My Review on Knowledge To Action
Knowledge to Action (KTA) is the world’s biggest forex educator boasting an impressive 200,000+ students across their entire network. They advertise extensively here in Australia so I thought I’d go to one of their open days to see what they have to offer. I’m very sceptical about any organisation that charges thousands of dollars for education (having been burned early in my forex journey) so I admit I went into it with pretty low expectations.
Introduction & Registration
The day starts with registration followed by small talk with several of the “coaches”. The guy I’m paired with is in his early 20’s with an open neck shirt and salesman swagger , he explains to me how he used to work in shitty 9-5 office job until he found KTA 3 years ago and it changed his life. He now trades 6 hours per week and makes enough money to be financially free. He does the coaching gig because he wants to “give back” some of his knowledge and help other traders succeed. Then he goes onto tell me that he’s starting to teach under privileged kids between 10-15years old how to trade and that it’s “really rewarding”…. (he’s being serious) as he says this I actually start to laugh (which I inconspicuously covered up by a fake cough and a comment that the complimentary coffee was delicious).
This is going as I expected….
The Speaker
Before we enter the training room we’re told that today we are incredibly lucky to have Brock teaching us. He’s one of the head traders here at KTA and he’s going to explain how everything works.
Brock is in his mid 30’s and doesn’t look particularly confident as he turns on the introductory video that features a people trading on a boat out on the harbour. As the feel good music blasts through the speakers and images of traders laughing around their laptops on the back of a yacht run for 3-4 mins I start to look around the room wondering if anyone else thinks this is ridiculous as I do. Evidently people are glued to the screen, so I’m clearly in the minority here…
The video stops and Brock starts to explain how he ended up being a “professional trader” and working for KTA. Interestingly his story contains almost no information about his trading journey, the most interesting part is when he speaks about how he formerly owned 2 wine businesses and that he loves being involved with business people. He drops in “I’ve been invited to trade for the largest hedge fund in Austraila” and gestures towards the financial district. At this point in time my BS detector starts to red line…
We are then shown another video where the owner of the organisation, Greg Secker, places a trade on his $2mil account and makes $19,000 in 4 mins. The amusing part was that after a very quick overview of the chat he focuses on the floating equity. We watch on the edge of our seat as his 100 lot trade fluctuates between $4,000 and -$2000, then BOOM! There is a breakout and he locks in 19 pips to make $19,000. I can actually feel the excitement in the room as this pre-recorded video ends and I start to think about how easy it is to manipulate people in this environment. All we saw were some numbers of on the screen (it could easily have been a demo account) and Greg Secker speaking about the position.
What I learned about trading
The open day promises to give you some information that you can take away and use in your own trading. To kick things off Brock starts to explain how candle stick charts work…. I use this opportunity to feed the parking metre downstairs for 5 mins. When I return we have covered the basics of how to read a chart and are onto the good stuff! We are taught about RSI Divergence on the 4hr and daily chart. After a couple of fumbled manual backtests, this appears like a great strategy (of course). Brock then explains the importance of avoiding new events by referring to the “Economical Calendar”. I give him the benefit of the doubt thinking this might have been a simple slip of the tongue, however he refers to the “Economical Calendar” 2 more times.
I look around to see if anyone else has picked up on the fact that this guy doesn’t even know what is economic calendar is... I’m all alone.
Shoot for the starts!
After the short educational component of the day we’re given general life lessons about achieving our goals. The basic message is - If don’t aim high then you’ll never be able to experience true success. We are then shown more testimonials from former students (there are probably 50 separate video testimonials throughout the day) and finally a current student is then brought in to tell us how much she enjoys being part of the KTA “family” and how she made a 6% return last month (I start off wondering if she’s a paid actor, but decide that she seems genuine).
One point that stuck out for me - Out of this huge portfolio of testimonials all anyone spoke about was their experience over the space of a month or two, many people only described their experience on a single trade. After educating 200,000 people I would expect to see a few success stories with people saying “KTA helped me become financially free!”, or “I bought this massive house with 7 spa baths and this hot pink Porsche with the money I earned trading and Knowledge to Action!” For a company that seems to get a testimonial every time a student goes to the toilet there was not a single person who could talk about REAL success…
The Hard Sell
I knew it was coming, but it wasn’t anywhere near as slick as I had expected. The normal course cost is $13,000, however today they had 3 “scholarships” made available by Greg Secker himself. They are only available if you sign up today (of course). As an added bonus they also offered an educational DVD that normally retails for $50 free of charge if you pay before leaving their office. The cost for this “scholarship” is only $4,995. There was an elderly gentleman sitting next to me that I could tell was anxious to give it a try because he was itching to get to the signup table, however the rest of the room shared complimentary cold calamari and spring rolls and left. I gave my card to one of the attendees on the way out and pitched our free trading room. I started to feel grubby about it shortly afterwards thinking that I was stealing their potential customers… However on reflection I believe it was the general feeling left from the open day I’d just attended.
Knowledge to Action (KTA) is the world’s biggest forex educator boasting an impressive 200,000+ students across their entire network. They advertise extensively here in Australia so I thought I’d go to one of their open days to see what they have to offer. I’m very sceptical about any organisation that charges thousands of dollars for education (having been burned early in my forex journey) so I admit I went into it with pretty low expectations.
Introduction & Registration
The day starts with registration followed by small talk with several of the “coaches”. The guy I’m paired with is in his early 20’s with an open neck shirt and salesman swagger , he explains to me how he used to work in shitty 9-5 office job until he found KTA 3 years ago and it changed his life. He now trades 6 hours per week and makes enough money to be financially free. He does the coaching gig because he wants to “give back” some of his knowledge and help other traders succeed. Then he goes onto tell me that he’s starting to teach under privileged kids between 10-15years old how to trade and that it’s “really rewarding”…. (he’s being serious) as he says this I actually start to laugh (which I inconspicuously covered up by a fake cough and a comment that the complimentary coffee was delicious).
This is going as I expected….
The Speaker
Before we enter the training room we’re told that today we are incredibly lucky to have Brock teaching us. He’s one of the head traders here at KTA and he’s going to explain how everything works.
Brock is in his mid 30’s and doesn’t look particularly confident as he turns on the introductory video that features a people trading on a boat out on the harbour. As the feel good music blasts through the speakers and images of traders laughing around their laptops on the back of a yacht run for 3-4 mins I start to look around the room wondering if anyone else thinks this is ridiculous as I do. Evidently people are glued to the screen, so I’m clearly in the minority here…
The video stops and Brock starts to explain how he ended up being a “professional trader” and working for KTA. Interestingly his story contains almost no information about his trading journey, the most interesting part is when he speaks about how he formerly owned 2 wine businesses and that he loves being involved with business people. He drops in “I’ve been invited to trade for the largest hedge fund in Austraila” and gestures towards the financial district. At this point in time my BS detector starts to red line…
We are then shown another video where the owner of the organisation, Greg Secker, places a trade on his $2mil account and makes $19,000 in 4 mins. The amusing part was that after a very quick overview of the chat he focuses on the floating equity. We watch on the edge of our seat as his 100 lot trade fluctuates between $4,000 and -$2000, then BOOM! There is a breakout and he locks in 19 pips to make $19,000. I can actually feel the excitement in the room as this pre-recorded video ends and I start to think about how easy it is to manipulate people in this environment. All we saw were some numbers of on the screen (it could easily have been a demo account) and Greg Secker speaking about the position.
What I learned about trading
The open day promises to give you some information that you can take away and use in your own trading. To kick things off Brock starts to explain how candle stick charts work…. I use this opportunity to feed the parking metre downstairs for 5 mins. When I return we have covered the basics of how to read a chart and are onto the good stuff! We are taught about RSI Divergence on the 4hr and daily chart. After a couple of fumbled manual backtests, this appears like a great strategy (of course). Brock then explains the importance of avoiding new events by referring to the “Economical Calendar”. I give him the benefit of the doubt thinking this might have been a simple slip of the tongue, however he refers to the “Economical Calendar” 2 more times.
I look around to see if anyone else has picked up on the fact that this guy doesn’t even know what is economic calendar is... I’m all alone.
Shoot for the starts!
After the short educational component of the day we’re given general life lessons about achieving our goals. The basic message is - If don’t aim high then you’ll never be able to experience true success. We are then shown more testimonials from former students (there are probably 50 separate video testimonials throughout the day) and finally a current student is then brought in to tell us how much she enjoys being part of the KTA “family” and how she made a 6% return last month (I start off wondering if she’s a paid actor, but decide that she seems genuine).
One point that stuck out for me - Out of this huge portfolio of testimonials all anyone spoke about was their experience over the space of a month or two, many people only described their experience on a single trade. After educating 200,000 people I would expect to see a few success stories with people saying “KTA helped me become financially free!”, or “I bought this massive house with 7 spa baths and this hot pink Porsche with the money I earned trading and Knowledge to Action!” For a company that seems to get a testimonial every time a student goes to the toilet there was not a single person who could talk about REAL success…
The Hard Sell
I knew it was coming, but it wasn’t anywhere near as slick as I had expected. The normal course cost is $13,000, however today they had 3 “scholarships” made available by Greg Secker himself. They are only available if you sign up today (of course). As an added bonus they also offered an educational DVD that normally retails for $50 free of charge if you pay before leaving their office. The cost for this “scholarship” is only $4,995. There was an elderly gentleman sitting next to me that I could tell was anxious to give it a try because he was itching to get to the signup table, however the rest of the room shared complimentary cold calamari and spring rolls and left. I gave my card to one of the attendees on the way out and pitched our free trading room. I started to feel grubby about it shortly afterwards thinking that I was stealing their potential customers… However on reflection I believe it was the general feeling left from the open day I’d just attended.
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