onlinetradingacademy.com

Not worth it.
1.0

Im totally an newbie on trading but i was reading some books on it before jumping i.in the market and made some money but it wasnt fast enough for ms and i was hoping to find an class that could teach me on how to trade better then i find OTA. On July of 2017. Went to their 1/2 free seminar hoping to learn something but it was nothing but a sale pitch. Since i didnt know much amd the price for theirbmarket timing class wasnt that much I end up paying 300 for their market timing class hoping to learn something new. Well well well. During the first two day of the class. 99% of the time the instructor talked nothing but how great their school is. As of July 2017. They charge 23000 for their core plus a leverage class(i can probably get an college assocoate degree with that money or i can even use that money as a house down payment or even buy a car) I didnt even bother to go on the last day since i know i wont learn anything new. What a time waste. I could just buy an book and that wont cost me 300 dollar…. Thanks for nothing OTA

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Silly Sales Tactic
0.5

This place is a joke. Don’t even bother going to half day sales pitch. That would be waste of your time. I attended free half day workshop for Online trading academy in Toronto. That half day ‘course’ is like others mention, just sales pitch. The instructor talk about the stuff that I already knew, how wall st. wants us to be on the other side and that they would make money off of us. And the academy will teach me how to become a “cleaner fish” who eats off of shark’s dead skin… And just like other mentioned, they use “door in the foot” technique- first say many times that 3 days course offered at $999 and drastically down to $299 + Tax.
The reason why I signed up for half day orientation was that it was “mandatory” before sign up for their course ($5000 + $2000 for part 2)- which I was going to take. They did not have to try so hard sell me the membership because I already made up my mind to take the course and learn.
The day after I got a phone call from the “education counsellor” asking me all these weird question, including if I had a magic wand and can change one thing, what would that be… is this a joke??
Well, unfortunately, our financial is pretty solid, and we are heavily invested on real estate. I just wanted to learn how to trade and understand those market better not to desperately make money! I told him I have in good place and I just wanted to learn.
They push you for coming into the school for one hour meeting to get to know me and understand my goals including your financial informations. I told him I just wanted to learn and financially I did not need help- just come in for classes . Seems like he was a newbie because he said his goal is to MAKE ME TAKE THE COURSES.LOL
And other guy (more experienced) called again that he was told how I did not want to come in for the “meeting” and did not want to fill out questionnaire ( why do i have to share my financial information with guys that I don’t trust? ). And was being very upset saying how he did not know me, and he needed to know me to help me, and how he did not care about the money and he was there to help people and I was not suit for the school and that he needed to cancel my seat. I am so thankful that he mentioned first that he needed to cancel my seat after reading how some people had hard time getting the refund. HAHA
I would have taken the courses and dropped the my money if it wasn’t for that pushy phone calls, foot in the door sales techniques, and intrusive questionnaires- that totally threw me off and made me had second thoughts. That was nothing but sales tactic that they used to make me spend money. The counsellor said it himself, that his goal was to make me take courses..

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Mastermind Rip-off
0.5
  • mastermind.ota50 reviewed 7 years ago
  • last edited 7 years ago

Okay…Here is a true review of OTA Toronto and overall in general. I hope it will be helpful for some. If you had some dealings with OTA, you will find that I am writing the truth. My intention is for people to make decisions based on correct information as I see many students who do not even know ABC of computers getting sucked in for 60-80K by OTA. It’s a business, not an academy. So, by definition of it, they are in to make profits by sucking in as many students as possible.
Their objective is to suck you into Mastermind eventually. (45K…If you paid more than that, you suck real good…don’t worry there are many like that)
1. All 5 star reviews that you see are from OTA students taking the class. They are offered prizes during the class. So, that explains the 5 stars. No institution gets 5 stars from everybody, c’mon be real.
2. Here is how the whole OTA business runs.
2.1) You get sucked into a FREE (don’t everybody want it 🙂 ) power trading workshop. When you come in the shop, it’s a motivational speech, carefully crafted to get you pumped up to make millions in a year. How do you make millions? Well, they will tell you in next session title “Market Timing”. You enrol right there, otherwise the discount they offer will not be available next day. Okay? well, that’s their first lie. You can always get the same price. Think about it. It’s a business to make money. Market Timing is about 250$. If you paid more than that, well you are a sucker.
2.2) Market Timing – Before you come in for the class, they ask you to fill-up a form to get to know your net worth. This determines how much they will sell the mastermind to you and if you get any discounts.
In the session, they give you snippets of their PATENTED Core strategy (Well, Fancy support/Resistance). It’s a 3 day course. They teach (lol! it’s a sales pitch instead) you briefly stock, forex, futures and options. Also, how buy and hold doesn’t work. In the end, you have sales guy (called Education Counsellor) coming in and share the retail price of the course if you take it same day otherwise price goes to wholesale tomorrow. Retail price is about 50% off. Well, their retail price is the actual price they would sell the courses to biggest sucker. If you are good in negotiations or low net worth, you could get a 25% off.
I observed whites are preferred and get better discounts. So, if you are white, use it your advantage and reap deeper discounts.
2.3) All courses stocks (7days), forex, futures, options have 5 day on-location classes and about 12 XLT online classes.
2.4) Unlimited Retakes – Not really, you only get in if there is no spot left in the classroom training. Generally, that happens for their new instructors, good instructors have their classes filled in pretty quickly. So, you cannot attend those.
2.5) ProPicks – Their winning percentage do not budge even if they have straight 10 losing trades. You only get 1-2 trades per asset class per week.
2.6) Mastermind Supply/Demand Grid – They only tell you levels which do not match their core strategy principles taught in class. Also, they do not share how they came up with levels.
2.7) Market Screener – It only shows symbols, not even levels. So, useless.

Conclusion: If you register for only couple courses, you will notice that your Education Counsellor is always trying to sell you Mastermind every chance they get.
You will also notice that you are missing some parts of core strategy that is only taught to mastermind students, only to realize after you get Mastermind that nah, not worth it.
So, Does their core strategy work? Sure it does. But, not more than any other trading strategies out there. You can learn those from other institues for about 5K. As any trader would know, there are many strategies that works, retracements, breakouts etc. So, core strategy (again fancy support/resistance…you will notice some instructors say that) isn’t worth 60K that many students pay for.
If you are still a fan, I would suggest take their pro trader courses (about 8K including XLT) that teaches core strategy and move on. You can learn basic mechanics of Futures, forex from any book and apply core strategy to it. That saves you 50K right there (50K profit, I should say as i am a trader)
Will you be a millionaire by the end of it? Lol..no..but you will start making decent money if you stick to this business for about 2 years.

Know this, it’s a business and their profit is based on how much they can sell their courses for. They will make you think about big dreams and that their courses will help you achieve it. But, I would say only about 2% of their students actually do well in about 2 years from start. Generally, you know if you will do well or not. So, if there is any hesitation, walk off, save your retirement money. Deals will always be there if you really crave OTA courses.

One more observation, generally their target is oldies as they have retirement money. But, these students are the ones who do not do well. Why? First off, they don’t know computers. Second, they have hard time learning the platform. Third, OTA doesn’t help set you up with trading accounts even with their business partners.

I hope this review would be helpful and gives some insight to prospective students that they don’t receive from OTA. Existing students, well you paid what you paid, can’t do much about it now. It was a business transaction.

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Pay Someone a Monthly Fee To Send You Trades and Learn From Them Instead.
1.0

I made my money in other things,and traded-self taught-and did well. I have a knack for catching large moves based on fundamentals.news,figuring what will happen on the future etc

Attended the free seminar,then paid the $300/3 day course to maybe learn something,as $300 means little to me. If $300 means more to you,just be advised (like others have said) the 3 day course is largely a sales pitch to get you to spend $25-30k on their courses. Because I know about trading,I knew much of what they said was BS.

Like they focus on their patented “supply and demand lines”-they go on and on about how it’s patented (which actually means very little) implying that it’s something very valuable. They tell wondrous stories about how they use a supercomputer to find supply and demand to put these magical lines on charts that you can use to get rich BUT it relies on candlestick patterns.And if you go online can be bought for cheap and maybe downloaded for free.

Thing is they have the same lines for Forex,and there is no central Forex broker and you can’t tell what the volume of sellers vs buyers world wide is,so their system wouldn’t work on FX based on just supply and demand…see? I asked the instructor this and he dodged my question,said he’d answer later. He never did,despite me asking several times..

They flashed their trading records for FX,Futures,stocks etc and it was supposedly around 55 to 60 % wins and their risk/reward was about 2 or so which is good BUT in smaller print on the screen was the trades not even taken. Roughly speaking to give an example: typically an asset would be say 580 wins/420 losses or so,but way more than that -1200 or so=other orders that were placed but not even taken.
So you could make the case that their patented system only won 25% of the time.
So what they want you to do is pay huge coin,to be able to sign in to their website and they put up the trades of the day,long term and short term for various FX,futures,stocks,options, etc.

You don’t need to attend their week long FX or Futures course to learn how to push the buttons on the broker page. You can start a demo account,read online and figure it out…it’s easy. Perhaps they give more details,but you don’t need to know how a car and all it’s electronics and ABS systems work to drive it…do you?
You don’t need to pay $30k for that,if you google you’ll find pro traders that for $200+ a month will text and email you trades to take on whatever it is you want to trade. Check them out,check their record.

Because I know the markets,I did however pick up a few helpful points from the instructor,and read between the lines of what he was saying. So for me it was worth it,however another instructor may not give as much info.
But if you know nothing of the markets,you wouldn’t notice the things I picked up on-so the $300 would be a waste of time for you.

In the last day of the 3 day thing,the “counsellors” would put sales pressure and pretty much lay guilt trips out. I don’t fall for that crap,and told him as much. So in the last hour of the third day,the counsellors interrupted the class purposely to bring out the info packs and fancy case for the people who ponied up…thereby trying to publicly shame those who didn’t.
After it was over, several of us who didn’t buy were hanging around and I told all of this to them:go online and find an advisor,and learn from them.

So you see,this company is basically a trading advisory service for $30k, when you can fiddle around on a demo account to learn the buttons,and pay pro traders 1% of that a month…and put that $30k into an account instead of seeing it vanish.

Hope this helps.

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DON'T GET SUCKED INTO THIS
1.0

Let me share with you the impression I was left with after a 1/2 day OTA class here in Canada. It’s a sales pitch. And I believe they’ll keep getting money out of you until you’ve contributed a hefty amount.

The instructor chatted briefly with each of us in the waiting area before the class started. During the brief chat the instructor tried to get an idea of our financial status with some indirect questions. After the class was over neither I nor another attendee were pursued to sign up for the next 3 day class – was that because one of us was unemployed and the other asked if they could start an account with $1,000 rather than $5,000 as they could not afford it. Both of us appeared that we did not have any extra money floating around to be spent on OTA’s courses. Meanwhile there was another attendee pursued for further OTA education because he sounded like he had the cash to spend.

When the instructor told us that OTA is selective in who they allow to take their education because they want to ensure a “good fit”, I think what they’re really doing is choosing those that they think have the money and will spend it on their courses.

As well, the first 3 day course where we are supposed to be doing “live” trading is held on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I am not aware of any markets that are open on a Saturday and Sunday. So I knew right off the bat that this 3 day event was not going to be doing live trading, and we likely wouldn’t be doing live trading on Friday as that would be the very first day of our learning what to do. So, what do you think happens on the Saturday and Sunday? Likely, more sales pitch for the next 5 day day course. Once you start this investing-in-the-courses process, it’s hard to walk away as you’ve made such an investment already.

And one always has to wonder of the 1/2 day free class instructor, if this such A GREAT way to make money, then why are you teaching this course and pushing sales of it, and not sitting on the beaches of the Virgin Islands, trading on your smartphone, just making money, while watching your kids grow and enjoying life? Why are you HERE pushing this sale?

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1.0

This place is a real joke. They don’t know anything about trading, it’s a big sales pitch, I was recently at one of the 3 hour sales pitches and asked trading questions to one of their sales reps and she didn’t have a clue, when I asked what it would cost me she said it depended on what I wished to do, after asking several times I was told a high price range. I have heard far too many negative reviews since going to this sales pitch.

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1.0

Recently in Toronto

I went through the 1/2 day intro and paid $170 for the 3 day weekend training. I was contacted by a rep who wanted me to complete the questionnaire and send it in, which I did. We then had a meeting, prior to the 3 day training, where they interviewed me. Asked me about my finances and motivations etc….Then they told me about the tuition which could range from $30,000-$60,000. $30,000 would get me the 7 day training plus an additional 5 day course down the road. HOLD THE SHIP! I could go to an Ivy League College for a year on that.

I’m here reading about the $5000 others paid for the 7 day course and I can get it for $30,000. HUH? I guess I have sucker written on my forehead.

Lightbulb moment: The tuition varies with your ability to pay it, and is the reason for the financial interview prior to telling you how much it all costs.

That’s why they will not answer the question, “How much does it cost?” in the 1/2 day seminar. Answering that question would limit their potential margins later on in the process. I’ll take that hard earned $ and put it in my kids RESP. A good investment in the future. Why give it to people with ethical issues?

They can keep the $170, I’ll write it off, and they told me that I would be ‘no further ahead’ after the three day course as well. Why go then? I guess it’s more sales, sales, sales….working the big bucks out of your pocket. BEWARE!

I’m going to Chapters and look up Constance Brown.

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Sales versus "education"
1.0
  • Micalolipoparoonius reviewed 7 years ago
  • last edited 7 years ago

It is all the same game plan, at all OTA, based on reviews I read. These salesman will pump up the rep of the guest speaker, so you feel you are about to meet a rock star. The room is filled with naive, moderately endowed 401K holders, like cattle in a corral. The OTA rep is there to educate you.

Sales is part education, part influence, part pressure in the correct mix. People don’t like to make decisions, we prefer just eating, breathing, and being loved and having comfort. A good salesman will feed you, love you, and make all the decisions for you. A high pressure salesman will do that in a more artful way.

OTA allows minimal questioning, they prefer filling up their pitch with old stale jokes, or stories about their projects in their big houses. The group will be fragmented, so that they can manage you, and close you individually, which of course makes sense
I have never been in a lecture in any college level course, where my educator pulled me out of the group ever three hours to check in with me and see how I was doing. Reason: you pay for college up front, you can schedule an office hours visit. OTA wants your money, of course. Makes sense.

Trading strategy:
OTA preaches (and in GA they do quote several bible verses during the lecture), that supply and demand govern the market. You get this on day one. Also, OTA pushes short selling, with no real precaution on the unlimited risk it may present. Both premises are false. Supply and demand do not run the market, supply, demand, and specialists with SEC granted rights run the market. It is the specialist trader on the other side who may buy and sell large positions simultaneously, to work inventory orders. This allows the market to function for the benefit of large institutions. By entering this market with the false premise that supply and demand regulate it, one will have a belief that all movement is based on those two variables. That is simply not the case, and if OTA were legitimate, and skilled, they would properly inform their “students” of the market forces, to begin with, rather than “supply and demand” , which is lemonade stand economics.

The public is generally incapable of making informed financial choices in the capitalist “free market” because the choices are all false. The SEC has tainted the market, ever since Joe Kennedy was appointed chairman.

OTA is an opportunist, in a corrupted system. It takes two to tango, and here you have it. There is no safe and compleyely accurate method of trading. Company specific risk is unpredictable. (Ie: Wells Fargo 2016, lost Buffets a billion, and many others examples exist).

Invest in something you do not have to think about all day. If you like gambling, go to Vegas West, they love you more than at Vegas East, and feed you well.
Otherwise, read books on trading, commodities, real estate rental property, or suffer having the dollar deprecated over time. But be careful about a class where you have to pay $5K to play. There are other online pros in commodities and stocks charging much less, who actually have decades of experience trading, not just years.

Our government has left us with some challenges in our “free” market. Don’t give your money away, just because you lost some of it to that market.

When you ask for your $250 back for the intro session, you will be told that you have “disqualified yourself”. It’s OK, take the money, put it on a Starbucks card, give yourself some love. It will go further.

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1.0

I attended their so called introductory class for 3 hours. TOTAL SALES PITCH. Nothing of substance was given. Was forced to go to a salesman office BEFORE the start of the class. Where this guy told a story of how good the training here was. I asked him if he himself with 20 years of experience had traded that morning? And he gave me some excuse that he was not comfortable to trade THAT DAY!

Next there was a sales pitch of how great the training was. Told us about the photos of traders from Chicago trading pit. Before the break 2-3 employees came in and yanked the 8 stupid visitors to ask how they felt about the presentation. WHAT PRESENTATION? It was a sales pitch. I went to the rest room and one of the guys followed me…. what a joke. There he wanted to make sure that I would return for the 2nd half of the session.

Well 2nd half of the session was the same sales pitch, till I was pulled out of the room to some managers office where this guy spoke rudely and wanted me to sign up for some $5,000 training! When I said that I need to think about it he got really upset.

These people are crooks. They are not selling but forcing people to buy there mini training courses for HUGE AMOUNTS.

DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT DOING ANY BUSINESS WITH THESE JOES

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1.0

So check this out!

I was just told by the Online Trading Academy in Toronto that I was not allowed to attend their class because I asked too many questions!!!! Want to hear the story? Here it goes. My husband signed up for the course years ago with the option to have unlimited lifetime access to the courses taken. Years later, I showed interest in the course and took the free introductory seminar in July, which then led to the three day paid market timing class last month. My husband also took the course with me as the curriculum had changed after the franchise was acquired by the corporate office and restructured. If you saw my post a month ago, you probably recall that I had a rough run with the instructor in that class as he was not able to accommodate different learning styles. That was fine. Life went on. My husband and I then signed up for the next course which would run from yesterday to next weekend. The people working at the academy tried very hard to sign me up as a new account as opposed to a guest of my husband’s for this course, but based on my prior experience, I wanted to be sure that I would like the course and instructor first before giving them thousands of dollars as a new student. The instructor for this course was excellent, very knowledgeable, informative, dynamic and encouraging. He made it very clear from the beginning that he welcomed all questions and said that asking questions is an important part of learning. That’s great! Because that’s exactly how I learn after I pre-study the materials for any class I attend. We really enjoyed the class and learned a lot and I was looking forward to going back today and for the week ahead. One little episode prior to the class yesterday which came totally unexpected was the fact that we were pulled out of the class when it first started in the morning to the office. The director of the academy along with our so-called “education counsellors” greeted us by saying that my guest pass needed approval from the director as he was the sole authority to grant such pass. What? Why on earth then did you not inform us of this when we signed up for the course weeks ago? Why couldn’t you wait until the break to tell us this so that we would not waste precious class time? Why then did you have my name tag made in the classroom and have a seat reserved for me if this pass had not been granted otherwise? Apparently there was an internal discordance with their administrative process, but why did we have to be involved and suffer the consequence of their problems? They had weeks to resolve this and nothing was done! So I walked out the office by telling them that I did not own the problem and didn’t want to waste class time so I went back! My husband spent more time in the office and the director signed an agreement for my guest pass, which was already agreed upon between our “education counsellor” and us when we signed up for this course weeks ago. Anyhow, with the agreement, I was “officially” a guest in the course. The day went by very well and we thought we all got along just fine until a phone call from the director came in to my husband while dining out last night. According to him, he received numerous complaints from students of the class that “I” asked too many questions and he could not allow me to go back today and risk losing other “paying” students! That to me is totally ABSURD!!!! First of all, I wasn’t the only one asking questions. Secondly, I was not the one who asked the most questions. Thirdly, why was I the only one not allowed to go back to the class? Is it because I was the only “non-paying” student? If there was an issue, which I honestly didn’t sense and perceive, how come it wasn’t communicated to me directly? How come there was no attempt to resolve it before the decision for the dismissal was made? How come the instructor, from the very beginning throughout the course of the day, encouraged questions all along? How come they would only hear from one side of the story before a sound and fair decision could be made, rather than being biased against me? After I called and left a message with these questions on the director’s voicemail, he then wrote an email to my husband (again, not me!) that his wife (meaning me) didn’t have the proper pre-requisites (i.e.. the market timing class) to attend this class. So the premises for dismissal changed?! What happened to consistency and coherence? They were the ones telling me not to bother with the market timing class when I asked to retake it after the fallout with that instructor. They were the ones telling me that it wasn’t necessary for me to take that course based on my existing knowledge level after their conversation with me. They were the ones that told me not to worry about the content I missed in the market timing class as everything would be taught and elaborated on in this course I’m supposed to be in right now! Geez! So much about honouring your own words, eh? So this morning when we went to the class, we were barred by the security guard on the ground floor! When we asked for an explanation, the director came down with two big guys and spent 15 minutes on the phone before talking to us. He basically said that they are a private institution and can do whatever as they see fit! So we left. My husband then called the director again and was told that he could go back alone without me! I’m totally ok with him taking the course alone without me; my problem is with the institution and how they make their decisions! I would definitely like a justified explanation in a professional manner to convince me that the dismissal was based on solid grounds!

Thoughts and advice? I have a fairly good hypothesis about all these preemptive gestures imposed on me, but I would refrain from making it public until it’s proven.

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