Hi - The latest post I can find here and on Babypips generally about LearntoTrade / Secker / KTA is November '16 so I thought I might add my recent experience.
I am new to Forex, and been thinking about it a for a while, since attending a LearntoTrade 2 hour seminar about a year ago. I didn’t bite then as I felt I needed to do some research first, and so have worked through some of the Babypips courses (which I thoroughly recommend). So I went to another LTT 2 hour seminar last week (July 2017). It was a bit like deja vu.
The presenter was very good, seemed genuine and likeable. He went through the personal motivation stuff, which was a bit cringe-worthy before getting to the nub. He was basically selling their 2/3 workshop course, which ‘normally’ costs £7000 but that LTT was subsidising this and selling for £2000 to 50 lucky customers (same story as last year, and I imagine every other seminar). For that, he said you get a memory stick with their ‘SmartCharts’ software, some training videos and a 2 day workshop at their trading office in Chelsea (NB the dates are weekends so I don’t expect there is any live trading included there). You get your account set up in advance and have to have it funded before you go.
After a week of playing with the software, while getting phone / skype support, the ‘lucky 50’ can come back for a day of 1-2-1 live trading with one of their traders in Chelsea.
Now the software sounds like the holy grail - the system is supported by LTT analysts who disseminate financial news and ‘green light’ various trading pairs with recommendations for Entry, Target and Stop loss. You don’t need to do anything really it seems, just pick you green lights and go! He doesn’t say every one is a winner - probably 60%and the wins are bigger that the losses. By implication you have to be smart enough to spot the more promising proposals. He demonstrated a ‘live trade’ (green light selected by one of the audience) but we didn’t see I to completion. I think the target was for GBP/USD to hit 1.2990 and I checked later that this did not even come close that day or since.
Various questions come to mind (Why are these trainers and analysts doing this when they could just be making money? Who is taking the other side of these trades which presumably every other player in the market is trying to do if they are so obvious? Etc?). Trouble is, there is no time for questions. Presenter mentions he already has 44 of his 50 from previous seminars, so only 6 places left and there are 17 punters in the room. First 6 to sign up get the £5000 discount!. I’m sure they realise that nobody is going to pay £7000 for something they could have got for £2000, so its a case of either leaping in blindly to get ‘the bargain deal’ with no questions and no time for research, or just walk. I did the latter. Same story as a year ago.
The sad thing is that what they describe is possible, therefore plausible. It sounds perfect for newbies to get some software, and some handholding to get started. OK if 50% of the trades don’t work at least you would get to understand the rationale, and see where you need to develop - maybe find better software and better brokers later.
Unfortunately there does not seem to be anybody commenting on a credible forum with a good word to say about LTT. We can’t trust LTTs own references and a lone forum post would have to be treated with suspicion. Mineone’s contribution above is about as good as it gets. I can understand that some of the negativity might be attributed to bitter naïve punters who didn’t stick to the rules, or seasoned pro’s who have paid their dues and might scoff at the wanabes. However the bottom line is that ‘if it sounds to good to be true, it almost certainly isn’t’. You have to avoid ‘hearing only what you want to hear’. See my post about psychology here