About a year ago, when I knew absolutely nothing about the FX market apart from the fact that I was interested in it, I got sucked into a program run by a group called Knowledge 2 Action.
Basically, they send out heaps of emails inviting you to a free seminar, at which, over the course of an hour, they more or less separate the idiots from the people who know what they are doing by offering to teach you the basics of the forex market for, get this, only £2,500 for a weekend seminar.
Of course, the fact that the seminar is on the weekend means that they cannot actually teach you any real trading, because the markets are closed.
What you actually wind up with, for £2,500 is a couple of ring bound folders that tell you the basics about how the FX markets work (information that can be had for free on the internet, in other words) and a load of promises that if you only keep giving them more money, then you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams.
I remember at the end of the first day, they got someone to come into the room and tell people about an extra special course, only for those people who had the total commitment that would make you a super trader. The price, only £10,000.
Now, of course, the simplest question to ask is if these people are so great at making money from the market, then why do they need to teach at all? When I asked the teacher this, he replied that making money from spread betting can be taxed if it is your primary income, and therefore he was using teaching as his 'primary income' to fool the tax office.
Ofc, anyone who knows anything about the UK tax code knows that spread betting is Tax Free under UK Law, so that was a blatant lie.
Now, even though I lost £2500, my heart really goes out to the people who blew much more money. I remember a girl that I met there. She had just come straight from a Tony Robbins course (i suspect that Tony gets a kickback for sending these gullible suckers to Greg Secker) now, the central point of Tony Robbins is that if you just believe hard enough, then everything you want will come true.
Now I dont know what universe Tony Robbins has been living in, but from my experience, just wishing for stuff really hard is not going to help anything. Although there is something to be said for having confidence, there are many people with confidence issues that simple cant be fixed by a week long seminar, which usually costs some ungodly amount of money.
Anyway, back to this girl. She had just blown about £15,000 on Tony Robbins, then another £5,000 to fly to London and another £2500 on the Knowledge to Action course. This money was left to her by her father, who had recently died. At the lunch period on the last day, i was trying to explain to her what a candlestick was whilst her eyes darted back and forth as she began to take in the magnitude of how much she had been scammed for.
Now there is another interesting twist to this tale. When I originally signed up to Knowledge 2 Action, i did some research on the Internet and found lots of negative comments, so I nearly pulled out. Then a friendly user on babypips.com called Simon Templar send me several reasonable sounding messages about how he had been on their course and it was very helpful etc etc.
This idea of using paid sockpuppets was completely new to me and I fell for it. So be warner when people tell you that Knowledge to Action is a great deal. Everything they teach can be learnt for free on babypips.com
Not only that, but when I did the course, the broker that they recommended was guess who?
MF Global... Bwahaha.
Anyway, there is more to this story. The other day, i got an email informing me that Knowledge 2 Action has decided to change their name to 'Learn to Trade' Presumably because of all their negative publicity and because the phrase 'Learn to Trade' will come up in about a billion google results.
So needless to say, avoid these bastards like the plague. If you want a forum where you can get good information for free, then try etoro.com, babypips.com, the FX Pirates Group on Facebook and other places. I plan to compile a list and post it on here.
The bottom line is, be very wary if someone tells you that for £2,500 they can teach you how to be a super trader. After all, if they were so good, why would they need to teach?
Christopher Carrion
No comments:
Post a Comment