I hope this post can save some people money. Recently I've been rather bothered by the increasingly shameless marketing techniques of course providers, especially those from my country. I must admit, their marketing skills are top notch, and the amount of students that they managed to suck in is a testimony of that. I'm not gunning down all course providers as there could be legit and good ones out there. However, from what I heard and from the courses I've took so far, the dark nature of many providers is very apparent. I'll just describe the core and most powerful technique they use.
Basically, many course providers provide a private forum, a facebook group, a whatsapp group chat etc. Through the week they'll make many calls/recommendations, some will turn out well and others will not. There will also be students who trade those calls and will boast about their winnings or thank the mentor for the calls. Now the course provider will then take screenshots of the original recommendation posts + the winning outcome together with the student thank you posts and put them on their public site/forum/blog. Some will also include the actual trade records. The idea is to give the public an impression that they made those calls before the event actually happened and hence boost their credibility. What people don't realize is that the losing calls and losing student posts get buried under the carpet. Now these providers are not dumb, they do know that no one wins all the time. So once in a while they'll post a small losing trade with some golden words like "Trading is a probability game, no one wins all the time, as long as we keep our losses small we'll make money in the long run". Again statements like that connect readers to them and instill trust. Many will also portray a very close mentor-student relationship by posting mushy SMSes. Some will even put on a good guy image by encouraging charitable acts or claim that their goal is to educate the public so they won't be slaughtered by the manipulators out there. Now who is the slaughterer?
Oh ya I just remembered another technique which I've noticed a few times recently. I know of a few courses who advocate trading pin bars on a 50% retracement. First of all I don't see the logic behind it, there is absolutely no reason why price should turn at an arbitrary 50% level of a freaking bar. Do you really think some huge Goldman Sachs trader is out there waiting for price to hit the 50% level of a H1 pin bar to press the buy button? No, price moves from S/D zone to S/D zone, period. Every market, every time frame, every single turn. Check it out yourself if you don't believe, there is ALWAYS a zone or an ignored zone where price turns. The only reason why Fib levels, moving averages, trend lines, indicators etc sometimes work is because they coincide with a zone. The best traders I've seen trade purely on naked charts. Ah I digressed, back to the 50% retracement thing. So these providers will then take a pin bar which turned out well, post it on their public site with a description like "If you had traded this pin bar using our 50% retracement strategy you would have made a whopping 6R profit!". This really grinds my gears because some of these pin bars could be pathetically small and lousy ones that aren't even good to begin with. So if you take a small pin bar and trade the 50% retrace of it, you'll obviously get a very tight stop and a small move will net you a multiple R profit. This kind of stuff looks good after the fact but did the provider actually take or post the trade before it happened? Another common one is posting inside bars that worked out. Inside bars are everywhere on every time frame, it is easy to just pick a few winning ones to show how effective your inside bar breakout strategy is!
It took me years to see through all this and experience it for myself. It is dark and sad but true. There are many shameless and evil people out there. I still struggle with a mixture of doubt and jealousy when I see some of their after the fact posts, but I constantly remind myself that they're just posting the winners and not the losers. It does not profit myself to get bitter and emotional about it. Our greatest competition is always the man in the mirror. I must discipline myself to stay focused and committed to my goals, to improvement, to growth. Too many people waste their time debating, arguing, and shaming others on forums when that time could be better spent on the charts, webinars, or educational resources.
In summary, never ever trust any course provider who does not post their calls/trades before the outcome. It is not enough to see screenshots where they appear to have made the calls before hand to a private group of students. Please do not ever get taken in by that. Also, it is ironic but the best educational material I've found so far are free. James16 (though they also have a paid group), ReadTheMarket (though they are also going to start selling a course), Sam Seiden's webinars, LoveJoy's videos, PriceIsEverything FF thread, and many other forum threads. The thing is this, people can't seem to believe that they can learn tonnes from a forum thread. The material is often unstructured and messy, it requires days and weeks of digging through hundreds of pages before the pieces start to fall in place, and a paid course often seems like the easy way out. However, I've realized that many forum threads are really treasure troves of knowledge, but the treasure will only be found by those who're willing to put in the hard work and time to dig for it. So.... if one is not willing to put in the hard work, he probably won't succeed in trading anyway and no amount of courses will help him.
Whew enough rant for today, glad to get it off my chest. Back to trading! :)
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