Trade Smart University Review
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Honesty
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Quality
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Cost
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Support
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Verified Trades
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User Experience
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Summary
Trade Smart University is a trading education company offering the very basics. Little value to anyone other than the extreme newbie trader. Teaching old and tired technical analysis concepts. Nice people running the organization. Very friendly and they want to be helpful. But missing a track record and the owners of the company refuse to publish a track record. No trading histories of the owners give pause and worry. Proceed with caution.
Thanks for reading today’s review of Trade Smart University
What is Trade Smart University? The company is a trading educational company that specializes in teaching technical analysis for stocks, futures, currencies and options. There are several membership
options available. A $39 per month “Silver” plan that includes a library of training videos, on demand study courses, a sentiment survey, access to the community, and market research tools. Next, there is a $89 per month “Gold” plan that includes everything in the Silver plan, plus weekly trade ideas and the opportunity to have your trades analyzed by a trading expert. Next, there is a $119 per month “Platinum” plan that includes all of the prior, plus “exclusive master classes” and something called the Weekly Power Trader Live.
The website appears to be managed by two individuals named Josh Hesse and Jeremy Whaley. An exhaustive Google search did not reveal any negative information for either of these individuals. The Trade Smart University website appears to have come online in 2009. Considering that this educational business has been in business since 2009, and has been able to avoid any negative online chatter is a good sign. Regardless of how well a trading educational company services customers, they usually will gather a few scars and bruises from online review forums. Nothing much to report on the company or the individuals.
Initial Findings of Trade Smart University
After signing up for a trial account, I reviewed several of the videos and educational materials offered. The materials presented are very basic technical analysis. Nothing extraordinary. I would have preferred to see some statistical testing attached to some of the trading concepts, but this can be expected as the materials are geared towards a newbie audience. To gain a better feel for some of the trading materials, the style of teaching and educational offerings, you can find plenty of material on their YouTube page.
The individuals that run this organization are based out of Nashville, Tennessee. And like most people from the southern part of the United States, they are very friendly and folksy. I have hundreds of “kin folk” throughout the south, and hospitality and friendliness are something that is quite common. The individuals running this organization are quite friendly.
Performance review and performance claims
You will not find any information regarding the individual trading histories of either of the company founders. I reached out via email and asked for more information regarding their qualifications or performance histories, but none could be provided. They prefer to simply be labeled as educational in nature and wish to not have the product based upon performance metrics. Of course, this is the type of stuff that drives me crazy. Nothing more irritating that when average folk will put together trading educational products meant to teach how to trade, but they themselves have no verifiable history of ever trading profitably themselves.
In lieu of a trading performance history, they appear to rely upon clever, colorful, and downright friendly marketing. They have this “we are all family” attitude, where everyone is nice and friendly and simply because we are nice and friendly, then hopefully this correlates into trading success for students. Unfortunately, I have not personally found this to be the case. In my many reviews, the majority of my positive reviews are written about traders that can be downright nasty and socially awkward individuals. I have found that the most successful traders that offer an educational product do not have the time to produce fancy marketing videos with background music and sappy emotional undertones. The guys at Trade Smart University love sappy videos and overly friendly messages. Am I being too critical? Perhaps.
In my own experience, the markets make quick work of those that bring emotions into the equation. This is not to say that since TradeSmartU is a warm love fest, then it must be a haven for suckers and losers. But the point that I am making is that trading is a very brutal sport, where you are attempting to out whit and cleverly pick the pocket of your trading adversary. If I am looking to learn how to take the resources from my adversary, then I want to follow in the footsteps of those that are currently doing it. I want proven killers. These guys are not killers, and they are definitely not proven.
Since they have no verifiable track record of any success whatsoever or are simply unwilling or unable to prove any prior trading success, then one has to assume that a positive trading record has never existed. This might sound like a harsh and simple conclusion, but when it comes to trading educators, even very nice trading educators…one should always use an abundance of caution.
Simple Technical Analysis
Trade Smart University is what I would consider to be simplified technical analysis. The ideas that are presented within TradeSmartU are indeed simple and easy to digest. And so the central question is whether simple technical analysis, that can be obtained for free from many sources, is it of much value? My own personal opinion is that technical analysis is mainly mumbo jumbo that does not stand the rigors of statistical testing. One of the most depressing and sad books that I have ever read is a book by Professor David Aronson titled, Evidence-Based Technical Analysis: Applying the Scientific Method and Statistical Inference to Trading Signals.
Over the years, since the 1990’s I have purchased hundreds of books on technical analysis. David Aronson’s book was the last book on technical analysis that I have purchased. Its a big fat whopper of a book. From page one, David systematically takes the reader on a journey that begins first into the human mind. How as humans, through evolution and natural selection, we have evolved to look for patterns in everything around us. It is part of our survival mechanism. This is part of our subconscious programming, and in nature, it has given us a distinct advantage over other living creatures. However, the human mind when combined with modern computer visualization tools can very easily be tricked. In short, computers allow us to present large quantities of data to a mind that is unconsciously predisposed to finding patterns in everything from mouse droppings to cloud formations. Its no coincidence that the era of financial technical analysis took a fertile root with the advent of the personal computer.
Aronson takes many of the technical analysis concepts that we have accepted as scripture, and then he systematically destroys it through science and testing. Everything that I thought was valid regarding technical analysis, it turned out was just my little brain subjectively interpreting squiggly lines on a screen. If you need further evidence, then you should generate a series of random numbers using excel. Apply a stochastic or MACD indicator to the random data…like some sort of sorcerers magic, the patterns will start magically appearing!
Enough ranting about technical analysis. But the key point that I am trying to make is that before you invest your time and resources into a trading education, then make damn sure that the person teaching the concepts are actually able to apply these concepts in a winning manner. The only thing that really matters is a real track record.
Wrapping Things Up
I hate to be disagreeable with agreeable people. Being skeptical is certainly much more difficult that accepting the status quo. With the guys at Trade Smart University, my heart wants to agree with them. They are so darn nice. But my head say’s that unless they can prove some sort of prior trading success, then how are they any different than the rest of the trading scammers that pollute the internet?
The guys at TradeSmartU claim in several of their videos that many of their students are earning $5k to $10k per month at trading. But where is the proof? Why not trade themselves and simply post the results? This would put the skeptics to bed.
And my final question would be, why would anyone invest in their unproven investment concepts when many trading educators are now accepting the inevitable and are now reporting actual trading results? Jason at B12Trader.com reports his results daily, so does Jason at OilTradingGroup. More are joining the trend by just being open and honest about trading results, creating an environment where the truth can flourish. Where people can actually learn something of value, as opposed to learning something of little value than having to unlearn it. Nothing worse than unlearning something. Sort of like eating bad sushi, you eat it then you have to deal with flushing it out of your system.
Well, that’s it for today. Hopefully, the guys at Trade Smart University read this and take the final step…find someone that can actually trade. Plug this person into their website, and then folks can at least get a clearer picture of value.
Thanks for reading and don’t forget to leave your comments below. Even the haters, trolls and shills are welcome to post their comments.
One final note, I have to give these guys some credit for not putting up a big fake spreadsheet of supposed trading results. It’s tempting for sure. These guys won’t do it. That say’s a lot about character. Hopefully, they take the final move towards accountability and transparency.
I have subscribed to some of their services for a year and enjoyed them. Not a get rich sort of plan but honest education. I’m new so simple has been good and I do enjoy what I have seen. Definitely not scammers at least. Focus is on swing trading with pretty modest goals. In short, I do not regret the money I have spent with them but I’ve kept it pretty low so far. I’m still paper trading.
I took their courses a couple of years ago but did not have the time to pursue trading. Since then I have been exposed to a few other “plans” and also have gotten back to TSU. In my opinion TSU is head and shoulders above everything I have heard lately. The are professional, informative and knowledgeable. They make the other ones I’ve seen look like complete scams.
They seem to be a low-price competitor, with a simple offering. True, the market is shifting towards greater transparency on trading performance, but that’s a newer trend, and these guys look like they’re selling basic fundamentals at a budget price.
I bought TradeSmart’s educational package back in 2010 for about $1,000. All in all pretty good educational stuff to teach people the very basics about reading charts, technical analysis, Dow theory and th basics of trading Options. I actually learned a lot being a newbie. It was a good starting point for me and when you’re new you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. I remember asking what I thought were pertinent, relevant questions in their chatroom to Jeremey Whaley and getting vague, terse answers in response. Whaley in the live educational series always came off to me as arrogant with a superiority complex. I had a problem with that. Newsome was much more personable, but it was evident Whaley was the brain behind the operation as far as charisma & ability to control a room. They also only talked about stocks they had a longstanding history & familiarity of talking about…like Bidu. It was never new stocks. They never wanted to go there because it would have exposed them. That was red flag #1.
Red flag #2. Newsome and listening to him talk on the educational series and in Power Trader live free promo, I thought he was just a clown. Not really able to articulate anything sensible on a particular topic. Personable guy always talking about his family and the great trips his and Whaley’s families went on (or were planning to go on). I bet at $1,000 per pop per student plus the extra services they were hyping.
So was $1,000 for a basic education from these clowns worth it? No not really. But it did start my foray into the world of trading that I love that continues today. I chalk it up a a life’s learning experience and I did learn a lot. In all fairness they never promised anything and always preached you make your own success. Like most, they’re nothing more than great, great, marketing and salesmanship people. And by presenting a dream that can be achievable through hard work and dedication is both very appealing and compelling. Sell the dream baby and they’re good at it.
Another thing, you should do a review on RealLifeTrading.com, Jerremy Newsom used to be with TSU, he was one of the student but got hired by Whaley and Jerremy started to run POWER TRADER LIVE! I mean a newbie trader/student is all of sudden teaching other newbie/student to trade???? It was very appalling, I think that’s what I did it for me to quit.
Now he is running Real Life Trading.com blog and pretty much mimicking all the schemes he learned from TSU.
tradesmartU.com and reallifetrading.com, these guys put 1000s of hours to put together their material. Think about it, if they are making so much money in trading, why waste time with that??
RLT Newsome is so cheezy, ive been following him just to see what he does, and his videos are just comical, I mean u can tel a lot by just looking at Newsom’s profile picture.
I think I can probably give you the most accurate experience with TradeSmartU.
I was with them since they first started, and they were called “Financial Puzzle” at that point, the business was pretty much two men operation, Jeremy Whaley being the main guy to teach and Josh Hasse was just admin type of guy -I dont even think he qualified to even teach at that point, Jeremy started having Josh teach once in a while, but he just didn’t have the knowledge and I didn’t even care to listen to Josh.
Anyway, “Financial Puzzle” started to grow as they were implementing marketing tactics to grab new students with their free LIVE teachings. They changed their name to TradeSmartUniversity and created more fancy website to accommodate more growth.
One thing I noticed was Jeremy kept saying that anyone can do this and anyone can make money trading part time. Obviously trading can’t be a brutal vocation and only specific person with fortitude can able to sucesfully trade on a consistent basis. But just like any marketer, they always pump “anyone”. He made it seem like as long as you can draw few trend lines, you can be sucessful, most newbies would think that that’s all you need.
Well, their basic technical teaching is solid, but again its a foundation of technical analysis teaching, it has nothing to do with how to profit from the market using the technical anaysis they teach you.
Well, I was in their POWER TRADER LIVE session where they go through 10 stocks every week and give you trade setups with stops. I literally put those trades into the test, and most times 5-8 setups will be a failure. somtimes 3-5 stocks will be winner as the setups get lucky with market direction, but if you kept following the setups they give you every week, you will be losing money consistently. Also the setups Jeremy was giving you, he himself wasn’t even trading it or it seemed as though he really didn’t care about certain entries. I mean, if you are putting your money into a trade, I feel like there should be deeper though and strategy behind it, but he just be like, ok well below this # go short, above this # go long because the trend line. I am like “thats it? ” no profound analysis, just cuz its above or below the trend line?? Another thing I would notice is that they would not revisit their setups the week after see if it worked out or not. They just give you new fresh setups every week. So Jeremy never talks about which stocks played our which stocks didn’t. Just every week, its new setups.
I was in POWER TRADER LIVE probably for about a year, and I put all of their trade setups into my paper trading account. Every single one of them pretty much every week and I monitored all of the setups every week. I WAS VERY DISAPOINTED on the outcome. I consistently lost money on my trading account of their setups. This was the point after being with them over 2 years, I’ve realized THESE GUYS CAN:T MAKE MONEY IN THE MARKET. They are good at teaching the basic foundation of technical analysis and knowledge regarding stocks and options, but THEY CANT MAKE MONEY ACTUALLY TRADING.
Back in late 2010, Jeremy was calling for massive crash worse then 2008, he was calling SPY below 60 level. I remember because he was very emotional about it. He kept saying he is not trying to put fear into us but trying to help us. But it never happened, same thing in around 2011 market correction, he started calling SPY below 60 level again, just being very emotional about it saying their might be global market meltdown. He was wrong AGAIN.
Well, after many years after, I’ve look Jeremy Whaley and see what he has to say about 2016 as it seemed like every “experts” been calling crash all year long, well sure enough, he called for Dow to 12500, I have attached screen shot of his youtube video in March 1, 2016, and here is the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9wQ60uCu7Q&t=850s you can listen to him yourself.
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All in all, TSU Jeremy or Josh can’t trade, and I think they haven’t traded in a long time probably after losing all their money trying. I think thats why they started the business to gain back their loss from trading.
I’ve learn that real traders, people who make money in trading, they are low key because they don’t want to share their secret. Market always fools the majority so more people know about their strategy, more likely it won;t play out, so why share the secret right?
If you want to learn basics/foundation of technical analysis, I think I would recommend TSU, but if u wanna learn how to trade and how to profit? They dunno how cuz they dun trade.
Good day @RealNewman
I’m 4 years late but I’m hoping you somehow see this and reply
Have you found a course/book yet that actually teaches you to be a profitable trader (as in you have applied the teachings and those specific teachings have allowed you to profit)?
I’ve been a member of the site for some 2-3 years and for a proof of concept, you should go to the Alphonso Esposito, who is an instructor and coach on that website. He is a day trader, he runs his separate trading room (Fierce Trading) and is an author of several courses in TradeSmart (Trading Plans, Risky Business, Tick By Tick) and also hosts a Trading Lab weekly.
He emphasizes the importance of risk management and claims that the only way to be profitable in this business is to decide in advance how much are you going to lose PRIOR you placing a trade. Also, he advocates of having detailed your trading business plan (and has a course where he explains how to create one). What I found different from many other educators, Alphonso suggest to reverse the temptation to “analyze yourself into trade” by watching a chart and searching for the reasons to trade, instead, you should focus on the reasons not to trade, and only when you see a chart that has your “edge”, only then you could place a trade with predefined risk.
If you need more information, just go ahead, I will try to provide feedback.
It seems to me that the real smart traders only focus on dividend stocks in solid companies.
Thanks for getting to this one! I’ve been a member of TradesmartU for a few years. They have taught me a lot (albeit at a snail’s pace), but I too would like to see results. Particularly with their Power Trader Live program. The weekly PTL videos provide specific trade setups for a list of 10 stocks. The list is chosen each year and remains the same throughout the year. This is the one area I would like to see their performance on, but never have. Thanks again!
Man, You must be grading on a curve. I guess compared to rooms like Profit-Forex Signals they are 2 stars. Man the bar in this industry is low.
This reminds me of the joke where a kid is arrested and his attorney goes to the teacher to get a “Great” character testimonial. And this is a horrible school where all the kids are failing and criminals. And the teacher is well he did not pee on me today so yes he is an “A” student.
The reason more rooms are not upfront and honest, is they could not trade profitable if there life depended on it. This is an industry of 99% swindlers preying on the naive. I would love someone to prove me wrong.
You are correct! Hey, at least they are not making massive promises to make you millionaire in only 48 hours.
Yes it’s all 99.9 % scams and hype….there is a kid on Twitter his name is Austn Page that followed me on Twitter. I decided to direct message him on Sunday. He said “I trade high volume stocks and ETFs like $NUGT and $VRX on Speedtrader” and get this he said he started out with $2k and got it up to $198k in 14 months as a newbie.
I then asked him do you have financial records to back that claim up? And his response “Yeah you don’t believe me”? I responded I believe in proof…..after that it was crickets. I unfollowed him later in the day. If he’s making that type of money why would he need to charge people money and train the? LOL that makes no sense to me.
I think most people just have know idea how bad and corrupt this industry is. They cannot even imagine it is as bad as it is. They see someone posting results and think they are real. WRONG!! Believe me from personal experience even NT results can be faked. They see great results posted on Myfxbooks or even Collective 2 and think that must be a real trader. WRONG!! They see someone trading a lenient sim engine that gives positive slippage and they think that must be a real trader. WRONG!!
I mentioned several times Emmett needs to publish an article in the WSJ exposing this entire swindle of an industry. But now thing it is to big for an article. An entire book needs to be written showing the entire scam from brokers splitting their commissions with the con artist to NT and their scam educators. This entire day trading industry is a well oiled machine for one purpose and one purpose only. To Swindle people out of their money. It needs to be exposed. I help you get started Emmett with a title:
Day Trading the Biggest Swindle Ever and the Regulators are Asleep at the Switch.
A start for these regulators would be to require a honest disclaimer that states unless the trading room operator trades a live account and shows his brokerage statements as verification of the trades, no results can be posted and this site is solely for entertainment purposes only. In no way are the complete false made up results being posted by TR operators hypothetical results. On the contrary they are real results if you completely fake your results.
Well said. I wonder if this online trading education/room industry is as big as online sports betting/poker/gambling or has already surpassed it in the amount that people have lost in a chunk of their savings. It’s kind of sad that trading rooms and sites in the US, no matter a 99% losing proposition for the client retailer, can be one of the few lucrative low overhead independent or family small “business opportunities” left in the modern new economy.
I’m inclined to think that this group is just a cheaper form of useless scammy trading education. They don’t ask as much in the way of fees, but can’t prove they trade and have probably stopped trying to trade live since they started. One of the biggest hurdles and problems with trading is time it takes to learn to be profitable where most never reach it and run out of funds long before. I would say this group quickly latched on to teaching about trading as a business like so many others out there on NT ecocesspool. I would not rate them any better than our ol pal, clotheline pinched nose dawcter Baaryy Burns or even Ross and co of WT.
Agree. But its really hard for me to get nasty with really nice people. If they could find a decent trader with proven results, then they have something. Right now, its just nice people. Am I getting soft? Lol.
You’ve got a good point. The old southern hospitality and friendliness of the southern states is getting more rare to see today. A time when you could walk the neighborhood all the way to main street and leave your doors unlocked. If one overpaid for some services you still felt fine about it and felt like you made some friends. A far cry from pushy sales calls on the phone.