Urgent Help!

I am not sure if I am posting this in the right place or what kind of users would be best to answer this question. If I am in the wrong topic please let me know and I will re-post. My close friend just put his life savings of $50,000 into a Gain Capital / Forex.com account. He has been relying on a "friend's" signals for the past 30 days during the practice/demo trial and got a 27% return on investment in 1 month. He is convinced the guy is a forex genius. I have tried to reason with him, but he keeps telling me to "just try it yourself with the practice money and you will be convinced also." He gets 1 signal emailed to him at exactly 9:53am for him to place at exactly 9:55am and 1 signal at exactly 6:52pm for him to place at exactly 6:55pm. The stop loss is $1,500 and the upside is $3000. He makes only 2 trades per day and 1 on Friday. Does anyone have anything I can say that will convince him to pull his money out and run for the hills? The guy is totalling lying to him saying that he has a "patent" on his mathematical algorithm (if you had a system that worked you would never patent it as it would make it public information). Plus the guy works as a security guard during the day...why would someone who has a successful algorithm be working 9-5 as a security guard..I just can't convince my friend that there is something wrong with this picture. I would hate to see him lose the $50,000. Its everything he has saved up in the last 5 years. Someone please give me some advice on how I can convince him.

Mike

there is absolutely nothing you can do. each individual trader that has tried forex or the stock market whether young or old has lost everything at least once, especially when first going live. It is just part of the learning experience. The problem with your friend it seems is he thinks he found a "holy grail" in this system that has been tested on a demo account for a short period of time and doesn't seem to have any intent to learn a method that works for him, not relying on somebody else. When it comes to such a large sum of money (which is probably what his friend makes in a year as a security guard) and that being his savings for the past 5 years, he is being careless, either he is desperate and needs money quick or wants to get rich over night. Even the money management is all wrong, he is assuming too much risk on each individual trade for just going live. Start small and go big as the method is proven as being successful, thats my philosophy. The way I see it you got only 2 things you can say to reason with your friend. 1)Ask him to check out the security guys performance using that algorithm or w/e on a LIVE account for at least one year, that way he will know the method works somewhat (demo and live are entirely different, even the data feed is different). or 2)at least ask him to start trading with smaller pip sizes...instead of 1500 maximum drawdown, make it 250 or 500 until he has at least lets say 50 trades completed to see the win/loss ratio and whether the method works on a live account. Thats about all you can do, best of luck to you and him and hope he doesnt lose it all =/

You're a good friend.

Your friend is blinded by greed, plain and simple. Being bombarded from the MSM on how America is supposedly imploding probably doesn't help, either. What ever the real reson, he's not acting rationally, as you have seen.

Treat this as an intervention, like hiding someone's car keys after a big party.

Copy & paste as many articles about the Madoff fiasco as you can find (or about the broker-pilot who ditched his plane in Florida) and drop all 5000 pages right in his lap! And tie him to the chair until he reads every one of them over with you.

Action speaks louder than words.

Bloody odd thread this.

Reads like a horse race betting scam.

Anyway if it is a true story then your best hope is that he gets 6 or 7 losing tips.

That will wake him up

A fool and his money are soon parted........but,how did the fool get his money in the first place?

add this to the message to your friend.

he shouldn't rely on anyone when it comes to trading. coz when it turns sour, he can't blame the other for the fault and demand his money back.

he should be responsible enough to make a decision on his trade by himself instead of waiting for tips...

also, he should invest time in studying...

if he doesn't listen, just wait for him to lose the money and say "I told you so..."

Good Luck...