Andrew Mitchem Forex Trading Coach – You Must Be Joking, Right ?

Someone sent me an email asking for my opinion on Andrew Mitchem. This person wanted to buy his forex course but was of two minds about it – on one hand, with it being priced at $2,500 he thought that it must be valuable, on the other hand, he wasn’t quite ready to part with his money before asking around first.

After just a little bit of research, my thoughts could be perfectly summarized by the title I chose for this article. But unfortunately for the poor saps who end up paying extortionate fees to this guy, it’s not a joke. This fact led me to write the present article, instead of just a short email reply. There are so many ridiculous, false, misleading claims on his website, and he charges such large amounts of money that I felt I have to give a warning not just to one person, but to the general public.

All right, so who is this Andrew Mitchem? In his own words, he is a ‘full-time currency trader, investor, private funds manager and trading coach’.

Fund manager: He operates the corny sounding site wealthwithforex.com where he offers managed accounts if you have a minimum $20k to ‘invest’. Although he supposedly offers ‘a low-risk trading strategy that provides consistent and profitable results’, there is no third-party verified performance track-record on the website.

Trading coach: He offers a $2,500 online forex course and a $20,000 (!) one-on-one private coaching at your home or office,  for one day, wherever you are in the world. After seeing this, it’s easy for beginners to mistakenly equate high price with high value when in fact all that Mitchem does is to sell the trading dream for a very expensive price.

Let me go through some of the most ridiculous, false and misleading statements that prompted me to write this article. On the homepage, the latest video is called ‘One trade makes more money than keeping your savings at the bank for a year’. Really? This is like comparing apples and oranges and it’s totally ridiculous. Even if you don’t make any return on your savings, you know that at the end of the year that money will still be there whereas in trading there’s no guarantee you’ll finish the year in the black.

Also on the homepage, Mitchem boasts that “Forex traders from over 48 Countries have taken my course and the success rate of those students has been incredibly high”. Not only is that an unsubstantiated claim, but there’s no proof that Mitchem himself is trading forex successfully. Bear that in mind before giving him $20k of your money.

In the FAQ, he says that he’s making 5% per month trading h4 and h1 charts (of course there’s no proof of that). A couple of questions below, he says that it takes 1-3 months for a student to learn his system effectively, thus implying that after only 3 months one could be making 5% returns monthly. That’s akin to saying that after 3 months of med school, a student will be a better brain surgeon than the ones who’ve been operating for decades.

Then there’s the pitch with the new trader who follows his free advice and he’s already averaging $100-$150 daily with his $3500 account. If he keeps compounding that 3-4% daily return I guess we’ll find him in Forbes 100 in a few years.

 

Andrew Mitchem’s sales pitch

Browsing through his website I noticed that Mitchem repeatedly says how he only risks around 0.5% of the account on any trade. That supposedly makes him sound professional. Don’t be fooled though, because that aspect of money management, by itself, is meaningless. You can still lose your account even when risking just 0,5% of equity if you don’t have an edge – it’s called ‘death of a thousand cuts’.

To conclude: Don’t fall for the hype! Andrew Mitchem calls himself a trading giant – at least that’s how he is known on ForexPeaceArmy. But as far as I’m concerned, he’s just a snake-oil giant.

Update December 2015:

I was made aware that Andrew Mitchem has a Christmas sale, another opportunity to see the real sleazeball masquerading as a professional trader and fund manager.

So if you decide to fork over $2000 to Mitchem you not only get a 40% discount but guaranteed 20% performance for next year. Imagine your luck!

Now, let’s look through the facade, shall we? First of all, you’d be better off spending the $2k on a nice vacation during Christmas and New Year. That discount is a mirage – you can’t discount a bucket full of horseshit because it’s worthless, to begin with.

Secondly, you can’t call yourself a trader anymore (let alone ‘professional’) if you talk about guaranteed results.

Reading the terms&conditions we can quickly realize the sleight of hand Mitchem uses with his 20% guarantee: what he practically does is to send out daily trading recommendations. It’s up to the customer to decide which ones he follows and how exactly he implements them. If after one year, the company (Mitchem) doesn’t achieve 20%, then the customer can ask for a refund within 4 weeks.

But here’s the bait and switch: the company doesn’t do any trading !! It’s one thing to say buy EUR/USD, sell USD/JPY and USD/CAD for instance, and a totally different thing to actually take the trades. When the customer will say that his performance is negative, Mitchem can very well retort: well, I only took the EUR/USD and I’m profitable now.

I’m going to repeat myself: don’t be deceived by the shiny website or the smiling face of this scumbag.