fxinsights.com Review

http://www.nashvillepost.com/news/2009/12/7/soldier_of_forex


Soldier of Forex

Francisco Arias ran a $1.2 billion trading fund between special-ops missions. Or not.

By E. Thomas Wood

12-07-2009 12:06 AM -

He's nowhere to be found at the moment, so maybe Francisco R. Arias Jr. has gone behind enemy lines. But the 22 investors from across the United States who filed suit against Arias in Nashville late last month probably have other ideas about why he seems to be lying low.

Arias, who moved to Nashville from Florida earlier this decade, is at the center of numerous legal claims and counterclaims over his activities as a supposedly high-flying foreign currency exchange (or "forex") trader. The three related lawsuits filed against him Nov. 24 in Davidson County Circuit Court are the latest volleys in the legal battle. The investors seek $10.9 million in punitive damages for what they term "promissory fraud" by Arias.

In another case involving Arias, his father-in-law has said Arias duped him into serving as the "face" of the investment operation. You see, Arias "was in special operations with the United States Military and must keep his identity hidden," he is said to have told father-in-law Gary Doney Sr. of Lebanon. Arias even gave Doney the authority to sign documents on his behalf "in the event that something happened to him on one of his alleged military excursions."

Eventually, Doney said, it became clear that Arias "is not presently, nor has he ever been, a member of any branch of the United States armed forces."

But he did file for bankruptcy in 2007 and in May of this year, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge George C. Paine II issued an "order finding fraud" that prevents him from discharging his debts to various investors through the bankruptcy process.

For a time, Arias had Doney and plenty of other people convinced that he was not only an international man of mystery but also a genius at making money in the notoriously volatile forex markets.

The plaintiffs in the latest lawsuits say Arias talked them into making one-year loans that offered a guaranteed interest rate of 30 percent. Doney signed promissory notes to the investors, who believed the returns would be derived from currency trading by Arias. They say he showed them false financial statements indicating that his trading company, Adieus Corp., had a net worth of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Doney, for his part, says Arias showed him "a computer screen that evidenced trading in the account reaching a value of as much as $1.2 Billion and resulting profits of as much as $180 Million." The figures were fake, he claims. But Doney would have been in a position to know one number for real: He said the total amount Arias took in from investors came to as much as $3.4 million.

The new lawsuits say Arias put out promotional materials asserting that he had a 90 percent success rate in his trades, achieved by using a proprietary software system that "minimized or eliminated investment risk."

Some of the plaintiffs say that while Arias was investing their forex funds, he also sold them equity in a new wealth management company, Reynier Holdings. He promised it would go public and make its owners wealthy.

Franklin resident Rick Mattos was one such buyer. Besides investment losses of $176,000, his lawsuit says he is out $60,000 on the equity investment.

Enticed by the high returns they believed they could obtain via Arias, some of the plaintiffs went to exceptional lengths to come up with money to invest. John and Natalia Yosco of Franklin took out a $150,000 second mortgage to fund their purchase of Reynier equity; they were eventually forced to sell the home, their lawsuit says.

Two Florida investors cashed in Individual Retirement Account funds to invest in Adieus. Each lost almost all the money invested while also incurring substantial IRA withdrawal penalties and fees, according to one of the complaints.

Nashville attorney Kevin S. Key is representing the plaintiffs in the three new lawsuits. He declined to comment on them when reached last week.

Two Nashville-area telephone listings for Arias were out of service last week. Filings in Davidson County General Sessions Court indicate he was evicted from a home on Country Wood Circle in Donelson last September.

Im not rating the site because none of the options reflects my experience with fxinsights. btw: my english is a little bit jerky, so bear with me ;)

What I loved about FXI were Mod's daily updates. Put asside his 'levels', the daily fundamental view was simply on spot and helped me turn about 3-5% a week with very little risk, trading on my own according to the daily view. I was introduced to some new ideas and integrated them into my own trading style. Im not saying that these were original FXI's ideas but hey, they were there in one place and the community of honest people was there too - so it worked well for me.

But... There was something strange in the air all the time.

The Levels:

For example so called "Mod's levels". From my technical_analysis_guy point of view, Mod's levels were mystery. Anytime I (or anybody else) asked Mod about how he's picking buy/sell levels for the day a very vague answer was replied. Mod wrote an article on the forum about levels but it wasn't clear any better after that. So my guess after all the time is that the levels were picked randomly. I know from my experience, that you can draw horizontal trendline anuwhere on the chart and you surely find S/R levels.

The Signal:

The signal was another puzzling thing to me. I took their statistics about the signal a draw every single trade on the chart just to see, how it performed over time - not just the recpectful success rate. What I found wasn't nice. There were trades with drawdown of hudreds of pips just to grab 20pips of profit after they turned positive. When I personally asked Moderator about the drawdown and how I should manage the risk, I got no answer about the risk but I was advised to register on the paid site, where there is much more signals every day...

The Forum and The Chat:

The pervasive anti-technical attitudes from the FXI was a thing didn't understand at all. I can understand when someone prefers fundamentals over technicals, but the religious refusing of ANY technical talks on the forum/chat was silly. For me personally, technical and fundamental analysis go hand-in-hand the same way the head and heart.

To conclude I must say, that thanks to information proveded by fxinsights I was able to integrate fundamentals into my trading and my money- and risk-management improved tremendously. Today Im trading EURUSD and Silver only, Im evaluating fundamentals on a daily basis and Im turning about 10% monthly ROI with very very low risk and about 70-80% success rate. Im not saying it's all credited to FXI, but the nudge that pointed me to the right direction originated with FXI.

This is the truth about Cisco and the FXI crew. I have personally met and lost a tremendous amount of money with them managing my account. My account was like many you have read here and margin called. Moderator(Dave Cohen), Yeno(Lee Stouch), Sebestian(Ryan Woods), and Marshall(Craig Cejos) are all frauds. Cisco's fraud started in Florida where he managed a fast food chicken shack. He wasn't any good at that so he tried trading Forex trading demo's and passing them off as real p and l's to get clients. He frauded people out of over 7 figures there in Florida only to move to Tennessee when the investors came looking for their money. He also claims to be very structured due to his advanced special forces training...the truth is that he only served in the reserves. Another lie to make himself look like someone he is not and that you should fear if you ever cross him. He has frauded hundreds of people and lost countless amounts of money. Even his own father in law has a lawsuit against him as he cheated him out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in a scam business called ADIUES which has now been shut down now that investors are looking for their money. He is now Bankrupt in Nashville but has opened a new business called www.profxi.com where he has started a new form of fraud where you can pay him $200 per month and you can watch the master trade...ha ha. All his accounts are loosers so please stay away. How can a bankrupt man have cash to trade in a trading account? DEMO's that's how! He has numerous lawsuits pending and he is also being investigated by both the Tennessee and Florida Attorney Generals offices. WOW! When will this guy stop? The fxinsights site is down due to fraud and wont be up anytime soon now that the truth is out. All of that crew Dave Cohen,Lee Stouch,Ryan Woods, and Craig Cejos will have alot to explain when their araignment time comes...and that is coming sooner than they expect! These people are the scum of the earth. Feel free to contact the Attorney Generals office if you have been a victim of Francisco Arias and crew

Im not posting a rating as ive already previously done that.

Fxinsights was a great website to learn forex and i recall their moderator telling people to hold onto a euro short when the euro was at 1.60, just prior to the euro bombing. What followed was obviously the biggest ever selling off of the euro in its history and obviously many traders had multiple euro longs open & were margin called.

Im aghast at how many people blindly lost so much money when the euro went south, risk management always has to come first and i cant believe many traders did not protect themselves better by either using stoplosses or hedging.

2008-10-27 5 Stars This is an excellent website which has really improved my trading. Hope its back up & running again soon.

I have personally meet the traders and none of which where impressive. They are ruled by an iron fist from the the one they call "cisco". They are just a group of "yes men" not knowing all of the underhanded fraud that cisco is up to. I have first hand knowledge of the millions of $$$ that cisco has frauded from people. He shows them trading accounts worth millons of dollars that are not even real. I personally know many families that have been hurt bad financially. He doesn't even have the morals to say he is sorry for all the pain that he has caused. As for any responses "BRING IT." I can and will prove everything that I have said and more. Go to the Nashville public records and look up Reynier management LLC.

I was a member from FXinsights. It was a great place to learn the principles of the EURUSD market using fundamentals and market timing.

I remember FXinsights always requesting people to be w/ the market trend, not against it and teaching how to use the oil, gold, bond and libor to trade. It seems that they broke the basic rules of the market triggering their signal against the market trend and the fundamentals according to members of the premium site. Many people are saying that they are broke or at the brisk of it. I have no idea and don't know if that is 100% true so far.

I learn a lot from them in their chat and their trade journals. They said that they never charged for teaching and won't in the future. I hope they keep that promise and come back.

Thanks to them I found a trading strategy for me and only trade a few times per month when the oil, gold, US bond yield, libor and Dow work together... Most of the days of the months is risky and I'm away doing another things...

First of all, I just wanted to say that Rootkit (below) was one of the most prominent members of the fxi site, and according to his online journal, one of the most profitable. He openly credited FXI to his success. Just wondering what happened to change his mind and prompted the scathing report below... I

The entire purpose of FXInsights was to herd a bunch of sheep together for convenient shearing. The process has been largely completed...so I wouldnt be expecting fxi back anytime soon. If your foolish enough to believe this isnt the case, then you should head on over to profxi and for only 200 per month you can reclaim the same losing strategy that has margin called hundreds of accounts. Otherwise, I welcome you to trading. Many who have come before you had to learn this same lesson. Many got off much easier than the fxi community. As I was told on my first day trading, "this isnt walking grandma across the street kid, this is millions of effin dollars". The money traders make must come from somewhere...thats where people who seek free never fail signals, advice, blogs, newsletters, signals, etc come into play.

As of now the site is down -- undependable -- squabbles between the top guys and the site goes down. When pro site started the "official" "free" signals stopped after some people were already hooked on them. The signals were only buys and good until the Eur/USD reversed and started going down. By the time you find out you should reverse your position(s) it is usually too late. Most of the comments in the chat are by beginners seeking help and discussions about sports or other non currency trading related issues or putting down technical trading in favor of fundamental trading or in favor of constantly watching price action. If the truth hurts, that's just the way it is ... you can see for yourself in a short time if the site is operating.

I've given FXInsights one star for "Terrible, extremely bad performance. Possible unethical behavior."

They did great with the signals as long as the Euro was trending up, since all of them were buys. They could have drawdown in the hundreds of pips, but they'd close them out for profit of only 20 pips.

If you follow their trades, you might have to stay up days on end watching your account as there's no way to know when you might have a chance to close with profit. Neither site really trains you to trade successfully.

Mod is a an intelligent and persuasive writer who seems to be very successful. His account on the paid site was down about 10K for over a month while he claimed to be making a lot of profit on closed trades. They just hold the loosing trades indefinitely and don't mention how much in the negative they are. Mod is also quite arrogant and excessively disrespectful of anyone who doesn't have overflowing praise for himself or FXInsights in general and makes sure there are only very happy members on the site by banning anyone who hints at questioning the unusual trading methods they teach. He openly mocks anyone who uses stops or indicators of any kind such as moving averages, fibs, support resistance lines, etc.

One thing of benefit on FXInsights, there are many good articles on about fundamentals, but the same information can also be found elsewhere.

The head trader who Mod has said is the "best trader on the planet" started another site, but his signals turned out to produce a lot of drawdown at times. In fact. he margined one account right in front of everyone, with no recommendation to anyone to get out of the trades if they were following along.

If you join the ProFXI site, you'll be totally dependent on what the head trader does as he will not teach anyone how he's picking his entry points. Apparently he uses some mathematical formulas he's come up with and he does have a lot of experience, but even if he can turn profit most of the time, you'll never have a sense of control over your own trades since you have not done the analysis yourself.

By the way, Yeno is a company member/owner so his review should not include a rating.