[Tekunda]

Two days ago I came across a thread where member Trueville claimed that he had the 98th customer signed up for the signal service he is offering for $550 per month. Now do the math: This is $55.000,00 per month of secure income.
I was blown away by these figures and visited Trueville's webiste.
(Now please do understand that my intention is NOT to bash Trueville, nor am I envious of his success)
But what I found amazed me even more:
With all due respect to Trueville, but I found a cheaply made website, a ten year old could do better, some shabby account statements of the last 3 months, nobody can verify, and that was it. Apparently this is all what is needed to attract a hundred paying clients.
I honestly thought I am dreaming until I realized that it is the truth: There must be an incredible huge number of totally dumb people out there who are ready at any second to throw their money away. We are talking here $550 per month plus the risk of a total loss and a totally unprofessional website seems not to be the least hinderance to accumulate clients.
It is so cynical that I really have a hard time believing what is going on. On one site you have a signal provider which rakes in $55.000,00 a month and does not even bother to take a meager $5000 and have someone design a professional looking web page and on the other hand you have tons of traders who are so naive they will believe anything, (probably even when written on toilet paper).
I would really like to get some feedback, since I admit I am still a bit shaken by what I saw and by what that means for the trading community.
Please allow me to copy Bobnat's response here to my post at the other thread, since his reponse carries some weight:

Tekunda,

I understand your amazement for I'm equally amazed. Yet, it's more than likely that Truville is telling the truth.

I did some research a while ago and found that from 1997-2000, the stock brokerage firms in the US reported 26 million new accounts were opened, with an average of $1,500 per account. This was during the stock day-trading craze in the US. Those figures work out to $39 BILLION dollars that hit the market from average folks that we see here on these boards. Where did that money go to? Well, I'm sure the brokers took a nice big chunk of it and the rest went to the professionals who left the citizens holding the bag when the dot com went bust.

Now, given that the Forex market is being relentlessly adverstised around the world now, and given the ease and availability for people to access the internet and the brokers, I believe the numbers we will see in the next few years will dwarf those above. As we can see from the composition of these boards, the Forex craze is global in nature, not confined to one country as the stock craze of the 90's. Instead of billions, I expect the number to reach a trillion or more when all is said and done.

Of all these people trying to cash in on what is being touted as easy money, how many of them do you think will be willing to pay $100 - $500 a month for the chance to make millions? I think the number is so high that it is mind-numbing. But look at these boards. How many folks here are looking for easy money? Most of them. And many of them will be willing to try a signal provider, whether they admit to it or not. As someone once pointed out, the folks who got rich during the great Gold Rush were the ones selling the picks and shovels.

Nat