I’ve been a long time member of FSO. I will be giving you my thoughts on what I think.
Johnathon is actually a good mentor. He does help newbies with all sorts of questions. The trading principles he teaches are sound, but that is because everything he teaches you can find from the james16 thread over at forexfactory.com, which is for free. He just put what he learned from that thread into a concise summary and charge you almost $300 for it.
And now the usual question: why teach when you can trade? Some people may argue they like to teach others, and have the free time to do so. If they can earn a little money on the side then why not, right? That’s what I thought too. But after being a member for around a year, it is obvious that he is not a profitable trader and he earns his main income from operating FSO. In a bit over a year he has made over $150,000 just from membership fees. Not a bad yearly income. He is a good marketer over at babypips. He probably copied the idea from Nial Fuller. Johnathon’s site’s content and format is very similar to Nial’s. I don’t like randomly stating things like these so I will provide some facts for you to consider.
On the forum, there is a thread just for senior members to post their live trades. In this thread, Johnathon rarely posts the trades he takes, and when he does, he sometimes cleverly post and describe the trade setup without explicitly saying he is entering it. When the trade doesn’t work out, nothing happens, because he’ll just say he never said he entered it. If it works out, he then reveals that he has moved to breakeven, took some profits, etc. Just go his most recent post there and all will be revealed. The same tactic is employed by his senior member Bryce (bhops here, and he is probably part owner of FSO judging by his praises. Again, he has not verifiable track record). He posted a live trade and got stopped out, then disappeared from the forum for days only to come back and say he entered and won another trade soon after. Funny… may as well say he won 3 more trades while he was gone. Oh wait, too obvious. The FSO method only provides few (if anything) trades a month. This is perfect for them to scam you. By providing you with a discretionary method that will maybe give you 15-20 trades a year. Only after around 20 trades can you really tell if the method provides an edge or not. But this will likely be a year later. He’ll just tell you since it’s a discretionary method, you have most likely been making mistakes along the way. Anyway, he never reveals all the trades he’s in, claiming that he doesn’t want other people to blindly copy his trades. This way it is hard for anyone to verify his results and we are left wondering if he is really a good trader. He claims to have years and years of trading experience but has nothing to prove it. Good mentor perhaps, but trader? Highly doubtful.
Johnathon used to run a small fund of over $30k contributed by members and himself. He gave this fund months and he’s the sole trader of the fund. It’s been in deep drawdown ever since the beginning, then he starts making up stories of his family (son, father) being sick and having to take time off, etc, etc, always the same story. It seems like he always have personal issues he has to attend to. This has been ongoing ever since the beginning. This meant he can take time off his personal trading and trading for the fund. Good for him, delay his public trading performances even further, while putting more effort into attracting more members to join him. Now, all of a sudden, he cancels the fund and stops trading it: a dead giveaway of his trading ability.
So why am I saying all this? I just want to be honest and let others know before committing. Granted, the membership fee is not a lot of money, but to some it may be. In summary, Johnathon is NOT a professional trader. He is merely a good mentor. You can learn how price action works and how to trade it, but you are left on your own to make the strategy profitable.
For your information, I am now a consistently profitable trader after taking what I’ve learned from FSO and being creative on my own. Consider the cheap membership if you want a mentor but don’t put full faith into what he teaches, as he is not profitable himself. Don’t be fooled.
The majority of his members will probably disagree with me. But it is a sad fact none of them is profitable for 3 months in a row on a live account.
Hello Arjun,
As you can see I am not here posting (2nd post) as I have no agenda in promoting FSO in cyber space. If you haven't read the content of this link, perhaps it is a better assessment of whether you think FSO is a scam.
Forex Price Action
Following on from my post earlier, I am going to prove that I am a very happy and satisfied member of Forex School Online community. Here is a copy of the receipt I purchased in 2012. I have blocked my first name and email address for obvious reason.
For those out there seeking a path to success there are obviously many ways of doing it. No one method is perfect or only profitable. I have read on many occasions in many forums whenever an educational services being offered, I read plenty of comments such as "the stuff is all out there and it is free, you only have to look" or posts similar in nature. I have spent many years 'searching' and demoing and backtesting hoping to find a consistent way of trading the markets. I have spent big $$ purchasing all sorts of methods and unless I am stupid I haven't found anything effective until Forex School Online came along. I was also cynical initially because it seems to suggest for such a small outlay I can learn to be a smart and profitable trader. My due diligence was the first 50 pages of this
Forex Price Action and the rest of the posters comments in that thread. The strategy gels with my thinking at the time because I came from the retail mentality of piling on more math indicators to find a path to the holy grail. I was also very impressed in this thread that Johnathon genuinely teaches the basic of Price action and support resistance and not a tool to promote his business of FSO.
Here I am a year later and the process took longer than anticipated because of some personal distractions and I have a turn around in my trading profits. I no longer feel that I have to be in the market every single hour of the day. "Less is more" mentality is what I strife to achieve and to cut down the outright bad gambling trades and concentrate on consistency of profits. I learned all this formally at FSO even though I have read many books talking on this broad subject. I am a very satisfied member being taught the Johnathon's way of trading but expected to learn to apply the strategy and not given any trade signals. The true strength is the mentoring from Johnathon by emails to my questions and this helps a great deal in the message and knowledge transfer that can get lost just by reading the course notes. In addition the member forum helps me achieve a better understandings of the the strategy through reading and postings.
Now I have a few issues with Happyfaces starting with his forex factory comments about everything you need to know is on that site. Yes it may be true but try collating the available resources to filter out the rubbish. Accusing someone of plagiarising is bordering on slandering and I take offense to this part of the comment from Happyfaces "
...but that is because everything he teaches you can find from the james16 thread over at forexfactory.com, which is for free. He just put what he learned from that thread into a concise summary and charge you almost $300 for it." If I recall reading James16 initial remarks, he also mentions that what he is revealing is not a secret and some he learned along the way. Extracts from James16 (
james16 Chart Thread @ Forex Factory scroll down a third of page)
"
NOTE: In over 25 years of trading and learning its important for me to give credit where credit is due.
virtually all of my methods are original but some of the ingredients are often things i have learned from others and use in my own way. This is true for all of us that truly put in time and effort to find success in this business."
I had a look at the charts James16 posted and I see bar chart with what looks like a Bollinger bands with multiple moving averages and then I see Support and Resistance lines. Are you referring Johnathon copied these lines concept? Seems learning is an evolving process even Einstein learned the knowledge from someone! I am surprised you did not follow this site before parting your hard earned cash to realise you could have got it for free.
Secondly Happyfaces accuses Johnathon of not being a profitable trader because he spends all his time mentoring and charging for it. Well in that case Warren Buffet must have been an idiot preaching his methods for free and spending time on CNBC/Bloomberg when he could have made even more billions watching the screens or reading latest research notes. So why is Buffet wasting his time on talk shows when he can ride to the sunset and freeze time?
Happyfaces claims that FSO is a scam blah blah blah and then he said this, "
For your information, I am now a consistently profitable trader after taking what I’ve learned from FSO and being creative on my own.". Well could he be disappointed that he didn't buy an ATM machine for $300? If it was a SCAM and with SCAMs generally we know what you get right, why didn't he UN-LEARN instead of adding creativity on that knowledge? Spells contradiction to me reading his statement.
Again for the record, Johnathon has talk about unfolding trade setups and the majority went on to make big pips. Of course he is not GOD and a few were losses. I remember Bryce commented half jokingly on a particular trade setup! That is trading, want a perfect system I suggest he gets Bernanke's mobile number! And that goes for Bryce too who have posted winning trade setup as it happens. Bear in mind our forum are for people to learn the trading setups and not a tool for 'showing off' our trading skills. We post our trades so that others can learn the pitfalls and vice versa. We are not a forum to compare who made the most money or a 'follow my signal and you WILL make money'. You want that kind of boast there are plenty of forum I can suggests.
Now regarding the fund, I don't have privy to any details as I have not invested in the fund. Where did you get all these details from? Did you invested in the fund and if so can you furnish some details please? You keep accusing that Johnathon do not post his trades blah blah and here you are doing exactly what you 'seem' to despise of others.
Happyfaces signs off with this, "
So why am I saying all this? I just want to be honest and let others know before committing. Granted, the membership fee is not a lot of money, but to some it may be. In summary, Johnathon is NOT a professional trader. He is merely a good mentor. You can learn how price action works and how to trade it, but you are left on your own to make the strategy profitable."
If you think $300 is too much money to invest in your trading future then you shouldn't be trading. Happyfaces, exactly what do you want out of a $300 course? Someone to spoon feed you with what trades to take and when to collect profit, apply kindergarten methods of helping you learn or perhaps just only teach and equip you with a system that ONLY makes money? Your rant here so far does not makes sense.
Hell of course I disagree with you completely with your expectation and false accusations in a public forum. So far it is all accusations and very hollow. It reads very suspicious to me on the agenda behind your post. I have proven to you that I am a paid up member and I am defending the good name of Johnathon and the seniors like Bryce who have help me achieve a turn around in my trading. Post your FSO paid receipt please.
And lastly this statement from Happyfaces "
The majority of his members will probably disagree with me. But it is a sad fact none of them is profitable for 3 months in a row on a live account.", seems to be wrong. Using the phrase "sad fact none of them is profitable.." is implying that it is a fact set in stone and I am saying I am profitable but I am not going to have to prove my results to you. So it begs the question why post these false slanderings that seems to be back up with so called facts that are nothing more than hear say or make believe convictions and the whole time expect Johnathon to do the proving.
I await your response to balance out the views express here.
One happy and profitable trader using the FSO method
