Clint,
how dare you, after all you can’t compete with a newbie. 
I would like to join the beer but my sleep got in between. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Also glad that the “suckers” never die out, it gives this world a certain consistency. :rolleyes:
Oskar, my friend
Good to hear from you. It seems like I haven’t talked to you for months.
The newbies are working me over. They’re so deadly serious about everything!
They have no sense of humor, at all. They can’t accept a good old pissing contest for what it is.
That sleep thing of yours is still a problem, eh? Are you still trading overnight breakouts while you sleep?
I can’t emphasize this enough, Oskar: it’s a 24-hour per day market — there’s no sleeping!
Interesting point about consistency. I never looked at suckers that way before.
Stay well, and stay in touch.
Clint
I wouldn’t say no to a beer!
The pissing contest gets much easier after drinking beer!
I still trade the overnight in my sleep. Not every night.
I know, sleeping is a disease, we can do a lot of that after we are dead, just don’t know why I have to do it regularly now. Anybody else in here seems to be able to do without that stuff.
I call it 9 38 400. (9 days a week, 38 days a month, 400 days a year). :eek:
Take care Oskar
Let me get this straight Some guy reads a book , He likes the book so willing to invest a few dollars on a course to help him learn trading. Also willing to share hsi ongoing expreience with others…
I really like that and commend Cdutoit Because that is how most of us learn and we can cover more information that way. But if you get only one or two good points and remember them from anything it is well worth a few hundred dollars…
Now we have our new friend Scammed By Booker, Going to save our few hundred dollars and discredit this guy all in one extrremmelly agrevating way.
First off be carefull you said this guys a lawyer. You can get yourself in big trouble slandering people. If you can’t read the fine print where I am sure it say there are no guarntees.
Second not having everheard of or read anything by Mr. Booker, But yhaving read your posts , I would have to be on his side…
If you haven’t noticed yet . BabyPips is a forum for the sharing of Forex trading ideas. But most of us don’t like personal attitude to get in the mix. If you have some information that would help a fellow trader learn or maybe save hime from wasting his money on such a bad program. It would be better to state some facts instead of just RANTING ON ABOUT NOTHING THAT MAKES ANY SENSE.
But I hope you hang around and share your trading thoughts with us because apparentlly you have tried to get educated yourself, and I am sure othert han mr. Booker you might have some things you learned that you could share…
Anyway lets all play nice together... Ken Lee
Trade Happy
Perhaps some would be interested to learn a forex pattern I saw during a visit to “Piptopia” (Wheeling, West Virginia) illustrated on the white boards in Robs office.
It is a pattern you have never heard of at any of his seminars.
Its called “The Funnel”.
Sure why not scammed
About a year ago when I had a small acct with IBFX the Twin Cities office invited us to a Rob Booker presentation. No selling was involved but of course his web site was mentioned plenty of times. This duo presented another seminar in Seattle (I think). Then IBFX announced that Booker was joining them with some lofty title and position. That lasted about six months, I never saw any announcement by either, it just happened. I felt like I had been had but I wasn’t sure if it was by IBFX or Booker.
It was a little hard to cancel/delist B.'s emails, announcements, etc. but finally I never heard from his office again. I don’t know if his strategies work; I do know that he comes across as the world’s greatest and you don’t have to ask him, he will tell you - several times. Great promoter, yes; great strategist, maybe. d.
where can i get this book from?
Finally I have found someone telling the truth about that little (indeed) boy. it is the truth, guys. What that man is good about is just in hiring a good marketing company and putting nice color and graphics to his website.
I went to his course;
- He never talked about money management or risk (most important things imo)
- He asked for more money, after the payment for: renting the hotel meeting room and the license for Forex tester
- Can you imagine that? You pay 2 grand and then he says: now give me some more
- I said, to an email to the group, : why are u charging us? He answered in the most unusual aggressive way saying bla bla bla…but at the end we did not pay, thank God.
- The course was useless, a part for a tip about using carry trades and interest free brokers account, the only thing of interest.
- He tried to explain the crazy Arizona rules, but he was not even able to explain that…they simply suck.
- Then he taught a grid system…old **** the he sells as a hit.
Well this is enough, I’m planning to build a site called: RobBookerTheScammer
trust me don’t waiste yor time and money, there good people out there anyway, for sure mister bad looking Rob is not
Max
I don’t know if Mr Booker is delivering what people attending his course expect. However, certainly a lesson is to be learned. Either you will learn how to trade from him or you will learn how to trade in spite of him. Alternatively you will give up on trading alltogether thus learning a valuable lesson and saving a great deal of time and probably even more money
I read a lot of these types of forums but do not post much. However I may have something to offer here.
My introduction to Rob Booker was by reading the Adventures etc (given to me by a friend). It is a good read, yet is not very instructive in terms of technical trading education if that is what you are after. After some research (or was it being conned by his advertising?) I decided to attend one of his seminars earlier this year. He is certainly full of beans, loves being the centre of attention and presents masses of information. Personally I think it was wrong to advertise that each participant would come away with a personal trading system as he never spent any time with anyone on a sustained basis that I know of. I certainly didn’t come away with any ‘personal trading system’. Yet that was the major reason for me attending.
His favorite two trading methods were the trend trade and the counter trend systems using pivots. He also spent some time on what he called Zen Trading, however that is just scalping to maybe a 10 minute trade going on just your gut feeling after watching the market for a while. Any uneducated idiot can do that. He promised to trade live and did so using a demo account. The trade lost money.
What did I take away from this two day seminar? The realization that his seminars are not for newbies even though he said all you needed was you computer and, hopefully, a copy of Forex Tester. For a newbie his seminar was information overload. Also as there were plenty of people present who had attended previous seminars (some people several seminars) there tended to be a lot of quite technical commentary going on between these people and Rob, most of which I (and I suspect from the dazed look on other faces, a lot of other people) couldn’t understand. What really disappointed me was that he had stated that each person would come away with their own trading plan I gained the impression that the number of attendees would be small. He never advertised how many allocated seats there were so I fell into the trap. I was really wrong as there must have been near fifty people attending.
The one aspect he did touch on and I was very appreciative of was money management. He explained about protecting your capital by using sub-accounts, something I would not have thought of. However all in all, I don’t think it was money well spent. Does he trade for a living? I can’t answer that because I don’t know, however I suspect that with all the traveling and teaching he doesn’t make the bulk of his income from trading.
I had considered signing up for his signals service (3 to 5 trade ideas a week) and watched with some horror the results he was getting. At least he was honest enough to post the results. That service suddenly disappeared and almost immediately out came the announcement that he had set up an agreement with FXCM UK for a ‘special’ service for members of his Piptopia group. Again he was honest enough to state that he would be making a pip or so (I don’t remember that exact amount and I can’t be bothered to trawl back through all his videos to find it) on every trade we made. The deal was that if we got into any suspect actions by the broker (like hunting a stop loss) he would step in to be our advocate. If any advocacy has occurred I have not seen it published on the Piptopia site. It has occurred to me that this arrangement is money for nothing for him. I’m not sure of what real benefits there are outside that you would be able to set up sub-accounts and recently when FXCM UK altered their maximum leverage from 400:1 to 200:1 members of the Piptopia group kept the 400:1 (at least for the moment).
IMHO both his Piptopia and Postcards sites are unwieldy to use. He could really use the help of a decent web designer.
To answer the question is Rob Booker a scam artist? I would say he falls into the grey area. He certainly is honest enough about most of what he does, although I feel he should be posting his personal trade results. At the seminar I attended he did put up some trade results, however if you weren’t someone with super vision there was no way you could read it. I definitely think his advertising of his seminars is suspect. He doesn’t outright lie but he does give the impression that he will turn you into a professional trader. I know that doesn’t happen in 2 days, so don’t shoot me down just yet. I suspect that his personal trading plan was for each of us to go away and back test his and any other systems we liked at least 1000 times per system. Sorry Rob, that’s not a personal trading plan. I certainly would not attend another of his seminars. I don’t feel cheated but I am definitely disappointed with the man or maybe I’m just disappointed in my own gullibility.
At last, a serious discussion about Rob Booker. My 2 (or 3…) cents.
I attended one of his seminars a couple of years back. After I’d factored in the seminar cost, flights and the cost of the hotel, I was in the hole for well over $3,000. But hey, in 3 days time, Rob was going to turn me into a superstar trader, so this was all chump change…
The seminar was, without doubt, a complete waste of time and money. On the course I attended, he was still doing the London/New York boxes. Not an original idea at all, he was merely flogging a dead horse and rehashing a simple breakout strategy.
But what was really annoying, is that it only takes 5 or 10 minutes to explain this strategy, it’s hardly rocket science. So, how did he pad out the following 7 hours and 55 minutes? Backtesting. We all had to fill in spreadsheets of trades gong back 6 months, using slightly different parameters. Then, hours later, when we had all finished, he compiled them on a projector and we discussed the results.
WTF?? Don’t get me wrong, backtesting is a crucial part of developing a profitable strategy. But I don’t expect this to be a major part of an expensive seminar.
And, in true Booker fashion, another of his strategies involved brightly coloured candles which changed colour to signify a trade. And of course the strategy had a sexy name - so hey, it must be profitable!! Yeah, right…
But hey, all that didn’t really matter, because Rob is a REALLY nice guy, and he’s really funny, and cracks jokes all the time, and hey, he REALLY wants to be your best friend, so it’s all good. No matter that you leave the course without a frigging clue how to be a successful trader…
And another thing - Booker makes a big song and dance about how you will become a member of this exclusive group of seminar attendees, like a big extended family, and how you can always count on him for help, support, trading advice etc. This is laughable. When I tried to contact him a few months after the course, there was total silence - my emails went completely unanswered - he was obviously too busy creaming it from his new crop of wannabee traders.
The thing about the marketing upsell, is that he really does infer that you can be a professional trader after attending one of his seminars. He gives it large about how his former students, Hank, Kurt etc etc turned a $200 account into $10,000 (or whatever it was) in 2 months or whatever, and how someone made over $100,000 in a year just a few months after attending his seminar. The bottom line here, is that in the first instance this can’t be done without using massive leverage, which no novice trader should be encouraged to use in any case. And in the second instance, taking one guy’s success is hardly representative of the success of the course as a whole - what about the other 29 attendee? We don’t hear about them onhis website… But hey, they make for great tag line, and help fill those seminar seats.
In my view this is unethical at the very least.
All in all, is Rob Booker a scammer? I agree with the Nytramas - it is definitely a grey area. However, I definitely felt fleeced, and he certainly didn’t live up to any of his promises.
Finally, to the naysayers who claim I’m just bitter because I wasted money on a dumb course, and got sucked in by the sales patter of the ‘Rob Booker Show’…
… am I bitter? - well, to be honest, yes and no. I have to admit that it still galls me to think that he is making $50k a month for 2 or 3 days work, and knowing full well that a room full of novice traders will leave thinking they are God’s gift to forex trading (which is certainly how Rob sells it). However, the good thing which came out of it all, was that about a year ago, when i Googled ‘Rob Booker scam’ to see what came up, there was another unhappy Booker victim, who posted the details of a mentor who really did help him, and for a tiny fraction of the cost. I gave this guy a go, and I havent looked back since. My trading was transformed, and I now trade consistently profitably - so maybe it was fate, karma, I don’t know.
BUT, what I do know, and my one piece of advice to newbies thinking about going on a seminar is that Rob Booker should be avoided at all costs. And yes, I do realise that Rob is a trained lawyer. And yes, I am aware of the laws of libel - but there is a defence to libel - it’s called truth and fair comment - all of which the above is, in my opinion. And Rob, you want to challenge anything I’ve said, please feel free to post here on this thread…
In fact, maybe to enhance the legitimacy of this thread, and to encourage further seminar attendees to step forward, we should invite Rob, or one of the employees of the ‘Rob Booker Money Making Machine LLC’ to comment on this thread, to get a balanced view.
I don’t usually compliment writers of rants. But, that rant was a good one!
[B]Fleeced by Booker[/B], I think you should change your screen name to something more positive. Then, I hope you will hang around, and contribute often to this forum.
You write well. And your positive experiences with forex training and trading could be very helpful to our newer members —
if you’re willing to share those things.
What more could a forum ask for?!
Welcome to Babypips.
Clint
Clint: I have observed in your posts a consistent attack on those who are willing to express what they have experienced through their own real and personal experience with Rob Bookers training. From my point of view, I have done so in an effort to shed meaningful light on the matter. I, like others who have posted, have ponied up thousands of dollars in forex training to the likes of Rob and others only to have had witnessed with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, the failure to live up to the hyped up claims and failure to perform as promised. You surely can call it whatever you want, negative, or tiradic rants. Whatever suits you. Fact is, myself and others, have had meaningful experience and we are sharing it. We have nothing to sell.
I think you build more credibility for yourself by examining and commenting on the content of the points expressed in lieu of a smear or personal attack on a fellow poster.
So I don’t get jumped before I even ask…
Yes, I am just brand new to this forum. No, I am not new to FX. No, I am not marketing anything here. Yes, I would like the whole story.
I would like to know a few things about scammed by booker’s pre/post booker attendance activities.
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Have you been back testing any system aggressively, those that mr. booker taught, or your own?
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How much have you lost in the FX market? Before booker and after.
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What system have you moved to now?
Thanks
Dear Relax
My position is that you are not asking the right questions and forgive my suspicious nature, however you sound like a Rob Booker apologist. Either that or you are trolling. The subject here is not what we have been/are doing in our trading but does Rob Booker deal in dubious sales tactics and do his seminars deliver what he advertizes.
I would like Rob Booker to answer your questions 2 and 3.
Q2. I would like him to post his real, verifiable trading results here to back up his theory because without the proof all his systems/strategies are nothing. I mean ALL his results, not selected ones. Trading results using the systems he teaches which means all the stacks, the SL and TP.
Q3. What system does he teach now? Has he moved on because his trend and counter trend systems don’t work.
I won’t hold my breath waiting.
In the seminar I attended he quite openly said that when Josh and him zen traded they asked each other which way they thought the market was going on a given day and then decided to trade in the opposite direction. I’m not sure you can back test that. Then again you may be able to enlighten us on such a strategy.
Already, knowing absolutely nothing about me, I have been called a “rob booker apologist”.
I would also like mr booker, where ever he is, to answer question 2 and 3. However, I am a deep believer in the following:
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When a rant, argument or belief is made so vehemently, it reflects a short coming in the person making it. see Jim Baker, Jimmy Swaggert, Bill Clinton, Ted Haggart, James Edward “Jim” McGreevey et all. The list could include others outside the religious/political sphere as well.
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These types of shortcomings stem from the deep seeded belief that you are somehow special, when in fact you are not. In Forex, or any financial market, one of the manifestations of this belief is that you can “buy” success. EA’s are a perfect example of this type of belief. Examples include the oh so popular FAP Turbo, the “double your money every month” MegaDroid, and ForexSignal.com, 5 years without a losing month (they even post their results, false as they may be)
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This “buy” success mentality leads to a lack of personal development in the necessary skill to actually be successful. The inevitable frustration with the “bought” or canned success is the only logical outcome.
Asking “scammed by booker” what he has done was simply a way to ask, what have you done for yourself to side step this “I am special, I can buy success” attitude. If I am scammed, it is my fault. If I don’t succeed it is my fault. Very few failures in life come from someone keeping you down.
If he ever answers, my belief is that he spends very little time testing himself and moves from system to system looking for the perfect approach to trading. He most likely has purchased several EA’s and failed with them as well. He probably can not show a document, aside from his decreasing account balance, for what reasons he took a trade, why he exited, why he held on or even what profit he was looking for. (commonly referred to as a trading journal)
Someone who is certainly successful in trading financial markets, Barbara Rockefeller, has said, and I paraphrase, “any system can be made successful, it’s the trader that lacks the discipline to test and trade the way the system is supposed to be traded”. If “scammed by booker” is not the type of trader described above, it may be time for him to simply hang up his trading hat and move on. Booker apologist, no. Advocate of accepting personal responsibility for ones own faults, YES!
I have taken 3 of Rob’s seminars. I think the naysayers need to see what Rob Booker is for themselves, if you want to make a judgement, go find out for yourself.
I know that he has each person’s success as his top priority, and I think that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t shove that head down a drain pipe until water gets in. It’s hard to force things on people.
Rob has provided his own statements, and I have seen the one he posted on his site, back from Oct 2009, and it went from about $90,000 to about $190,000 in 6 weeks. I don’t think that would make him a non-trader. I think that makes him a trader just like the rest of us.
Kurt has made 170,000 pips in 2009, and it’s amazing the way he did it. It’s not easy to do what he did, I agree, you might need some adult diapers with some of the trades, but Kurt has done it, and I met him.
I don’t think any “guru” is going to make you something you are not. Trainers probably have the hardest job in the world, and that is, to teach people things the students cannot inherently do. Hence that’s why they are taking a seminar. I learned more from Rob in 1 year, than I could have on my own. I think he’s saved me so much money already, that it’s been worth the trip.
There might be many reasons for people not succeeding, but the 5 people that he brought with him, were all making money.
Doing dinner with his personal “group” afterwards showed me that they are not concerned about money, they are solely concerned that each client makes money on their own. I have never met a more caring bunch of people.
Their intentions are in the right place, and that says it all to me.
So, there is a very small defence for some of the amazing claims against Rob Booker.
Personally, I like the guy. And I can’t see any faults with him.
wgreville