On Get Rich Seminars
 

Don't be fooled by those "get rich" seminars, says a Sunday Times article today (as I interpreted it).

Flip open the papers, and you'll see some advertisements on "How to make lots of money doing XYZ", where XYZ can be "options trading", "forex trading", or "shares trading".

As some will say, the only person definitely getting rich is the person who runs the seminar. Some of them charge thousands of dollars and upwards for a ticket to their seminars.

But are these seminars really effective? My guess: Out of every 100 people who paid good money to get the "exclusive" training, most will not benefit monetarily, but there will definitely be at least 1 or 2 lucky ones who made money.

Yes, only 1 or 2.

Were they simply lucky or did the techniques really work for them? That's a good question, and we get a hint from the Sunday Times article:
Of the 3 people interviewed for the article, one spent $3,600 on a forex course and have made $2,000 (further?) loss so far, while another who attended some of such seminars claimed that they "merely sell hope". The third person "studied and practised hard for six months" and made enough from forex trading to just recoup his fees.

In my opinion, all 3 were failures.

As I said, there will obviously be some lucky ones. 1 or 2 of them.

And it seems that such seminars are always quick to capitalise on these lucky ones. You sometimes see the advertisements claiming this guy or that gal managed to make N% return or profit after attending their seminars.

What the ads fail to highlight is the success rate. For all we know, maybe the success rate is only 10%.

Clearly, it's a marketing tactic. Will you pay $5k if only 10% are successful?

If school teachers were to adopt such marketing tactics, every single one of them could publicly claim he/she always produces a top pupil!

Duh.

http://www.salary.sg/2008/on-get-rich-seminars/

1586
 

> Will you pay $5k if only 10% are successful?

Depends on your definition of successful. If I have to pay $5k for a 10% chance of being able to get out of the structure of office work, and trade when I want and feel like, with an income of (say), SGD10k/month, the answer is a resounding YES, OF COURSE.

The fact is that trading is HARD WORK. The courses tend to deemphasize this very important factor and instead draw our attention to the glamor and wealth that the top 0.01% traders get.

Just like this options trading course conducted by a certain Dr. My friend went to the course, and guess what he remembered the most out of that course? The fact that the Dr. made USD12k in one night using a USD12k investment by playing Google. Sigh.

Not that we can blame the trainers. If you tell people that to trade options successfully you have to approach it like a full time job, doing hours of analysis, research, and study every day, and you can go for months initially without making any profit, even losing a big chunk of your trading capital, would they go to your course? Of course not!

1591
 

i wld put the rate of success at 30% for 1 trade, 10% for 10 trades and zero for 20 trades and above. even trader who do this as a profession find it hard - the level of discipline required is amazing & a lot of time it takes a little craziness to be successful. I know, I've been there.
If these people promoting such get rich seminars are true to their claims - why do they bother to waste their time with seminars..they can earn 10x they get per seminar within a few trades, as claimed. Out of their good heart to share their success? Gimme a break...

1595
 

Quote
"If you tell people that to trade options successfully you have to approach it like a full time job, doing hours of analysis, research, and study every day, and you can go for months initially without making any profit, even losing a big chunk of your trading capital, would they go to your course? Of course not!"

If you need to put in so much effort, you might as well read books and study yourself, as stated at the end of the article. Why pay $4-5K for the course fees ? When you pay so much, so would be looking for a magic bullet that works more than 50% of the time and give higher gains and lower losses when it fails. But then again, in a bull market, even the neighbourhood aunties are investment experts.

1597
 

For the needy

1601
 

1. I think the trainers generally knows their trade. Standing in front of a big crowd speaking isn't an easy affair if they don't know what they are talking or teaching.

2. These trainers are businessmen. They know the rule of Income = Value X Leverage. They know they can earn $100k a year by themselves alone, but by teaching many people at the same time in seminars they can earn $1 mil a year because of leverage. The swimming instructor can earn $20 a hour teaching 1 student, or he can earn $200 a hour teaching 10 students at the same time. Same theory applies in ALL trade.

3. Most people won't get maximum returns after these trainings because most of them won't follow 100% of the teachings. They treat it as a movie, get entertained and motivated and go home sleep after that. No actions = No results.

There is a saying, "There are no right or wrong decisions. It's what you do after making the decision that makes it right or wrong."

1602
 

1. No doubt they know what they are talking about. Whether they believe in what they are talking about is a different story.
2. Cause if they believe that success in fx, options etc is so easy, why teach? Yes you can leverage and make lots of money but you can also spend a few hours a day and make millions, if the adverts are to be believed.
3. I think many who pay put in the effort - and lose money. It's not a recipe for success ie even if one follows 100%, the chances of making money just improves from maybe 1/10 to 2/10.

To me such adverts are no better than those put out by slimming centres. By the way my friend appeared in one of those satisfied customers for a "bust enlargement" program. She never even took the program. Pack of lies from the word go. The sad thing is that people want to believe that they are the one who wil lmake $100,000 in 3 days or will lose 10kg in 1 month. They waste their money on such hopes and there are those who willingly (or should i say "freely") take that money in the name of "business".

1604
 

Yes, I think those slimming centres are a waste of time and $$. Just go jogging and swimming everyday consistently for many months will lose weight already. And it doesn't cost much to jog and swim.

Back to the topic. I believe the trainers CAN make $$ themselves. They know what to do. They teach because they can earn MORE $$. Basically that's the main reason. Bill Clinton probably earns around less than $500k USD per year while in presidency. After he left office, he makes about $1 million per speach. And he makes many of them a year! That's the power of leverage. That's why he is a speaker. And that's why there are thousands of such trainers on the senimar circuit.

1605
 

I respect your view. Just that I don't think they can make the kind of money they claim their students can. And here I am talking about FX options, futures etc Honestly, I can give such a seminar and I can guarantee that 5 out of every 10 students will make money - just get the latter to go long and the former to go short.
But I do agree that motivational speakers and ex-presidents/CEOs who have made it can demand high fees for going on the speakers' circuit. And rightfully so. But they are of a different class and very importantly they don't claim to help people make money (& EASILY too) like these guys in the papers do these days.
p/s Plus I dont think they earn more from teaching if one is to believe that you can make $10,000 in a few hours. But i do believe they earn more from teaching because they personally do not trade the market. I await the day they make public their account statement to show us all the trades they have done to prove their methods do work.

1608
 

I think it is pretty stupid and boring to sit behind a computer all day long doing trading. No life... Sad but most people like the idea that they can hide at home without meeting any people or selling anything and make lots of money. Zero communication skills. Losers mentality. (Sorry if I offend anybody.)

Start a business. Learn to network and socialise with people. Earn real money. Then invest the money earned from businesses into stocks/real estate and let it grow passively and sleep well every night. That's the right way. This way, few people will attend such courses, thus fewer complains! :)

1609
 

I think it's not hiding at home from other human beings as much as: (1) freedom from a fixed schedule, and (2) promise of more control over their lives that attract so many people to these courses.

If you really like trading, it won't feel stupid or boring to do it all day long (although personally I would trade on a much longer timeframe, no time/energy to sit all day long). Whereas if you don't like trading... then why bother at all?

1610
 

If these people really like trading soooooo much, why not be a full time remisier? I believe they don't because they don't like to meet and talk to people. They don't like to do business with people. They like to stay at home and talk to computer. Losers.

Remember that Singapore's Peter Lim is almost a billionaire. That "freely fella" is considered poor when standing next to him..

1614
 

I've been skeptical of the "free fella" since the get go, especially after finding that his successful ex-students are not using his method!

And believe it or not, there are people who like trading on their own time without the whole structure of work or employment in place, and that has nothing to do with how antisocial they are.

1616
 

Any traders here successfully made >$100k per year consistently no matter bull or bear market? Care to share?

1659
 

Nobody? All lose money? Or make very little?

1680
 

Depends on your capital mah. If your starting capital is 100k and you make > 100k/year, that's fantastic. Keep it for 20 years straight and you're gonna be bigger than Buffett.

So far my own return is so so, good during bull, bad during bear. Taken together it's probably about 10-12% or so (that's why I'm still doing this part time...)

I'm sure the freely folks are not doing any better though. In fact those I know who did go for the course are no longer trading.

1689
 

Howcome,

Very true. I personally think 10% - 12% average is very good already. $10k compounded at 12% for 20 years gives you about $96k! Not bad.

3453
 

Just do the maths ... 1 student pays $3,000. If there are 100 students enrol, the trainer makes $300K per course and he only teach 2.5 days - saturday, sunday in hotel meeting room plus 1 week night in his office. If he managed to run 12 classes in a year, that's a wopping $3.6m! And he only work once in a month, only 2.5days per month. And since he booked a hotel room, he probably would gather more students. You can do the maths ... if there are more than 100 students in a class.

I was at the Invest Fair 2009 today. The get rich seminars there are on overdrive.

One forex trainer claims he and his students can "consistently" achieve 10% profit a month. He even repeated that it's "10% a month" and not "10% a year".

He even illustrated how 10k can compound at 10%/mth to about 100k in 24 months, obviously hinting that it's easy for him to multiply his capital by 10 folds in 2 years.

As some of the above posts say, it's not too hard to see these self-proclaimed alpha traders actually make money from conducting courses.

Well, I know some who justify that they "truly" want to share their knowledge and help others get rich. Yeah right. If they are indeed so altruistic and can really get 10%/mth return like what the forex "guru" claimed, I suggest Temasek Holdings and GIC hire them, cos according to my calculations, at 10%/mth compounding, $10k will become $1 billion in just over 10 years and hit $1 TRILLION in 16 years and 2 months.

"10% a month consistently". Yeah right.

It's so obvious these trainers make money from seminars. The only value they provide is basic knowledge and maybe some encouragement. If you think it's worth a few thousand dollars, go ahead. I will just say that the same can be had for about $50 - just go amazon.com and search for the best rated book on whatever trading you're looking at. As for encouragement, aren't you encouraged by the fact that you have gained a few thousand dollars at the start of your trading journey by not wasting them on seminars? :)

All I've spent so far on investing is about $100 buying a couple of good books. :D

I'm one of those guru trainers.

[Whisper: I learn basic forex trading first from an Idiots book and then from a Dummies book, and then I start selling hope and teach basic trading to unsuspecting people who think they can get rich just by attending seminars, charging an affordable $3k per course and advertising that "my star student can make $10k in just 1 trade". Hohohoh. The only person getting rich is ME! hahahaa :D :D :D]

Please use your head to think. Do your due dligence before embarking on your new journey, don't lay blame. Check out details, see their credentials, u need to know before you enrol.

It doesn't help when our national papers dedicate a full page interview with a "forex expert" who also claims to make 10 to 15% on average every month.

Like the post above said, if he's so good, our national coffers should give him 1m or so to turn into 1b in a few years.

I just like to quote my mum, a story about some blind friends telling one another about how an elephant should look like. one blind man touches the tail and commented: oh elephant is just like a snake, another touched the ear and commented elephant look like a fan.

Be even more cautious of those courses by those motivational instructors who want to teach you forex, options and all the other mumbo jumbo. They claim they have academies to teach you how to get rich but they charge more than $4000 for a month's worth of night classes only. They will emphasis basics and kick you out if you challenge them. They make sure that you will not dare to challenge them ever even if they are wrong.

These places tend to be near the CBD and just costs lots of money to attend. They will even try to send you to Investopedia.

If that's what you think then so be it. Life is what we make of it.

I attended some property ones as well. Majorities are trying hard to get u to buy. eg, for US properties, US$35,000. They know u will not fly there to see and manage the property.
Once, I attended one, the agent selling this property for US$35,000. I did a search in front of him and showed him that the same property is available openly for only US$20,000.

Now that you know the modus operandi of property seminars, you should start one yourself! ;)

anyone know a proper course that teaches u how to read charts analyse trends etc? I'd like to learn forex trading and prefer to have a teacher aided by books rather than just reading fm books...

If trading is so profitable, Lehman could have traded its way out of bankruptcy with its pool of ivy leaguers. Goldman Sachs makes money in trading by having unfair advantages, like having superior technology and sometimes unfair access to government funds (think bailout).

dont investment firms make tons of $$ & investment bankers earn millions? Is trading forex any more risky than stocks & gold? I'm not disagreeing with u but sincerely asking... I'm not trying to make millions fm thousands but looking at ways to earn additional income

The big forex players make money from the retail traders who quickly run out of funds. Sadly, there are more and more such retail traders. It's like the casino - sometimes there will be a few aunties making big wins, but in long run, the house always wins against the majority.

There's a report somewhere saying that retail forex traders mostly get eaten up. It's a Bloomberg one or something. If anyone can find it, please paste the link here for the sake of the blissful ignorant.

Even a major investment bank like JP Morgan -- with their top traders, rocket scientist quants, time-proven models, super computers and frequently faster-than-market access to time-sensitive info (not amounting to insider news) -- could lose $2 Billion.

JPMorgan executives set to leave, sources say | Reuters

If this Adam Khoo's partner can really generate 10% return month-on-month, then he should go teach JP Morgan a thing or two.

And retail traders should wake up and stop dreaming of making money by clicking mouse buttons at the computer. Waste of time!

Remisier does nothing but follow orders, most of them don't trade.

Successful traders who work for investment banks get paid millions doing the same thing, you can hardly call those people losers in today's context. Whether they contribute to society is another question.

Successful trading takes lots of skills and is hard, especially when you are trading with your own money. But the few privileged ones get to enjoy financial freedom and has tons of free time to pursue their interest or do social work, if that's their cup of tea.

Don't know about you, but compared to slogging 14 hours a day doing a "meaning" job and having no life at all, I know which lifestyle I rather choose.

Ir you really wanted or aimed to get rich, you must work hard and be honest with your work or business.

Dont be stupid, they are sales people. just do some mon key tricks and the money-loving singaporeans will kowtow to them. Naive!