Everyone wants to be the king when it comes to day trading. Some people build their fortunes over years of hard work and dedication, while success comes seemingly overnight for others. Some people just appear on a popular reality show and instantly they are thrust into stardom. For Anton Kreil, this is exactly what happened in 2009.
He started equity trading before he gained popularity on reality television. As a 16-year-old hot shot, he started his first investing account and began earning money in the market. Ten years later Kreil became the vice president of European Equities while working at JP Morgan. In 2007, he left and began traveling; after a while, Kreil received an offer to appear on “Million Dollar Traders.” The short mini-series featured Kreil along with a group of amateur investors worked toward making money in the stock market.
From reality television to the digital teaching forum
After the show lights dimmed and the makeup ran dry Kreil began receiving letters from people asking him to share his secrets with other amateur investors. Kreil took all the requests and decided to found his own school for stock market trading. Opening in 2010, Kreil began taking in students and showing them the tools he used while working for Goldman Sachs. The Institute of Trading and Portfolio Management specialize in giving the average joe a shot at becoming a trader like Kreil.
If you want Kreil’s net worth without spending an arm and a leg, for the lesson plan you can take one of the free webinars that the company offers. You will not get all the trade secrets, but you could be able to snag a few gems from his playbook.
At this point you may be thinking, “Well there has to be something wrong with this guy, right?” Well, at Critical Financial we want to fully vet every “self-made” millionaire before we hand you over to them.
Kreil’s armor holds tough, though there are a few cracks.
While his intentions are mostly good there are a few cracks in the Kreil legacy. We should start with the Institute of Trading and Portfolio Management; a few students of the training program have been less than satisfied with the services the school offers. Some users of the mentoring program have complained that they did not get the value for the price tag it flaunts – see the graphic below from the Institute.
Speaking of the price tag, to enroll in the investment training class you would have to pay about $3,000. If you were to ask a trading professional, they would most likely tell you to take that money and reinvest in various stocks. Since no one at Critical Financial has $3,000 to just play around with we are going to take the pros words into consideration. Many reviews on the program state you could find the information Kreil “teaches” you online for free.
Spending this much on a service that you may or may not be successful in could be very dangerous. The company does not guarantee that you will be successful at the end of the program either. This is one of the biggest downfalls that the school has to face. The market, even if in a great climate, is extremely unpredictable. With the amount that the average person has to spend on the course itself, you could probably buy a $30 book on the basics of trading and invest the rest.
Another red flag that pops up frequently is his actual track record. There really is not a lot of information of Kreil’s net worth actually being earned from trading. A multitude of the articles you find online will describe him as a master trader, however, digging deeper you really cannot find a lot of stories of him making huge power moves within the companies that he worked for.
From this vantage point, you can only speculate.
Could there be a chance that Kreil’s net worth, lavish trips and shiny helicopters are all a façade to draw in people like an angler fish does its prey? Or, does Kreil actually have something of substance that will help people become successful investors? The explanations are endless in the end you have to thoroughly vet anyone you choose to invest your money in.
His plan may help you become the next multi-millionaire in your family, or he could give you tips that are readily available to the public. For other people, buying the used trading manual on Amazon is a much better option. Just make sure you are making money doing either.
If you want another good read, consider checking out dinksfinance story on Spyro Contogouris, a hedge fund hitman.
Id like to mention a few points on this article based on information that’s publicly available and from my own short experience as a new trader.
1 – Anton Kreil has provably worked in a professional capacity for some of the top financial institutions in the world. Most selling trading advice haven’t
2 – Anton didnt ‘make it over night’ he started trading early and developed skill and ability (like every trader must do). The fact that a hedge fund manager such as Lex Van Dam got him in on a project is another sign the Anton has some clout.
3 – Teaching people how to apply themselves to the market doesn’t mean that those people will actually apply themselves properly as they have been taught. I would say that anyone who starts trading thinking of a ‘Ferrari’ is somewhat immature who probably hasn’t got the basic mentality to put in the grind that’s required.
4 – It doesn’t matter what you teach or how well you do it there are people who are inept and do not apply themselves and ultimately blame the teacher. So the fact that there’s disgruntled students means nothing.
5 – So in short anyone who assumes they can pay some money for a course and expects to start making money without massive amounts of mental and psychological challenge is a fool and would have lost their money anyway. From the material ive seen Anton doesn’t claim anything else
I haven’t yet taken this course but its on my shortlist as a new trader. Ive completed a short course from SMB Capital and its opened my eyes on the massive scale of the task of being a successful trader, it truly is for elite performers. Anton doesn’t need the likes of me to speak up but already I can see why 80%+ fail in this game and wanted to put some perspective on this article.
Did you and up trading? Is this a scam? Is Tim Sykes a scam? It’s hard to believe anyone nowadays I want to hear what happened to you because you seem level headed.
‘John Smith’, that you ask, ‘Is it a scam’, after seeming to have read what a David Arnott wrote above indicates that you are either very young or (pardon me) very dumb. Did you read what he wrote? Read it again and again until it sinks in. You will NOT ever earn money trading. Don’t get involved. How do I know? You lack the ability to do research so as to be able to learn what’s what. To bring up the name of a Tim Sykes in the same line as Anton Kreil is embarrassing to read. You know a word, ‘Scam’, and you want people tell you ‘YES’ (whatever) is a scam and then you can more on feeling good that you were not ripped by a scammer. Those scammers that are chasing you. You are not smart enough so as to think for yourself. You do not seem to have any idea how it is that either of these people make money and WHY they do what they do. You will fail in either of these settings. Do NOT spend any money on any of this. You will be sorry and you will tell people it’s all a scam because you failed.
I took the ITPM 1 month crash course option out of the 3 that you can pick from, which costs 1499 USD. What i got was a lesson on how to setup a “Proper” approach to trading my own money in the stock market just like how successful traders do at investment banks and hedge funds, btw of which no “$30 book on the basics of trading…” will ever teach you because there is no basic approach to it.
Trading is not for everybody, stick to your day job and save like hell. reduce your liabilities. As for Anton Kreil, I don’t know him personally, all though i did have a chance to meet him last year in NYC for a trading seminar i signed up for but was not able to go due to personal reason. Missed opportunity. His youtube videos are very insightful. Definitely recommend them and also follow his twitter. IMO that guy knows his shit.
I enjoy Anton’s information – seems like a smart, insightful, decent, normal bloke from my experience, who has a relaxed but decisive presentation style. I’ve met him briefly and attended his (almost) free seminar. Whilst there is some slight spin on the facts in order to make a point, in reality I found his presentation honest, there were no catch’s or attempts to coerce people, and the information he displayed in his slides openly convinced me that it would NOT be for me through the honestly of the results data he showed.
There will always be those seeking crutches and get rich quick mantras who throw their money at providers and then complain when the inevitable happens, but I’d rate Anton as very credible and creditable in comparison to just about anyone else selling a trading development program.
Well said. I especially agree with the part where you say, ‘….and the information he displayed in his slides openly convinced me that it would NOT be for me through the honestly of the results data he showed’.
Like you, when I saw the level of detail and the learning required I told myself that I can image doing this yet to be fully honest with myself, I said, this is not me. Anton is looking for one person out of many who step up, who can learn it all and apply it all, consistently. He has probably found and developed only a handful of guys (not sure if there’s a female in there) who can pull it off as he needs it done. And i’m pretty sure it’s taken many many years to build this team. Once he has everything calibrated just right, only then is he able to exercise that mastery of his methodology. I respect Anton Kreil. I do not know him, never met him.
I attendes Anton’s seminar in Singapore and most of the stuffs he talked about there is now available on youtube (pleaee check it out).
Some comments:
– Investment Bank do not disclose their traders big winning trades to public, rather they show the end results year in year out. So verification is NOT easy, but you just have to check the profile of the professional traders who joined his team and guests in his mentoring programme. No other gurus online comes close to his connections in the professional trading world.
The price tag is pricey for regular joes like us but I think it would be worth it. Planning to sign up soon.
“Since no one at Critical Financial has $3,000 to just play around with”……….so then why am I taking any financial advice from you?
We can see your point, Ryan, we do not want to give inaccurate information to our readers. This was for people that may or may not be on the fence about joining his program. That being said, if you have $3,000 to spend on Kreil’s seminar we would love your feedback. Look forward to hearing from you again, Ryan.
-Critical Financial
Ryan: For me, this page is a place to stop and chat about a very specific subject. No person here needs to take advice from another. Not having ‘money to play with’ should not shut out anyone from having curiousity, and that includes the host. I do not ‘play with money’ nor do I have money to play with. I make smart choices, I use money as a tool, AND I went through the entire program without spending more than some time and effort. That’s my story. Like Anton teaches, one need not have or show any emothion connected to money. Right now I have somewhere between $450K to $550K to put to work and I am seeking the right set-up. I’m not sure how much cash I have because it doesn’t really matter. It is enough to build something. Build ‘what’ I do not know yet. Anton is a guy I’d like to know and work with. I am not there yet. I am not smart enough. I may not be willing to work as hard as is required to get in. Maybe over the next six months I’ll be ready. Uncertain times, indeed.
after much research over the past few years I have decided that I will be going through antons course as soon as I have paid everything off and I have the $3,000. plus im assuming $30-$50k cash to start trading properly. its no use spending $3,000 for a course without the capital to get properly involved immediately right?
We look forward to it hopefully, you are able to provide us with some hard facts. We appreciate your feedback.
-Critical Financial
and yes, ill be reporting back either way.
Is tim sykes legit?
Ryan
Can you please provide and update if you have taken the course and how your experience was.
Thanks
anybody who is already trading with Anton for few months or yers?
My only concern is that these courses are about making money, if you paid for anything these days you want to investigate and confirm that the product is the correct one, therefore I would expect some trusted feedback, reviews from his current and past students, and maybe some success stories to support the course, if you were going to pay £9k to a university you would like to see the past pass grades, to know you are going to be taught well especially when Anton freely admits that there are a lot of charlatans out there. What you do with all the new skills / information once you’ve got it is down to the individual.
Mike, from memory (don’t quote me – not exact figures) Anton’s presentation included a slide that said about 40% of institute members (not everyone who does the course would choose to join) are making money, 20% breakeven or a bit better, and 40% not making money (though limiting their losses was the messaging). Now, to me that is A. Impressive since generally only 10% of retail traders would be expected to make money, and B. Honest to those with the sense to engage their brain…in my case I thought “well that means the median person is not doing much better than breakeven, and since I do not have the time to commit, who am I to say I could do better than the median person who might well be investing a lot of his time in this”. I might back myself intellectually to beat the median, but without the time to dedicate…hence not worth my while. I found that ‘honesty’ refreshing. There was absolutely no hard sell – very little sell at all in fact.
I’m happy to reply to your Tim Sykes question. I wasted $6600 US on Sykes. By his own admission, Sykes has a big ego, (true) is a lousy trader (true) claims to be a good teacher (false) and additionally swears like a trooper. I mean really foul language. So do several people in his chat room. He claims to have thousands of “students”, which could be true, and IMO that’s where he makes most of his money. However, only about three or four have reached millionaire status out of the thousands of members. So that would be a dismally small proportion. If you consider how long he has been trading, the past 17 years or so works out to him making less than $200k every year. I believe the majority of his income comes from his students for the vastly overpriced “course”. Many of the photos on his advertising are fake, like the pile of $1,000,000 in cash which you can buy off the web for $450…seriously! A quote from his second wealthiest trader…”These poor people have no idea how badly the odds are stacked against them”. I’ll leave it at that.
if you didn’t have the money to “play” around with Kreil’s seminar, than why write this article ?
You are not entitled to an opinion if your experience on the subject is zero.
They already answered this question.
I have accidentally attended one of his seminars in London (Westminister uni.) a few years ago. Not sure what he is preaching or leading now but he sounded like a decent/honest semi-retired finance person. There was no easy trick or hints in his presentation, I think it’s mostly about macro-economics and investments on specific ideas, rather than taking gambling approach. Most of his advice and comments were quite common sense though in terms of saving and avoiding liabilities. My suprise is that even in this age, many people have so lack of common sense in terms of general finance, they simply think he is awesome or magician. I believe his reputation is not his fault, but we are really living in an age where people have almost zero sense about basic economics, and probably his school is filling that niche…
He is very crude and crass time-time on social media though which is a shame but again this is not a suprize behaviour anyone from that industry basically.
As someone put it simple enough;
Work hard. Eat right. Exercise. Don’t drink too much. And only buy what you can afford. It’s not rocket science.
LOL
I kind of like him. Very clever guy i share a lot of the same points of view. Especially the part of being cynical and aggressive if you want to make it in the market. He tells you the truth, like how education is a scam if you want to be financially free. You can literally be the 1 out 10000 that becomes analyst at a prestigious firm while making less than a McDonalds employee. And on top of that having student loans it will take 15+ years to be wealthy going that route.
In the beginning of his project institute of trading he would often contract his students to trade for him basically. Or set up a contract with external hedge funds and then get a commission of what the student made. (something like that). And if thats still the case then its the best of his interest to teach his students well. Although if its a 3000 dollars course followed by “good luck and good bye” then its really not something i would recommend getting. And he would agree with me if he was an outsider.