will do it onsite : this will be a good break from my everyday trading. I don't trade equities, so I am interested to add equities to my arsenal. school smart: from my limited observation, formal education has no link to trade ability. However in his case, I believe the training had a lot to do with his trading well.
4) Firms that charge money for getting in the door (either through high training tuition fees or down payments) and then strictly limit your access to capital and hold you to ridiculously small daily loss limits. You never have the chance to make real money, and once you lose half of the tuition/downpayment fee, you're shown the door. Total scam.
Don't pay for any training. If the firm charges any sum, its a conflict of interest. If a firm was confident it could "train" someone, it wouldn't charge them anything, because a good trader would make them a ton of money. These SMB guys need to prove their successful traders first too, before they go "training" people. What does training mean? Being knowledgeable of the market won't cut it. You need to be consistently profitable. This cannot be taught in a 3 month period, no matter how intense it is.
I don't know how legit this is: http://www.smbtraining.com/?q=overview2 Looks more like a money-making scheme. I also remember that dumb girl on Wall Street Warriors who was given a job there... she didn't understand anything about the market, let alone trading. They hired her before she quit... I hope that was a publicity stunt rather than the quality of trader's they have. I wouldn't pay too much to the video's posted on this ET thread... They are all uploaded on SMB's website: http://www.smbtraining.com/?q=home&video=c (just click the picture to start video) So these videos...even the onn.tv interview are all biased marketing tools. I doubt that anything critical of the firm would be put onto their website.
It's hard to put a dollar value on training. A) because you dont know who these guys are, especially if its remote B) if you have 100k to start, is it worth paying 5k to learn?...I think so, but if you only have 15k, then thats a big chuck on money. C) you might save yourself time and money, by finding out that trading isnt what you thought it was and decide its not for you, in which case this will save you years of struggle. I like most traders leared the hard way...many losses, and years of mistakes. Paying 5k to learn in a few months, what would take most traders years, might be worth it. SMB was founded by traders for trader, so they seem legit, but just do some research anyway. cm
Well they are in the business of making money after all. I think SMB gave it an honest effort but quickly realized that it does not work. Hence they moved toward training fees and now notice that there is more money in selling "educational" materials, rather than turning out profitable traders. The TV exposure obviously helped. The reality is that there are little to no exploitable edges that can be taught to newbies. It does not make sense to train newbies and carry their losses, as it would take at least a year to see any potential progress. With a risk deposit, the new guy will last only so long. Also, I'm sure the owners make the majority of their income from the training materials & such.
The owners are serious about the business and are good traders, Steve is likely one of the best there is. Talk to them or visit, I have, and asked many difficult questions, they continue to send out free material and blog information that you can learn from. They are not your typical hyster prop shop. I would take the training at 2500, 5K is steep. IMHO, likely one of the best out there.