OptionRally Education Review – Trading, Not Racing.

Full Review of OptionRally Binary Options Education

Unfortunately, I haven’t met a lot of traders since I’ve entered this business, but “wanna be” traders…well I’ve met a lot of those; maybe more than I would have wanted to. These are the guys who want to trade as soon as they hear about this way of making money and realize its potential. “Ok, show me where the Buy button is.”… And in a month or so they start giving advice to others. Some of these “mushroom traders” (I call them mushroom traders because they almost instantly turn into traders just like mushrooms appear after the rain) think they are experienced just because they’ve read a broker’s education section or an e-book provided by a broker…and those can be very poor at times, to say the least. But this is not the case with Optionrally’s education materials. It will not turn you into a real trader, but it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Optionrally First Impression: A step in the Right Direction.

The educational material is pretty well structured and can be found in the “Academy” and “Markets” sections at the top of the first page. The Academy contains a Glossary but also basic and medium level education while the Markets section contains an Economic Calendar (very few brokers have such a tool) and daily market analysis articles which is actually up to date. So far so good, their education seems better than most I’ve seen.

Optionrally Education – Basic level: Shifting into Second Gear

The first thing I checked was the Glossary – wow it took me a lot of scrolling down to reach the bottom of the page. What I am trying to say is that their Glossary is…how any glossary should be: complex. They include some terms that are really not needed but it’s better to have more than less. After all, you can just ignore the ones you are not interested in. The FAQ contains really basic explanations like what is a Binary Option or an underlying asset; it could contain more information to be honest but it’s good enough for a basic level although it doesn’t bring anything new and it is written in the same manner used by most brokers. However, they do have another section called “Binary Options FAQ” (under the main FAQ tab) and here they step up a bit the complexity and give me some good tips and advices. So there’s not much to complain about and I think a newbie can find good educational value in their materials so far.

Optionrally Education – Medium level: Minor Bumps along the Way

Now here things get a bit more complex…after all, it’s the medium level. They show some easy to understand trading videos about Support and Resistance, money management and trading psychology and they continue by explaining how to trade each asset and its particularities. This is a first, to be honest as I didn’t see any other broker explaining each asset in such a thorough manner. Now don’t get me wrong, it is not spectacular strictly from an educational point of view; it’s just great because it comes from a binary broker and I like to see brokers starting to emphasize more the importance of a solid foundation for your trading. Going deeper into their education, I could find some interesting strategies that could actually work, not just the crap handed to us by the majority of brokers. But staying true to their broker “heritage”, they try to tell me that buying a Put or a Call is a strategy… no strategy there guys, just an action. The strategy is the one that signals me to buy that Call or Put. Ok, I’ll forget all about that little stumble in their material because at least until now, they seem to care about what they teach to their customers.

The final section of the Academy is called “Webinars” so my logic leads me to believe they organize webinars. Yea, my detective skills are through the roof…but they won’t do me any good if I try to register for the webinar because even if they show me all the steps I need to follow, I get stuck at the first one. This is what they write: “After you have been directed to the following form, fill in your information, and then click on Register” (below they show a picture of the form they mention). I couldn’t find any way of registering to an upcoming webinar and it’s probably one of those cases where you must know a guy that knows a guy who is friends with the boss’s kid and who will….eh, you get the picture. Maybe if I deposit money they will send me an invite to a webinar or maybe webinars don’t exist, I can’t say for sure.

Ok, forgetting all about the webinars, one thing I really commend them for is the up to date market analysis articles. On second thought and on a careful read, I realized the fact that their market analysis focuses more on what happened than what will happen. Well, at least the articles are written well, but their real value as a trading help drops significantly… unless you own a time machine.

Optionrally Extra: NOT Recommended for Newbies

Once I created an account I had the nice surprise of seeing a new feature: charts. Yes, actual candlestick charts. Now, that’s a rare one when it comes to binary options brokers. Although this should be the standard, brokers don’t offer a real chart. It’s really not acceptable but maybe the majority of brokers don’t offer more complex charts because nobody asks for them and many traders are just…mushroom traders. Unfortunately, at the moment I must consider this an extra, so …good job, but if you are going to offer candlestick charts, you should let me attach a bloody MACD on it or…maybe draw a trend line, don’t you think, Optionrally?

They have an e-book as an extra feature, but they want me to deposit more than $1K in order to receive it…yea, I’m gonna pass on that. There’s something else that extra-bothers me: they have a type of account named “Executive” which requires you to deposit $5,000 – $9,999. Nothing wrong with that (except that the amount required is too big compared to the advantages offered by an Executive account) but they highly recommend it to…beginners. Ok, here’s a BOTS.com educational tip: never deposit that amount if you are a beginner. And if a broker recommends you to do it…well, let’s just say that it’s better to keep your eyes open when dealing with that broker.  

The Speedy Conclusion

Strictly from the perspective of the training material offered, Optionrally is not so bad, even good I might say. There is definitely value in their written content and you can gain some insights on the trading business. Usually brokers just focus on luring clients in without providing real, useful training and although Optionrally had some slip ups, I consider them to be above the average, talking from an educational point of view. You might also want to check OptionRally review by Martin Kay.