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FX Trading – Why do FX Education & Training Companies charge so much?

Posted by FXBattleground On January - 21 - 2011 ADD COMMENTS

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Hello fellow traders, no matter where you are in your journey to become a professional FX trader, you must always do your best to make the correct choices when it comes to the FX companies that you do business with. All the way from your choice of a FX broker, to your choice of FX training and education – each decision should be carefully analyzed and weighed out, just as you would for each currency trade that you enter.

We all know that over the years, the FX market has been growing rapidly. As of April 2010, the report from the Bank for International Settlements states that the average DAILY transaction volume of the FX market is approximately US $4 trillion. What a astounding number! The FX marketplace obviously represents one of the most accessible financial markets in which you and other retail investors may venture and become successful. But, keep in mind, that the road to success won’t be easy. You may, and probably will, hit a few bumps in the road along your journey. That is why we are here to accompany you, trying to relate our experiences over the years, helping you avoid the common pitfalls that are waiting for you, and preparing you to do whatever it takes to achieve your goals.

One of the requirements to be a successful trader in the FX realm is a good education. It’s true for other businesses and our life as well. Learning is a must. Venturing into the gigantic, fast-paced financial market without first equipping yourself with a premium FX education is a guarantee that soon you’ll get hurt. Realize that patience and discipline will be required before the sweet rewards of success can be enjoyed. The very first thing you must invest in is a FX education. Invest your time to become an educated and well trained trader before investing your money.

You can easily find many FX Education and Training companies out there offering a variety of educational materials, from basics to advanced classes. The majority of these are clearly illegitimate scams, attempting to sell some re-hashed free material as a “secret strategy” or “breakthough indicator”. The small minority of these educators that actually provide an acceptable education are charging enormous fees, in the thousands of dollars, for the privilege of participating in their program. Without a doubt, such high a educational fee is not affordable for many retail investors, especially for novice traders.

Why do some FX Educators charge so much money? To answer this question we should take some time and understand the business model behind these companies. These FX Educators have structured their businesses in such a way that they have an enormous number of expenses. For example, most of them are paying for multiple offices, instructors, administrative staff, phone staff, sales staff, and tech support staff. They are paying for glamorous booths at all the trading expos, and footing the bill for their sales staff to travel to those expos all over the world. Many of them are advertising on CNBC, Fox Business, and high profile trading publications and websites. And all of these expenses must be met somehow, yes?? And that’s where you, the aspiring trader comes into the equation.

Yes, you dear trader, are very important to that equation, for it’s your LARGE deposit of funds that’s required to keep this mammoth machine running. And, do you think that these companies have such a superior education that it warrants such a ridiculous price? Of course not!! Just because they have such large organizations, and spend so much money attracting starry eyed traders like yourself, doesn’t mean that they are good traders themselves, or that they are able to turn you into a professional trader. In fact, because they have so many expenses to meet, it logically follows that after you’ve paid and been through the training, they must immediately turn their attention away from you in order to keep signing in a new crop of wannabe traders to pay the bills.

So, why are we different? Are you wondering what “the catch” is? The answer is that there is none. Our goal, simply, is to debunk the idea that Professional FX Education needs to be expensive. We intend on becoming the premiere FX Education and Training Resource on the Internet, and we’re quite sure that those companies who rely on tempting traders like you to pony up these exorbitant fees will be very upset that we are providing an education that is better than theirs, for far less money.

The difference with the way that we operate is that we’ve built this business from the ground up with you, the aspiring FX trader, in mind. We’ve designed our business model and education delivery method in such a way that we’ve been able to keep the training costs low, without sacrificing in any way the quality of education that we offer.

We don’t have high salaried “salesmen” who travel all over the globe to trading conferences and expos trying to hock their wares with personality and flashy smiles. We don’t maintain swanky offices in multiple cities in an attempt to appear bigger and “better” than the next guy. You won’t find us advertising on CNBC or Fox Business!… all of those considerable costs are invariably passed on to the consumer, which in this case, is you!

Isn’t it obvious to even the most casual observer, that these types of companies must be, by necessity, chiefly focused on acquiring more trainees to pay the inordinate costs for their offered education, instead of focusing on training successful traders. Because their costs of business are so enormous, they must continually beat the bushes to convince new students that their education is worth the high price tag, when in reality, the only reason they have to charge such enormous amounts of money is that they have to cover the costs of their massive operational and advertising budget.

Our cutting edge concept was to streamline FXBattleground.com in such a way that we are able to operate in a highly efficient manner that allows us to provide a premium quality FX Education & Training Course for a small fraction of what the others charge.

Still not sure? We can’t blame you! There are so many FX scams out on the Net.

The bottom line is that we are a 100% legitimate company and we stand behind our product. And, along with our education, we offer you, the trader, so many extras and bonuses, that you have very little to lose by giving us a try. We’re not asking you to jump off a cliff and send us four thousand or six thousand dollars. We have worked very hard to provide this opportunity to you for a mere $299.00. One Price. One Time. Lifetime.

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Forex Education Article, FX Trading Course

Forex vs Stocks – Which is better for you?

Posted by FXBattleground On December - 16 - 2010 ADD COMMENTS

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For many years, the “thing to do” was to entrust your investment capital to a local broker, and aside from browsing your monthly statements, that was the extent of your responsibilities. Very often an intelligent and savvy individual will start to consider whether or not they can handle making their own investments, especially in the current economic climate. These days, due to the widespread availability of electronic markets and software, just about anyone can get themselves into the market. Many, however, are intimidated by the overwhelming complication and endemic corruption that exists in the stock market, and most will eliminate that as an option. There is another market, however, that offers the astute learner an arena into which they can safely venture With the confidence that a proper education provides, and the peace of mind that a developed sense of discipline instills, the Forex market can be a dream come true for the hopeful market warrior.

Easy Accessibility

One of the most attractive reasons that the Forex market is accessible to almost anyone is the fact that there are practically thousands of brokers that offer 100% Free, no commitment, no deposit required down-loadable trading platforms that allow you to trade the market live using a “demo” account. A Demo account gives you nearly the identical experience that you will experience if you one day decide to start trading with real money. The value of this type of experience is incalculable, as it allows the trader to find out whether or not he or she has what it takes to compete in the world’s largest financial market. The aspiring trader can brainstorm, analyze and test strategies for several days, months or years before they feel they are ready to begin. For the patient and disciplined, the value of this cannot be overstated.

Another advantage that the Forex market offers the novice trader looking to find his niche is the ease of entry into a live account. The world of stock trading is dominated by a select few online brokers who have collectively agreed that $1,500 to $3,000 seems to be the minimum amount that they will accept to open an account, and at those levels, the level of services is even reduced. In contrast, there are many reputable Forex Brokers who have established Micro-lot programs which allow the trader to enter the market with a very small amount of risk by trading what is called micro-lots. These programs extend their hand to the trader with little capital to employ by lowering the entry threshold to as little as $25.00. In addition, these deposits can be made quickly and easily via a credit or debit card, while most stock broker deposits require a wire transfer or ACH deposit.

One of the most disappointing moments in a developing trader’s career comes at the time they realize how much capital they have to commit to a stock trade in order to make substantial money on a short term move. As an example, to make $500 on a 5% move over the course of a week or two, the trader has to commit at least $10,000 if he or she is not margined. If margined at the normal maximum of 2 to 1, then that amount may be as low as $5,000, but then the trader is open to the risks inherent with being leveraged in the stock market. Large opening gaps and major unannounced announcements can happen at any time, and devastate the traders account without giving that person any possible way of avoiding the tragedy. By comparison, the Forex market offers the trader a much lower risk profile by offering as much as 500 to 1 leverage in some markets. More realistic is the new US standard of 50 to 1, but still, this amount of leverage allows a trader to drill down to the lower time frames and develop a plan that extracts substantial profits from a much more acceptable risk profile. And, because the Forex market trades 24 hours a day during the week without any gaps, the chances are slim that price will move substantially far away from the trader’s entry price before he or she is able to make an exit decision. As long as the astute Forex trader exits trades on Friday, and enters again after the Sunday night EST opening time, the odds of getting burned by a gap or excessive flash move are very low.

On the same wave link as the previous point, the Forex market allows the trader to enter and exit in an unfettered way, regardless of the size or configuration of their account. On the other hand, the US stock markets require a participant to maintain a balance of at least $25,000 in their trading account to be classified and permitted as a “day trader”. Without this classification, you are limited to 3 in/outs per 5 day rolling week, meaning that you are allowed to enter and exit during the same market session, but only 3 times every 5 day rolling week. This restriction forces new market participants to miss out on some of the most reliable setups that exist in the stock market, as they are not legally able to routinely enter and exit during the same day. Forex wins again!

“Technically” more accurate

Aside from the entry requirements for trading a live account, the Forex market offers the novice trader a shallower learning curve than does the stock market. Because Forex trades 24 hours a day, and traders are not “in a hurry” to sell or buy before an upcoming close in the market, market participants don’t often produce irrational movements that can’t be predicted. The stock market, with its’ pre-market, NY open, lunchtime doldrums, bond closings, NY close, and post-market trading create a labyrinth of movements that those outside the Wall Street Elite are left to only make educated guesses about. The Forex market, while it does react strongly to some news items and occasionally does something that seems out of the blue, mostly gives the educated trader sensible and definable patterns with which to measure entries, stops and take profit levels. Forex, like all markets, goes into sideways patterns that are difficult to predict, but, just like all markets, that is not the time to trade heavily. When the Forex market starts to trend, however, the skilled player is like the proverbial “kid in a candy store” looking at and scooping up those little green and red candies.

The size of the Forex market cannot even be fairly compared to the stock market. Almost $4 trillion a day is exchanged every single day, and if you relate those dollars to the analogy of each one being a vote, then it helps one understand the realities. Each one of these trades is a vote on what the current price of each currency pair should be, and the reality is that having such an enormous ocean of variant ideas about where the price should be provides a dampening effect that results in a smoother overall price movement. The result is a more predictable and playable market.

In the stock market, the number of shares available to trade of any one security can have an enormous effect on how that security trades. The smaller the float, the more erratic and unpredictable its’ movements can be. Many day traders don’t like trading anything that trades less than 1 million shares per day. This insures that the instrument is liquid enough for them to enter and exit with an acceptable amount of slippage. Compare that to the Forex market, where 4 million times that number of transactions take place. To an Forex trader who avoids trading news events and the 5pm EST rollover, slippage should be completely limited to the market spread at the time of entry and exit.

That leads to yet another reason that Forex makes sense as a trading vehicle for the intelligent trader, the low costs of commissions. Actually, very few Forex brokers even charge commissions as the primary source of income for an honest Forex broker is the “pip spread”. This is the difference between the typical bid and offer that is common to every market, but in Forex, that is all that you “pay”, although you never really write a check or see it deducted from your account. The spread just gets rolled into the trade, whether it wins or loses, so that when you exit all trades and your account is flat, the amount that shows in your account balance is all yours. There will be no additional broker fees, SEC fees, Exchange fees, data fees, etc… Now that’s something that you can get excited about.

Education is available, but Buyer Beware!

Of course, it would be hard to find anyone that would agree that just anyone can enter the market successfully without first getting a proper education. While, in rare occasions, it has been done, even then it was not without a few “near financial death” experiences, and hard won lessons. Training is essential to successfully operate in the worlds’ largest market, but where does an aspiring trader go to get the best education at the best value?

There are a great many operations on the Internet that claim to be able to convert the newbie trader into a master in “just one weekend” or after “learning the secret that no one else knows”! Level headed people can spot these scammers a long way off, but others have not been so lucky. The best advice is to limit the amount of capital you commit to education in the beginning, as trading capital is the most precious asset that any trader has.

We at FXBattleground.com have seen and heard horror stories about a great many of these types of educational offerings, and to be honest, we’ve never been impressed. Our goal is to present an aspiring FX trader with a new paradigm in Forex educati on. What we offer is a dynamic, professional Forex education that offers an incredible value when compared to what else is out there. If you are considering entering the FX market, we simply ask that you evaluate what we have to offer.

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Forex Education Article, FX Education, FX Trading Professional Advice

What’s wrong with Forex Education?

Posted by FXBattleground On December - 15 - 2010 ADD COMMENTS

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There are three models of education that dominate the Forex Market today. They all claim to have the magic formula, exclusive knowledge about the market, or some hyped up set of proprietary indicators. Their promise to the ever re-generating gaggle of hopeful FX traders is the easiest road possible to the promised land of Forex Enlightenment.

Understanding the realities of what’s out there on the market as far as education is an important thing for someone who is out there trying to become a Forex trader. This article addresses some of the more common paradigms of the current Forex Education Market.

The Seminar – This is, perhaps, the most common form taken in the FX Education Market, because it usually leverages the notoriety or charisma of a supposed master trader to convince their potential devotees to plunk down anywhere from $3,000 to $8,000 for the privilege of spending a short weekend “learning how to trade”.

Starting at nine in the morning, usually a 9:00 AM, the host of the seminar will begin. After a lunch and several breaks you might get a total of 6 hours per day a Forex education.

This type of education is marginal at best because you are only exposed to the information for a short and inefficient weekend – after that you’re on your own. If you’re lucky, you were able to take notes and make scattered “next level” observations that might carry you through until you’re able to retake the course – if they allow that!

You’re only one of maybe 100 people in the room who are all vying for the attention of the supposed master trader or trading celebrity who is running room. So, you have to wait in line in the chat to get your questions answered, and what’s worse, you have to wait behind the questions of the slowest people in the room who, no matter how many times the material is explained still have questions that are very basic, and range from repetitive to astoundingly pedestrian, As a result, the presenter must spend enormous amounts of time trying to remedially educate the slower members of the room while you wait, minute after minute watching your very expensive Forex education be wasted.

So the bottom line is that it’s a very expensive way to obtain what is usually only a rudimentary Forex education, simply because there’s not enough time to train the group in the basics of trading, much less the advanced topics that are necessary in order to profit in the the Forex market

The other type of education that is very popular among the online Forex education web sites is the ubiquitous chat room. This is where a group of moderators spend the morning or just a part of the morning attempting to disseminate educational tidbits to a large group of hundreds of people. If your lucky enough not to be completely annoyed by the voices that are coming through your computer speakers, you may be able to collect enough information over the course of the next few months to construct some semblance of a proper education. There is never an organized lesson or consistent pre-scheduled teaching, and the moderators, because they are distracted from trading by the continuous questions from novice traders, become less effective as traders themselves.

Any nuggets of trading wisdom that are doled out in these chat rooms comes in sporadic bursts that are unpredictable and varying in quality. So the trader that hopes to receive a proper Forex education by participating in one of these chat rooms must do several things in order to succeed #1. He must be able to spend every available hour in the chat room to avoid missing valuable information as it is discussed, and #2 He must be able to efficiently and effectively collect all of these various data points into one organized structure, which clearly presents even the most precise thinkers a difficult challenge.

Another issue associated with chat rooms is that novice traders often use them as a crutch to avoid the difficult work of writing a trading plan, testing a training plan, and learning to read the market on their own. They often blindly follow the trades and advise of the moderators or other senior members of the room, who post loudly of their numerous winning trades (this assumes that they are honest, wink wink). And so the trader’s development is slowed for years as they just limp along, trying to follow trades of other people, trying to figure out who in the room is the best trader, so that they can mimic their style. This process retards the development of the trader for years and sometimes forever if the trader never figure is out the cause of their desperate gyrations.

The social aspect of the chat room paradigm is tempting, but there are a great many successful traders out there today who will tell you that their true success in the markets did not begin until they turned all the chat rooms off.

The third main category of Forex education comes in the form of the downloadable course. Almost always delivered in PDF format these courses promise to show you proven strategies that let you easily take profits out of the Forex market.

The worst offenders out there are those who simply copy and paste volumes of information from all over the web that the unsuspecting buyer could have easily found on his own. Many a trader has been disappointed by this newly downloaded Forex course, when he or she realizes that the sum total of unique information in the course consists of nine or 10 pages, while the other 99 or so pages contain standard definitions of Forex trading and explanations that answer the eternal question ” what is a pip”?

Slightly more honest but equally ineffective are the outfits who tout their unbelievably reliable, proprietary setups which usually consist of a collection of bar patterns or moving average crosses that are corroborated by chart after chart that the authors handpicked from the market. They fail to tell you that in a sideways market, that these types of setups often lead to a series of damaging losses and a devastated psychological profile.

As a result, the trader gives up on these newly learned methods, and continues his search for the next Holy Grail.

The common thread that runs through each of these educational methods, is that they’re quite expensive and leave the blossoming Forex trader with much less of the one commodity that he must value the most, trading capital. While it’s difficult to argue that a Forex trader would be better off entering the market with no education at all, it’s quite possible that there is a better paradigm out there at a fraction of the cost.

Academic knowledge of how the market moves and how technical analysis works is something that must be taught over an extended period. The concepts, in many cases are counter-intuitive, and therefore require a continuing education that allows the apprentice trader the opportunity to repetitively access the educational material, and be able to post questions and receive answers about its content.

As the technical side of trading is being developed under this educational model, the aspiring trader also needs some method of psychological support. We’ve already established that the moderated chat room model is an impediment to true trading mastery but surely there is another way for traders to interact, while still retaining their integrity of mind.

The current belief by our team of professionals, is that a Forex course consisting of dynamically illustrated and logically explained high quality videos is the best and most efficient way to train a novice or intermediate trader. This allows the student to repetitively access the information as many times as they deem necessary, and eliminates the negative issues associated with the other types of education mentioned above.

The trader that is able to learn with the assistance of professionally taught high definition videos has an edge, and if that trader is then supported with the latest in continuing education, then that trader has the best possible chance of success.

Price, of course, is another issue. If the trader is able to spend far less money to acquire a top quality forex education, then that would be a good trade indeed.

We at FXBattleground.com have seen and heard horror stories about a great many of these types of educational offerings, and to be honest, we’ve never been impressed. Our goal is to present an aspiring FX trader with a New Paradigm in Forex Education. What we offer is a dynamic, professional Forex education that offers an incredible value when compared to what else is out there. If you are considering entering the FX market, we simply ask that you evaluate what we have to offer.

Author: FXBattleground.com Staff

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Forex Education Article, Free Forex Lesson, FX Education, FX Trading Professional Advice