I advise your readers to do due diligence before signing for any of the trading courses. Many of my students are graduates of those expensive courses. Think about it, if those expensive courses are good, why do they need to sign up for my online course?

It will be good if interested party can find out if the trainers are profitable traders themselves. Email them and ask for track records or proofs or trade signals.

I had generated 1,259 pips profit in the month of June 2009. 35 trades were executed: 26 trades won and 9 trades lost. This results in a Success rate of 74%!

Performance for longer period can be found in my website.

I post my trades regularly in my website.

Not surprising that many of such courses are springing up more frequently especially so now that the economy is not doing well. They served as a “solution” to people with financial woes…giving an impression that trading in forex or any other types of financial derivatives will get them out of their rut.

On the contrary, these people may sink further as not everyone can trade profitably within a short period of time otherwise a lot of people will not hold onto their full-time job and try to trade part-time. Its not as simple as when this happen, simply do this or when that happen, just do that. Even the big boys with their so called team of expert traders and sophisticated analytical tools are taking a beating and going down the drain so what makes these new waves of trainers so special.

On the surface, trading may seem easy..just buy low and sell high ..but actually it involves a lot of hard work Unless people have some idle cash to trade, money that when they lose, will not create a dent in their current lifestyle, otherwise I would advise that they be better off keeping what little they have on some other safer investments or put it to better use like paying off their loans.mortgages or credit cards debts first than face the prospect of being tied down and having to work long-term just for the banks.

The so-called gurus may be good in theory but when it comes to actual trading not many may perform as well. In fact, most courses are more or less similar in nature. They simply teach you the basics of technical analysis and some will throw in a couple of so-called “techniques”… something which is not unique…a trader who has been trading long enough would have discover it anyway… nothing special.
The fact that there are so many similar courses being conducted by different trainers with students hopping from one trainer to another just prove that generally no one trainer’s technique is good enough to help the student to trade profitably.

As a full-time trader, I an still learning and trying to discover new and even better ways to trade everyday. I subscribe to the belief that if you want to excel in trading, you must be prepared to spend lots of time learning from scratch..starting from the basic as you advance along. You’ve got to develop your own trading plan. There is no short cut to success. You may be taught how to trade but nobody will teach you how to make money. You will have to discover it yourself. Trainers simply provide you with the knowledg and tools (something which you can also glean from books) and from there you will have to research and discover what works for you. You can’t just get successful trading overnight. If you have the passion you will succeed. There must be a quest to learn. Plenty of knowledge on trading is available from books and on the internet. There’s no need to attend any course. However, if you’re the impatient type and you have the means, then it’s ok to attend a course to learn the basics of trading BUT do NOT expect to come out of the course and be profitable right away.
It takes time and in my opinion a lot of time you’re actually trading against yourself … grappling with your emotion as you see your trade moving in and out of favour. If you feel you have a good trading plan and you’re very disciplined in the way you trade..sticking closely to your plan and devoid of any emotion, I’m sure you will come out a winner. All these from your own effort. But then again, many aspire but few achieve.

the following are some of great teacher:

1. time, unfortunately it kills all of its student.

2. market, unfortunately it wipe out most of the inexperience students.

3. yourself, unfortunately he is too busy doing his own thing.

4. professional traders, unfortunately they are too busy winning money….

hi michael, spot on. forex is 24-hrs alright. but most of us cannot trade 24 hrs!

What ‘NOMAD’ said is so true. If you want to succeed in forex trading, you go out there to find the relevant knowledge from books, internet and speak to fellow traders. Paying big bucks for these basic or outdated courses are a complete waste of hard earned monies. I attended a free forex seminar last night in the Orchard road area and was taken aback when the presenter told two attendees not to take down notes during the session. What he has on the screen was basic stuff that can be easily obtained from the internet. Not to my surprise, about half of the attendees signed up for the course costing almost $3500. These so called forex gurus are sprouting up so fast during the current recession preying on the unsuspecting retirees, housewives, young people and the unemployed. I am a newbie myself and having been trading live and demo accounts since May this year. Like many, my initial objective was on making money through forex trading. That was so naive of me! After 2 months of live trading during which I lost USD480, my main focus now is on survivability in the long run. Money management is so paramount that you must ask yourself ‘how much can I afford to lose per trade’?

My advice for newbies is firstly, be responsible for your own trading style and trading system (adopting someone’s else system is adopting his problems). Spend valuable time gathering knowledge on forex trading from library books, bookshops and the internet. Try not to focus entirely on forex alone but touch on other subjects like macroeconomics, equities, interest rates, oil, commodities, Dow Jones, S&P 500, etc because all these different markets are somewhat correlated. Secondly you must have the confidence to trade forex. Don’t rely on another person to hold your hands if you want to succeed in trading forex. Let’s face it, if I have a profitable trading system or strategy, would I share it with you? Obviously not, right? On the same token, if these self claimed forex gurus have the ‘holy grail’, they will hold it close to their hearts wouldn’t they? What they are teaching you is probably outdated or plagued with problems and you newbies know no better. I would love to see how many of these gurus would step forward to compete against each other in a grand forex trading competition held in Singapore, each putting in big money like $100k and trade within a certain time frame using their own touted trading system. This is probably the best way to separate the ‘sheep’ from the ‘goats’ in order to consolidate or invalidate their creditability. And thirdly, you must have the discipline to trade forex in the long term. By that I mean you first develop your own trading system, understand and trade your system with full confidence and stick with it through good times and bad times. There will be times whereby you will run into losing streaks and your confidence will be shaken. By the way, even with a good trading system, confidence and discipline, you are not guaranteed success consistently. You need to find an honest forex broker which is most unlikely. Not only the broker wants to earn your spread (the difference between the ‘bid’ and ‘ask’ currency prices), they will also trade against you as well. Believe me, they will win most of the time because they have all the information about your trades (habits, stops).

My parting shot for newbies is to seek knowledge relentlessly, understand them, apply them with confidence and discipline because to me knowledge is what separates the top 5% successful traders from the losers.

Further to Brendan’s comment, in the interest of the general public, I think the details and rules of the grand forex trading competition and who has been invited to participate be published in the major newspapers. In that way, a ‘no show’ at the competition invalidates the creditability of those forex educators or trainers who choose to abstain. The general public is entitled to know who is genuine and has integrity and who is not.
Correct me if I am wrong, a trader having a high win/loss ratio doesn’t mean anything if he or she does not have an effective money management. You can win many small trades but lose a big one, you are still a loser. Not unless you cut your losses early (when you can feel the pin prick) as opposed to hanging on to a losing trade hoping that it will turn back in your favour (that’s when you are bleeding profusely). On the contrary, a successful trader can be one who has a low win/loss ratio who practise cutting losses early and let the profits run. In other words, shoot for the big one that not only cover all the small losses and still produce a decent profit. May the pips be with you.

Hallo traders ,
My name is rito , I’m from Indonesia…
I started trading about 2 years ago , and I still haven’t gained any good profits until now.
I profit in day 1, 2 , 3 , 4 , 5
Then loss it all at day 6
Sometimes loss at day one……To be honest , so far , i never learn the techniques , because in Indonesia , there are no courses for training people to trade . So Please , help me … What shall I do ?
I know these financial markets….if we have good techniques , we can certainly make money from it .But I don’t know ehere to learn . Please do help me introduce me the good trainer . email me at ritohuang888@hotmail.com . I really need your help ……Thanks in advance …..