Recently an article popped up on our Mentor Program graduate forum by Scott Pape who writes for the Herald Sun in Melbourne and undoubtedly it was syndicated nationally. Traditionally, I tend to let these sort of things slide simply because of the standing of the Herald Sun somewhere between a Harvey Norman catalogue, a chip wrapper and a self help manual for bogans. The Wall Street Journal it is not.
Unfortunately the article trots out tired old chestnuts about CFDs and introduces us to a supposedly successful financial planner called John who managed to lose 500k trading CFDs. It would seem from reading the article that John is under qualified to run a Mr Whippy van let alone provide financial advice for unsuspecting strangers.
The full article by Scott Pape can be read here
An earlier article I wrote can be found here.
I had some amount of respect for Scott Pape until I read his article. The last line sealed it for me…”Luckily John could afford to lose $500,000. He’s a successful financial advisor.”
I would guess that he is successful at fleecing people of their money in exchange for poor run-of-the-mill financial advice.
Very scary for the people who place their faith in financial advisors.
The issue at hand I think is that instruments neither make nor break the trader. Traders do this to themselves without any help at all from anyone or anything else. The problem is that there is an unsophisticated and myopic financial media that lacks the insight required to see this. As such it is much easier to blame someone else.