What Ian more effective…paying for a forex course or learning for free online?
Why not both?
Different teachers have different methods and a good approach is to soak up as much as possible from multiple sources.
Eventually youll gravitate to certain styles.
Also there is a lot of good stuff that isnt strictly FX, stock market or commodities knowledge can be useful.
I once had a friend who spent £2000 learning about Elliot wave, now THAT id avoid.
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At the end of the day your tuition fee will be in the market though.
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Lol this question is like opening up a can of worms. Some will say pay for course, others will say for free. I don’t know the right answer. As far as I can gather both ways are ok. However it’s worth doing all the free stuff first. So babypips course, watch YouTube videos and try a demo. Then when you know what kind of trader you want to be, you can look more into detail of who is trading in line with what fits your personality and life.
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Read a few good of the good books, The market wizards series, Popular delusions and madness of crowds, reminieces of a stock operator.
Get some books on system design, trading psychology books by Brett Steenbarger - Enhancing Trading Performance - being the best.
These are not books for the newbie, by that i mean none are chock full of trading methods - but they will round out your knowledge in a way many paid for courses will not.
My personal favourite is Long term secrets to short term trading by larry williams. This will give you an idea of system development and how simple trading can be.
The trading chaos books by Bill Williams.
Then there is the totally free but amazing course by Adam Grimes - highly rated and FREE.
None of these are specifically on FX but many ideas work the same.
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There is a ton of free educational material available and I would put this forum and the BP school at or near the top of that list.
However one thing that I continue to stress is that actual screen time in the markets either thru a demo or live account is the best trading education you will ever get.
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Decide what you need to learn before you start your education. Don’t let a training provider decide this for you and just teach you what they like teaching.Structure your learning and set SMART objectives - don’t assume you are a sponge and will succeed by just soaking up all the knowledge that’s out there, sponges don’t have brains and can’t trade.
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Lots of great free resources out there including this website/forum.
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yes thats true, just think that some people like to learn too fast and then pay for a quick crash course and miss key points or skim over some important stuff. but then again it is hard sometimes to focus and dedicate your own time to learning when you could just be mentored 1 on 1
Quote of the day for me. Need to jot this one down. I also thought it was great to be a sponge, to soak it all up. But there’s just too much information out there now.
I’m a free learner. Like I said, lots of free stuff out there. Go through that first, trade some, figure out your short comings, and go from there.
Thanks @dudebro.
Actually I’m full of stuff that might be useful, like that. A top thing I lerned when I got involved in training courses (nothing to do with trading, this was in previous employment) is - how to learn.
A simple example - know what you need to learn before you start learning.
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Definitely helps in reducing the amount of stuff to cover, at least initially anyway. But there lies the problem for newbs - what should I learn? Not always a clear answer.
Ah, got to start with the questions. Actually start with the very basic questions and work from there. On some projects in the past I have started with a Powerpoint presentation outlining the completed task, with bullet points in the form of questions - then fill in the blanks with research.
That’s not a bad way of going about it. Pictures always help keep the process flow and options right there in front of you.
Yes for me too - i also took a big interest in the learning process itself.
Whats more its a transferable skill.
Learning online is more effective rather than Forex courses.
You can customize your learning environment, enjoy a flexible schedule and many more.
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This is correct.
And you have to recognise the business model rules of selling trading courses. Any course has 4 possible outcomes for students -
- get rich quickly
- get rich slowly
- go broke quickly
- go broke slowly
No.4 is the trainer’s preferred outcome. You will stay in the game for quite a long time but you’re not making money so you need something else. And the trainer will sell you this. So its inherent that a formal training course or even a trading book will be incomplete.
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yes youre right, learning for free and paid courses will give you insight into just mroe knowledge, not bad or good from either side. good idea. did you do both?
If you learn all by yourself you will spent a lot of time to get know all what is needed to start trading.
You are entering into new world completely blind and you need to learn and understand all of it.
If you have time just do it.
Time and experience that you will acquire learning by yourself cannot be payed.
If you can self improve and self evaluate then you are on the right track. You will be better and better.
It could happen that you go into wrong direction and lose to much time and money until you correct your self learning path.
But that is the price learning on your mistakes.
Having a Mentor
If you have some one who can show you how to trade then that is the best you can have. Offcours, the one who will teach you the right stuff.
The mentor will guide you in the right direction immediatelly from the start.
You do not worry that you will lose time on something that is unnecessary.
The mentor knows few steps ahead and he teaches you stuff that will eventually come into place to give you the big picture.
He will save you time and money.
Someone who do not have money, maybe, will start learning by itself. Someone with more money will pay someome to teach him.
Smart people pay to someone who is professional in his area to do the right job. He knows that the job will be done with quality and he will have more benefit compared to if he do the same job by himself.
Now what is better you can decide 
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If you are motivated enough, you will be able to find and learn everything yourself, especially since there is a lot of information on the Internet now and you just need to focus and spend enough time on it. Are you ready ? You can limit yourself to it. Not ready ? Then it’s better to pay, you’ll feel sorry for the money spent and you’ll start to work more actively.
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