I don’t even have to explain why you should only learn to trade only from people who have already been trading successfully for many years. It is very obvious.
What is more surprising, however, is that most of the trading educators I have encountered in my life do not even invest their own savings, revealing a complete lack of confidence in their own financial knowledge. Based on what I have seen, they are probably very wise not to trust themselves.
First of all, a real statement does not just prove that you are a legitimate professional and not a scammer, it is also the only proof trading coaches have to show that they are teaching is, at the very least, empirically proven.
The most common excuses you’ll hear from trading educators who are faking it are:
- We cannot provide it for privacy reasons
- Some regulators do not allow us to do so
- I only give proof to people who have already bought some courses (yes, seriously!)
- My dog has eaten it
Sometimes, albeit very rarely, they will give you something complete worthless to divert your attention, such as the following:
- An excel spreadsheet with performances
- A demo account statement
- A photoshopped statement
- A real statement from an unknown broker. You can ask them to remove some bad trades from the list for “marketing purposes”
- A real statement but on a very small account
- An mt4 statement
It is now very common to mislead potential clients—or just to show off to your friends that you are a good trader—by sending a Myfxbookor other online-based performance tracker statements. A quick search online reveals that there are even tutorials on how to manipulate these. While it is very easy to cheat using them, it’s not easy to see where the glitch or change is—especially to the untrained eye. These statements are not necessarily always fake, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to spot which ones are legit.
How can you tell if someoneis really able to make money?
Say you want to apply for a job in a real FCA-regulated trading position in a real hedge fund prop desk in London. Before reading your cv, they would ask for a statement sent DIRECTLY from a broker or a bank that is regulated in a g20 country. Anything else has got zero credible value.
A trader should ask for the same, but, of course, it is a little bit more complicated for even an entirely honest educator to ask his broker to send a statement to everyone who asks for it.
A solution could be to have a track record with a list of trades, open positions, and the possibility to watch it live from the trader’s computer.
If you really have it and you are just proud of your performance, then privacy is not usually a big issue (publishing your bank account track record on Facebook, however, would be too much). That said, having the possibility of showing off your performance is really good.
At this point, dear reader, you might be wondering, does this guy really have one?
Yes, of course! I’ve got one that is big (in financial size) and long (in time).
You’ll get the full statement with a list of trades and all the information you could possibly need. Additionally, you will receive information on the performance of other accounts.
I would say that 99% of the time, educators do not have a real account in profit. And even if they did, it would not have more than $20,000USD in it. The account shown above has $1.4 M and I did 8% during the last few months, which means that I made—after taxes and commissions—more than$100k.
As far as I know, no other trading mentor in the UK can show a document like this because they simply do not have one. There are only a few in the world that does any better.
Am I showing off how good I am?
A little bit, yes, but I am proud of myself!
But what I want to point out here is just how difficult it is to spot the fake in this industry.
If you go to a doctor, you can be almost sure that they have a valid medical licence that allows them to legitimately do their work, but in trading, anyone can pretend to be a master trader.
Another extremely important reason why I think real trading educators should show their performance to clients and potential students is because nothing is more motivating than that! When a student sees that their teacher is actually able to make what he says he does, it encourages the student to learn and their motivation will skyrocket.