Hahaha! Fraud is not free market. I'm very libertarian but fraud is fraud. I don't think it's above 99.95%.
Yup, I won't argue with you there, and I agree that there's far too much of that about. It's interesting who's considered a "vendor". I realised only in a very recent discussion in this forum that some people consider all textbook authors to be "vendors", by definition. (And technically, they may even be right: after all, if you write a textbook and Wiley publishes it and pays you a 10% commission on its sales, you are profiting from it - I think of those people as being in a basically different category altogether from the people selling their horrible courses themselves, for $2,999/$3,999, which teach a glorified moving average crossover, and have fake testimonials on their revolting websites. The ones as clearcut "scammy as hell" as that are actually a minority, though, in my opinion - and to anyone with any judgment, it usually stands out a mile from their websites that they're scams).
I agree, I've spent money on some decent educational resources...chat rooms, seminars, books etc. which did have some good ideas and strategies. The problem for the novice is they not only don't know what realistic material is but don't know what is or is not suitable for THEM, hence the maze.
Plenty of scammers have written books precisely because you put book writers into a different category - adds a lot of legitimacy. Many publish articles in trading mags and advertise in the classifieds in the back of the same mags. It's all (99.95%+) a fucking con.
I hear you - we just disagree about the figures, but neither of us can prove our contentions on that point, anyway.
There are two reasons why there so few legit educators: 1) Trading successfully is incredibly hard for a retail trader. Very few reach that level. 2) Once someone does reach that level they're economically DIS-incentivized to disclose it. So the economics of this just does not work.
I agree with the first but the the idea that by teaching someone one's method is dilutitive to one's own income is bogus. I've taught people to trade (not for profit and no longer interested in doing so but am happy to help those with good intentions) and ones who ultimately became profitable made adjustments according to their own personalities and personal characteristics. Time frames will change, indicators will come on and come off, targets and stops will change etc etc. But even if they traded exactly the same, our combined efforts will have had zero effect on a liquid market.
the problem is your feelings will be short lived. the let down comes later. then it is quite a plunge.
interesting thread, read a blurb from a "trader training educator" the other day, some one asked him the smallest sized account to trade, he answered $10,000, trade with $5,000 and send him $5,000 for training.....