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Toronto, Irvine,
Riyadh, Orlando, Dubai , and now Toronto –
pick your favorite training spot.
If you’ve got
two days and about $3,000, you can attend John O’Donnell’s Online
Trading Academy top level course, he’ll call you a member of the
academy, and you’ll join 78,000 other members, around the world.
Or, Mr. O’Donnell and his teachers will welcome you, for
free, at what his organization calls a half-day Power Trading Workshop.
Either way, Mr.O’Donnell takes training people to be online
traders very seriously.
John O'Donnell, co-founder of the
Online Trading Academy, opens his
first Canadian training facility in Toronto
A co-founder of the Online Trading Academy in California in
1997, he’s given the education process a great deal of thought, and
offered some advice, and a couple of good stories, to Online Trading.
We talked to him in Toronto where he was speaking to online
traders and meeting with officials from Questrade, the affiliated broker
for OTA’s first Canadian training facility. It opens this winter in the
North American building at 5650 Yonge Street, at Finch, in North York,
joining another dozen OTA locations throughout the USA, in London and in
Riyadh and Dubai.
He’s a showman, but when he described the OTA as “the leading
trading school in the world,” and was challenged on “leading” he pointed
out the number of locations, the number of classes, the number of
countries, the expertise levels of the teachers, and, very proudly, the
78,000 members. OTA, he adds, has the most of what he calls “learning
labs” and the most classrooms – two per lab – with, usually 20 computers
in each classroom.
And, he pointed out, at OTA the training takes place in a
live environment, using OTA’s real money. “We keep the trades small,” he
said, “but by using real money we put everyone in a better psychological
space. Trading small shares sizes help us manage the risk
He explains to students that “when you start trading for
yourself, this is your money we are talking about,” and goes on to tell
them, “online trading is not a game, it is a skill.”
“And the skill comes from immersion in the world of trading,
not from theory,” he continued.
Even with his travels around the world and his experiences
with so many students, he’s been, he says, “caught by surprise at the
pace of change in online trading. In the early days, we had a trading
arcade with 120 day traders working from our facilities. because we had
the high speed connections. Now the day traders are gone from OTA
because it is so easy to have high speed internet connections anywhere.”
Asked about security of online transactions, he said, “I
traded some foreign exchange from the hotel last night. No problems.”
Was he successful? “I paid for the hotel room,.” he said.
The Online Trading Academy students are split about 80
percent male and 20 percent female. Most are between 45 and 65 years
old. “They’ve accumulated a little bit of money,” Mr. O’Donnell says,
“and with their families growing up, they have some time.” |
John O'Donnell in front of Toronto's
Financial District towers.
About 80 percent already have an online trading account, and,
common to everyone, “They have a passion to be involved, to make their
own decisions. They are part of a megatrend,” he says, “where more and
more people want to be self-directed, to make their own decisions.”
He looks at online trading as a worldwide phenomenon he calls
Globalization 3.0. His expansion plans for OTA include having 100
centers in 100 markets around the world. “Money and charts are
international” Mr. O’Donnell says, adding that OTA courses are currently
taught in English, Arabic, Korean and Chinese.”
His students, or as he prefers, members, can have their
accounts with any online broker but, he points out, “Questrade, our
affiliated broker in Toronto, provides excellent service, good rates,
and offers tuition refunds against commissions.”
And, once you’ve spent your initial tuition, he points out,
you are welcome to retake the courses, free of charge, any time you
want, at any OTA facility in the world, to keep yourself up to speed.
This story was written for
The Star by Brian A. Kilgore.
www.BrianKilgore.com |
