Over the past couple of years I have had several sales letters from Michael promoting his beginners course called “Making Money From Financial Speculation”.

I took the plunge recently and have been reading the manual and watching the DVD included.

The course name sounds similar to Vince Stanzione’s “Making Money From Financial Spread Trading” and is very similar.

However, rather than simply covering spread betting and fixed-odds trading, Michael also goes into the basics of trading with CFDs and trading the cash market.

The package is very well presented apart from a few typos here and there.

Also, there is a solid refund guarantee, something which is lacking in Vince’s home study course.

Unfortunately, most of what Michael has included in the course was useless to me as I have been studying trading for a couple of years.

Apart from the section on CFDs, the remainder of the course is pretty standard stuff on moving averages and trends.

Still, if you are new to trading, I have seen a lot worse.

And the price is not extortionate at just £53.95.

You can read more at:

http://www.BizOppsUK.com/michael_hein.php

Back in 2003 I was working in a deeply boring and poorly paid job. On a weekend I would get the Observer as I particularly liked the “Cash” section of the paper.

I suppose I liked reading about making money by traditional means i.e. savings and shares.

However, one weekend the Cash supplement featured a spread betting millionaire who they described as a “hi-tech messiah who wants to spread his betting secret”.

There, on pages 2 and 3, was a large feature about spread betting the financial markets. It centred on the achievements of Vince Stanzione who had “… made £2m from internet gambling on market price movements”.

Now, I left university in June 2000 so I completely missed the tech boom. This is probably a good thing. Back in those days I was so skint that I had to pray that my Switch card would let me buy £5 worth of booze on a Friday night!

Around the time of the dot com bubble I had read about a group of amateur investors making outstanding returns through spread betting on share prices.

This feature was great, it really got me excited about trading. Of course, looking back now I realise that it was pretty much an advertisement for Vince Stanzione’s trading days but it worked on me!

On Googling Vince’s name I quickly found his website and read with delight the great secrets I could learn about from Vince i.e. “make £400 a day, tax-free”.

After a little consideration, I faxed off an order form for £297 and eagerly awaited my home study course. A few days later I had the course and read through it all, watched the video and got very excited about my new little cash-cow.

I was really pleased with the course, I thought it was great.

So, I registered for an account with Finspreads and loaded up some money – I think it was £1,000 at first.

Then I got started with Finspreads’ 8 week training course. Trading with pennies I didn’t really make or lose any money but soon I decided that I wanted to trade Gold.

To cut a long story short I traded for around 6 months and lost around £2,000. I did everything wrong, everything that Vince said NOT to do, I did.

I overtraded, I day-traded, I always wanted to trade Gold. I made a complete mess of it.

The only time it was going well for me was when I went on holiday and had an open long position on the German DAX 30. Every day I was checking the paper in Gran Canaria and finding that the DAX had crept up slightly. It was great!

By around June 2004 I had had enough and closed all my positions and emptied my account. One particular time I got a margin call at work and was terrified because I couldn’t get access to a PC! That was the worst point and when I finally realised that I was under-capitalised which caused me to make silly mistakes.

Since then I have done absolutely nothing with Finspreads but my account remains open.

What I had decided is that I wouldn’t trade again until:

(a) I had cleared all of my debt and
(b) I had built up some money which I could afford to lose.

So, in the last 2 years or so I have been reading trading books, watching seminar videos and DVDs and learning as much as I can about financial trading.

I’ve seen loads of Vince’s seminars – the 2000 and 2002 events from Milton Keynes, the “Seven Keys Seminar” from 2004, the Ed Downs and Martin Pring one day session from 2004, the huge two-day “Masters” workshop. I’ll admit, I got hooked on the learning process.

So, I’ve decided to start trading again but this time in a very boring, business-like and professional way.

The idea is that I will update you on my progress via this blog, or maybe via a new one. That way you can add comments etc and see how much money I (hopefully) make.

I made a site about trading whilst I was learning the ropes. You can see it here:

http://www.FinancialSpreadTrading.co.uk

Also, I found out that Vince Stanzione is holding a one-day event later this month so I decided to write a little about his Seven Keys seminar from 2004. Read it here:

http://www.BizOppsUK.com/vince_stanzione.htm

And, of course, there is information about Vince’s “Making Money From Financial Spread Trading” course on the site:

http://www.BizOppsUK.com/vince_stanzione.php

Stay tuned for more information about Ben’s spread trading exploits!

Thanks,

Ben

Although I have been actively buying Business Opportunities for about 2 years now I had never managed to get on Streetwise Publication’s mailing list.

Reading a review of John Harrison’s book “The Money Making Magic of a Funfair Goldfish” I decided to contact the company and buy the book.

I knew that by buying a product from Streetwise, I would get onto the mailing list.

The book was very good, full of interesting stories mixed with money making tips and ideas. A full review will be available shortly.

After buying this in January, loads of offer for various Business Opportunities have come through the door. And, of course, all of the sales letters have gone into my swipe file. The sales letters are excellent, John Harrison knows how to write good copy.

I must admit that I haven’t purchased much from Streetwise – just 2 books and the following newsletters:

(a) The eBay Kommando newsletter, edited by Oliver Goehler and
(b) The Passive Income newsletter, edited by Iain Maitland

So far I have had several issues of each. The Passive Income Newsletter (PIN) is very good and the editor, Iain Maitland, does a great job in my opinion.

He recently contacted me to say:

“Hi Ben,

I just stumbled across the review you’ve done of PIN – thanks for kind words. It is a bona-fide product and we do put a lot into it.

We have opened up a little from passivre income as the feedback from readers suggests they want to know lots about all sorts of things and I have tried to meet that in the newsletter and weekly emails.

Cheers

Iain”

You can see the review of PIN at:

http://www.BizOppsUK.com/iain_maitland.php

I’ve put up a little information about Streetwise Publications on the site:

http://www.BizOppsUK.com/streetwise_publications.php

Darren Winters runs investment seminars through his company, the Winters Investment Network.

He has been giving these 3 day workshops for years but recently started a major advertising campaign in the National Press. You may have seen the adverts in the Sunday Mail or, quite surprisingly, Inside Soap magazine!

(Of course, I don’t buy this magazine – honestly – but my girlfriend reads it every week. I just have a glance through to look at the adverts)

With this new campaign, WIN Investing are touring the UK offering free, 3 hour trading workshops.

I attended the Manchester workshop and was looking forward to seeing Darren in full sales mode.

Unfortunately I was sad to see that he wasn’t there and had sent one of his employees to do the selling.

Expecting the big man himself, I was very disappointed and left halfway through.

A week later I received a call from a very nice lady from WIN Investing offering me a hefty discount on the seminar but I politely declined. She also offered me a home study course which I also declined.

Perhaps if Darren was still doing the seminars himself I would have accepted but they have employed a new investing guru to run the 3 day weekend courses.

If you are interested, there is more on the site:

http://www.BizOppsUK.com/darren_winters.php

Vince Stanzione runs similar courses and also offers a home study course on financial trading. He too is featured on the site:

http://www.BizOppsUK.com/vince_stanzione.php