tactical trader

Three very interesting interviews with the man himself...

Link

Link

Link

A disturbing trend that I have noticed just lately is the increasing number of tips services hiding behind the apparent safety and credibility endorsement afforded by FSA registration.

How can it be that a service clearly telling you the trades being made and the relevant entry and exit points then hide behind the statement that any information given is for educational purposes only? This is an absolute disgrace and the FSA should do something about it.

This TV broadcast tells us a bit more:

Welcome to the program.

First tonight, the property market might be coming off the boil but there's still plenty to be made in the get-rich-quick business.

Property buying seminars came into sharp focus last year with the collapse of the Henry Kaye Group, resulting in a meeting of creditors today that voted to put Mr Kaye's property education company into receivership.

Now the Australian Securities and Investments Commission says the spruikers of wealth seminars are getting back into selling stock market schemes and the complaints are rolling in.

But while the regulator says it's watching these schemes closely at least one is trading under the auspices of an ASIC licence.

So what protection is there for the punters?

Business and economics editor Tim Lester reports.

TIM LESTER: It's been a theme through human history.

Our ancestors dreamed of finding the secret to great riches, maybe a gold map.

So do we.

Though now, the nuggets are in shares and property.

ROGER MONTGOMERY, INVESTMENT TRAINER: They want the red button that says sell.

TIM LESTER: The maps are schemes to outwit the market.

ROGER MONTGOMERY: They want the green button that says buy.

TIM LESTER: And they're for sale to anyone who believes.

ROGER MONTGOMERY: Just, tell me when it lights up and I to want press it and I will make the money.

PETER KELL, ASIC CONSUMER PROTECTION: The level of complaints that are coming through to us about share trading seminars and software is beginning to pick up again.

TIM LESTER: Peter Kell heads consumer protection at the authority governing those who give us financial advice, the Securities and Investments Commission, or ASIC.

PETER KELL: What we are also seeing is more people promising more exotic sorts of schemes, derivatives and other options.

TIM LESTER: Gold Coast-based trainer Daniel Kertcher sells a weekend of training, this 8-set DVD and trading software and for just under $4,000 per student.

DANIEL KERTCHER (TRAINING DVD): You're going to learn how to develop a guaranteed passive income for life.

TIM LESTER: On it the images and rhetoric of the 30-year-old self-claimed multimillionaire ooze wealth.

DANIEL KERTCHER: I am in the process of turning $2,000 into $1 million.

TIM LESTER: At this Sydney seminar last year, he told student investors he was making $1 million for charity.

DANIEL KERTCHER: It's very easy to turn $ 2,000 into $1 million.

All you have to do is keep doubling up - 9 trades, you're done!

TIM LESTER: And of course they could make their million.

DANIEL KERTCHER: Who cares?

You could have it done in the next year.

My friend, who taught me this, has done it over three times in the last three years.

He does it for sport.

He doesn't need the money.

He's a multimillionaire.

PAUL DOLAN, AUSTRALIAN STOCK EXCHANGE: It's all about the selling of the lifestyle, the selling of the dream.

TIM LESTER: Australian Stock Exchange trainer Paul Dolan says the wealth gurus use an American motivational model, attracting customers to an introductory night to sell a more expensive course.

PAUL DOLAN: At that 3-hour event you will be told that there is a secret and, basically, how great your life is going to be after you discover the secret.

TIM LESTER: Daniel Kertcher took his seminars across the Tasman to windy Wellington two years ago.

PHIL MITCHELL: A 100 per cent money back guarantee.

TIM LESTER: With an advertisement that caught the eye of NZ consumer journalist Phil Mitchell.

PHIL MITCHELL: They're saying I can make 331 per cent return in three months.

GEK MUI LEE, WEALTH SEMINAR STUDENT: Financial independence, you know, you could give up your job.

You could just live on trading full time eventually.

TIM LESTER: So Wellington resident Gek Mui Lee enrolled in a Daniel Kertcher seminar.

GEK MUI LEE: He once said if you are quadriplegic and all you could do is blink, you could do options trading.

I beg to differ.

TIM LESTER: Phil Mitchell did the same course.

He and Gek Mui Lee both then followed up with fellow students almost a year later.

GEK MUI LEE: Maybe two of them were just breaking even.

The rest of the people lost money or were too afraid to try.

PHIL MITCHELL, NZ CONSUMER JOURNALIST: Overwhelmingly, people had lost money and a great deal of money and very quickly.

TIM LESTER: How much money?

PHIL MITCHELL: An average loss of $10,000.

TIM LESTER: Though he calculates that one person did really well - Daniel Kertcher, selling students his seminar package for a hefty NZ dollar price.

PHIL MITCHELL: 65 times $4,250 is not a bad return for three days work.

That is nearly $300,000.

TIM LESTER: Phil Mitchell's article in NZ's consumer magazine stirred Daniel Kertcher to threaten legal action.

He insists one third of students in the Wellington course in question made money.

And another 12 didn't even bother to trade.

That still leaves plenty of losers.

But Daniel Kertcher isn't apologising.

Rather, he has organised seminars for five Australian capital cities in the next few months.

If you can't get to see him, no problem.

There are plenty of others selling their own gold maps and they're not hard to spot.

PETER KELL: Often glossy brochures.

ROGER MONTGOMERY: Look out first for any claim that there is a secret.

ROGER MONTGOMERY: PETER KELL: Some sort of magical track record of past performance.

ROGER MONTGOMERY: The more testimonials there are, the more you should be concerned.

TIM LESTER: Roger Montgomery is a Balmain-based fund manager and investment trainer for the Australian Stock Exchange who has given up warning people about the merchants of wealth.

ROGER MONTGOMERY: I spent the early part of my career trying to educate people about these things.

I'm, in fact, just tired of doing it now.

TIM LESTER: Roger Montgomery is unimpressed even though Daniel Kertcher has diluted his astonishing NZ profit claims.

His Australian ads say he can earn us 6 per cent per month, not per year, per month.

That is still about 15 times the interest offered by banks.

ROGER MONTGOMERY: If it was that easy to make 6 per cent a month, we would be doing today.

It isn't that easy, so we know not to believe those claims and no one else should.

TIM LESTER: Late today Daniel Kertcher strongly defended his 6 per cent earnings claim saying he could provide actual trade examples to prove it and attaching four pages worth in case we had doubts.

PETER KELL: I have never seen anyone sustain a 6 per cent a month return over a long period of time.

In many ways, it is a meaningless and potentially misleading claim.

So if that has been made, it is something that we will be looking at.

TIM LESTER: It certainly has been made but the problem for ASIC is that it has been made with ASIC's imprimatur, as Daniel Kertcher told the 7:30 Report in a recent letter, the securities firm he operates under has an ASIC financial services license.

ROGER MONTGOMERY: It surprises me that someone who has a license can make a claim like that.

TIM LESTER: And it frustrates the Australian Stock Exchange.

Doesn't that tell us that the licensing system is flawed?

PAUL DOLAN: Well, there's a question that you would like to pose to ASIC, I think.

TIM LESTER: We did.

What is the point of having an ASIC licensing system if one of the licensed operators is making claims that you concede is absurd?

PETER KELL: Dealing with someone who has a license is an important first step but it won't guarantee that you will get reliable advice.

Unfortunately, we do run into people who have licenses, who have people working for them, representatives, who may step over the line.

TIM LESTER: It's a sensitive subject for ASIC.

Just last year the commission took Henry Kaye to court after the property millionaire claimed ASIC approval for his training courses.

But Daniel Kertcher has still more credentials.

As an options adviser, he is accredited through the Australian Stock Exchange.

PAUL DOLAN: We're not involved in the licensing of brokers as such or financial advisers as such.

TIM LESTER: Just training them.

And in the Daniel Kertcher case, the stock exchange concedes we shouldn't read too much into its options accreditation.

It only takes a month or two to qualify and the ASIC license, well - PAUL DOLAN: For example, having a license does not make you a great driver.

TIM LESTER: We approached Daniel Kertcher for an on camera interview.

He declined.

GEK MUI LEE: After doing this for one and a half years, I realise that it's not as easy, you know, as some of his claims were.

TIM LESTER: We also approached the Melbourne-based promoter of several other makers of modern day gold maps, the management of Break Free Events would not comment and told us none of the gurus it promotes were available for interview either.

The leaders of this latest gold rush are unwilling to say much outside their seminars, though they are they are quick to point to any credentials they carry, the ones intended to guide us to good advice.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Tim Lester with that report.

As you can see, this is not from the UK, it comes from an Australian show called ‘The 7.30 Report’. Despite this it could almost word for word be the kind of dialogue that would take place between similar people right here.

• The increase in the offers due to more market activity

• The complete lack of protection

• The fact that people want the green button that says buy

• The image and rhetoric of the self claimed multimillionaire

• The introductory night to sell a more expensive course

And so on and so on..

None of this is new of course, this method of conning people out of their money has been around for as long as I can remember and if it was not this it would be something else. If people are stupid enough to keep buying them then I can’t change that and like the person in the interview I am tired of trying to warn people who just do not want to hear.

So why this post? Because as I said at the start, I think it is wrong and almost bordering on the unlawful to claim to be a Appointed Representative of an FSA member firm, sell a service that is clearly designed to tell you when to trade and then say that it is only for educational purposes. This is a step too far, they have crossed the line between clever marketing and outright fraud in my opinion.

I can only hope that the people who sign up the these schemes make their inevitable disappointment known to the regulator who might then get off their backside and do something about it.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to send in messages of support for what we are trying to do here. The overwhelming message was that the site was ours and that we should deal with the bullies without mercy, ironically most people thought we had been far too lenient for far too long.

The real learning for us comes from the fact that a great many former old timers pointed out that the reason for their lack of involvement was nothing to do with the redesign and loss of the old postings but far more to do with the very behaviour that led to my post holiday blog.

As a result we are going to continue to support the forums at our own expense for the time being. We are doing this in the interests of the people who do care and in the hope that the use of the forums will increase.

We will keep a close eye on the level of use (and abuse) and will hopefully not need to revisit this subject again.

The future of the forums is now in your hands.

Certain thing are inevitable on return from holiday, a mountain of post to open, thousands of emails, dead plants and of course the old favourite, people behaving like complete idiots on the forums.

If you have not bothered to read the senseless and spiteful rants of these ‘traders’ who clearly have nothing better to do with their time then don’t bother reading on.

However, if you are one of the, supposedly many, disenfranchised members who long for the glory days of the old site or if you’re merely an interested observer then read on because I have some important things to say.

The loudest complainers will be pleased to know that we have decided to get rid of the current website. We’re going to write-off the months of work that went into it and put them down to experience. We’re going to forget the new sections of the site because, let’s be honest, who cares about articles and reviews? It’s time to resurrect the old site with all of the valuable old posts and happy memories it contains.

Yeah, right!

How exactly do these people think this works? Do they seriously think we make a dime from this site? We do it because we want to help and want to educate. If we were in it for the money we would have given up a long time ago. We make our money trading the markets, something the loudest critics would be well advised to do instead of making unpleasant and threatening comments on what is a free and valuable service.

Amusingly people talk about setting up their own sites and then others threaten that they will leave our site and visit the new breakaway one, how I wish this would happen so we would be rid of these people once and for all. The trouble is that they realise how difficult it is to create a site worthy of any attention and they always come back.

I have now reached the limits of my patience and will no longer tolerate this regular and sickening treatment at the hands of a vocal minority.

If this nastiness does not stop right now and the forums return to their intended use they will be terminated with immediate effect, then everyone will lose out.

The choice is yours.