karoshiman
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I've tried to post the following review on fxknight.com at the "review site" forexpeacearmy.com (Free Forex Trading Community With Forex Signals And Broker Reviews) but it was not published for whatever reason. That's why I post it here. Judge yourself.
When I relate to "this site" I am referring to forexpeacearmy.com as I wrote my review initially for that site.
*****************
It has now been some time, since I've attended the pro room of fxknight.com. However, since then I've always felt this anger inside me when I think about these self-proclaimed experts in this market who fool aspiring traders by providing their services. I have to admit, that I did attend only fxknight.com and no other educational service, but I am pretty sure that in this business about 99% of educators sell mostly crap to their clients. So, my review would probably be similar for many other educators. Unfortunately for Andrei Knight (or Andrei Pehar or what his real name is) I've attended his service...
A. My background:
Traded stocks and options since the 90-ies, but without a concept (only gut feeling). Started taking trading seriously for over a year now, i.e. doing it full-time. It's been quite a journey.
Did all mistakes one can make at the beginning, including believing that an educational service would teach me how to trade. That's why I joined the pro room of fxknight.com for a few months. When I saw that these guys have no (or very little) clue themselves I've started to continue the journey on my own.
I've educted myself from many many books and trial and error, sitting endless hours in front of the screen and analyzing methods. Unfortunately, there is not one "bible" out there. The "truth" about trading is scattered over many books (the better ones only... more than 90% is also crap in this field)... you have to put the pieces of the puzzle together by yourself. That's how "it works".
However, I am now an above average profitable trader.
B. Main criticism regarding fxknight.com:
1. Lack of disclosure of performance metrics
He advertises that he backtested and forward-tested his methodology. But, if you ask him for concrete performance metrics of his system, he is beating around the bush! The only figure I've heard from him several times is that his trades "work about 75% of the time", i.e. that's his win rate. But why is he focusing so much on the win rate? What about profit factor, avg. win, avg. loss, % draw down, etc.? And on what instrument(s) did he test his method? During which period(s) did he test his method? You don't get any answer from him on these important metrics. He prefers to stay intangible. Why is that so?
This communication strategy of him can backfire. One can assume that he focuses on the win rate as it is easy to fool uneducated students with such figure. A 52% win rate does not sound good, of course, but every professional trader knows that the win rate alone is meaningless. It can be very misleading as many very profitable systems or methods have way worse win rates than 75%. The fact that he focuses only on the win rate gives an educated trader the feeling that his service is only fooling people.
But to make matters worse, in one of the sessions, his co-coach "YR" revealed by chance that you can not expect to make more than 1% return per month trading fxknight.com's methodology (without giving more info on risk per trade, etc. to get the 1% p.m.). This figure is for sure realistic for most folks getting into trading and trading any method. If you put this into perspective together with the 75% win rate you get an idea of the other performance metrics...
However, getting so few basic information regarding a method's performance should make anyone suspicious of the service.
2. Hindsight methodology
His complete methodology is only useful to describe what has happened so far. In hindsight he can explain very well the price action. That's where people get fooled. However, his methodology is almost useless when it comes to tradable ideas. He used so many support and resistance and fibonacci lines on his charts that later on you could always make sense out of the price action as some of the many lines always fit to price action. Also, several times he claimed that he forecasted this or that development in price in previous sessions, but if you had listened carefully, you knew, that he did not do that the way he presented it later. That left also a bad feeling about his methodology or his way to present things.
A further thing that makes any educated trader suspicious is the fact that his methodology relies heavily on indicators. He looks also at price action and emphasizes that price action is more important than the indicators (so much in his defense), but still, the use of ADX, stochastics and MACD shows that he is not a great trader. Such indicators are lagging by nature, they just describe what has happened so far. They have no predictive value at all! Most of the good traders do not use indicators to trade at all (I said "most", not all!). They rely mostly on price action alone.
3. Unreliability
He was late very often in the few months I've attended his service. Often by 15-30 minutes, sometimes sessions were cancelled altogether! As you can see on this site from older reviews, this problem has been there before as well.
4. Overemphasizing of positive thinking mumbo jumbo
His positive thinking/visualization sessions can be outright dangerous for some weaker personalities. I believe also in positive thinking and visualization, but only to a certain degree. You have to still have a good sense of reality. Some weaker folks out there could really get into problems if they believe too much in this stuff and rely on it. Just to give a stupid example of what he wants to make his student believe... In one of his sessions he gave an example of the power of visualization by telling that one of his employees or co-workers on the site was visualizing to get a free parking lot on a saturday afternoon at a busy mall, something that he never got... he visualized it and.... bingo! He got one! ... this is just one funny example that comes to my mind, but you understand my point...
C. Further negative aspects which add to the bad flavor
1. Strong focus on FX
As the name of his service suggests, fxknight.com focuses very much on FX.
Well, this is not a problem in itself. The problem with FX is, that it is currently very popular among retail traders, but it is not what most professional traders trade. The latter trade mainly stocks or index and other futures and not spot FX. So, every company that focuses on FX is suspicious of being more interested in marketing their service to make the quick buck first as compared to be genuinely interested in providing excellent education first (in addition to good marketing and making a good profit, of course).
However, I have to mention that he analyses sometimes also other instruments than FX, such as the Dow Jones Index, Gold, etc. But as I said, his focus is FX, the brokers he works with are FX retail brokers and the platform he works with is the crappy retail platform MetaTrader.
This limits his students right from the start as they don't get to see what else is available in the market and at much greater value!
2. Giving the impression to be professional traders themselves
He says that he is a fund manager. Well I am too... I manage my own funds and those of some friends and family members... lol
Why isn't he publishing his funds name so that everyone can check out the performance of his fund from a neutral source? Well, I am sure, that he will come up with a good explanation why he cannot do this...
Another one: His co-coach YR was initially portrayed as a professional trader, but then you find out later that he still has a normal everyday job and does not live from trading alone... which is okay, but then don't make the impression that he is a professional trader already living all the student's dream, i.e. being a full-time trader able to make a living by trading only.
3. Providing false or unverified information
Repeatedly he made fun of people using the Bollinger Bands for their trading.
He stated that John Bollinger (AK: "I have met him") invented the Bollinger Bands for options trading only (as volatility is important for options pricing) and not for technical analysis in general. A technical indicator, he said, should not be diverted from its intended use. Well, unfortunately for him, Mr. Bollinger must have been drunk when he talked to Andrei. At least, in his own book "Bollinger on Bollinger Bands" he describes extensively how Bollinger Bands can be used on any financial instrument as a technical indicator... he is not talking about options at all! (It was only when he was working in the options area in the 80-ies when he started to think about volatility and its implications. But then he applied it to technical analysis in general.)
Before making such statement one should at least take his time to read the ONE main book available on the subject.
Such behaviour just leaves a bad overall feeling about the competencies of a person who claims to be an expert.
D. Positive aspects
The psychology sessions with Dr. Marty were helpful. These were once a week (2 sessions in one day, but with the same content). But you get this information (and more) in the books of Brett Steenbarger and Mark Douglas as well.
E. Conclusion
Don't get fooled by the positive reviews on this site. They are not from professional traders but from students who used the service for a few months only. Many of them still trade on demo. And of those who trade live, I doubt that most of them are consistently profitable at all. Furthermore, at least one of them is on the payroll of fxknight.com. So much about the weight you should give to these positive reviews.
Andrei Knight/Pehar asked his students also several times in a few weeks to post their positive reviews on such sites as this one (which is legitimate). He is an excellent marketer and presenter, but I seriously doubt that he is a good trader.
I am not saying that a newbie trader will learn nothing in his pro room, but one should reduce his or her expectations a lot and don't expect that he will make you a great trader because he himself is not one. Of course, I have no proof for this, but the facts above leave a very bad feeling behind.
Now, what should a newbie trader do now? Try another educator? ... No... as I've stated in my initial remarks, I am sure that there are only very very few helpful educators out there - if any! Unfortunately, there is overall not much helpful information out there for aspiring traders. Trading is very much a do-it-yourself profession. That's the way it works, unfortunately. Nobody, who is a great trader starts an education service to teach others for $200 bucks (or whatever amount) per months... ... such trader trades... period!
When I relate to "this site" I am referring to forexpeacearmy.com as I wrote my review initially for that site.
*****************
It has now been some time, since I've attended the pro room of fxknight.com. However, since then I've always felt this anger inside me when I think about these self-proclaimed experts in this market who fool aspiring traders by providing their services. I have to admit, that I did attend only fxknight.com and no other educational service, but I am pretty sure that in this business about 99% of educators sell mostly crap to their clients. So, my review would probably be similar for many other educators. Unfortunately for Andrei Knight (or Andrei Pehar or what his real name is) I've attended his service...
A. My background:
Traded stocks and options since the 90-ies, but without a concept (only gut feeling). Started taking trading seriously for over a year now, i.e. doing it full-time. It's been quite a journey.
Did all mistakes one can make at the beginning, including believing that an educational service would teach me how to trade. That's why I joined the pro room of fxknight.com for a few months. When I saw that these guys have no (or very little) clue themselves I've started to continue the journey on my own.
I've educted myself from many many books and trial and error, sitting endless hours in front of the screen and analyzing methods. Unfortunately, there is not one "bible" out there. The "truth" about trading is scattered over many books (the better ones only... more than 90% is also crap in this field)... you have to put the pieces of the puzzle together by yourself. That's how "it works".
However, I am now an above average profitable trader.
B. Main criticism regarding fxknight.com:
1. Lack of disclosure of performance metrics
He advertises that he backtested and forward-tested his methodology. But, if you ask him for concrete performance metrics of his system, he is beating around the bush! The only figure I've heard from him several times is that his trades "work about 75% of the time", i.e. that's his win rate. But why is he focusing so much on the win rate? What about profit factor, avg. win, avg. loss, % draw down, etc.? And on what instrument(s) did he test his method? During which period(s) did he test his method? You don't get any answer from him on these important metrics. He prefers to stay intangible. Why is that so?
This communication strategy of him can backfire. One can assume that he focuses on the win rate as it is easy to fool uneducated students with such figure. A 52% win rate does not sound good, of course, but every professional trader knows that the win rate alone is meaningless. It can be very misleading as many very profitable systems or methods have way worse win rates than 75%. The fact that he focuses only on the win rate gives an educated trader the feeling that his service is only fooling people.
But to make matters worse, in one of the sessions, his co-coach "YR" revealed by chance that you can not expect to make more than 1% return per month trading fxknight.com's methodology (without giving more info on risk per trade, etc. to get the 1% p.m.). This figure is for sure realistic for most folks getting into trading and trading any method. If you put this into perspective together with the 75% win rate you get an idea of the other performance metrics...
However, getting so few basic information regarding a method's performance should make anyone suspicious of the service.
2. Hindsight methodology
His complete methodology is only useful to describe what has happened so far. In hindsight he can explain very well the price action. That's where people get fooled. However, his methodology is almost useless when it comes to tradable ideas. He used so many support and resistance and fibonacci lines on his charts that later on you could always make sense out of the price action as some of the many lines always fit to price action. Also, several times he claimed that he forecasted this or that development in price in previous sessions, but if you had listened carefully, you knew, that he did not do that the way he presented it later. That left also a bad feeling about his methodology or his way to present things.
A further thing that makes any educated trader suspicious is the fact that his methodology relies heavily on indicators. He looks also at price action and emphasizes that price action is more important than the indicators (so much in his defense), but still, the use of ADX, stochastics and MACD shows that he is not a great trader. Such indicators are lagging by nature, they just describe what has happened so far. They have no predictive value at all! Most of the good traders do not use indicators to trade at all (I said "most", not all!). They rely mostly on price action alone.
3. Unreliability
He was late very often in the few months I've attended his service. Often by 15-30 minutes, sometimes sessions were cancelled altogether! As you can see on this site from older reviews, this problem has been there before as well.
4. Overemphasizing of positive thinking mumbo jumbo
His positive thinking/visualization sessions can be outright dangerous for some weaker personalities. I believe also in positive thinking and visualization, but only to a certain degree. You have to still have a good sense of reality. Some weaker folks out there could really get into problems if they believe too much in this stuff and rely on it. Just to give a stupid example of what he wants to make his student believe... In one of his sessions he gave an example of the power of visualization by telling that one of his employees or co-workers on the site was visualizing to get a free parking lot on a saturday afternoon at a busy mall, something that he never got... he visualized it and.... bingo! He got one! ... this is just one funny example that comes to my mind, but you understand my point...
C. Further negative aspects which add to the bad flavor
1. Strong focus on FX
As the name of his service suggests, fxknight.com focuses very much on FX.
Well, this is not a problem in itself. The problem with FX is, that it is currently very popular among retail traders, but it is not what most professional traders trade. The latter trade mainly stocks or index and other futures and not spot FX. So, every company that focuses on FX is suspicious of being more interested in marketing their service to make the quick buck first as compared to be genuinely interested in providing excellent education first (in addition to good marketing and making a good profit, of course).
However, I have to mention that he analyses sometimes also other instruments than FX, such as the Dow Jones Index, Gold, etc. But as I said, his focus is FX, the brokers he works with are FX retail brokers and the platform he works with is the crappy retail platform MetaTrader.
This limits his students right from the start as they don't get to see what else is available in the market and at much greater value!
2. Giving the impression to be professional traders themselves
He says that he is a fund manager. Well I am too... I manage my own funds and those of some friends and family members... lol
Why isn't he publishing his funds name so that everyone can check out the performance of his fund from a neutral source? Well, I am sure, that he will come up with a good explanation why he cannot do this...
Another one: His co-coach YR was initially portrayed as a professional trader, but then you find out later that he still has a normal everyday job and does not live from trading alone... which is okay, but then don't make the impression that he is a professional trader already living all the student's dream, i.e. being a full-time trader able to make a living by trading only.
3. Providing false or unverified information
Repeatedly he made fun of people using the Bollinger Bands for their trading.
He stated that John Bollinger (AK: "I have met him") invented the Bollinger Bands for options trading only (as volatility is important for options pricing) and not for technical analysis in general. A technical indicator, he said, should not be diverted from its intended use. Well, unfortunately for him, Mr. Bollinger must have been drunk when he talked to Andrei. At least, in his own book "Bollinger on Bollinger Bands" he describes extensively how Bollinger Bands can be used on any financial instrument as a technical indicator... he is not talking about options at all! (It was only when he was working in the options area in the 80-ies when he started to think about volatility and its implications. But then he applied it to technical analysis in general.)
Before making such statement one should at least take his time to read the ONE main book available on the subject.
Such behaviour just leaves a bad overall feeling about the competencies of a person who claims to be an expert.
D. Positive aspects
The psychology sessions with Dr. Marty were helpful. These were once a week (2 sessions in one day, but with the same content). But you get this information (and more) in the books of Brett Steenbarger and Mark Douglas as well.
E. Conclusion
Don't get fooled by the positive reviews on this site. They are not from professional traders but from students who used the service for a few months only. Many of them still trade on demo. And of those who trade live, I doubt that most of them are consistently profitable at all. Furthermore, at least one of them is on the payroll of fxknight.com. So much about the weight you should give to these positive reviews.
Andrei Knight/Pehar asked his students also several times in a few weeks to post their positive reviews on such sites as this one (which is legitimate). He is an excellent marketer and presenter, but I seriously doubt that he is a good trader.
I am not saying that a newbie trader will learn nothing in his pro room, but one should reduce his or her expectations a lot and don't expect that he will make you a great trader because he himself is not one. Of course, I have no proof for this, but the facts above leave a very bad feeling behind.
Now, what should a newbie trader do now? Try another educator? ... No... as I've stated in my initial remarks, I am sure that there are only very very few helpful educators out there - if any! Unfortunately, there is overall not much helpful information out there for aspiring traders. Trading is very much a do-it-yourself profession. That's the way it works, unfortunately. Nobody, who is a great trader starts an education service to teach others for $200 bucks (or whatever amount) per months... ... such trader trades... period!
