Futex Trading Academy – my thoughts
Hi All,
The other day I went to the open evening at Futex’s London office. I got off at Temple station and walked up.. it was a pleasant few minute walk and it’s here:
My first thoughts walking into the office was that it was rather small. However, this is the new London office and their main one is in Woking. There were seats for around 15 – 20 stations with multiple screen set ups. Walking through the office space to towards the end I was lead into a room with around 8 – 10 delegates and John, one of the directors was talking about the programme.
I appreciated his frankness about how difficult trading is and that one needs to put in an insane amount of effort to be successful at the game. I think that was important as some trading academies just sell themselves on how wonderful life would be once you’re a trader but they allude to tell you to how difficult it is getting there just so that they can make the sale.
He discussed how the trading academy is structured… basically, the cost is £10k. Once you’ve gone through the trading basics and simulators you will start trading with 1 lot. Typically, you start off with a profit share of 50/50 so whatever you earn trading the firms money, you keep half of it and the rest goes to the firm. If you get good, you will be allocated more money from the firm to trade upto a 90/10 profit share (you keep 90% of profits you make). This makes sense otherwise you’re going to lose the traders who can make money if you’re still taking sizable chunks off their profits. So far so good…
A visit to the floor where we were introduced to a trader. He showed us the charts he was looking at and invited us to click a few buttons. These guys trade using TT and a trading ladder as below:
A few clicks of the button and apparently I was already 50 Euro up! (It was a simulator, not real money!)
Th e trader mentioned that there are fees that he has to pay to cover the office costs (office rent, internet, Exchange fees etc) but what he liked about it was the freedom that he has now in what he was doing. Previously he said he worked on a currency desk with a big bank but he didn’t get the autonomy as he does now.
There was another chap there whose name escapes me but he was the trading guru and had trained the trader who we met. He was quite impressive and seemed to know his stuff.
Generally, the whole outfit was pretty decent and the whole operation professional. However, with trading, there are no guarantees… it is down to the work you put into it and then not everyone makes it. If you’re looking for a decent and respectable trading academy, I think Futex is worth considering. It’s not like some of the scammy ones which have cropped up in shedloads over the past few years.
As for myself, I liked everything I saw except for the offices. The desks were the horrid cheap type with no cable tidies so it looked messy. The lighting wasn’t good either and cheap carpet. Yep, I am fussy but that’s just me! 🙂
Oh, some other facts I picked up from Futex:
- They have 65 traders in Woking and 15 in London
- One of their traders was in the Trader Montly’s 30 Traders Under 30 – I checked him out, his name is Brad Young and his profile is here: http://www.futex.co.uk/futex-academy/testimonials/
NEVER EVER pay for training. £10k !!!!
I agree with ‘greed’. Never, ever, ever pay for training. The owners are very rich and they can pay your expenses at least during the training period.
We’re in the worst downturn in living memory and these richer s.o.b’s want people, some of them desperate to get work, to pay £10K??????