IOption Education – I learn, I trade, iOption

Full Review of IOption Binary Options Education

Yesterday I was watching a BBC documentary about people living in harsh conditions and relying solely on their nature skills for living. I must tell you, it was really inspiring to see how others have to work hard for things that we take for granted. A fisherman was out on the sea for a whole day just to catch one fish and a 16 year old kid walked two days long with his cows to find water for them. And here we are, reaching in the fridge for water or food. Makes me feel a lot more thankful for what I’ve got, but it also makes me realize that on a different level, we do a similar thing, trying to provide for us and our family by trading and by finding the best brokers around. And this takes me to my next review: the education provided by IOption.

IOption – First Impressions – A truckload of educational material

Let me tell you, the amount of educational material on their site is HUGE. I mean, you could almost build a new educational website just from that material. This is definitely a plus, but it takes us to the next step: is it informative and useful or is it just a pile up of words? If the information is good and to the point, it can be concentrated in a few words, maybe there’s no need for tens of pages. More about that later; for now, I like how the site is structured overall and the fact that they care about providing education.

 iOption Education Basic Level – Simple and to the point

I consider the basic level of education should contain a Glossary and general information about Binary Options and although iOption provide clear information about Binary Options and their advantages, they lack a bit when it comes to the Glossary, because I feel it should be more comprehensive. They only have 18 terms explained, but I don’t want to judge them too hard for that, because their Glossary contains the most important terms. I could find all their education in the Knowledge Center section of their site, with some short videos about how to use their platform and comparison between Binary Options and Vanilla Options. Ok, all good, but they should have done a better job at organizing all the articles, because “What are Binary Options” is one of the last articles on the page and the first is “iOption Academy”. If I am a novice, learning about Binaries, I want to know what they are before going to the “Academy”. Putting this aside, their basic level of education does what it is supposed to do: provide basic education.

 iOption Education Medium Level – Academic or just babble?

When I pressed the “iOption Academy” button I found something that took me totally by surprise and it was a good surprise: they offer free, live webinars and reading material. They have 4 webinars and 4 live trading sessions. All this is just “Course 1” and they have 6 Courses (for courses 2 to 6 you have to contact your account manager to register). Now this is a broker that takes his educational role seriously. Whenever I see a company that operates in this manner I am glad I stumbled upon them but I am also worried that I will find something that will make me dislike them. Continuing my search, I downloaded the reading material and started reading it. You can find this material on the right side of the webinars page…but the first document contains stuff that I can find in other sections of their website, to be more exact, in the “What are Binary options” and “Knowledge Library” sections. I can’t really think of any reason why they would want to re-post content. To make sure we read it? To look like they have a lot of material? I’m not sure, but I continue reading and I unfortunately notice a lot of grammar and spelling mistakes. It just feels unprofessional and honestly, my confidence in them starts to deteriorate. Ok, I get to the title “Beginners Guide to Trade Forex” and now things start to go even worse: they show me a picture of a clear uptrend and tell me that in most cases it’s a mistake to Buy in this situations because that means going with the “herd”. Come on, a mistake to Buy in an uptrend? I don’t really agree. In the second document I could find some of the same pages found in the first one, more spelling and grammar mistakes and one important advice related to money management: never risk more than 8.5% on one trade…that’s  a bit much, don’t you think? The generally accepted rule is to risk 2% to 5% of your account balance per trade and some even recommend 1% until you become comfortable with trading, so what are they trying to do? Make me invest more? Next, they provide some hedging examples and explain me about market hours and volatility which is a good thing, but when I scroll down to the other page, I read the same content again…so pages 15 and 16 are repeated in pages 17 and 18…and in the middle of page 17 I can see written in red letters:”alex insert you interative chart here”. I did not laugh writing this review…until now. This just became more “interative”! Right after the last weird pages, there’s a section called Peter’s story and that is really worth reading; it’s about a guy, Peter (obviously) and his Forex experience. There are some nuggets of wisdom throughout the story, so it will be a nice read. The rest of the documents contain duplicates again and more grammatical mistakes, although I must admit, among all this unorganized content, I could find some good material, especially in the fourth document.

IOption’s Educational Conclusion

Yes, I must admit I am a bit puzzled, because among all the tangled, duplicate content, and grammatical errors, I could find some good stuff. But is it enough to say they offer good educational content? I cannot give a binary answer, a “Yes” or a “No”. What I can tell you is that I consider iOption should pay more attention to their content because it makes them look a little unprofessional, and they shouldn’t tell me that it is a mistake to Buy in an uptrend or that I should risk 8.5% of my account per trade. Some might say it’s OK, but it’s not a Binary Options rule, it’s an advice. Overall, they are much better than some of the other brokers out there, but they still have a lot more work to do if they want to be a part of the elite.

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