wow, what can i say !!!!
what an epic thread, longest ive ever gone through. i was just trying to get to sleep by browsing the net, yes i know not the best way to get to sleep, and i came across this thread and got hooked. took me SIX HOURS, 3 cups of coffee. started at 5am, just finished reading pretty much all of it, now its 11am and i havent slept yet
sorry if this is a long post, but hey, i just read for 6 hours lol so you guys can have some payback
i have a pretty unique take on this i think, as i attended one of the courses when it was transitioning from spyglass trading, to TT in 2009. and i then worked for mike baghdady for 2 or 3 months, until i was kinda fired ;d so i had somewhere around 6 months experience at the firm as student and employee
My comments on this thread are pretty unique also. They are backed up by knowing a number of ex employees and clients of Baghdady both recent and over the last three years or so. They are backed up by having details on what he did, what happened, how he treated people, how he is/was a control freak, how he repeatedly made false representations and even lied about things such as being World Trading Champion - no mere slip of the tongue I can assure you.
im sure this will disappoint some of you, but id like to stick up for mike baghdady a little bit here
after looking around for a few years trying to find the best way to get into trading, and trying a few different courses, i came across MB and his products/courses, and although high in price, decided he had something different to offer and attended the course
the 5 day course was designed to take absolute beginners, start with the basics, like “whats a candle” and work up to placing demo trades by the end of the 5 days. so things like how to use tradestation were taught, setting up your accounts etc. really a lot of content and a very full 5 days. after the course some were eager to go live, and some werent. i wasnt, i felt 5 days was way too fast, and i felt from my research that unless you can do it on a demo, you cant do it with real cash, so i wanted to demo first
the course included 6 months of mentoring with it, which was basically, emailing screenshots of trades taken daily, or whenever you wanted, and you would be told where you were wrong and where you were right. there was also a weekly club for people to attend who had taken the course, which was always fun, youd go along for the afternoon and get some lunch laid on. and there was also a webinar on sunday to plan the upcoming week. this was one of the reason i chose to go with this company, as you would get ongoing help, which was really useful to me in understanding various things.
How come many of those who signed up to this thinking they would get the "great man" himself - ended up with someone else most days of the week??
you could also trade along with the other traders there in a live room, which was helpful to know if you were heading in the right direction or not. so it was expensive, but you got a fair chunk of stuff for your cash. and perhaps thats what some people were looking for, some education, followed by mentoring
so anyways, after a month or two i think it was, i asked/got offered the chance of a trial to work there, which i really wanted to do as i wanted to be in the daily environment to gain more knowledge. so i did do, doing various things really, website copy, sales ideas, doing the office up, sorting out a problem with part of the software as i could do a little coding, helping with the open days etc etc. just show what i could offer. we even went over to dubai to do one of the trade shows there, it was all good stuff.
Please explain who else went over to Dubai with you? I know all of the sales team that were at TT during this time and I am sure they could verify if you were indeed involved. Right now none of them are aware of you.
but yes, i did get fired/didnt get kept on, for pretty silly circumstances really, but i dont hold grudges about it, and i always try to see the upside of things, as there are almost always upsides to everything
What were the "pretty silly circumstances" ? Again this would help in verifying your claims.
so after i got kinda fired, i decided to start demoing full time, which i did for 3 months, just trying to implement what i had learned at the MB’s company and through my own reading online and in books. long story short, i made some profit, lost it, made some, lost it, i didnt quite have it down. after 3 months i was a little bit down, and due to a change in personal circs, i decided to head back to uni to finish my degree, and stopped trading for the time being. i havent decided whether or not i will go back to trading or not yet, i still have another year to study, but if i do, i will certainly be using what i learned there as my starting point
you see, any of you guys reading this who have a clue, i would hope would agree that getting profitable can take time. i think it would be silly of someone to expect to take a 5 day course and come out in profit on day 6. i think trading takes time to learn, so it doesnt surprise me that i wasnt profitable, it just means i cant do it, yet. some of the people at the company where using the methods and were profitable with real money, so it can be done, but that doesnt necessarily mean it can be done by everyone.
Please explain why all those that were talked into taking a desk on the floor at considerable monthly cost after spending a small fortune on the course left after a few months? Why did they not make money in the presence of the "great man" every day? Why were they almost all completly hacked off by the lack of success and the near total lack of support from Baghdady or Tuckey? Why were they offended by the treatment received from Baghdady - treating them with contempt?
i dont think all people are suited to trading, and frankly, im not sure if i am able to do it yet, im not sure if i have the right brain for it. but, if i do chose to go back into trading again, i hope that i can learn
of course the marketing of MB and companies like this are going to be very positive, and make claims of making a person a profitable trader. a company who is advertising “we might make you profitable, we might not” is not going to get a lot of business. so i think some of your criticisms of the marketing of MB is a bit silly really. look at any advert for almost any product and you will see it painted in the rosiest light possible, that is what marketing is all about, to drive business. but it is really the product that needs to be assessed, and imo the product is OK
He lied about being the "World Trading Champion" He made false and unsubstantiated claims that his system provided a success rate of 70% - yes 70%. no-one has ever seen any evidence to support this wild and deeply misleading claim and this claim has been used to lure many unsuspecting potential clients to sign up and hand over their hard earned cash - but thats allright as you say as most companies paint themselves in the rosiest possible light!!!!!!!!!!!!
This would be the same Mike Baghdady who claimed Joe Tuckey (the brother of Ben Tuckey) was an institutional Trader!
Its fraud - pure and simple!!!!!!!!!
im not sure why some of you seem so obsessed with the “world trading champion” claim. its just a marketing tagline. he won the contest at an expo, and used it to promote his business. perhaps it should have been worded differently, but there you go. to my memory, this wasnt thought up by MB, but by one of the sales guys to promote the business, which is of course what it is all about
It was absolutely thought up by Mike Baghdady himself. The then Sales Manager was instructed by Baghdady to make the most of the claim. FACT.
do adverts for cocacola tell 100% truth ? do shampoo adverts ? do adverts for joining the army ? perhaps not. and its very easy to pick any of them apart and make them look ridiculous. so as for your criticism of the webinars on fxstreet,
So its ok to promote the webinar as "live trading in the New York session - trading the account of Training Traders"??? No live tradiing - never has been. No actual TT account - never has been.
The purpose of doing this is to solicit clients. Again false representation. But according to you - thats ok!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
or the offices being untidy, or his youtube videos, is in my eyes, all a little silly. they are just a means to drive business, to make people buy the product. all companies do this, and all are liberal with the truth at times. just take it with a pinch of salt and assess the pros and cons of the product independently. do you really need to be told to take advertising with a pinch of salt ? i doubt it, and thats why i doubt the authenticity of some of the disparaging remarks on this thread
You can doubt the authenticity of posts as long as you like. Well done you!
What you cannot do is dispute the facts. He is a lier, a cheat, maybe a fraudster, has misled many people to hand over money, has not paid bills, is wanted in Australia for unpaid business, has made totally untrue marketing claims, has fired staff without due process or reason, did not pay his former accountants, assaulted his Vice President Sales, failed to pay outstanding bills in Dubai (I would like to see him going back ther sometime soon), has had the Bailiffs into the business on several occasions, has not paid money due to his landlord, has not paid money due on the apartment he was renting for the assaulted VP Sales, Managed to get 20 or so turtles to give up jobs and careers and did not have the funds to finance the thing, and on and on and on.
Please point out one thing that is factually incorrect and I would be happy to withdraw it. There is more to come - a guy who operated like this has a lot of stuff he would not like to be known. Watch this space.
when i was working there, i had what i think is a really unique privilege, which was seeing newbies coming to the offices for the open days, signing up for the course, doing the course, and then begin to trade. i got to see them from start to finish, if you know what i mean. and boy oh boy was it ever interesting
Would these be the clients Baghdady frequently refered to as "Morons" ????????
Witnessed many times by those working there.
ill give you an example i can remember clearly, this guy came in once and seemed like he had little or no experience, but he was eager to learn to trade so he signed up, did the course and was live trading within 2 weeks, no demo ….. stupid if you ask me. and yes he started losing money, and he was calling the offices complaining it wasnt working and he had lost his money etc etc.
but what had he done ?
he broke basic rules, and wasnt following what he had been taught. he made a loss, doubled up his next trade to recoup that loss, lost again, and then doubled again, and lost again. he was just making stupid mistakes and breaking the most basic rules that could most likely be found on page 1 of trading for dummies. i think the attitude was “well i have spent lots of money on a course so therefore i MUST know what i am doing”. i found this attitude among others too, it was as if they felt like they had gotten a good education so were full of false confidence. very dangerous if you ask me. and i think the company should have made more of a point of keeping them grounded, and to not forget about the very basics …..
you can lead a horse to water …... so yeah not everyone that does the course will definitely make a profit, and this guy is a perfect example, he simply didnt do what he was taught. it wasnt the product, just terrible implementation
But as Baghdady would say "He's a Moron"
on the flip side, some people did do what they were taught, put the effort in, and began to make it work. so it can work, but trading isnt necessarily for everyone imo. there is no trading method that is going to work for everyone, and some people just dont have the head for it, simple as that
i find the vast majority of this thread to be a bit crazy. much of it speculating on the personalities of people you have never met, and the internal workings of a company you know nothing about. and id be surprised if some of you werent doing it intentionally as negative publicity. when i worked there, we held open days 2 times a week ish, and we would often have people from rival companies come along trying to get information about the system etc, and im sure that some companies do go around the web and post negative publicity about competitors. and just judging from some of the relentless vilification i have read here, i think some of this thread is just that
You fail to deal with any of the substantive points made across the thread. I will, when I have the time, summarise the points so that new readers can get the point without going through the many pages that now exist and avoid having to read through the futile attempts to distract the reader by claiming that Baghdady was just misunderstood.
for example, at one point on of you said something along the lines of malcom steel being a made up name as it sounded like a nigerian scammer’s name ….. i dont get why anybody would say something like that ? other than to stir up trouble …. malcolm steel is a real person, i met him the day he came in for his interview when he started there, and he seemed like a nice man to me
This would be the same Malcolm Steel who posted and lied about a number of points raised on this thread. He denied almost every thing and remained the most foolish poster to date - but you have just talken the award with bells and whistles.
i think MB is a shrewd businessman pretty headstrong guy,
Bust in the USA and apparently bust in the UK given the number of creditors chasing him - yes very shrewd!
yeah there were sometimes disagreements between him and staff. he has a strong personality, and other employees who had strong personalities clashed sometimes and did get fired or quit, like at plenty of other companies. i even personally heard from one that they intended to stir up trouble for MB after they had been quit/been fired after an argument. so be aware that these people may also be involved in online negative publicity for revenge purposes. i cant say definitely of course but i think that some of the people here are just intentionally causing trouble, its just how it appears to me. if you are doing so, then shame on you, you should treat others as you would wish to be treated.
Maybe they are just treating Baghdady as they were treated by Baghdady.
and im sure that you also use the internet to research products you may wish to buy, so how would you feel if you were mislead by rubbish put out there by malcontents? to repeat, im not sure, this thread just just looks that way to me
this is just a guess, as i wasnt there for the turtles thing, but i think it was a very clever marketing scheme. i think it was genuinely intended for them to be successful and to create a successful trading desk and to manage a fund and make profits.
A bit of news to blow this idea right out of the water shortly. Going to make your claim look pretty foolish my friend.
and at the same time use the publicity to drive interest and business in the other part of the company that sells training and software. i dont know why it didnt work out, but im sorry that it didnt, as i think it was a brilliant idea on many levels
Because it was a scam . He never did have the money to do it.
to sum up, i like the product i bought and i intend to make more use of it in the future. i enjoyed my time working there and even though i got fired, i like MB and the other people i met
They were all fired too.
i think thats about all i can say. there is a lot of stuff in this thread i am unable to comment on as i have no idea about it, the turtles and their fate etc, i just dont know. these are just my personal thoughts and experiences. im not necessarily correct in all of them, and they may differ from the experiences of others, but i stand by what i have written
i would encourage people to not be so hasty in judging a person before you meet them, or a product before you have tried it
