FAQs

Click here to read the ‘Online securities trading’ article.
Here are some questions beginners ask.

Do I have to be a University graduate to start learning about the financial markets?
No. Being highly educated is not a prerequisite and it may even be a disadvantage. People from all walks of life trade securities actively, many of them full-time.
Am I supposed to know anything about the securities markets before I take your course?
No. You will learn as you go along. Actually, one thing you will never stop doing is learning.
What equipment must I have?
To begin taking lessons, the hardware you already own is good enough. To start investing in the markets though, here is a list of what is minimally required: Pentium 4 personal computer, monitor & printer. Standard Internet access. Re-writable CD-ROM or a secondary hard drive installed in your PC for back-up purposes. Thumb drive(s). Power battery back up. Windows 7. 1-2 telephone landlines and cellphone. Fax machine or a reliable fax send/receive service. Printing calculator. Office supplies. For day-trading, the latest hardware and software are needed for the trader to be competitive, but this is not something to worry about first.


		Day-trading hardware
Also redundant monitors and computers, including laptops, plus a slew of spare accessories like keyboards, mouses, cables, headsets with microphones, KVM switches, etc., are necessary to be handy to ensure that at least from the equipment side everything is in place for worry-free trading sessions. One must not find himself in a situation where he has to stop trading in the middle of the morning and rush to the computer store to buy a new computer keyboard because the old one suddenly stopped working. The secret is to have a spare keyboard at his location ready for the moment when trouble strikes. We can suggest the proper upgrades for your computer and assist in designing an adequate one for you or in setting up a specialized computer network. Click here to see the mentor’s trading hardware equipment. (2015 Update) Everybody now has Blackberry, iPods and iPads. Not me. These are toys perfect for wasting time while clogging the network. To learn cyber-trading, you must have a reliable desk-top PC. To trade, you will need a reliable PC and a spare one. To manage money, you will need a reliable workstation and at least two spare PCs.
How much trading capital must I have?
$2,000 - $5,000. Important: having no capital to invest when considering learning to trade must not prevent somebody from starting to learn. Knowing this secret is one of the many things which separates winners from losers at the start. There are more secrets along the way, all of them eliminating the dreamers one by one from the race.
How many hours a day will I have to study at home?
A minimum of half an hour. You will also need a couple of minutes for downloading the latest data and some more time for analyzing it. Reading books on the subject will take some other time too. If you enjoy it, the time set aside for study will never seem to be enough but it all depends on the individual.
Will I have to change my lifestyle to become a trader?
Trading securities can be done part-time, full-time or on occasion. It can be done from a quiet, well lit corner of your apartment, from an office or from wherever there is a telephone. You will have to invest not only money but also your time in the markets. It is highly recommended that the student considers all the aspects of taking up a new venture such as trading and the changes the new endeavor will bring to his life. Being directly involved in the financial markets and trading once a month or forty times a day is unlike any other profession: both profits and losses occur much faster. Different than many business enterprises where it takes weeks or months for the owner to understand his ideas don’t work as planned and where it takes some more weeks or months after that for his new strategies to produce positive results (if any!), in the business of trading, opportunities to quickly recover from losses abound. It takes anything from one minute to one day for somebody involved in the markets to correct himself. Also unlike most businesses, trading allows for “paper trading” meaning that the market can be followed day by day and concepts can be tested by writing trades down on paper, without using real money, until confidence builds up for real trading. Another advantage trading offers over other business models is that, while business owners must open for business every day, private traders can choose when to trade and when not to. All these differences, and many others we can’t cover in here, speak on behalf of trading being a powerful occupation and the student will be better off changing his lifestyle in order to learn and practice the markets rather than continuing with his old routine and expect to be rewarded for little effort, false hopes and blurred vision.
Can I lose all my capital at once?
No, because you can protect it by using stop-loss orders. However there will be inevitable losses like in any other business. How profitable your trading will be is not given by your wins alone but rather by what is left after the losses are deducted from wins. To master trading means that one succeeded in managing his wins to be greater than his losses. It is often said that investors should play the markets only with money they can afford to lose without changing their lifestyle, but very rarely does someone burn out to the point where his lifestyle is damaged forever. It is nice to show concern and cautiousness but it is even nicer to show a sparkling intelligence, a solution, a market knack. The rule is that the small account unsuspecting trader will be washed out of the markets faster than the well prepared and well funded one. Just like in your current profession where you make a living at the expense of others who don’t possess your skills, keep in mind that in the markets too the money goes from the pockets of inexperienced traders to the coffers of the experienced ones. On which side do you want to be?
Will I be able to make a living out of trading?
Not in the beginning and certainly not from a small account. Unless you improved your skills, handle a larger trading capital and are able to demonstrate to yourself that you can trade profitably, leaving your current 9-to-5 job is a bad idea.
Do you use fundamental analysis and do you teach it?
No, we don’t use it and no, we don’t teach it. Never did and never will. To see a list on how fundamental analysis compares to technical analysis, click here.
By the way, what is fundamental analysis?
Fundamental analysis is another approach to study and invest in the markets. By and large, it assesses a company’s financial condition. Proponents of this theory read and interpret balance sheets, income and cash flow statements and other financial and statistical ratios in order to anticipate future earnings and ultimately price appreciation or depreciation. While we are not opposing the role and influence of fundamental analysis and openly admit that it can and does affect market behavior, we believe that all the relevant information for efficient trading is already included in daily prices everyday, and all the news plus the financial indicators are perfectly reflected in the day-to-day price movement on the charts. The news makes the price and the price makes the news. We, as pure chartists, are strictly interested in where on the chart the price is at this very moment, where it can take us and where we can get on and off board profitably. Technical analysis provides us with quick answers better than fundamental analysis does.
In the greater scheme of things, what is securities trading good for?
Trading the financial markets is the most vital part of the free economy and traders, investors plus the entire network of financial institutions, investment Banks, mutual funds, hedge funds and brokerage firms, are the ones who maintain fair prices of all commodities and financial instruments available today. Prices need to be known to establish value in the current supply/demand relationship. A trader, no matter how small, contributes to the health of the market oriented economic system, its stability and progress, in the same manner his daily expenses contribute to the well functioning of the flow of goods and services from manufacturers to the consumers.
There are books, web sites and software on this subject out there from where I can learn technical analysis by myself. Why should I take your courses?
Yes, indeed there are! It will take you time to go through available materials, select those you - as a beginner - think are good for you, study them and profit from them. We offer a complete package right away, assistance, accelerated learning and interaction with other traders and students. We save you time and money. Most importantly, you will develop a discipline of learning because you know you will have to show up for lessons with us. Undoubtedly, you will achieve a lot by yourself based on individual effort but you will have a better start with us. Self-tutoring has the major disadvantage of the student congratulating himself for having discovered a great idea only to find out later that it already belongs to somebody else before him, or for working hard on developing concepts that will turn out to be dead-ends. Everybody, us included, have spent countless hours on something that seemed to be a great find and looked highly profitable on paper but turned out to be worthless in reality. Reinventing the wheel or getting sidetracked is nothing new. Why should it happen to you when there is help and you can be quickly pointed to the right direction? Serious students will be invited to join our group of traders and receive work offers, something which 99% of tutors on the Internet don’t do.
There are other traders offering 3-day intensive courses. Why do you need several weeks to teach me?
Yes, indeed there are. We do not discourage you from attending those courses. There is no single approach to the markets these days and there are many workshops, courses and seminars available as a result. The stock market is no longer the rich men’s game and trading doesn’t look like gambling in the old days anymore. Actually the stock market has evolved to include everything today we call the financial markets. Investors and traders handle more theories than ever before: every day, minute by minute, Moving Averages contradict Stochastic, RSI fights Volume Indicators, trend-lines are dueling fuzzy logic, MACD battles price channels. The list goes on and on. Everybody has become more knowledgeable and this is why this environment has become so complex. We advise you to grace the presentations of the other teachers in town with your presence and if you feel they are valuable to you, hey, get yourself enrolled! At GAINtraders.com our approach is to take time to teach, knowing that good students will reciprocate by taking time to learn. If your goal is to trade immediately, we feel obliged to advise you that good opportunities to make money in the markets will always exist in the future You lose nothing if you don’t trade right away, but you stand to win if you take your time to learn.
I heard that a lot of money can be made in the stock market. Is it true?
Money can be made in any business, including financial markets, only if patience, discipline knowledge and wisdom are practiced. However, while in other professions your success always depends on other people, in online trading your success depends on only one person: you. Playing the markets patiently, orderly and knowledgeably will make you a wiser and wiser trader. Money will follow after that.
Some say trading is psychological and even mystical. Shall I look into these matters to become a successful speculator?
Psychology and mass psychology are very important because they are the forces driving the markets. There is always something that separates winners from losers and one group will forever exist because of the other. Trading is life itself and you will be surprised to find out how many basic common sense rules in life losing traders disregard. The real question is: can a trader turn himself around and change from a loser or poor performer into a winner? The answer is yes. There are psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists who specialize in traders’ mind problems and a trader doesn’t have to lose his shirt first in order to consult one of them. As far as mysticism in trading is concerned, there will be days when you are going to feel that a greater force watches over you, both when you lose and when you win. Sometimes what saves us is not what we know or what we planned for but rather something that has to happen or somebody we have to meet for us to make a step. Mystic or not, a trader has to face the reality of the markets and show a profit. We will touch upon psychology in our ‘Course 1 - Invest for profit$’ and to grow you will need to read more on the subject later on.
I am 56 of age. Am I suitable for venturing into trading?
Sure you are. An adult can achieve more than a youngster. Let us remind you that most great successes, like good wine, come with age. The same applies to trading. Young people are easily trainable because of their enthusiasm, courage, lack of (bitter) history and lifelong perspective ahead of them. An adult can become easily trainable if he understands to look at tomorrow with other eyes than the eyes he used to look at the future in the past. To progress, one must keep in mind that more important than his knowledge is the miracle happening today. Adults accept new ideas slower because something called experience holds them back. It is strange that something that once put bread on their table is now keeping them away from getting the cake. In life, and even more intensely in day-trading, creative and destructive forces work side by side. The fact that you asked the question means that you are ready to get the answer. You paid your dues, carried your cross and reaped what you had sowed. Does this mean that you can sit now and count your blessings? Or does it rather mean you now are free, cleansed, forgiven and ready to start something new? Yes, we can help adults overcome personal conflicts, deprogram themselves, eradicate misconceptions, remove destructive habits and dislodge themselves from mental traps, all this and more to unleash their hidden potential and launch them into a profitable endeavor. Richard D. Donchian, one of the giants of technical analysis, started trading large amounts of money at the age of 65 in 1970 and retired in his early 90s. Winners will be inspired by his example, losers will turn a blind eye and a deaf ear. Winners will learn and change, losers will keep on doing what they have been doing. Not only is venturing into trading a good thing to do but it is a necessity: adults get closer and closer to retirement and there will be a day when one has to choose between sitting on a bench in the park complaining to his buddies about that his pension dollars are never enough and sitting in front of the computer making a few extra bucks. What will it be for you? Says our mentor: “At the extreme, trading is the only profession I can think of that can make somebody who failed in all his previous enterprises walk out of the scene of life as a winner. I can take anybody off the street and turn him into a trader. Why not you? Age is irrelevant! You are most welcome to contact us for an appointment and hey, bring along your spouse and your friend too!
Is securities trading art or science?
It’s both. Science helps with formulating a set of rules while art helps with deciding when to follow them and when not to. Furthermore, science helps with reformulating those rules and art, again, helps with deciding what to do with them. Definitely, securities trading and investing in the financial markets for the longer term are not complicated sciences! What is complicated indeed is to find something simple which works. The simpler the trading approach, the better!
What qualities must a person possess to become a good trader?
Firstly, there is no such thing as good or bad traders because all the bad ones are flushed out the markets quickly. Traders who trade are by definition good professionals. Secondly, in a way, you can look at your career for similarities: what did it take someone to reach the top, what did it take others to be better than yourself and others to be in a rank lower than yours? What did others lack that made them quit? With trading, the same qualities yet stronger are required because of both the intense competitive nature of the game and the lure of rewards waiting ahead. Introduce yourself and we will assess what is good or bad about you. We can help you. Qualities for trading can be cultivated.
If your methods are so good, why do you sell them?
This question is usually meant to be a tough one, but not to us at GAINtraders.com. We usually laugh at those who want to intimidate us and, although more can be said on this topic, we now choose to say the following: Imagine someone asking Vincent van Gogh, the famous painter, why does he sell his paintings if they are so good!?!? We believe that everything is for sale and that the damnedest thing in life that can happen to somebody is for him to have nothing good to sell. We heard about theories which stopped working when they had been sold and became public knowledge but we never actually found one of them. We believe that everything works, more or less, for better or for worse, sooner or later. Everything can be bought and sold. People barricading themselves behind secrets live with fear. We chose to chase fear of any kind away just for the sake of keeping a free mind. What we sell are well-known systems which we enhanced with our own observations and we can’t hide the pride and excitement of showing them to those who care to listen. Some of them, Kagi, Renko and Three-line Break (Courses 2, 3 and 4) are 250+ years old and not a secret anymore. We are not afraid that these methods, or any other method for that matter, will stop working for us after we “sell” them. Are you ready to buy? All what people who refuse to sell do is actually claim their right to do so. This may be not that bad but we believe that trading and life itself have better things to be claimed than anonymity. It’s great if somebody finds something which works for him, but finding something which works for the world is even greater. To sell (or to buy) means to be able to communicate.
Some say 90% of traders fail. Why is that so?
Events occur at two levels: individual and group. At individual level, failures are arrived at because trading is too often taken for what it is not or for entertainment or for a rodeo-like atmosphere or for purposes too insignificant to produce lasting benefits or for countless other uninspired reasons. To many aspirants, the salvation that trading is supposed to bring turns into the final debilitating blow to their money and personality. The reality is that for too many people there is no reason to succeed. Sadly, these truths come up only in retrospect. It seems life has millions of ways for losing and just one way to win. There is so much to talk about this topic that we just can’t get into details in here. However, we can’t leave this discussion without differentiating between those who started with the wrong foot setting themselves up to fail, the experienced traders who fail to maintain their output and those traders who last long in business. If you remember, there are plenty of stories of fortunes that have been made and lost in the trading pits and investment offices. They may be exceptions to the rule and, if you think well, they may even have an amusing side to them but one thing is certain: life rewards and punishes equally. Who and why? At group level, simply put, life is not set up for 90% of participants to grow rich at the expense of 10%. It’s just the opposite. Natural selection works nonstop and, for profitability to occur, not even a 50/50 proposition is enough. What happens is not only a transfer of money from losers to winners but also a filtering process: how much of what losers lose goes to every winner? Another question is: what are the reasons for failure? In our opinion, the real culprits are: Dishonesty. Disrespect for the markets, for others and for oneself. Ask anybody who failed why did he fail and you will get an explanation along the lines of what we just said. Something else must be mentioned now. Life is complex and the opposite of dishonesty and disrespect does not automatically ensure steady success. There are many traders in the winning 10% group who are honest and who respect the markets, other people and themselves yet not all of them can rise above their own top group average to be in the 2% group. This is so because the game is not only between winners and losers but also among winners themselves. Says our mentor: “I don’t blame someone for failing but for not starting again.”
How do your tuition prices compare to those of other tutors?
High prices. We have seen courses that sell for US$7,500 for two months of private tutoring and for CDN$7,800 for 63 hours. The teachers are experienced traders who do not want to compromise. It’s easy for them to put a 30-page manual together and sell it ten times less at a price affordable to everybody, but their intention is to match the quality of information they provide with a tuition price which reflects it, and to deal only with high-end students. In our opinion courses like these are mostly for established traders who have no difficulty paying top dollars for highly specialized education. Low prices. The Internet is awash with US$1,000 courses. There are many decent tutors in cyberspace who can show you one approach or another to trade the markets. Low price is not always an indication of poor quality and most tutors who sell their course cheaply do it mostly for the sake of getting to know new talented amateurs who cannot afford pricey courses. It’s exciting to teach an ambitious beginner for the first time and sometimes the teacher ends up learning quite a lot from a serious student. Paying for lessons, having access to a tutor, progressing in a disciplined way and turning the tutor into a new friend of yours is still far better than wasting time reading tons of free information on the Net, all alone. In our opinion, you will have to take several low-priced courses until you settle for just one methodology. Trading the markets is a complex game and, if you are like most traders, you will not limit yourself only to the cheap course with which you started. It’s not about paying for the most expensive course or taking the best course there is. It’s about finding the one with concepts and explanations which come natural to you. Finding it, takes time and ... money. Middle range prices. Very good courses sell for US$3,000 - $4,000 as you can see for yourself from Internet searches. It boils down to finding them and choosing a tutor who inspires confidence. Final word on trading course prices. Many people who spent 4 - 5 years and US$100,000 or more on high education are either destitute today or unhappy with their job or business. In contrast, with less than US$10,000 and in less than six months, a person can learn to trade securities online and start a profitable career working from home. The tuition fee may be looked at as the entry ticket not only to a new lifestyle and well-deserved isolation from the troubled world we live in, but also to a status where you can’t be hired, fired, used, abused or refused.
How many students did you train and can you give me references?
Ten so far (2015). Training is an old project we started in September 2002 and abandoned three months later. In 2004, we re-actualized it. Real stories with our students up to 2011 have been penned in The Money Art, Vol. III. Our intention is to teach when opportunity presents itself and to help those who want to invest in the financial markets, in respect to their desire to learn and the mentor’s own ongoing learning process. If we coach 1 - 2 good students per year, our mission is accomplished.
Update: so it happened that we do not teach only newbies, but also professionals. Here is Dawn, a licensed stockbroker with 20 years of experience managing US$50M with five employees taking ‘Course 1 - Invest for profit$” (Dec. 2011).
A very private person, she gets ready to retire and wants to trade her own account only by the charts. Says the mentor: “She is the only person in St. Lucia with who I can speak technical analysis language, a bad situation I do everything in my power to change for the better. The same way I found her, I shall find others too.” As for our references, The Mentor’s page speaks for itself. If it doesn’t, sorry, we won’t be able to help.
Can you offer me a trading demo?
Sure we can. Every 3 - 4 weeks, we organize a live trading session via the Internet. The price is deductible from the course fee if you become our student. The session lasts 1 - 2 hours until the mentor meets his profit target for the morning. (Update: this service has been canceled because of new duties the mentor undertook with his real estate enterprise. To compensate for discontinued live demos, trading reports has been posted at the ‘Trade view’ page).
Will I get a diploma or certificate of attendance at the end of your course? Will I be able to take a job with a financial institution or brokerage firm?
No. We are not an educational institution, nor are we affiliated to one and we don’t see this situation changing in the future. For this reason no diplomas will be issued. You will receive a Letter of Recommendation from us showing your marks together with The Mentor’s Profile, which should help you to do private business with anyone you wish. Our courses are for self-employment enabling the students to trade or invest for themselves by themselves. Courses 1 and 5 are mostly for beginners and for people who tried to do it on their own but ended up confusing themselves and courses 2, 3 and 4 are for established traders and investors who want to enhance their charting skills. If you look for certification, we recommend contacting the Stock Exchange in your country for advice. No doubt about it, enrolling yourself in a seminar from a leading financial corporation, passing the examination and landing a job as an institutional trader comes with its own advantages, and having been exposed to technical analysis from GainTraders.com (or other tutors) by then will be your plus at that time. We have income generating opportunities for our top students.
Feel free to contact us for any clarification you need.

Click here to see the results of a questionnaire in Adobe .pdf format which 39 traders and investors filled in from June to Oct. 2002.

To have a 360^o view of cyber-trading - especially as a private cyber-trader who wants to work from home - buy ‘The Money Art’ motivational e-book series here.

Says the mentor: “The world has many losers and only a few winners. The very fact that you have read so far shows that you began your journey to grow and change into a winner. There will be many losers who will try to stop you in the future again just like there have been many losers who delayed you in the past. Do not make it easy for them to delay you and, at least do not stop your growth yourself.”