I’ve been occasionally reading some articles written by Nick McDonald in the NZ Herald. These articles are on the subject of trading financial markets for profit.

As with many so-called traders, Mr McDonald runs a company that teaches people how to trade. This seems to be the same old scams that have been running for years. Learn how to pick the best horses. Learn how to pick the winning lottery numbers. Learn how to trade the markets. 

I’m aware that it is possible to trade markets successfully and make money from it. However, if trading was consistently so successful, why are there so many successful traders selling courses? [Hint: because there is no money in it…]

I knew a friend a few years ago who was in a training course similar to this, learning how to trade. She was quite sold on the process, which involved significant amounts of training, a large amount of money and ongoing costs to use specialised software. I’m not sure if she is still involved in the trading but I’m pretty sure that has died off. Despite promises, I doubt many people come out ahead after one of these training courses. But at the end of the day the fault is always going to lie at the foot of the student for executing the strategy wrong.

There may be get-rich-quick schemes out there but trading for a living is not one of them for most people. Also, it appears that trading isn’t even a get-rich-quick scheme for those people running trading schools either.