CHAPTER 14 (FALCON TRADING BANDITS)

FALCON TRADING GUIDANCE

Right here we go, i’ll try to be as objective and un-biased as possible with my experiences within falcons cult.

I joined falcon after reaching out to a few of the key members who were largely active on instagram at the time, all of which said it was the best decision they’d made.

A lot were in very similar circumstances to me, and had left IP because it didn’t suit their personalities / styles, whatever you want to call it.

I liked the idea of what they were portraying, a simplistic approach to trading, no indicators, just pure price action and trendlines.

This was ideal to me as i’d just come from trying to force myself on complex analysis and complex entry styles.

The main premise of falcons teachings is to do with trend trading. This removes a lot of opportunities immediately to trade ranging markets, where typically markets tend to spend more time, instead of trending. Removing trading range-bound markets removes a great deal of opportunity, and from my experience, when you do actually try to apply trending strategies to range bound markets, you get hosed, so even if some are attempting to force these patternistic entries, they’ll have a hard time doing so, because the market is in a consolidation, lower activity phase.

Below is an example of their core teachings, simply put you are learning to recognise patterns and the behaviour of the price action. Simple enough, enter in a corrective pullback pattern, and ride out the huge gain in the impulse stage. Easy as that.

Like many others, I loved the idea of making these spectacular gains, because everyone loves a carrot dangling in front of them right?

This was great marketing from a business perspective because A) everyone loves simple things to learn because it requires a lot less effort than something more technical, and B) everyone loves a big fucking winner don’t they.

The problem (or genius depending on who’s side your analysing this from) is that teaching pattern recognition is, in and of itself, a never ending task. You will never learn repeated patterns which fall across different asset classes, or instruments, because they all move and behave slightly differently.

Many older falcon students will remember when Mark was constantly looking to short USDCAD because it was within a “bearish structure”. The irony being USDCAD is one of the most heavily influenced currencies against oil, which is driven by multiple factors like geo-political tensions, global economy performance and obviously, oil supply / demand needs.

Below is a screenshot of the weekly chart of USDCAD. Mark banged on about how price had created the large impulses down (in red) and as price had been forming the ascending consolidation, it warranted maintaining a short bias. The green arrows denote a multitude of missed opportunities to go long, going with the trend rather than trying to fight it going short at any trendline touch…

Additionally seeing as this was the weekly timeframe, you were taught that this was the higher time frame bias, and hence you should be maintaining a short bias, not a long bias because somehow it was against the higher timeframe sentiment…

One additional point to add is that as this pattern is forming, you can imagine how many countless trades were taken attempting to “catch” the impulse. Below is another example of how if you were maintaining the short bias you would most likely end up with a lot of wasted losses, and avoiding taking trades with the trend…

As the pattern evolves, you can see trendlines must move and “evolve”

Point A will most likely have yielded a lot of losses on the intradays.

A second missed opportunity to go long at the trendline is aparent, as well as a missed entry short at the top where there was zero trendlines or support / resistance.

And finally people attempting to short the break of the trendline would have been whipped in and out of their trades by the more educated members of the market.

The above signifies why their teaching is flawed, how many losses can one new trader take before they puke? And on top of that they were teaching their students to trade 1% risk instead of a more educated attempt at mentoring them, and could’ve said reduce your risk to 0.2% until you have proven to yourself you can make a return.

My next point to make is the actual execution of the analysis itself. Trading pure price action is what big traders use as their first point of call, however I challenge anybody to find a hedge fund / prop firm / big bank who are trading on pure price action and trendlines without any other indicators or even basic support and resistance.

Support and resistance are not guaranteed areas of turnaround, but they are areas where a lot of traders will be looking. Trendlines are objective and can be drawn a million ways, thus voiding that area of mass psychology.

Additionally Falcon said that you should draw your trendlines to the highs and lows! How mental is that… a lot of brokers have varying data for high and low prices, and can sometimes differ by upto 10 pips! So not only can trendlines be drawn a million ways, they can also be drawn another million ways different depending on your broker!

Big traders know who will be looking to aggressively short ‘breakouts’ from trendlines, and they know where you will be doing it. That’s why statistically trendline breakouts often fail 80% of the time.

Falcon haven’t found the secret sauce to trading, they’ve found the secret sauce to taking money from mugs basically, and I was one of them.

They dangle the big % return carrot in front of your eyes, showing they ‘made 30% this month’ without a shred of proof, and whenever any members have asked, they’ve either been blocked, removed from slack groups or simply just shunned, much like a cult whenever a doubter speaks up against their leader.

No big trader will take 3 months of sitting on their arse losing 1% here and 1% there trying to get one of these big 30% trades because even though mathematically the risk reward makes sense, they wont be because they’ve got money to make and prop firms would be sacking you if you were making fuck all for 3 months because your trendline channel is about to breakout.

Frequent smaller wins, in my opinion, are the better alternative.

Now, on to the grand master himself, Mark Hutchinson.

This is the main reason I lost faith in the teachings.

For those who were part of IP in the early days, you will know that Mark was infact a student, and actually tried peddling the affiliate links as much as he could (see below photo from July 2016).

Upon looking at Falcons main page on their website, it states that ‘between 18 and 22 I worked in Canary Wharf as an investment broker to gain insight and exposure to the financial markets as well as talented proprietary traders, however I didn’t enjoy the lack of freedom that came with working in a high paying normal job’ (another carrot dangling for the students, who doesn’t want to be their own boss? May aswell listen to a fucking Herbalife presentation).

‘I have over 8 years experience within the FX market, with the past 4 having been consistently profitable with an average uncompounded return of +117.5% YoY’ that’s bollocks first of all, why would you be learning strategies from IP 2 years ago if you were that profitable.

Additionally, working in Canary Wharf is bollocks, because I remember Mark saying in a webinar he worked in an architects (this is backed up by the below news article stating he’d just quit his job in architectural construction)

For those who really do their digging aswell, you’ll find that co-incidentally his mum owns an architectural business which seems suspicious.

Last piece of this elaborate money making puzzle is regarding the sudden influx of old IP trading mentors and marketers, all of which have had a sudden change of heart and are not peddling the great money making strategies they once were at IP, they’re peddling the falcon abstract method.

The falcon abstract method by the way, is the ability to identify an area there may be some form of turnaround in price, but not to identify any live or in real time, but are able to show a pinpoint entry with almost no draw down, a tiny stop loss and now a huge profit target. Another big fucking orange carrot.

I didn’t intend this to be a bashing for IP, however I feel they are intentionally and consciously lying to their students for no other gain than to ensure they continue paying their membership.

Like I said earlier, they did teach me one thing, impulse and corrections, and for that I am thankful, but for everything else I think they are intentionally misleading you.

I reached out to falcon and gave them the opportunity to settle my concerns, in which case i’d have quite happily backed off, but below is a screenshot of the conversation between myself and falcon.

My email is below:

” Hi Ben,
Thanks for getting back to me, please see the following. 
From May 24th until October 24th i subscribed to the falcon membership because i believed in what was being advertised to myself online. This idea that Mark was an expert in his field and that he had experience to warrant being qualified to teach his craft he specialises in.
After 6 months i felt that £97 a month wasn’t providing nearly enough content to warrant the expense, and i’d began to stop believing Mark actually knew what he was talking about.
If proof of any trades being placed was provided as evidence to substantiate the claims he’d made 30%+ in certain months then i’d have been more trusting. Unfortunately i chose not to ask when in reality i should have.
The community in which I was initially sold on due to its close knit nature, then steadily began to ignore and alienate me, furthering my suspicions that a lot of key members are actually being paid to promote the course. Unfortunately I have been unable to prove this….
I believe i am a victim of fraud / a scam and the following points highlight my reasons.
Complaint 1
At no point were any trades taken by Mark actually proved. I.e. a broker statement, live video of metatrader, even a ticket number showing an actual live trade.
Complaint 2
The website is false and can be easily disproved, Mark hasn’t been trading for 8 years, or 9+ as stated on facebook, let alone consistently with his strategy. I have both evidence of previous facebook posts from 2016 showing him trading under infinite prosperity as well as an interview of him in a local newspaper stating he was leaving his job in architectural construction to dedicate time to Silk Bros.
Complaint 3
The website and in the content Mark professes to how he worked in Canary Wharf, this again is false and can be easily disproved with evidence from online.
Complaint 4
Mark has used this community of followers to sell them his goal setting book 3 times, timed well with his purchase of a yacht and 2016 mclaren 540c, again i have my suspicions these are both rented and not even owned.
As you can tell from my previous thoughts, i believe that i have been scammed out of my money by using lies and deceit to coax others and myself into a false sense of security.
If you can help dispell these concerns then i am happy to leave this where it is and not pursue it further, alternatively a refund of £582.00 is acceptable as this covers the 6 months payments made.
I look forward to your response”

Falcon’s response below:

” Hi Tim,
As you have raised quite a few different points, I have tried to structure my reply as best as possible.
Firstly, you mention that you began to feel alienated and attributed this towards members being paid to promote the course. Falcon does not have any sort of affiliate scheme, nor any type of program which awards students a monetary value. This is the first instance we have heard where a student has found the community to be unhelpful or unwilling to help.
Complaint One – Lack of Proof
You raised the point that you have not seen a broker statement or “proof” of a trade Mark has taken. We would ask that at what benefit would that be to yourself and your trading to see what is the equivalent of someone’s personal statement? The aim of the weekly recurring content isn’t for it to be treated as signals or for the members to copy Marks analysis. The content is designed to teach you how to trade independently.
On your social media you have several posts which document the great returns you had experienced whilst trading the Falcon style, whilst also claiming that Falcon was “the last piece of the puzzle” for you. So this doesn’t seem to be in line with your allegation.
We would also ask you to refer to our Terms of Service which you agreed to upon signing up, where it states the following in section three:
“The material on this site and the Services provided by us are for general information and educational purposes only and should not be relied upon or used as the sole basis for making decisions without consulting primary, more accurate, more complete or more timely sources of information.”
Source:https://falconfx.co.uk/home/terms-of-service/
Complaint Two – The Website is False
Mark’s background is no secret at all. It is something which he has been very transparent about, including that he had previously been a member of another trading community years back.
It would seem that you may have tried to piece together a jigsaw puzzle with a lot of missing pieces. It is also worth noting that it may not be worth your time to cite a newspaper as “evidence”, given that they are notorious for bending the truth and misinforming the public on occasion in order to sell copies.
Moreover, we would welcome you to watch an upcoming YouTube video on the Falcon FX YouTube channel, where Mark will discuss his background in further detail and provide some clarity on this which may clear any confusion you have on this topic.
Complaint Three – Working in Canary Wharf
We appreciate that you do not believe Mark worked in Canary Wharf, however we do not intend to provide you Mark’s personal documentation to prove his previous employment history.
Complaint Four – Using The Community as Leverage for Mark’s Book
There has only ever been a handful of books for sale at any one time. The book is promoted via Mark’s Instagram, as well as to the mailing list on Mark’s personal website.
Naturally, members of the Falcon community are intrigued to pick up a copy for themselves, however the allegation that the community is being leveraged to sell copies is quite simply outrageous given that Falcon has never marketed the book to Falcon students.
In summary, it would appear that at some point in your time with Falcon there has been an event which has caused you to have a change of heart despite the initial success of using our methods and enjoying the membership content.
Although we are quite happy to listen to your complaints, they seem to have very little substance towards your claims and only raise the points and provide “evidence” of what is already known and publicly available, and does not discredit Mark or Falcon FX in any way at all.
We believe that you have taken value from our teachings and are able to implement the methods in your trading moving forwards. Having said that, we do not intend to take your complaints any further.

I’m only doing this because genuine, hard working aspiring traders are being misguided by this con artist, who manipulates, misleads and point blank lies to his students, for his own personal gain.

I gave falcon the opportunity to put these concerns to rest, and I quite happily would have dropped the witch hunt if they had atleast been honest and said they were just embelishing things to sell memberships, but they havent, they’d continued the lie.

Mugs