One thing that genuinely gets me insane are free stock trading seminars. They are a big waste of time. They can best be called a pitch fest.
The seminar was probably prepared by some company that desires to sell you on a $1,000 product or service. It may be a broker or software company.
You were tricked in going to the seminar because you were suppose to hear from some stock trading ace. The master you attended to hear shows you charts with trades he made and just how rich he is and just after you think he’s going to tell you how you to can get these extraordinary results you are struck with yet another everlasting sales pitch. You to can get these incredible results if you buy his awesome ace trader 7000 software program. And what’s more, it is available at a never-to-be-repeated exclusive discount price for the show.
And so it goes on. Speaker after speaker parades their product, thinly disguised as some beneficial investing info.
Red Flags About Stock Trading Workshops
1. Make perfectly sure that the organization offering the study course does not cash in on any trading you at some point do. The value of the seminar should be in the seminar itself, not on pitching some added product to you. Chances are that if you are being pitched another product then the aim of the seminar is not to educate you in stock trading but rather to upsell another service to you.
2. Are these “pros” trading or teaching? The saying goes those who can’t do, teach. Only go to a seminar where the “experts” really trade for a living as well as teaching at seminars. You need someone with real life knowledge.
3. Too good to be true testimonials from others. Ask for at least three references that live in your same city. Call the references and inquire if they or a family member or friend works for or has been paid by the organization. If not even three people in your city are profitably trading as a result of this workshop you know something is amiss. Do not be satisfied with their online site’s testimonies. You will find that many are paid actors and their testimonies are scripted.
4. If the marketing pulls on your emotions and greed, then it is probably a waste of time. The marketing ought to be about the content material of the seminar, not about how you can get rich trading out of your home. A workshop that teaches fundamental analysis should include how to read financial statements like: Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow. If a workshop teaches technical analysis it should include technical analysis patterns like: Reversal Patterns, Head and Shoulders Top and Bottom, Double Tops and Double Bottoms, Triple Tops and Triple Bottoms, Cup with Handle, Symmetrical Triangles, Ascending Triangles, Descending Triangles, Flags, Wedges, Support and Resistance Lines, and Candlestick Patterns.
5. Claims of high profits at low risk with guaranteed results or a refund. Nothing is guaranteed with regards to stock trading. Getting refunded for the cost of the seminar will not help you to get back all the money you lost using the trading techniques in the first place.
6. The emphasis is on targeting novices. Experienced investors are much more difficult to exploit.
FTC Decisions
In 2002, Tim Cho Investment Corp. settled with the FTC after being charged with filing “false and deceptive advertising claims” on its day trading seminar. Tim Cho advertised an 18 percent per trade return and a guaranteed 1,000 percent return in trading S&P futures each year.
In 2003, Wade Cook decided to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that he and his companies dishonored a court order to cease making unsubstantiated earnings statements at his workshops. Cook charged $3,000 to $5,000 for two and three-day workshops and advertised that traders can make a lot of money — at least 20 percent a month. He and his companies have to pay back traders and reveal his investment system’s actual rate of return on stocks. “Their own investments were losing money,” said Bob Schroeder, assistant regional director of the FTC in Seattle.
You win your next stock trade or I’ll run you out of the state! Learn more at stock trading seminars This article, Warning Signs Of Stock Trading Seminars has free reprint rights.
