Online Trading Academy Review
-
Value
-
Versatility
-
Ease of Use
-
Quality of Education
-
Quality of Support
-
Actionable Information
Summary
Online Trading Academy is one of the biggest market education services. The company offers a variety of online and offline courses with a broad range of topics, including stocks, options, forex and more. Read this review to see if the service is a good fit for your trading style)
About Online Trading Academy
Online Trading Academy is a comprehensive trader training and education organization that has been in business for over two decades. They are a marketing powerhouse that markets their services and products through infomercials, television, and radio ads to draw people to their free live seminars. These seminars are used to pique the interests of the attendees who are then offered the opportunity to attend an advanced trading class and become further immersed into their training programs. They have trained over 200,000 students worldwide since their inception in 1997 as the training arm of Block Trading. The organization has grown to over 40 on-location training centers spanning globally from the Americas to the Middle East, Europe, Canada, and Asia. Most of the office locations are individually franchised, but all follow the proprietary curriculum.
While Online Trading Academy provides quality education, we recommend online services like Investors Underground for education and Motley Fool Stock Advisor for stock picks.
Trading Style
OTA covers all trading styles ranging from intra-day scalpers to multi-day swing traders to longer-term investors with an emphasis on explaining the hows and whys of market forces. They balance fundamental analysis with technical analysis techniques to provide students with a full range perspective of the markets. I’d say that as students progress through the courses, the emphasis leans more heavily towards technical analysis which favoring scalping and swing trading styles.
Trading Courses
Online Trading Academy is all about the courses they provide on-location at the various worldwide offices and online through interactive remote access sessions. OTA slowly transitions would-be traders from the free half-day presentations to discounted multi-day live and remote courses that progressively get more advanced and intricate as traders move forward. Heavy emphasis on technical analysis is covered with classic patterns, and many patented and proprietary indicators and techniques, including supply and demand lines.
The free half-day live workshops are the gateway introductions to OTA. These are often marketed through various media channels. Potential students are given the opportunity to continue their training with limited-time discounts at the seminars.
The pricing can vary depending on the individual’s experience and financial situation/goals. Once students pay for a course, they are allowed to re-take the courses anytime they find a scheduled opening.
They teach diversified strategies for trading multiple financial trading products, including stocks, options, Forex, and futures. The courses start from scratch educating investors on the basic working of the markets and market timing to trading tools and methodologies.
Core Strategy Courses
The Core Strategy courses are split between Income Solution and Wealth Solution, which basically differentiate between traders and investors. Income is more intra-day and actively managed trading compared to less aggressive and more passive mid to longer-term swing traders and investors. The path of each set of courses leads ultimately lead to the elite Mastermind Community program.
Remote Online Classes
While the on-location live training courses the most immersive ways to learn, OTA also provides remote training sessions as well. These sessions include a live instructor that shares his screen with live charts and notes marked up so that attendees have all the materials in place. Participants can communicate through the chat and ask questions.
XLT Courses
Students that graduate the Core Strategy program can extend their learnings through XLT courses. The Extended Learning Track (XLT) courses are a combination of remote live and self-paced and interactive training sessions that extrapolates and applies principles from the Core Strategy Course covering stocks, Forex, options, and futures markets. The All Asset Mastery course is the ultimate combination course that integrates all the tools and resources for the most ambitious traders and connects them with other students in the Mastermind community.
🏆 Top Rated Services 🏆
Our team has reviewed over 300 services. These are our favorites:|
📈 Best Day Trading Service Investors Underground 🎯 Best Stock Scanner Trade Ideas 📉 Best Stock Charts TradingView |
💰 Best Stock Picking Service Motley Fool 📱 Best Mobile Broker Webull 📊 Best for Stock Research Seeking Alpha |
The Mastermind Community Program
Membership into the Mastermind community is only given to students that complete three qualifying XLT courses. The cost is $15,000 for the first year and $5,000 per year afterward or $25,000 for the first year and access for life. Mastermind Community membership gives access to the XLT- All Asset Mastery training, Pro Picks from each XLT, Daily watch list, Market Screener and special trading chatrooms, and priority access to OTA instructors.
Specialty Courses
These courses cover topics like real estate investing and wealth management, which includes tax and estate planning to address more conservative long-term planning. OTA is always adding to these courses, which are a very diversified way to fortify the financial base outside of active trading for many students.
Power Trading Radio
OTA also runs a daily podcast called Power Trading Radio hosted various instructors, including Merlin Rothfield and Mike McMahon and Tillie Allison, after the market close. They interview various industry guests that provide unique insights covering the most active financial markets. A lot of good free information can be found in these interviews. Podcasts are available for download on Itunes and Google Play Store.
What Type of Trader is the Service Best For?
OTA has done a great job of simplifying the markets so that newbies can onboard easily and proceed towards reaching the level of a seasoned trader in time. These guys cater to every level of trader, including intra-day, swing, and long-term investors in a complete and comprehensive process-oriented education model. It’s one of the few organizations that have something for everyone. The specialty courses are a nice touch that lends towards integrating more diversification outside of trading for students.
Is the Service a Good Value?
The pricing for the courses can vary based on individual experience and financial situation. Each student meets with specialists to determine their individual goals and ability to finance the courses. The half-day workshops are free, and the follow-up courses apply in-person discounts ranging from a few hundred to thousands depending on how many courses are purchased. The Mastermind Community program is for the elite students that put in the time and money commitment necessary to gain acceptance. The quality if good, but the pricing can be lofty, especially when compared to basic investing programs like Motley Fool, GuruFocus, or Investing Business Daily. Similar programs provide trading/investing ideas and education for a much lower price; however, in-person classes are much harder to find.
Pros
- Very structured training programs and courses for all levels of investors
- Impressive roster of professional instructors
- Over 20 years in business
- Multimarket and specialty training courses help diversify efforts
- Innovative remote training platform
- Can re-take courses once they are purchased
Cons
- Pricing can be inconsistent by individual case
- Mastermind Community is expensive
Thanks everyone for these great tips. I was laid off from work this week and heard on local radio of the program ‘online trading academy’. At first I thought it sound really good then I thought I better research before I signed up for this free class. Here I am finding out like just the way I thought it would be. If it was so good why these instructors wasting their time teaching instead they should do what they know best and make lots of money and the hell with wasting odd hours and weekend teaching others. My mind is totally turned off after hearing all the comments. Thank you!
Coaching and teaching trading courses are more profitable then actual trading now a days, there are thousands of academy’s and people who are making more money in this field. They advertise first some thing for free and then they want to market $ 7,000 to $ 20,000 worth of courses no one works on live trading platforms. Tahir Gilani from Toronto
Amen Ahir, well said…. after being bilked out of my hard earned money for nothing but sales tactics… and a scam hidden in their fine print – I’ve finally learned to cut my losses with OTA and get out and never look back…. I can’t emphasize enough what a disappointment this ” training” was – -… never again!! I should have reviewed these online reviews before they slowly bled my wallet dry!
They seem like multi-level market scammers because they are! beware!
David in Sacramento
Do you know Rehman!? I just took the second day class, I don’t think I’m going back. I like him, but it became a sales pitch and made me sad.
I have a “if it sounds too good to be true ” attitude and thank the heavens I read these reviews, Christ. not one good one !
You are not getting any kind of day trading strategy. You can scale down the core strategy to a day trade time frame but you will not be profitable. In fact you probably won’t be profitable if you stick the larger scales. There are too many variables to place together within your personal time range that they say create winning trades. When those variables meet which are few and far between the chances that you will make enough money to sustain average living conditions are very low. Basically in order to have a successful strategy that makes money you first must have more wins than losses. At OTA they say you can have more losses than wins. Good luck keeping your head positive about your plan with 10 losses to 2 wins over the course of a month. What they do in the XLT is take a concept for the day an over emphasize it and say it’s the problem and everyone in the room is over complicating it. You will never see the full plan put together and used, because when you do put it together it really doesn’t work like they claim. You either don’t get filled, you get stopped out or you take a limited profit. More often than not you will lose, I did for years and so did a lot of people. OTA’s only solution is to dump more money into the Master’s program. Sorry but under preforming programs don’t deserve my money. When the market changes trend all those orders you’ve been putting on will stop out. Because the majority of traders want to go with trend, they don’t care about supply and demand. Instead we use those levels as precautions, places where there might be some resistance or support. I would never buy or sell at those levels because when they break I’m taking more positions and i’m counting on them to break and they do more than times than they reverse. Really OTA is teaching you to be the liquidity that I am absorbing. I realized it as a student for years, I grew tired of being the food for the big investors. So I moved on and started doing what they do. They look at chart patterns, volume and indicators. That demand that’s forming is called support for a breakout. All the information you need to know about them is on youtube. You won’t get anything better from the expensive school.
That’s the best description of OTA I’ve ever heard! It’s right on target. But I think it goes deeper than that. If you think about it how do they make enough money off clients to operate and pay salaries? I think they are trading their clients tuition on the higher time frame. Chances are the CEO probably operates a hedge fund or uses the services of one to rake in big money.
Well put.
My brother and I have both attended the 1/2 day seminar and the 3 day seminar…and 1 thing that has stuck in my head from the begining of each class was clearly told to everyone is ” THEY ARE PROMISING THAT YOU THAT ITS NOT A “GET RICH QUICK” CLASS, THAT REALISTICALLY YOU WILL LOSE SOME DEPENDING IF YOUR COACHABLE AND FOLLOWING THE RULES AND THAT IT IS NOT MEANT FOREVERYONE”
I’m very much interested in going however to I have doubts in my capabilities in truly being succeasful because I do not follow through with things if I know I can’t be number 1 .
But at least I can admit that….y’all seem to be blaming the school for your bad choices in investing. No one forced your hand…and you knew that trading has RISKs.
But what do I know… Im just a redneck who wants to learn something new.
Wendy, you didn’t say if it was helpful or not. I am thinking of taking the course, but I sure see a lot of negative comments. A couple I can see, but all but one are very negative. If you get this message, please respond.
Hi Dan, I just finished the 3 day class which was offered for free. I though it was very informative and the instructor Eric was very impressionable. I definitely learned many new things and would love to learn more however the price tag is my deterrent. I would definitely take the classes if they were $1K-$2k but they are much more. One of the red flag for me was how Eric made it seem easy to make $$$ but I know it is not as simple as he made it out to be. Hope this help.
I agree with Wendy. No body forced your hands. RISKs are norm of the day just like any other thing. Discipline is very important, so is accountability. I am a student at the Vintage Park location and enjoy every minute of it with the well versed instructors. I don’t plan to get rich overnight, I do plan to invest myself with knowledge that nobody can take it away.
I sometimes read reviews for companies out of curiosity. I alway’s find it amusing at how many people are willing to take the time to write bad reviews ands of few are good. I also know that many sites, I don’t know about this one, but yelp for example. Yelp and so many more are “pay to play”. The more you spend on advertising with them the more of your good reviews show. It as a consumer of advertising and former ad exec most of these sites could be likened to “fake news” unless you pay enough. I mentioned Yelp, its been a few years but after many phone calls and emails I was able to find the good reviews and was told how much it would cost to “move up” by advertising more. Same with Home Advisor/Angies List, same company now. You can only really make your own decision in a real face to face meeting and you have to not be a gullible idiot going in, all companies are trying to earn money. Do you really believe there is such thing as a “tuneup” on a furnace, there is nothing to tune. The latest I have heard in my field is commercials “calibrating thermostats”. I’ve never seen a calibration switch on any brand no matter the cost of a the thermostat. If your willing fail you will. All way’s be at least an educated sceptic. And why complain when you get information, good or bad for free that you chose to go get. No one in any of theses positive or negative comments knows the success rate of OTA and you never will. For now I’m learning something for free, even if I think the something is flawed it helps me separate the good from the bad as I move along or stay.
Don’t waste your time and money.
This is a pure trap where they will hammer you with calls and try whatever they can to bring you back and buy their courses with tens of the thousands of dollars that will never be retrieved back.
Frankly, if I had not attend the three training days and have the tuna sandwich, I’d still be believing I’d learn the secret of life and discover Ali Baba treasure so that paying them $55,000 would mean that I was fooling them.