The Trading Fraternity

Thanks for reading today’s review of The Trading Fraternity

What is The Trading Fraternity? The Trading Fraternity is a stocks and options day trading school. The person that owns the company will not reveal his real name, he prefers to only be known as ‘Josh Answers’. The Trading Fraternity occupies the following web addresses: Site A, Site B.

The Trading Fraternity is selling an online educational course, live day trading room, and day trading mentorship program that will supposedly help you turn “only a few hundred dollars into millions of dollars.” But in order to learn the secrets of The Trading Fraternity, you must first purchase the Citizen Package, which has a beginning price of $29.99 per month. Mentorship programs range in the upwards of thousands of dollars per individual.

Normally, when I see a $29.99 introductory day-trading product, I just move onto the next review. Whom would actually be stupid enough to spend $29.99 for a stock trading newsletter, a day trading room, and a few videos claiming to teach the secrets of becoming an online, stock trading millionaire? Well, you would be surprised at how many people have been suckered into the web of this very clever online con artist.

Before we go any further, let us go over the marketing efforts of The Trading Fraternity. It is quite interesting and highly amusing.

The online presence of The Trading Fraternity

A review of Archive.org reveals that The Trading Fraternity first appeared on the day trading educational scene sometime during the summer of 2014. Since 2014, the Trading Fraternity has had an exploding social media presence which includes the following social media profiles:

• You Tube: Which includes dozens of videos of supposedly ‘real trades’ earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in ‘real’ profits. Amazingly, the YouTube channel has over 8,800 subscribers and a incredible 1,589,000+ views of the videos. The videos are usually a combination of either a Mercedes, Ferrari, Bentley, Maserati or a Rolls Royce. The driver is usually driving around San Diego, Ca and spends his time talking about the millions of dollars that he has earned day trading.
• Facebook: Included are pictures of multiple mansions around San Diego, Ca and surrounding areas. In multiple posts, ‘Josh Answers’ claims to own these mansions, all through his amazing ability to day trade stocks and options.
• Twitter: An incredible 27.5k followers and 10.5k tweets. Each tweet is basically a personal promotion of either a luxury car, a video of stacks of $100 bills, exotic houses, and thousands of supposedly ‘real’ trades that earned millions of dollars.
• Instagram: Nearly 400 posts claiming that ‘Josh Answers’ is a self-made millionaire with multiple million dollar properties, and the owner of a Mercedes, Ferrari, Bentley, Maserati, and a Rolls Royce. Pics of exotic locations, people dancing and partying, the typical trader pornography that we see from so many, so called day trading educators.

The following are a few of the images that are expertly marketed and produced. However, please notice that ‘Josh Answers’ never shows his face. Nor will you find any identifying registration information for any of the exotic automobiles. He was smart to remove this, TradingSchools.org recently busted Mook Trader for placing a fake license plate on a $125k Porsche and proclaiming he paid for the car with day trading profits. It turned out that the license plate was a fake plate.

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In addition to the ‘trader porn’ visual images, ‘Josh Answers’ is also an excellent video marketer. Example below:

In my opinion, what is so amazing is that ‘Josh Answers’ has been so darn clever as removing any and all identifying information that reveals his personal identity. We know that he is galavanting around San Diego, making videos with fancy rental cars. But tracking down his exact physical address has been a real challenge.

Hopefully, someone within the trading community or social media can unwrap the mystery of this creative con man.

How this con artist is targeting the victim

TradingSchools.org began receiving a steady request for reviews beginning in early 2016. Over the course of 2016, TradingSchools.org was able to interview several individuals that had terrible experiences with ‘Josh Answers’ and The Trading Fraternity. Their stories are remarkably similar.

In speaking with victims, it appears that each person was drawn into the scam by searching You Tube for videos regarding day trading or money making opportunities. Each victim’s age varied from 17 to 26. And each had absolutely no prior experience at investing, day trading stocks, or trading options. The social media profiles, the videos of expensive sports cars and stacks of hundred dollar bills, the pictures of expensive food, exotic locations, screen shots of ‘real trading accounts’ all acted as visual pornography to entice the potential victim closer to the con man.

The initial purchase price of $29.99 serves only as bait. It’s a cheap price for a day trading room. And it acts as an entry to obtain a small initial fee and provide an audience for which the con artist can now ‘groom’ the victim.

Once inside of the live day trading room, each victim describes an environment where everyone seemed to be making massive amounts of easy money via day trading stocks. ‘Josh Answers’ serves as the ultimate performer, proclaiming million dollar profits and how he started with only a few hundred dollars and turned it into millions of dollars in profits. Everyone seems to be making money, and each victim described how they were warmly welcomed by the group. The sense of community gave a feeling of safety, security, and friendship. This served as a platform in which ‘Josh Answers’ proceeds to ‘groom’ the target. Similar to the way a pervert priest will slowly build trust with an innocent and naive child. Eventually, he slips his filthy finger into the buttock of the victim. Not surprisingly, most victims of this type of abuse willingly submit themselves to the abuse. Only to later realize that they were slowly manipulated into willful participation.

‘Josh Answers’ lures the victim closer. Providing a tempting and tantalizing narrative, that if they learn his day trading secrets, they will be “in the good blessings of Jesus” and all of their financial troubles will be a thing of the past. That they might not be worthy of his secrets. Not worthy of their impending wealth. The narrative is the classic primrose path scenario where the victim follows the con into the trap. They entrap themselves.

The final destination of the con is the so-called mentorship program. And it’s an “exclusive fraternity” of supposed Ferarri drivers and compulsive eaters of fresh lobster. TradingSchools.org used multiple aliasas, and it was not much of a surprise that each alias was accepted into the private mentoring program with ‘Josh Answers’. But here is where the fun part begins, it seems that the price of the private mentoring program is predicated upon the available credit limit that is remaining on the victims’ credit card. In other words, ‘Josh Answers’ ultimate goal is to max out the credit card of the victim. Constantly feeding the victim a steady stream of hope, in exchange ‘Josh Answers’ goal is to draw the victim further and further along the primrose path, until the inevitable. When the credit card runs out of available purchasing power, and then the victim is dropped like an aging porn star.

What about trading capital? This is of secondary concern for ‘Josh Answers’. He soothingly tells his victims that once they immolate and immerse themselves in his ‘trading secrets’ that profits will surely flow to them like the blessing’s of Jesus to his beloved flock. But first, they must use a simulator and prove to themselves that they have properly learned the ‘trading secrets’.

The end game

It appears that the average failure time is 3-4 months. Each victim, after becoming a mentoring student, and spending thousands of dollars in ‘education’ will typically go broke at around 3-4 months. The entire time they attempted to learn and replicate the trading performance of ‘Josh Answers’. But never experiencing his supposed million dollar trading performance. Many became suspicious as to whether ‘Josh Answers’ was ever actually trading. And whether the individuals inside of the trading room, all proclaiming the trading greatness of ‘Josh Answers’ where even real people. Or just paid shills to create the appearance of daily trading success.

Wrapping things up

‘Josh Answers’ is a clever con artist. An A+, top level marketer. He appears to have taken Cameron Fous, Bulls On Wall Street, Anton Kreil, and Timothy Sykes to the next level. Gonzo trader-porn visual marketing on steroids. Heck, Tim Sykes has only one orange Lamborghini, Cameron Fous has only one Maserati, Kunal Desai has only one Porsche, Anton Kreil has only one Ferrari. But the truly amazing ‘Josh Answers’ has a Mercedes, Ferrari, Bentley, Maserati, Rolls Royce, and several mansions! Therefore, his ‘day trading secrets’ must be better than all of them combined.

What will these day trading con artists think of next? A personal rocket ship, a fleet of private jets, a harem of bikini models, a navy of yachts? When does it end? How crazy does this business need to become before people begin to wake up and smell the obvious fraud?

Thanks for reading. And don’t forget to leave a comment below. And try and not be too hard on the newbie victims that got suckered into the scam. I am pretty sure that everyone that reads this blog, at one time or another, has also been suckered by a so-called day trading educator.