AKFinancials (registered in Seychelles) is a forex educational firm that regularly posts ads in local job portals, seeking to hire trainee traders for their online educational program. If you pass this program, you will be able to trade company funds and be entitled to their profit-sharing scheme. The trainer claims they plan to open a Singapore office along Robinson road, and you're qualified to become an office trader should you pass. Their ad can be found here:
http://sg.jobsdb.com/sg/en/job/trainee-forex-futures-trader-400003002906694
The training costs USD 1495. I signed up in April, and given the lack of reviews around, I've decided to do one for the benefit of those thinking of making the leap.
Educational Material
A significant proportion of the notes is either available online free of charge, or plagiarized. Examples:
1) 'Education' on trading psychology is in the form of the trainer sending a PIRATED copy of 'Trading in the Zone' by the late Mark Douglas. I have contacted the rightful content owner to inform them of this IP infringement and can affirm that it is indeed pirated, since no genuine PDF copies of the book exist. Incredibly, the trainer accuses me of saying I BOUGHT (vastly different in a legal context) the pirated PDF from him, and that the content owner will have to pay him. Seems pretty ridiculous and unethical to me.
2) The notes on building a training system are lifted right out of 'Technical Analysis for Dummies' by Barbara Rockefeller. Approx 2000 words of plagiarism.
I then did a quick google search of entire paragraphs from their notes and found instances where they originate from free websites such as investopedia, deltastock and tititudorancea, to name a few. It's ridiculous to pay so much for a course and discover that so much of the materials can be available free or are plagiarized.
Did I mention how outdated the notes are? For example it still says Bernanke is the Fed Chair. Even the notes on their own (I assume) proprietary trading methods require extensive markups to make them up to date. With such a lack of quality in material, do you still believe their ad which claims they offer the 'very best in support and training'?
Delivery
The delivery of the lessons leaves a lot to be desired. Lessons are conducted on skype, which is fine. Skype has great features like voice calling, screen sharing etc, but none of those features is used. Going through charts together can be quite a pain. When I first spoke to the trainer, he told me he had problems with his mic. Two months later, at the end of the course, it was still MSN-style chat. Questions are encouraged but are answered in an ad-hoc, almost cavalier manner. On at least 1 occasion when I attempted to dig deeper, the trainer avoided the question and reminded me I was a trader trader, not an economist. Maybe this has something to do with the notes being plagiarized?
The timing of the lessons can be highly erratic too. One week I had no lessons, another week I had 11 hours of lessons. And be sure you keep track of everything he promises to cover at the start of the course, because for my case he totally forgot about the topics on building a trading system and part of their risk management scheme, until I reminded him towards the end of the last lesson.
Mentorship/Support
My third gripe with this company is their lack of support when the demo month starts. As required, account statements were sent to the trainer every friday. When did the first feedback arrive? 1 month and 14 days after the start of the demo month. Enough said. Moreover, the trainer claims there is 'no way' to lose money if you follow his rules. This is strange, because anyone with a modicum of trading knowledge will know that trading always entails uncertainty. Even their contract agreement says 'the past performance of these systems and concepts may yield different results in the future'. So how on earth is 'no way' possible?
By the way, the course fee is refundable if you pass the course and trade with them for at least 8 months, though you will be fired as a remote trader if you suffer a 10% drawdown in 1 month. Whether 10% is a lot is up to you. Experienced traders will know that anything can happen in the short term, whether you have an edge or not. Note that based on the methods you are taught, it's already an achievement if you hit 30 trades a month (for people holding a full-time day job). 30 is not a large sample size to let your edge play out.
One last thing. Regarding the Singapore office, I am in contact with MAS and ACRA now in an effort to verify this claim. I suggest you do the same if you still think this course is worth your hard-earned money. If you are serious about learning, spend the money on quality books instead.
Feel free to ask any questions. I will be glad to help.
http://sg.jobsdb.com/sg/en/job/trainee-forex-futures-trader-400003002906694
The training costs USD 1495. I signed up in April, and given the lack of reviews around, I've decided to do one for the benefit of those thinking of making the leap.
Educational Material
A significant proportion of the notes is either available online free of charge, or plagiarized. Examples:
1) 'Education' on trading psychology is in the form of the trainer sending a PIRATED copy of 'Trading in the Zone' by the late Mark Douglas. I have contacted the rightful content owner to inform them of this IP infringement and can affirm that it is indeed pirated, since no genuine PDF copies of the book exist. Incredibly, the trainer accuses me of saying I BOUGHT (vastly different in a legal context) the pirated PDF from him, and that the content owner will have to pay him. Seems pretty ridiculous and unethical to me.
2) The notes on building a training system are lifted right out of 'Technical Analysis for Dummies' by Barbara Rockefeller. Approx 2000 words of plagiarism.
I then did a quick google search of entire paragraphs from their notes and found instances where they originate from free websites such as investopedia, deltastock and tititudorancea, to name a few. It's ridiculous to pay so much for a course and discover that so much of the materials can be available free or are plagiarized.
Did I mention how outdated the notes are? For example it still says Bernanke is the Fed Chair. Even the notes on their own (I assume) proprietary trading methods require extensive markups to make them up to date. With such a lack of quality in material, do you still believe their ad which claims they offer the 'very best in support and training'?
Delivery
The delivery of the lessons leaves a lot to be desired. Lessons are conducted on skype, which is fine. Skype has great features like voice calling, screen sharing etc, but none of those features is used. Going through charts together can be quite a pain. When I first spoke to the trainer, he told me he had problems with his mic. Two months later, at the end of the course, it was still MSN-style chat. Questions are encouraged but are answered in an ad-hoc, almost cavalier manner. On at least 1 occasion when I attempted to dig deeper, the trainer avoided the question and reminded me I was a trader trader, not an economist. Maybe this has something to do with the notes being plagiarized?
The timing of the lessons can be highly erratic too. One week I had no lessons, another week I had 11 hours of lessons. And be sure you keep track of everything he promises to cover at the start of the course, because for my case he totally forgot about the topics on building a trading system and part of their risk management scheme, until I reminded him towards the end of the last lesson.
Mentorship/Support
My third gripe with this company is their lack of support when the demo month starts. As required, account statements were sent to the trainer every friday. When did the first feedback arrive? 1 month and 14 days after the start of the demo month. Enough said. Moreover, the trainer claims there is 'no way' to lose money if you follow his rules. This is strange, because anyone with a modicum of trading knowledge will know that trading always entails uncertainty. Even their contract agreement says 'the past performance of these systems and concepts may yield different results in the future'. So how on earth is 'no way' possible?
By the way, the course fee is refundable if you pass the course and trade with them for at least 8 months, though you will be fired as a remote trader if you suffer a 10% drawdown in 1 month. Whether 10% is a lot is up to you. Experienced traders will know that anything can happen in the short term, whether you have an edge or not. Note that based on the methods you are taught, it's already an achievement if you hit 30 trades a month (for people holding a full-time day job). 30 is not a large sample size to let your edge play out.
One last thing. Regarding the Singapore office, I am in contact with MAS and ACRA now in an effort to verify this claim. I suggest you do the same if you still think this course is worth your hard-earned money. If you are serious about learning, spend the money on quality books instead.
Feel free to ask any questions. I will be glad to help.
