I have also been scammed by a whole host of brokers and services. I lost my business, my house, and my boat as a result.
It started when I became ill and couldn’t work for many months and an employee took advantage and stole all the liquidity out of the company in my absence.
I was trying to save the company and recover the liquidity and a friend trying to help introduced me to managed binary option accounts. He was having an amazing experience and his account was growing rapidly. Several people went in on this after the people who had invested earlier were getting payouts. Turned out it was a ponzi scheme but before this came apparent the mindset that you could make money with managed accounts set in and I was surrounded in a community that believed the same. I am not by nature a gambler and I am a hard worker and don’t give up easily, but because I was so vulnerable due to my situation, I lost alot and it destroyed me.
I had this very wrong and vulnerable idea that they can’t be all bad. I wont go into all the details, but I think I have been through the most. Also, I did not want to learn to trade as I was so busy trying to save the company (before I had to let it go), and learning to trade is no easy or quick task in my opinion.
Today I am still learning to trade and I am getting better all the time, but for me it has not been easy, and it is even harder when you are under tremendous pressure. I am in a group of traders where about maybe 10% are experienced and doing very well and are somewhat willing to help other learn to trade. Why I mention this is because, I cant imagine any of the successful traders I know even being willing to to trade someone else’s money. Why would they, they can trade their own money and they have lots of it (several I know trade between $500 to $2000 per pip). They don’t need the pressure of handling someone else’s account nor do they need another’s liquidity (which would be insignificant to their own capital). If they really wanted to help someone financially for whatever reason, it would be less hassle for them just to send some money.
What I have learned from this is that easiest way to identify a scam (because they come in so many forms) is that it is not reasonable that someone is investing in an email or telephone list and taking time out of their trading or leisure time to call around to people they don’t know to get small amounts of capital to trade with if they are any good. No matter how nice or convincing they are (scammers are good at this), there is no logic to this, and they will sooner or later blow your investment. Either they are an outright scam, they are an unprofitable trader, or they are a risky trader who may have good periods but sooner or later will blow it, and that is why they want to trade with somebody else’s capital.
A successful trader will have so many people that know them personally that are begging and nagging for them to trade their money for them, but even then, they probably won’t. Some may like to help others to learn as a way of giving back, and there are some real decent people and services, but they are rare and they are very unlikely to need to be too aggressive with marketing, not to mention cold calling people up.
The problem is that bad traders know all the lingo of the market and because they can’t trade, if they are unethical and a smooth talker, they get by from useless trading services and scams.
Don’t get me wrong, it can be lonely as a professional trader, and there are those that like to have a side hobby service and/or enjoy the community feel, but these are rare are very hard for a newbie to know the difference. If you have taken any of Petko’s courses and are not new to the learning process it’s not that hard to see he knows what he is talking about and has alot of experience in his field.
