Based at daytradingacademy.com, Day Trading Academy is an online education provider that offers a service to train both beginner and experienced investors in the art of profitable trading. It was founded by Marcello Arrambide, and a quick search for him on Google shows evidence to back up the claims that both himself and his site have been featured on the BBC, CNN, CNBC and other media outlets.
According to the pre-sales ‘blurb’ on the site, their offering differs from other trading education companies as they fund traders directly from the online academy, but it is worth looking a little deeper into their sales pages to see if signing up would be worthwhile.
Profit And Losses
They claim that more than 50,000 people have previously signed up for their services, and throughout their site they actually go out of their way to demonstrate that the methods they teach could lead to both gains and losses.
Example screenshots are displayed of a trader supposedly experiencing a $48,000 loss, and it is perhaps a form of ‘reverse psychology’ to actually promote their system through old-fashioned honesty.
Once reading through this ‘honest warning,’ any cynicism could be offset by the fact that they are offering a free ‘starter kit,’ but at the same time, it is incredibly difficult to get a true idea about how much Day Trading Academy will cost before providing any personal details for a login.
Technical Issues
To try and gather some more concrete information about costs, we provided a name and email address for the free starter pack, and although the ‘opt-in’ message was delivered instantly, after 15 minutes no further communication had been received.
We repeated the process with another email address and unfortunately noticed the same outcome. Therefore, in terms of first impressions, this was pretty disappointing.
Potential Costs
A PDF manual was sent after our initial enquiry, and it indicated that it may cost up to $10,000 for a complete day trading system. The fact that this figure could eclipse your suggested start-up capital was more than a little unnerving.
The Platform
While waiting for the starter pack to arrive, we looked further into the marketing material itself, and the main element that we noticed was that traders who sign up for Day Trading Academy get to follow a customised plan based upon their level of experience. There are four different levels to progress through:
- Beginner
- Intermediate
- Advanced
- Pro
Their philosophy is that newer traders reap the benefits of the experience from ‘Master Traders’ who have more than 50 years of collective experience in financial markets.
On top of this, they are also keen to emphasise that participants are taught how to understand the markets themselves and not just how to use a piece of software – this is definitely something that many would-be traders are crying out for.
True Academy
A lot of so-called trading education companies simply supply software and e-Books and expect their students to answer online questions in order to gain some sort of certification, but with Day Trading Academy it does seem like there is a far more interactive element to it all.
Part of the ‘induction’ process even includes a scheduled online class with the company’s founder himself, and getting such a personalised experience from someone at the very top will usually only inspire those new to the business.
Too Good To Be True?
The claims of being able to reach the point where you only work 60 to 90 minutes per day for a luxurious lifestyle may be too bold to believe at first, and the image of the programme’s founder looking out over the ocean is a little too clichéd.
Furthermore, when you delve deeper into the free starter material, there is a lingering impression that the hefty course fee may only be worthwhile if you are looking to learn about setting up and using their chosen trading software, Ninja Trader.
Having said all of this, being able to tailor what is essentially the same method for all levels of experience gives a real sense that participants can progress from one stage to the next with hard work and input from more experienced traders.
Therefore, Day Trading Academy could be more suited to people who have already had negative experiences elsewhere with the ‘download this manual and software and just get on with it’ approach.