Upon first glance, you might think that ClayTrader is the name of an industry magazine targeted at pottery class instructors. This type of clay, however, is a person – a stock market trader who teaches beginners how to trade stocks using technical analysis and charts. ClayTrader is a day trading education site, founded by a guy named Clay who doesn’t reveal his full name (oh how mysterious). Clay seems like a genuine, down to earth kind of guy, that is the polar opposite to typical traders on Wall Street. He got interested in the stock market while studying for his engineering degree and gained a strong following online, not through Twitter or Facebook but Investors hub, a well known stomping ground for penny stock pumpers. Once he built up a solid following the next logical step was to launch his own website purely to profit from his knowledge of financial markets.

Paid subscribers gain access to his video tutorials, podcasts and other resources all geared toward a general principle of trading without stress or emotion. ClayTrader.com boasts a pretty large community of like-minded traders, including chat rooms and forums. Clay sends subscribers a weekly newsletter, and holds free webinars – like “How to Kill Your Stress, Fear and Frustration as a Trader.” All these free webinars are used as a platform to up-sell people to various courses and memberships. Right now he has about 10 different courses, all targeted towards new traders, teaching a wide range of topics including Forex, options trading and penny stocks. His educational business is booming at the moment and his net worth is estimated to be $2 million. Why bother day trading stocks while you can make a fortune through selling expensive courses online.

Clay doesn’t make mention of any sort of credentials or education that qualifies him to be doling out day trading advice – but at least he is upfront and honest about that. He presents himself as a ‘normal’ type of guy who, after getting clobbered in the market during the dot.com bubble and claims to have developed a successful day trading system. His marketing strategy is quite clever, by portraying himself as just this normal, family guy, he appeals to a larger audience. This a strong contrast to the legendary marketing tactics of everyone’s favourite penny stock trader, Tim Sykes.

Clay doesn’t claim to be a successful trader and doesn’t provide any proof of his trading performance – or indicate whether or not he’s even trading these days. He interacts with users daily, but isn’t openly tracking his portfolio performance like some rival chat rooms sites do. He doesn’t do any live trading, which hurts his credibility. While his website can be a good learning resource for beginners, more experienced traders will learn very little from his service.

Products & Services

Let’s start with the free stuff. Without needing to pay anything, you get access to his Youtue video tutorials (focusing on the basics) that are featured on his blog. You get a list of resources that Clay recommends, like stock chart providers, the best stock brokers , stock scanners, books – the usual list of resources that every “guru” offers to their subscribers. Users can also buy individual, structured courses with a series of videos that train you a wide range of topics. These one-time purchases run between $59 and $397.

The Inner Circle

The standard subscription service is the “Inner Circle,” and it costs $99 for a full year. By joining the Inner Circle, traders get access to a live trading chat room, Clay’s personal scans and watch lists through the private newsletter, and networking via the premium message board forums. He doesn’t send out any live alerts to subscribers but does actively moderate the chat room.

ClayTrader University

Users with a fat wallet can also opt to sign up for ClayTrader University – the site’s most expensive and comprehensive option. For either six monthly payments of $377 or a one time payment of $1997, members get lifetime access to live chat-rooms and its weekly newsletter. University subscribers immediately get access to download all the training programs that Clay offers, which costs a staggering $2,600 if purchased individually. Lastly, those who shell out the cash for this option get to join Clay for live interactive webinars – which he describes as “learning sessions.”

Signing up for any of these packages is a big investment, so it’s important to know what you’re getting yourself into. ClayTrader is an attractive-looking educational resource, but it also has its drawbacks – especially compared to other guru’s who make their trading performance visible to their students.

Robotic Trading

Robotic trading is another premium course that will set you back $297. Robotic trading is all about learning how to use technical analysis and charts to eliminate your emotions, so you can trade like a robot. Maybe Clay is a robot, he’s just reading off power point slides with a monotone voice that makes it boring to follow, well I suppose he is talking about technical analysis which isn’t very sexy. Provides a solid basis for newbies but all the information could be found for free on the internet.

Mastering Level 2

A surprising amount of traders do not use level 2 to gain an advantage over their competition. Level 2 provides a great insight into a stock’s price action to help determine the best time to enter and exit a trade. Probably one of Clay’s better courses.

The Penny Stock Survival Guide

Even though Clay doesn’t even trade penny stocks, he decided to create this guide. One of his worst programs, very basic information provided as he has very little experience on this subject. If you really want to profit from penny stocks, it’s better to learn from experts such as Tim Sykes, Tim Grittani and Nate Michaud.

Options Trading Simplified & Trading Forex for Beginners

As the titles suggest both courses are marketed towards beginners. Once again very basic information provided, he has no business teaching others about the Forex or options trading.

Risk vs Reward Trading

Risk vs reward trading is mainly for those who have full-time day jobs and don’t have the time to follow the market. Risk management is a core concept thought in all of his courses but this product goes into more detail.

Shorting for Profit

Discover how to make money when the price of stocks go down. Shorting for profit covers five short selling strategies with each one given their own fancy name, e.g “Dream Crusher Short Strategy”. Short selling is a risky strategy that could result in you owing more money than you have in your brokerage account.

Trampoline Trading

Trampoline Trading is a more advanced program for those who have a solid understanding of technical analysis. It focuses purely on bounce plays. You will learn how to find these setups, what signals to look for and how to manage your risk.

Is ClayTrader a Scam?

I think it’s harsh to call ClayTrader a scam artist as he does offer some value to beginner traders, he teaches the foundations of stock trading nothing more. It’s clear his main focus is to make as much money as possible by selling overpriced educational material, so his family can live a better life. I think Clay should reduce prices and get rid of the crappy courses that teach Forex, penny stocks and options.

Clay Trader vs Timothy Sykes

While both traders have earned millions from selling online subscriptions their personalities differ significantly. Sykes is more brash and outspoken while Clay seems more humble and less attention seeking. Despite Tim Sykes douche-bag attitude, he isn’t afraid to publicly show his track record and openly shows his winning and losing trades. Sykes has banked nearly $4.7 million from short selling penny stocks while ClayTrader provides no track record or proof he’s a profitable trader. Sykes doesn’t even see him as competition and would never allow him to join Profitly as a guru unless he reveals his performance history.

@ForeignWolf @ClayTrader25 fake traders/poor newbies like Clay aren’t competition, they shouldnt be teaching, u’re welcome for reality check

— Timothy Sykes (@timothysykes) August 25, 2014

Benefits:

• Networking: By joining the Inner Circle, you suddenly join a community of like-minded day traders that have varying levels of experience – where you can trade knowledge and gain some insight. Apart from stock-specific chat rooms (like “Under $1” and “Over $1”), there is also a “Traders Lounge” where after-hours networking takes place. Clay actively participates in these chat rooms.
• The Fundamentals: ClayTrader.com is really tailored to beginner and intermediate traders. Clay helps users explore the basics in an easy-to-understand way. There are countless hours of videos that can help a total newbie take the first step. The blog section is also useful, if reading is your preferred way to learn.
• Clay: The guy behind the site is actually pretty accessible, and he’s a generally likeable guy. The way he explains things is very clear and easy to watch – and he presents a pretty clear vision.
• Transparency: ClayTrader is very clear about its offerings upfront, and the prices are front and center – there are no predatory selling happening here. You really know what you get as a buyer, and Clay doesn’t do any constant upselling of additional services or features.
• Discounts – Coupon codes are given to people who sign up for any of the courses, you save 10% on other products you purchase. It’s a pity no free trials are offered to entice new members to test out the service.

Drawbacks:

• No Performance History: Not only is there no performance history of the alerts ClayTrader sends out, he doesn’t show his subscribers his own personal performance. We are meant to believe that Clay – after taking a massive financial hit in the past – was able to bounce back and create his own winning, emotion-free trading strategy. He doesn’t, however, offer up any sort of proof – or show us real-time trading. Case studies or analyzing charts in hindsight offers little value to subscribers. It’s not actually clear if he’s even trading currently, or just making his money by operating the site.
• Price: While the Inner Circle subscription is reasonable at $99 per year, the other options seem pretty inflated. It appears as though Clay expects a lot from beginner day traders when it comes to their purse strings. What rookie trader has an extra $2000 lying around?
• Refund Policy – ClayTrader.com has a very strict refund policy and in most cases you won’t receive a refund if you’re unhappy with your purchase. The Inner Circle membership is set to auto-renew every year so members can easily forget to cancel and end up getting charged $99 to their credit card. Also to receive a refund on certain products, you will have to jump through hoops and show proof of your effort.
• Testimonials – The majority of testimonials are just screenshots of emails, anybody is able to send themselves an email from a fake account. It would be better if there were video testimonials or interviews from successful students who have benefited from his teachings.
• Negative reviews  – It’s normal for stock market educational sites to receive bad reviews and complaints but this review in particular on Reddit is epic. That poster on Reddit goes on a massive rant that is hilarious and tries to expose his service, claiming he is a rip off.

Ross Cameron

Warrior Trading is another one of those online day trading communities that sell trading courses mainly targeted toward beginners. Ross Cameron the red-haired, scruffy looking dude behind the company and employs other mentors to teach different strategies for trading small cap stocks. It originally started out just as a blog back in 2012 and over the last five years has gone to become one of the most well-known live day trading chat rooms on the web. Clearly he must be doing something right, but question remains, is his service popular because he provides the best stock market education or is it because he’s a clever marketer. Personally I think it could be a mix of both components but I am skeptical due to the abundance of fraudsters on the internet selling courses to schmucks and not showing verified profits or brokerage statements to back-up controversial claims.

Their mission is to create 50,000 full-time traders by 2020, this is a very ambitious statement but apparently they have 500,000 members so it’s not as crazy as it sounds. I think they’ll be doing well to help 5,000 people quit their jobs and trade the markets full-time from home. According to a survey from 100 randomly selected graduates from the Warrior Pro group, a staggering 82% who completed the class ended up becoming profitable traders. This could be true or they could have purposely cherry picked their top graduates as a 82% success rate sounds far fetched.

The Team

Ross is the main guy and founder, he follows 3 simple strategies – gap and go, reversal and momentum. These are easy to learn and spot but that doesn’t make them easy to make money with. He employs two main instructors as he can’t teach 5,000 students all at once. Mike Herman trades news driven momentum stocks above $20 using technical analysis and market sentiment to gain an edge. Jeff Foster is a swing trader with 9 years experience, Jeff likes to play high volume momentum stocks with solid chart setups and is constantly testing new strategies to stay ahead. From reading other reviews from past customers these two guys have been highlighted as the best instructors to follow.

Warrior Trading Chat Room Overview

They have three different pricing options starting at $149 per month, $297 per quarter and $897 annually, bonuses are offered for those crazy people who decide to join on an annual basis. If you’re thinking of signing up, I recommend going through all their free content on Youtube as well reading blog posts, you’ll need to pay to learn the more dense material. Also they offer a 7 day free trial and you can use the coupon code “300OFF” to save $300.

The chatroom is very active with an average of 1,000 people on a daily basis, it’s composed of people with varying degrees of experience, from novice to veteran traders. It’s useful for beginners to follow the live market commentary from Ross to grasp a better understanding of the basics. Every morning a watch list is posted at 9:00 am, then at 12pm he provides a mid-day recap followed by a short Q&A session so everyone is up to speed. Due to the amount of activity in the chat-room there are about a dozen moderators to help deal with the volume of questions. The most asked questions are always related to finding the best broker, FYI the top 3 penny stock brokers recommended are normally Trade Zero, SpeedTrader and Interactive Brokers.

The most important topics thought to new members are risk management, stock selection, chart patterns and Level 2. Risk management is the sole reason 90% of traders blow up their accounts, never place a trade unless the setup offers a favorable risk to reward ratio. Cameron reiterates a 2:1 profit loss ratio is key to success, in theory this sounds simple to adhere to but requires a lot of discipline. Once you understand risk management the next step is stock selection, it’s all about finding low float stocks between $1.50 to $10, moving 20-30% in a single day. Ross compiles a list of 3-5 volatile stocks that he expects will be hot in a certain day, he uses a scanner from trade-ideas.com to discover these setups. This scanner is super expensive and monthly plans cost $188 per month, very few members are starting off with small accounts so they won’t be able to afford this. The final piece of the jig saw is chart patterns, some of the breakout chart patterns they teach include bull flags, flat tops, flat bottoms, bear flags and ascending + descending wedges. In addition they also sell advanced online training classes to those more serious about investing in their education, Warrior Pro costs $4,299 and the exclusive Inner Circle fee is $9,997 per year.

Is Warrior Trading a Scam?

Calling Warrior Trading a scam is inaccurate but is a well-oiled marketing machine run by Ross whose main goal is make money. The whole concept of quitting your job and having the freedom to travel the world by trading on your laptop by a beach, is a major selling point in their sales pages. I can’t seem to escape his advertisements, Facebook ads promoting free e-books + pre-recorded webinars follow me around on every page I visit and for some strange reason his YouTube videos appear in my recommended video list quite frequently. He must spend a fortune on paid ads, web designers and copywriters to achieve so much coverage. Also I don’t really like the way he implements high-pressure sales tactics to persuade people to join his webinars that show how he made $100,000 in 45 days, they create a false sense of scarcity by claiming there’s only limited places left when in reality there’s unlimited spots available. It’s obviously a clever tactic used by other guru’s like Jason Bond and Investors Underground to increase revenue by motivating customers to take action instantly before the opportunity is removed, it’s not illegal but it’s kind of sketchy. Another thing I noticed is he has a good understanding of how to rank websites on Google and owns multiple one page websites purely created to outrank webpages who talk negatively about his brand.

Brokerage Statements

Despite all the controversial claims and click bait headlines, Ross has actually posted proof on his blog to verify all of his profits for 2016 and 2017. Even though he is fully transparent and publicly shows his trades, haters will always doubt his success and want more proof. Haters dislike the fact how much he makes selling high-priced products and by now Ross has a net worth close to $4 million from his business.

Negative Reviews

Due to his success Ross has had thousands of customers so it’s unlikely he’s able to please everyone, he can’t reply to every email as there’s only 24 hours in a day. Just because he receives a few complaints it does not make him a scam but you should definitely take heed of the criticisms of his service. Luckily there are websites such as Trust Pilot and Investimonials where past customers leave reviews, always be skeptical of overly positive ratings as it’s common for guru’s to encourage members to give them good ratings by giving away free bonuses and trials. Also rivals and haters like to leave bad ratings to unfairly damage his reputation purely out of jealousy.

Ross Cameron vs Tim Sykes

Both guys have made millions selling educational courses, they have proved they can be profitable traders so they decided to become online entrepreneurs to monetize their knowledge of trading. It’s a lot easier and significantly less risky to make millions selling subscriptions than it is trading penny stocks. Tim Sykes was original pioneer of selling educational material such as DVD’s and a newsletter for small cap stocks, his aggressive marketing and lavish lifestyle did not gone unnoticed, Bloomberg even labelled him a “millionaire douche bag” in an article that attracted even more customers to his business. On the other hand Ross is a chilled, laid-back person who doesn’t drive around in a Lamborghini for attention. He markets himself as an average Joe which appeals to a lot more people but clearly is an intelligent person so his results won’t be easily duplicated.

More than likely Timothy Sykes was a big inspiration for Cameron, he realized there are millions to be made as an entrepreneur and copied Sykes’ business model. If you look at both their websites, they are quite similar with banner ads of recent trading results, case studies of successful students and pop up ads asking your email address to continuously bombard you with emails. Once you leave their websites their re-marketing adverts follow you around until you give up and finally join. They both also cherry pick successful students and heavily promote them, it would make no sense to profile members losing money but these testimonials are supposed to inspire new students but ultimately lead to new subscribers joining with unrealistic expectations. Most sign up thinking they can just copy their alerts and bank easy profits not realizing that penny stocks are volatile so you won’t receive the same entry and exit points. The problem is the majority of subscribers who join don’t posses the required traits to succeed and aren’t willing to put in the effort to become a consistently profitable trader, if you fail it’s entirely your own fault!