. That’s why statistically trendline breakouts often fail 80% of the time.
Falcon haven’t found the secret sauce to trading, they’ve found the secret sauce to taking money from mugs basically, and I was one of them.
They dangle the big % return carrot in front of your eyes, showing they ‘made 30% this month’ without a shred of proof, and whenever any members have asked, they’ve either been blocked, removed from slack groups or simply just shunned, much like a cult whenever a doubter speaks up against their leader.
No big trader will take 3 months of sitting on their arse losing 1% here and 1% there trying to get one of these big 30% trades because even though mathematically the risk reward makes sense, they wont be because they’ve got money to make and prop firms would be sacking you if you were making nothing for 3 months because your trendline channel is about to breakout.
Frequent smaller wins, in my opinion, are the better alternative.
Now, on to the grand master himself, Mark Hutchinson.
This is the main reason I lost faith in the teachings.
For those who were part of IP in the early days, you will know that Mark was infact a student, and actually tried peddling the affiliate links as much as he could (see below photo from July 2016).
Upon looking at Falcons main page on their website, it states that ‘between 18 and 22 I worked in Canary Wharf as an investment broker to gain insight and exposure to the financial markets as well as talented proprietary traders, however I didn’t enjoy the lack of freedom that came with working in a high paying normal job’ (another carrot dangling for the students, who doesn’t want to be their own boss? May aswell listen to a Herbalife presentation).
‘I have over 8 years experience within the FX market, with the past 4 having been consistently profitable with an average uncompounded return of +117.5% YoY’ that’s bollocks first of all, why would you be learning strategies from IP 2 years ago if you were that profitable.
Additionally, working in Canary Wharf is bollocks, because I remember Mark saying in a webinar he worked in an architect (this is backed up by the below news article stating he’d just quit his job in architectural construction)
For those who really do their digging aswell, you’ll find that co-incidentally his mum owns an architectural business which seems suspicious.
Last piece of this elaborate money making puzzle is regarding the sudden influx of old IP trading mentors and marketers, all of which have had a sudden change of heart and are not peddling the great money making strategies they once were at IP, they’re peddling the falcon abstract method.
The falcon abstract method by the way, is the ability to identify an area there may be some form of turnaround in price, but not to identify any live or in real time, but are able to show a pinpoint entry with almost no draw down, a tiny stop loss and now a huge profit target. Another big orange carrot.
I didn’t intend this to be a bashing for IP, however I feel they are intentionally and consciously lying to their students for no other gain than to ensure they continue paying their membership.
Like I said earlier, they did teach me one thing, impulse and corrections, and for that I am thankful, but for everything else I think they are intentionally misleading you.
I reached out to falcon and gave them the opportunity to settle my concerns, in which case i’d have quite happily backed off, but below is a screenshot of the conversation between myself and falcon.
My email is below:
” Hi Ben,
Thanks for getting back to me, please see the following.
From May 24th until October 24th i subscribed to the falcon membership because i believed in what was being advertised to myself online. This idea that Mark was an expert in his field and that he had experience to warrant being qualified to teach his craft he specialises in.
After 6 months i felt that £97 a month wasn’t providing nearly enough content to warrant the expense, and i’d began to stop believing Mark actually knew what he was talking about.
If proof of any trades being placed was provided as evidence to substantiate the claims he’d made 30%+ in certain months then i’d have been more trusting. Unfortunately i chose not to ask when in reality i should have.
The community in which I was initially sold on due to its close knit nature, then steadily began to ignore and alienate me, furthering my suspicions that a lot of key members are actually being paid to promote the course. Unfortunately I have been unable to prove this….
I believe i am a victim of fraud / a scam and the following points highlight my reasons.
Complaint 1
At no point were any trades taken by Mark actually proved. I.e. a broker statement, live video of metatrader, even a ticket number showing an actual live trade.
Complaint 2
The website is false and can be easily disproved, Mark hasn’t been trading for 8 years, or 9+ as stated on facebook, let alone consistently with his strategy. I have both evidence of previous facebook posts from 2016 showing him trading under infinite prosperity as well as an interview of him in a local newspaper stating he was leaving his job in architectural construction to dedicate time to Silk Bros.
Complaint 3
The website and in the content Mark professes to how he worked in Canary Wharf, this again is false and can be easily disproved with evidence from online.
Complaint 4
Mark has used this community of followers to sell them his goal setting book 3 times, timed well with his purchase of a yacht and 2016 mclaren 540c, again i have my suspicions these are both rented and not even owned.
As you can tell from my previous thoughts, i believe that i have been scammed out of my money by using lies and deceit to coax others and myself into a false sense of security.
If you can help dispell these concerns then i am happy to leave this where it is and not pursue it further, alternatively a refund of £582.00 is acceptable as this covers the 6 months payments made.
I look forward to your response”
Falcon’s response below:
” Hi Tim,
As you have raised quite a few different points, I have tried to structure my reply as best as possible.
Firstly, you mention that you began to feel alienated and attributed this towards members being paid to promote the course. Falcon does not have any sort of affiliate scheme, nor any type of program which awards students a monetary value. This is the first instance we have heard where a student has found the community to be unhelpful or unwilling to help.
Complaint One – Lack of Proof
You raised the point that you have not seen a broker statement or “proof” of a trade Mark has taken. We would ask that at what benefit would that be to yourself and your trading to see what is the equivalent of someone’s personal statement? The aim of the weekly recurring content isn’t for it to be treated as signals or for the members to copy Marks analysis. The content is designed to teach you how to trade independently.
On your social media you have several posts which document the great returns you had experienced whilst trading the Falcon style, whilst also claiming that Falcon was “the last piece of the puzzle” for you. So this doesn’t seem to be in line with your allegation.
We would also ask you to refer to our Terms of Service which you agreed to upon signing up, where it states the following in section three:
“The material on this site and the Services provided by us are for general information and educational purposes only and should not be relied upon or used as the sole basis for making decisions without consulting primary, more accurate, more complete or more timely sources of information.”
Source:https://falconfx.co.uk/home/terms-of-service/
Complaint Two – The Website is False
Mark’s background is no secret at all. It is something which he has been very transparent about, including that he had previously been a member of another trading community years back.
It would seem that you may have tried to piece together a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of missing pieces. It is also worth noting that it may not be worth your time to cite a newspaper as “evidence”, given that they are notorious for bending the truth and misinforming the public on occasion in order to sell copies.
Moreover, we would welcome you to watch an upcoming YouTube video on the Falcon FX YouTube channel, where Mark will discuss his background in further detail and provide some clarity on this which may clear any confusion you have on this topic.
Complaint Three – Working in Canary Wharf
We appreciate that you do not believe Mark worked in Canary Wharf, however we do not intend to provide you Mark’s personal documentation to prove his previous employment history.
Complaint Four – Using The Community as Leverage for Mark’s Book
There has only ever been a handful of books for sale at any one time. The book is promoted via Mark’s Instagram, as well as to the mailing list on Mark’s personal website.
Naturally, members of the Falcon community are intrigued to pick up a copy for themselves, however the allegation that the community is being leveraged to sell copies is quite simply outrageous given that Falcon has never marketed the book to Falcon students.
I’m only doing this because genuine, hard working aspiring traders are being misguided by this con artist, who manipulates, misleads and point blank lies to his students, for his own personal gain.
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. Remeber every timeframe has it’s own impulse and corrections, leading up to make the higher timeframe structure and moving in line with it.
. Different strokes for different folks indeed so long as we all get there. Ps I was disposing of the junk he was talking not in anyway defending. I’ve tried all routes from self taught to learning different strategies(support and resistance, indicators, elliot wave, harmonics etc). You might evolve as well and not hold yourself back the moment you realise your trading can get better. This is life for me, bread and butter to say the least not a side piece so I need a sustainable strategy and this one works for me. Why fight a winning strategy? 
if you haven’t realised his the only guy who complained that should tell you something 
search FalconFX on google or Mark Hutchinson but goodluck to you too as well I hope you make it and don’t lose hope forex has so much potential
