Yeah, I just found out after watching some 30 minutes of an hour or so long *free* webinar called ‘See the market through the eyes of a successful trader‘. I guess what attracted my attention was, beside the catchy title, the fact that they went out of their way to accommodate people on various timezones by giving the presentation twice, at different hours. I was sure there was something for sale, if we also take into consideration accompanying statements like ‘space is limited’ or ‘is filling very fast’, which is standard sales lingo. It could be pointed out that the ‘scarcity’ problem can easily be solved by uploading the recording on YouTube and creating a dedicated page for answering any questions from listeners.
It turns out that my educated guess was correct. The *free* webinar was just a sales pitch for the $1197 ACT course which is named after Greg Michalowski’s book Attacking Currency Trends, launched in 2011. Please notice there’s that ‘scarcity’ sales tactic again: only 25 students per course. If that’s really so, I have no idea. There was no way of telling how many attendees were at tonight’s webinar, and I suppose they’ll use the same software.
Michalowski boasts that ACT is one of the highest ranked forex books on Amazon (47 five stars out of 53 reviews), but on a closer look, just half of those 47 (24 to be precise) are from people that have reviewed at least one other product. This casts serious doubt on the authenticity of the remaining 23. Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt, in the words of Shania Twain, that don’t impress me much. Traders are judged based on risk adjusted performance, not Amazon reviews.
As to the content of the *free* webinar, it was mostly common sense advice, ie treat trading like a business. What I didn’t like were some chart examples, where the highs and lows on GBP/USD were marked on 1hr time frame and presented, with the benefit of hindsight, as good entry or exit points. A quote from Reminiscences of a Stock Operator sprang into my mind:
Disregarding the big swing and trying to jump in and out was fatal to me. Nobody can catch all the fluctuations. – Jesse Livermore
That’s perfectly true and every trader who’s been around the block long enough knows it from his experience. And here lies the beef I have with this project of ForexLive: if it really was that easy to catch all or most moves on 1hr time-frame with an 100 MA, Fibo levels and trend lines, Greg and the rest of the team would be compounding wealth at such a fast pace that they’d soon leave George Soros in the dust. The book on which this course is based was published 4 years ago. Why aren’t we shown any trading track-record from this period ?
I guess what bugged me hard enough to write this piece is what I perceive to be a sleight of hand on their part. ForexLive has built its traffic on up to the minute news, succinct analyses and market gossip. Now they use the reputation and exposure gained in that area over the years to charge people $1197 for a trading course, without showing any proof that the methods taught have worked in real life. Well, in my book, that just ain’t right.
Later edit: seems like these guys can’t take any criticism at all. They removed my comments from the webinar thread. Anyone can judge for him/herself if there’s anything that can be deemed insulting in there.