Just like technical analysis, there are also signs to look out for if a trading course is credible. Well, at least this is what I think personally.

1. Sleazy websites
An example of sleazy old-fashion-long-copy-sales-letter-style websites is at: http://www.seeingwithoutglasses.com. They will provoke you with many questions, keep on bragging about how good they are, show tonnes of testimonials (unverified), keep on asking you to take action NOW! and are very looooonnngg. Wait! I am not saying the products of all such websites are bad. But for selling a financial course…I am not so sure…Makes me wonder if the course provider is established (and why they cannot afford to make a proper website?) and what is the real mission and value behind the company. Why they only talk about the good money and not highlight the risk that is associated with trading?

2. Our trainer appears on CNBC!
So what?! Going on CNBC is not too difficult, I believe. Well, Mr Clemen Chiang used to appear on CNBC. Now, his company has disappeared. For something juicy, I have been told by a friend that she knew someone working in CNA and hence arranged for the course provider (that she was working for) to be interviewed on CNA. It is THAT easy. Nope, no scrutiny, I think they don’t verify if you are really a successful and profitable trader.

3. Course fee used to be $5000 but just for today - $3000
Does that sound familiar? Many of the course providers out there apply NLP techniques extensively. Many organise previews on the pretext of free trading education. Then during the previews, they will make the participants “feel good” through the NLP techniques and apply pressure subtly to make them sign up for the paid course on the spot. Will a genuine course provider whose mission is to transfer trading knowledge go to that extent? And typically, the course fees are exorbitant in order to cover for all the marketing costs. That’s why I will get suspicious when the course fees run up too high. Come on, all the knowledge can be obtained from books and the Internet - what’s the big secret?

4. We have THE TRADING STRATEGY to let you make lots of money!
Nowadays, it turns me off when I see/hear trading course advertisements mention anything about trading strategy. Trading is not about any trading strategy or trading system. There are more - psychology and money management. But I guess these are hard to sell.

5. I made $10 million in 2 years!
Ok, did you lose it all in the next year? Make the most money within the shortest period of time - ya, this is what most trainers brag about. Ok, let’s say it is possible for them to make millions in a couple of years, they could be lucky. Did you question what is their starting capital? Ok, some claimed they only started with a few thousand dollars. Then, did they lose the money subsequently? Trading is about making money consistently. Jesse Livermore, the legendary stock speculator, went bankrupt a couple of times throughout his lifetime, even though he was trading successfully. A professional trader that I met has been trading successfully for the past 18 years. He prefers to keep himself debt free by paying up fully for his house and car because he told me that he is not sure when his trading will turn sour. So I am only impressed if you can make money consistently for the last 10 years, not one hit wonders.

6. We provide lifelong after course support
I wonder if anything like this is possible at all! It could be sustainable if the number of students is small. So far my experience is, when the number of students gets bigger, service level will drop. The trainer will reply with generic response or perhaps get the more senior students to help mentor the newer students. Seriously, who wants to continue with such non-profit making work? UNLESS the course provider has more things to sell to you in the future!

7. Look at what our students have to say!
First make sure the students are not getting any commissions either for appearing on that testimonial video and that, they are not marketeers for the course providers ie, they receive commissions for new student sign-ups. Ignore all those feel-good comments like “The trainer is very committed and friendly”. What’s the use? The question I want to ask them is: “What are your trading results?” Something for the students here: they may claim they made thousands in a few days. So, did they continue to do it subsequently, or did they lose the thousands and more?

So hopefully, the above can help you when you are looking out for your next trading course.

We are fortunate that he also has an interest in blogging. In fact, if I am not wrong, he has taken a blogging course to improve his blogging skills. I say “we are fortunate” because I have never come across such a candid blog by a professional trader, and a REAL professional trader at that. The blog really gives us a good insight into the trades of a professional scalper and spreader. He also shares with us his perspective and dishes out frequent advice on trading - on psychology, money management etc.

Some of the key posts (in my opinion):

Forex Versus Futures - A detail analysis from the perspective of a professional trader.

My Cost of Trading - I never know the operation cost of a professional trader is so high! He’s got to make more than S$200 daily to be profitable. It is also following this post that he begins a series of posts to track his performance with a fresh S$30,000 account. He shares his daily trades and profit and loss, complete with the scanned statement from the broker.

A Day With A Professional Trader - FAT realizes an aspiring trader’s dream to visit him in the trading arcade and witness him trading live. In return, the aspiring trader wrote an account of the encounters on that day. An insightful read!

So do check out FAT’s blog. Expect more insightful posts to come!

I also picked up “How to Trade In Stocks” - the only book  written by Jesse Livermore himself. Jesse Livermore always mentioned about carrying a little booklet around to jot down prices of his stocks. The book actually gives us a peep into how he kept his records.

Programming the Jesse Livermore Market Key

I believe many have tried to study if his strategy worked and still works. KH Tang is one.

I am more interested in Jesse Livermore’s attitude and approach to the market. I really take my hat off him for recording the prices with pen and paper. And the rules are not trivial at all. I believe many of us started with studying the strategies to approach the market but how many of us started with studying the market itself?

Can you imagine he merely traded with the quotes from the ticker tape? No charts at all. He treated the stock prices like a giant puzzle, like how we play Sudoku. So let’s begin to crack this giant puzzle!

Numbers don’t ring a bell? Let’s try graphics. See here for an animated visual representation of the US unemployment numbers throughout US (up to May 2010). Quite scary when things get glimmer, doesn’t it?  The latest figure stands at 9.5% on 2 Jul 2010. See chart from Forex Factory:

So I guess the US government still has a lot of work to do.

Then again.

From Sam Stovall’s theoretical model, the market cycle precedes the economic cycle. SO, the stock market has to pick up before we see improvements in the economic numbers, don’t we?

Then why those analysts are basing on economic numbers to predict the stock market?

Singapore Private Property Price Index (Updated up to 2Q/2010)

Wow, seems like we have reached the upper end of the 4-year range. Can we break out?

Singapore Private Property Rental Price Index (Updated up to 2Q/2010)

Rental prices are climbing steadily. Good news for landlords, bad news for tenants.

More details of the real estate statistics released by the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore here.

Sometimes I wonder. Singapore has 5 million people to date. Let’s say 20% (Pareto’s Law) of us are interested in taking trading courses. That makes 1 million. To date, there are close to 60 trading schools on my list. Let’s say each of them offer 3 courses. That makes over 5000 students per course. If we assume everyone takes an average of 2 courses, that makes 10,000 students per course. Mmm, let’s say a course cost $1,000. That’s $10,000,000 to be made from each course! Good money! No wonder they are still increasing in numbers! Now…what is the saturation point?

Some new courses that I come across:

• Moolaa Consultancy Pte Ltd - interesting. Like a one-stop shop for trading education. Offers everything except options.
• Eforex Academy - is a online course, something like what Grace Cheng offers. Think I include her in my list because she is Asian.
• Thomas The Coach - reminds me of Thomas the Train. Just like Moolaa Consultancy, when I first got them on my list, they only offer forex. Now they got everything! And I believe I seen Dr Foo Loon Sung appear under Moolaa before. Wonder how the 2 are related. It is a jungle out there.
• Value Investing Academy - one of the trainer turned $100 into a million! Getting more and more obscene these days.

This will be the last update to the lists. Finding it quite meaningless to continue to maintain this list. Now back to trading.

As usual, to download the “List of Local Trading Courses” and “Course Comparison Table”, subscribe at the top right hand corner of my blog.

Then again, if any of you feel very strongly about sharing about a course, it’s good and it’s bad, do drop me a note. I will still add it in.

First up: “Hey, I profitted 1000 pips last night, the strategy works!”

Some questions that you may need to probe further:

1. Ok, last night is 1000 pips, how was it the night before or the night before before? Trading is not about one hit home runs. Or the person may lose the 1000 pips in the next few days.

2. What does 1000 pips mean? Can 1000 pips profit mean $10 profit? It sure can!

3. Does the strategy really work? Single hit wonders don’t count in trading.

EUR/GBP

Entry: S 0.8515

Initial SL: 0.8623

Loss @ 0.8623

Nothing really exciting last week. Last week my P/L was flat. So just picked this trade to share.

AUD/USD

Entry: S 0.8912

Initial SL: 0.9043

Loss @ 0.8989

Again is one of those trades that makes you ump! AUD/USD today is at 0.8305!

Making adjustments to my trading rules.

Think I am going to get it from coconut again! Haha

Entry: Short 1.3181
Initial SL: 1.3371
Exited @ 1.3200