ClayTrader - Quality Education at a Value Price
Full disclosure - I'm a ClayTrader University (CTU) member. I joined CTU in January 2015 and it was the best investment I could have made in my trading education. My only regret is I didn't find Clay sooner. If I had, I would have saved myself a lot of money. The $1,997 I invested in ClayTrader University was nothing compared to the contribution I had previously made to the markets by making typical newbie mistakes like buying at the top, selling at the bottom, averaging down and not honoring stop losses.
When it comes to trading education, there are many firms charging 2-3x the cost of CTU that deliver far less. Although $2K is a lot of money, it's actually a great value if you consider all that you get when you invest in ClayTrader University: over 100 hours of video content, access to all future videos, lifetime membership to Clay's Inner Circle (private trading group and chat room), live members only webinars, weekly newsletter and networking opportunities. And, there's a 100% risk free, 30-day money back guarantee.
Don't have the full $1,997 to pay upfront? No problem. Clay offers a payment plan option of $377 per month. Still too much? Purchase Clay's trading courses a la carte and pay $99 per year for the Inner Circle. That's what I did initially.
When I first found ClayTrader.com I was skeptical. I was losing money trading and knew I had to do something to stop the bleeding. This dilemma forced me to choose between using the nearly $2K for education or to further fund my trading account to support my losses. I didn't know anything about Clay except that he posted a lot of YouTube videos talking about charts and something called technical analysis. So, I compromised and purchased two ClayTrader courses.
Approximately 30 minutes into the first course I decided I would invest the full amount into ClayTrader University. I remember it well because it was a Sunday and the following day the market was closed for Martin Luther King Day. I waited until Tuesday before sending Clay an email explaining I had purchased two courses over the weekend, decided I wanted to join CTU and asking if he would credit me the cost of the courses toward the purchase price of the University program. Clay quickly responded with a definitive "No".
What?! Here I was ready to give this guy $2K and he wouldn't credit me a few hundred dollars for courses I had just bought two days before?! Clay offered me a simple explanation - giving me a full credit wouldn't be fair to the CTU members who took the leap of faith and blindly invested in their education with Clay. I was sold. That brief interaction told me everything I needed to know about Clay - he was honest and had integrity.
Through my membership in CTU I have come to know Clay on a personal level and am honored to call him a friend. However, he doesn't let friendship get in the way of doing his job as a mentor. One of Clay's favorite anecdotes, which he often recounts, is of his high school football coach telling the players that when he stops yelling at them it's a bad sign because it means he's given up on them. Clay applies this principle to the way he approaches trader education and doesn't hesitate to dish out the tough love when his students make careless mistakes or don't honor trade plans.
For example, I once let a direction option play get away from me. I was negligent and didn't allow the trade to stop me out as I should have. Instead of just closing out the trade I reached out to Clay and asked if he could suggest a way to fix my losing trade. His response was direct and to the point, "Hmm, fix a losing trade? Sounds like you didn't honor your stop loss. If you simply followed your trade plan you wouldn't need my help to fix it." I don't recall if those were his exact words, verbatim, but they were pretty close.
The point is, Clay could have come to my rescue and walked me through repair strategies such as rolling the option expiration further out in time, rolling it into a spread or going delta neutral - all of which might have been viable options and things I now know how to do. What I needed, though, at the time was to develop solid trading habits by following my trade plan and honoring my stop loss. The $700 loss I took on the trade has been a harsh reminder to do just that.
As I look back on my trading journey and realize how far I've come in just a few short years, I have to acknoledge Clay and the education I gained from ClayTrader University. Clay provided me with the tools, but it was through my own hard work that I now have a solid foundation upon which I can continue to build throughout the years to come. He could have handed me a fish and fed me for a day, but Clay taught me how to fish and now I can feed myself for a lifetime.
The Bottom Line: You can pay a lot more for trading education and receive far less than what you'll get from ClayTrader. If you want a quality education at a value price, consider investing in ClayTrader University. It will be money well spent. And, I say this from experience.
