The Your Way to Wealth Workshop

I was an attendee at Darren Winters' Investment workshop this weekend, where the man himself was presenting some of his key investment methods and philosophy.

The workshop was held in the main ballroom of the Radisson Blu hotel in Portman Square in London. This is a spacious venue, and the ballroom has six eye catching chandeliers that were subtly lit to provide an optimum view of the big screen on the raised platform at the rear. Once the over 200 attendees were comfortably seated, many of them sipping their complementary bottled water and contemplating their training manuals, pens and notepads, Darren took the stage to begin his presentation.

He had to confess that he would have preferrred Barbados as a venue, but thought we wouldn't get anything done. So he consoled us with the thought of a celebration in Barbados instead, once we'd achieved success with the methods he was about to teach us.

He began by talking about the origins of this course. It has been distilled using the most effective methods that he has learned in more than twenty years of studying investment techniques. He's attended numerous seminars and over thirty training courses, and has sought out the best traders in order to learn directly from them. People like Larry Williams and John Bollinger have taught him one to one. He apprenticed himself to a leading investor in order to maximize the learning experience. His apprenticeship was the most effective way to model and copy someone who had already achieved investment success, and that commitment is now reflected in Darren's own multi-million pound bank balance.

We then launch into what we will cover on day 1. This ranges from basic technical and fundamental analysis, understanding the big picture, how to choose quality companies, when to buy and sell, plus psychology, strategy and rules for success. This is pretty comprehensive, and the experience level of those present ranges from complete beginner to veteran investor.

Not wanting to presume anything, Darren begins with basic concepts around markets and techniques of analysis. This is presented simply and clearly, so avoiding the possibility of confusing anyone new to it with information overload. We then cover some basic economics, and where certain industries and sectors fit in to the economic cycle. We talk about the best fundamental criteria to use in choosing a quality company, which is followed by a neat method of identifying these companies that only requires a few minutes to set up.

To break things up and keep us focused we're invited to stand up and do a little stretching and breathing. This actually works, well certainly in my case anyway. It helped to keep me fresh and alert at hourly intervals throughout the weekend.

After which, the basics of charting and charting patterns is introduced. To assist our understanding Darren then offers us a free gift. He gives us all access to three candlestick training videos on his website that he uses in his own apprentice program. These explain how and why the patterns work, with some specific rules to maximize their reliability. As someone who has done some forex trading, I'm looking forward to viewing these videos.

This is an opportune moment for Darren to explain his apprentice program, which he believes is the most effective way to learn and practise his methods. It comes in three flavours - elite, fast track, and mentored, and the price is structured accordingly. The key content of the program consists of personal video analysis of your own trades, along with access to the same analysis of the 16 other apprentices in your intake. This is combined with tutorials, bonus beginners videos, recordings of Darren's own trading sessions, and a live trading day. It all seems pretty comprehensive, and he sweetens the deal by offering a substantial discount to those people willing to act as case studies for a book he's writing. The main aim of this training is to help you achieve consistency in your investing, and the apprentice program is certainly a persuasive argument to invest in the best way of learning from someone who has already done it. The first break sees a few people signing up (by the end of day 2 I recall hearing that 12 of the 17 available places had gone).

So by this point we've covered basics and the big picture. We then move on to what constitutes a good investment strategy, and focus on when to buy and when to sell. This assumes we have identified some good companies through our initial fundamental analysis, and we are now using technical analysis to determine exactly when to get in or out. The six steps he shows us can be applied to shares or any other investment instrument, and involves behaviour, trends and patterns among other things. There are specific instruction on what not to do as well. This topic take us through to lunch at around 1.45pm.

We return at 3pm. There have been lots of questions over the lunch break, so Darren takes some time to answer these, which leads to some interesting diversions about his personal experiences in the investment world. We concentrate a bit more on chart patterns, and he explains that he is showing us the best of these, selected after years of testing the multitude of patterns out there.

We come to the close of day 1 after a discussion of the psychological aspects of investment. These include the principles of good goal setting and the basis of beliefs about wealth, and how to effectively integrate these. Creativity is mentioned as a desirable attribute, and to this end throughout the day Darren has been giving us a few questions to ponder, just to shift our thinking. I'm still wondering how far a dog can run into the woods, I missed the answer to that one.

Day 1 ends at about 5.30pm. It's been stimulating to say the least.


We start day 2 where we left off, with a further talk on psychology and the importance of creating useful wealth beliefs. Believing it's possible to achieve your goals is a crucial step in manifesting them.

We then concentrate a little more on significant chart patterns and how they actually work. Then it's time to discuss indicators, which for those of you who don't know are tools to assist in decision making when you're entering a trade. As for chart patterns, there are many indicators in use, but only a few that are actually useful when applying a trading strategy. They are used to confirm certain patterns and price movements. We talk about these at some length, and once we're done we now have a full explanation of the six crucial steps of trading selection covered.

To back all of this up, Darren shows us some analysis of trades done by his apprentices, and where everything we've been taught fits in. This is followed by a number of specific strategies that can also be incorporated into the decision making process.

The day has flown by at this point, and we wind up with an Action Plan to get us started on the actual business of trading. Darren doesn't mislead us by saying applying all of his training will be easy, but assures us that if we're willing to put in some work our prospects of success are very good indeed. We now know more than 90% of the professionals doing this already.

It's been an interesting weekend. For me, the trade selection steps and the proper use of indicators alone has made it worth attending. All backed up with clear documentation for future reference. I leave with the intention of putting it all into practice as soon as possible. As a training course, highly recommended.

Fear And Greed - The Ongoing Battle For the Trader!

Let’s imagine a simply game, where participants are enticed to play it due to the potential rewards on offer. The players are not required to make anything useful, or provide any needed service, nevertheless a few of the participants, maybe less than 5 per cent of them consistently win at it reaping huge rewards.  Perhaps you are wandering how this could be; bearing in mind that in this hypothetical games no tangible products or services are being created. It occurs because the winners' profits are generated from the losers’ losses.  This type of game is known as a zero sum game, in which the winners, a small minority of the participants, enjoy huge profits from playing it, which incidentally equates to the losses of the other 95 percent of the participants. Put simply, Bob’s win is Jill’s loss.

Naturally, for this game to continue functioning it would need to draw in a constant stream of new participants, since many of the players would either give up, believing that they can’t make money out of playing it. Sadly, for a few they may even be expulsed by the game, playing it to the bitter end, kidding themselves that a big win was around the corner, but in realty finish up, penniless, hopeless and in the poor house.  

Now assuming the game has been deliberately designed to tap into the two most powerful human emotion; fear and greed. Then, new participants could be drawn into playing, enticed by the perception of huge wins.   So greed would ensure a steady stream of new suckers to the game.  Moreover, both emotions could be extremely useful in bamboozling players to make the wrong decisions, to hand over their hard earned money in the form of losses to the fortunate winners of the game. To spice things up a bit a few entertainers, such as clowns, magicians, charlatans and glamour beauties could be hired to further seduce the players, make them even more bewildered, but keep them eager and playing.

This game isn’t fiction, it actually exists and probably if it were masterminded by America’s best known gangster, Al Capone, he would have been arrested by the authorities and charged for running a racket.  But that is not going to happen because this game is played by those respectable, eloquent, suited and booted men and rubber stamped by our own political masters.

So the stock market, like in the game mentioned above, is driven by similar emotions, fear and greed. Emotional investing/trading is akin to holding a match to a stick of gelignite. The results can be equally damaging to you and your wealth. 

So those who invest using their logical analytical side of their brain, rather than their emotions tend to perform better than their rivals. These types of alpha investors are different to the rest, in a sense that they tend to have a well thought-out plan by their side, ready to implement should things go pare shaped.  By doing this, somehow they have managed to suppress the primitive side of their brain, which controls the emotion of fear.  

Somehow, and perhaps this is due to the forces of natural evolution, way back when homosapians lived in caves and carried clubs they had to react fast, for survival reasons, to the sounds of a roaring lion. So modern humans are hardwired to respond to negative event, which tend to spark off stronger emotional behavior and a cognitive response, than positive event. Perhaps this explains why sharp falls on the market are often steeper, rapid and more violent, than rises. Indeed, that shear blind panic, as people are desperate to avoid losses can be devastating, resulting in a stock market crash.  

Nevertheless, if investors over react to bad events and oversell the market due to their irrational fear this could also offer a buying opportunity for cool headed bargain hunters.  Again another strong emotion, greed would draw the bulls in.  

Keep an eye on the FTSE big losers of the day and track their share price the following day, notice how the big losers yesterday sometimes are the big winners the following day.

But over optimism can equally be detrimental to investors’ decision making, as can excessive pessimism.  Are we now witnessing over optimistic investment in parts of the technology sector today with some companies exhibiting colossal PE ratios with titanic market capitalizations.  Have you heard the expression a “suckers rally?”  Fair enough, keep dancing while the music plays, nobody likes a party-pooper but make sure you’re near the exit door when the bulls make a dash for it.

On the other hand, investors with well thought-out investment plans, which clearly outlines what they should do if the financial markets move against them. Who offset potential losses that they may occur from other investments in their portfolio, an investment strategy known as hedging; tend not to panic in a market crash because they have already factored in their tolerance to risk. Moreover, by not acting on their emotions they tend to make better investment decisions and outperform their competitors. They are able to see buying opportunities in an oversold market and profit from the fear of others. They are also able to avoid buying bubbles. Indeed, these alpha investors profit from the erratic mood swings of the market.   

So the cost of emotional investing to an investor is huge, moreover it fuels the profits of the others who act with their head rather than their emotions. By having a plan in place you won’t be like a startled, rabbit staring frozen at the headlights when the market moves against your investments.