 Why not create an overt marketing model and marry the two industries together? The stock market. Where the heart of America, maybe even the world, lives. Where people go to get rich. Where the state of the economy is determined. Not really. Though judging the way some people talk about the stock market, you'd think that'd be the case. The allure of the mysterious and powerful stock market has fascinated the general public for quite some time. But the majority of people fascinated by the stock market actually know nothing about it. In fact, 50% of Americans aren't even invested in the stock market, and most Americans don't make any money or barely any money off of it. Enter scams. Stock market scams happen more than they should. Some charismatic individual targets a working class person who doesn't know much about stocks and tells them, I'm gonna help you get rich off of the stock market and teach you how to do it. And it all sounds really promising and legit to those that know nothing about the stock market, which once again is the majority of Americans. MLMs have also been around for quite some time, exploiting a very similar demographic of people claiming that their company has some sort of secret knowledge that'll help you achieve all the riches that you want. So what happens when you combine stock market scams with MLM companies? You get a forex MLM. Hi friends, it's Madison back with another video covering scams and unethical business practices. Before we get into this video, if you like deep dives and like to analyze, don't forget to subscribe and check out my Patreon if you want to support the channel and get access to exclusive content and an exclusive Discord. I also always forget to plug my merch just because it's like right below this video, but I did design my own merch and I have it up on Teespring. It's created ethically and sustainably, which was really important to me and I designed it myself. So if you want to check it out, definitely check it out. I have some inside jokes to past videos, as well as just things that I thought were cute and fun. And well, let's get into the video. So before we talk about forex MLM companies, it's important to know what forex is. Forex stands for the foreign exchange market. Forex is a global decentralized or over-the-counter market for the trading of currencies, which, if you have no idea what that means, well, same. So let me explain it a little bit further. The forex exchange market basically determines foreign exchange rates for every currency and includes all aspects of buying, selling, and exchanging currencies. So it's kind of a big deal. In terms of trading volume, forex is the biggest market in the world. In a typical foreign exchange transaction, a party purchases some quantity of one currency in exchange for some quantity of another currency. Before X, you're investing in the spread between the US dollar and the Japanese yen. I have no idea about any of that. So there's no need for me to be putting my money there unless I'm an educated trader. Sounds simple yet vague enough, right? You get the gist. Honestly, does anyone ever really understand the stock market or are some people just really good at pretending? So that's what forex is. And now that we all definitely 100% without a doubt, completely understand what it is without a question, it's important to know that while forex is a huge market and has a lot of interest in it because of its sheer size, trading on forex is extremely risky and even some of the greatest money managers fail at trading on forex. Forex is not like you see it on social media. What you'll notice is that a lot of times those people on social media, they're hyping it up, they're making it super easy sounding, right? But they're not giving you much of the meat and potatoes to actually what it takes to be profitable. There's 95% of people out there that lose money. And let me tell you something about those 95%. A lot of that 95% are actually smart individual people who are professionals who are actually doing real stuff in the real world very well. And they happen to not do very well in forex trading. There's one more thing that I haven't mentioned yet. And that's capital. You're not going to be able to make a ton of money from little money. Think about the rest of the world and the reality that we're in. Don't fall for scams that are telling you otherwise because in the real world, what does it take to make money? It takes money. As the SEC puts it, it is common and most forex training strategies to employ leverage. Leverage entails using a relatively small amount of capital to buy currency worth many times the value of that capital. Leverage magnifies minor fluctuations in currency markets in order to increase potential gains and losses. By using leverage to trade forex, you risk losing all of your initial capital and may lose even more money than the amount of your initial capital. So long story short, forex trading is a notoriously risky endeavor, but it's also alluring. It's alluring and like an MLM sounds too good to be true because it is. So what do forex MLM companies do? Do they help you trade on forex? Do they give you all the means to do it? What are forex MLM companies? Well, forex MLM companies teach you how to trade on forex. They don't give you a broker. They don't handle any investments. They simply give you courses so you can learn how to trade on forex. Spoiler alert, there are not very many ways to learn how to trade on forex since even the best money managers fail at trading on forex. So forex MLM companies are selling you a get rich quick course teaching you how to make money on the stock market and you have to recruit your friends and family members into the company. Is this the final boss of scams? My brain hurts just thinking about all the elements within this company. In a forex MLM you don't just market the opportunity to others, but you also have to use the products and services. You'd think with a course you'd just purchase it once and you'd be good to go, but no, of course with most forex MLM companies you're required to use the products services and seminars on a regular basis or you have to pay a monthly subscription in order for you to qualify for any bonuses and commissions. The structure of a forex MLM company is really interesting to me because unlike traditional MLM companies that sell a product that you have to continually stock up on and continually purchase like the Luluro leggings that people have garages full of or the Amway products that people have garages full of. Instead, forex MLM companies don't have a tangible product for you to purchase. Instead it's these online courses. So there is no stock that you have to keep. So how they get around this is by having you pay a monthly subscription. But if you've already taken the course and you've already educated yourself, how much more education do you need? Especially if you're like three years into being a distributor for a forex MLM company, how much more knowledge do you need to learn about trading on forex? If this course is supposed to be so good, then you wouldn't need so much continuing education. So the whole concept just kind of crumbles to me personally. The main and most popular forex MLM company is iMarketsLive or IM Mastery Academy, which they changed to their recent name change, I think due to all of the negative publicity associated with iMarketsLive. And boy is iMarketsLive a doozy. Before examining the company, let's watch this very entertaining, extremely motivational video by the founder of iMarketsLive, Christopher Terry. Read these things. Hook this stuff up. When you sit at your desk mentally, you have to be the Muhammad Ali of trading. You have to be willing to do things to say that others won't do in order to have tomorrow what others cannot. You're three o'clock in the morning, your friends aren't doing it. They're not doing it. They're sleeping. They need their beauty sleep. Okay, fine. Like how could you sit in front of an eight-figure runner? A guy who's gonna change your life and say, I'm tired. So who is this wonderful, exquisite man, Terry, who founded such a great hustle, make money fast MLM company? Well, unsurprisingly, Terry is a former AMWI distributor. Terry has said himself, I didn't make any money on AMWI. I made zero, but it created a mindset of wealth. Honestly, I love the AMWI and we were just speaking about it. I love the AMWI for the fact that the mindset, the positive motivation, I didn't make any money in AMWI. Don't get me wrong. I mean, zero. I mean, but it created wealth, a mindset of wealth, which led to wealth. How does someone have a mindset of wealth? Side note, but the whole idea of like a millionaire mindset mindset of wealth fascinates me so much because I feel like a lot of it has to do with the self-help movement and movies like The Secret that teach you that you can like actualize your reality just by changing your mental process or mindset. But I met a lot of dudes in college that had the millionaire mindset, yet they still live at their moms and get sucked into MLM companies where they make zero money, like World Financial Group and Forex MLMs. So does a wealth mindset really matter? Or is it more about working smartly and finding the right avenues for making money? Ideas like the wealth mindset fit so seamlessly with the MLM companies and get rich quick scams because it's like instead of educating yourself on what you're about to get into or seeking outside information, they teach you all you have to do is just have the right internal mindset. Don't seek any outside information. Don't further educate yourself outside of what we're telling you. Focus on what you're doing internally. And if you're not successful at this, it's because you don't have the right mindset. Not that this is a scam. You're just not in the right mindset. You're not thinking enough or in the right way. Christopher Terry also claims he was one of the original SOES bandits. Around the 99 to 2001 area right before and around after September 11th, we were, myself and my partner, one of the biggest traders in the country. We were doing like a billion to billion shares a year. We were called the SOES bandits. Which was apparently a group of individual investors who exploited the NASDAQ small order execution system for day trading. The stock market always makes sense to me. I always fully understand what people are talking about and never get lost. Does anyone think it's weird that we pretty much just one day made up the stock system? Like it is a completely made up concept that holds so much value in our society. And so much of the general population, at least in the US especially, holds so much weight of like how America as a whole is doing on whether or not the stock market is doing good or bad. If it's bad, everything is ruined and everything is going horribly. And if it's doing good, yeah, we're in the middle of a pandemic and you know, people are kind of struggling and losing their jobs. But hey, the stock market is okay. So things are fine. Let's open up businesses and get rid of quarantine. So why did Christopher Terry decide to start a forex MLM company? Well, Terry says, I thought, how can I mix and match something? Why not create a network marketing model and marry the two? So when I looked at my past, I looked at I was in Amway, I was looking at construction, I was looking at the trading arena. I was like, okay, how can I mix and match something? And when I realized I can start another business in the trading arena to educate people, I'd have to go out and do YouTube videos and marketing ads and click for whatever it's here. Why not create a network marketing model and marry the two industries together? So back in 2012, I created International Markets Live, which I mean, I guess if your goal is to scam double the amount of people, combine two scams together. There you go. It's kind of genius. I hate to say it, but I also hate it in general. So is iMarketsLive a scam? Well, that should already be apparent, but how much of a scam is it? Let's further examine iMarketsLive. iMarketsLive has been literally banned from offering financial services and products in Belgium and has received numerous warnings from fans in Spain. In the U.S., numerous complaints have been filed against iMarketsLive to the FTC. There are also a ton of videos on YouTube from people who have had experience in iMarketsLive talking about what a scam it is. iMarketsLive, iMacademy, they're not really here for you to lead the company and grow as a trader. They're not here for that. iMarketsLive targeted all the colleges. They just went to almost all the black colleges. I'm gonna be honest. They went to all the HBCUs down south. They went to my college. I fell into that trap, bro. I fell into that trap. I saw everybody else doing it at my school. I'm like, what the fuck is for it? Got into it and realized they don't know how to trade. And if they is showing you how to trade, they're not telling you the whole raw truth, man. They're hiding certain stuff because Chris Terry is telling them that you need to give them information, but like give them a little bit so they can keep coming back because if you give them too much, then they don't need us. And that's where we lose money at. You know, I spend this money to join this to thinking that it would be a way that I can increase my income and I can move out. If anybody on iML is watching this, please send me my money, please. I just want my money back. I was working, I was like working really hard playing going on Zoom calls, going to meetings, hosting events, and I wasn't seeing any return in it. Before any of you Forex traders comment my comments saying it's not a scam. It is. It is. It is. Forex MLMs like iML actually prey on people's lack of knowledge. That's how they make so much money. Obviously, very a predatory practice and they do it on young kids most. It's actually $175 or $125 every single month and that's US dollars. So that's a lot of money. Like that is a lot, a lot of money. I'll show them on the screen, but they, I cancel my account and then they charge me for the next month. So I was like, oh no, this is a real scam. Like this is not just a scam. This is a scam scam. Yeah, I don't recommend. I really do not recommend iML. It was a bad experience and I'm so glad that I didn't recruit anyone because I wouldn't want to be the person who actually recruited somebody else to join this even though I knew it was not the best platform. iMarketsLive requires a payment of $195 upfront and $145 a month for the platinum package. Most people who have purchased iMarketsLive feel that most of what they learned they could learn on YouTube for free. And the reality is high cost training tools do not eliminate the risk that comes with trading on Forex. Trading in general is a very risky business. Most professionals that trade huge amounts of money still experience massive losses. And it's one of those things that you have to be financially in a spot where you're able to lose a lot of money. And most people that are recruited into these Forex MLM companies are just not in that spot. On top of that, brokers and broker fees are not included in the iMarketsLive package. So you have to pay for a broker. Terry has explained the reason why they did this and did not accept any upfront investments is so that they raise less SEC eyebrows. Think Wolf of Wall Street. So if a product is inherently worthless because all you need is a broker and YouTube videos to learn everything you can really about trading on Forex, does that mean that all the company really has to offer is its recruitment structure? That reminds me of something. Not sure what though. iMarketsLive is very hesitant to disclose their income disclosure statement. And when you look into them, I can definitely see why. Their income disclosure statement is just about as confusing as every other income disclosure statement. But when you examine it, 87% of distributors are making less than or equal to $50 a year. Truth in Advertising also assembled a list of unrealistic income claims made by iMarketsLive distributors. This is very millionaire mindset, get rich, influencer vibes. But man, it's all crazy how it all played out and how it was all planned. Honestly, I had no idea life was going to be like this. Seriously. I didn't know the feeling of being successful at all. I've been in multiple companies, but never in my 23 years of existence have ever been so blessed to be a part of something that's bigger than me. I remember getting introduced to network marketing by a close friend. That close friend isn't so much of a close friend anymore. Okay, weird flex, but okay. Being able to do it all on my own and sacrifice multiple relationships was something I didn't know that came with it. Sacrificing multiple relationships. Yikes. Yikes, bud. From dropping out of high school at age 18 and having 21 jobs before they age to 21 and still make it out is something I will forever be blessed for. Oh, I feel bad. Obviously this dude has gone through a tough time in life and has been sucked into the Forex MLM hype, but like it's highly unlikely you make any money on Forex or in MLMs. So it's like a double whammy of losing money. And I'm very scared for this guy. So many doubted, so many waited and so many hated. But the ones that always showed love, there was a reason why I did what I did. It wasn't just about the money. It was always people before profits. It was always trading before anything. I made all my living and still make a living trading the Forex market every day. And to be able to build an organization of customers that want to learn on how to trade Forex is simply just textbook. On top of what is offered, I offer my personal experience and time as well. So much room to grow, learn and earn. I said it once and I'll say it again. This all didn't happen overnight without hard work and dedication. There's a small percentage that actually win in network marketing. Today, I'm proud to say I'm a part of that small percentage that make a living from it. And you can too. I've noticed people have started to acknowledge the small percent of people that succeed at MLNs. But just like gambling or winning the lottery, they have it with that allure of like, well, you could be that small percentage. Like, yeah, most people fail, but you're not most people. You're special. We all want to believe we're special. So join this, you could be the point zero one percent that kind of succeed at from making $0 a month, four years in this industry to now making over 5,000 in residual income. I myself can tell you anything is possible if you bust your behind and put in the work. Do you know how much leverage I have in the markets now? $5,000 in commissions being traded and compounded to multiple thousands. Funny how he never mentions the times that you lose because once again, even the best lose money on the stock market every once in a while, I just gave myself a 60 K raise and residuals. And that's not even including my trading profits. Not to mention, I'm not far from chairman 10 where that pays out six figures alone $2,500 a week. And a little like, this is our secret, even though I'm posting it publicly on Instagram. Chairman 10 loading. Can you build in trade? I challenge you. Holy crap. This keeps going on. Hashtag trade with Gustavo. Hashtag chairman 10 loading. Hashtag Mr. Wealthy Pips. And then he says at the very bottom of that extremely long post, my life story is so real, I have to put a disclaimer. Income disclosure. Another robot Instagram post. Bath. No, it's little money bags and it says bag security. Hoa is literally my little brother when it comes to making money online. I'm sorry if he didn't join you. He trusts me. It's an honor to watch name blurred, put in work behind the scenes and quietly obtain a $1,800 annual residual raise in his first 30 days. Your ju-ust over broke won't do that. And the J-O-B are capitalized to me. Your job won't do that. I think these are worse than the humbot Instagram. Like they're somehow worse. They make me cringe and want to just shrivel up inside, like collapse in on myself even more somehow. He just added some amazing income paid out weekly by locking arms with our retired in 365 movement. Don't even have to say this, but you already know what's about to happen. If you haven't plugged into our copy, paste and profit system yet, message Hoa directly. Congratulations, King. Let's get you retired over the next 365 days. Little cool guy emoji, hashtag retired in 365. And then the disclaimer in asterisk is results aren't typical. We aren't either. Another money bag and a hashtag, let's work. And then the same income disclosure at the very bottom. I mean, at least they're putting that, but like, they still made all these claims about how his buddy that he recruited is making 1800 and blah, blah, blah. Another robot says, tonight reminded me why I still continue to work hard, push my limits and sacrifice time, energy, and effort for others to have their shot at success. Nameblurdow and I have been rocking together for now 16 months. When I met him, he was earning 2k a month and merely going through the motions. I told him if he gave me everything he had for 12 months, everything would change for the better. We deaf had to grow through some challenges, but the evolution of JD has been incredible to witness, not going to make income claims. However, he has an organization of several thousand people all over the world and doing well enough to have recently bought his parents a brand new house. It's an interesting little workaround of an income disclosure there. The money is amazing. This lifestyle is incredible, but nothing will ever come close to the feeling you get when you know you're changing people's lives. Hugging his mom dad and sister tonight made me realize why I'm still working like it's 2011. More than money. Blue hearts, blue heart, blue heart, 100 emoji, blue heart, blue heart, blue heart. So yeah, those are all the income claims. Riley and I just filmed a podcast, but kind of editing Madison here to tell you guys about an interesting discovery I've made. I came across some really interesting videos of iMarkets Live distributors going to conventions, and it's really fascinating that the cult like excitement and hype in these conventions, the hope and excitement that they're selling, the best video that I came across just pure gold is from this one distributor. Someone who looks very similar to Lil Peep, who is also an iMarkets Live distributor, made an incredible documentary video into the iMarkets Live convention. And it's really funny because the entire video is basically him and it looks like he's some sort of rock star celebrity acting as if he's like getting ready to perform or something. And then he steps into like a convention hall and it's just the funniest thing ever. It's kind of not what I was expecting. This distributor has also made some really interesting videos to recruit people into iMarkets Live, like the liquids video to convey how big of a market iMarkets Live is. He shows all of these different liquids and by the end of the video he's just sitting in a room full of liquid and it is amazing. You know, it doesn't matter if you're broke. Years ago when I saw this information, I didn't have money, but it's not a lack of money that inhibits you. It's a lack of motivation. When I saw this, I said, look, I'm not going to have a poor mindset. P-O-O-R passing over opportunity repeatedly. So with that information, I hope this helped you like it did help me. Get back to the person who invited you and remember with or without us. Guys, this is the largest financial market in the world and this company will become a multi-billion dollar platform with or without us. The only question is, will you be a part of it? The cult following around iMarkets Live is really interesting but also kind of predictable. I mean, you take guys that want to get rich off of stock markets and the hype around MLMs and joining an MLM and you just combine them and you get the iMarkets Live distributors. Yes, I'm not making any money in this thing yet, but I'm going to give myself some time and create an income for myself and I've been doing a lot of research online and what I realized is, yes, some of my friends said you can't make money and I'm in Forex but I realized most of my friends are working jobs they don't like and aren't making the kind of money I want to make or living the kind of lifestyle that I want to live and 76% Americans are living paycheck to paycheck to paycheck. So I decided to take up all my own research and started listening to people our age who made the kind of money that I want to make and a lot of people shy away from this because they're scared and they're afraid to fail but I decided to observe the masses and do the opposite and if you're like me, which you are, I know that you'd rather try something and fail than not try it all. So I took this as a numbers game and here's what we're going to do. I'm not making money in this thing yet but if I help two of my friends who want to do this thing with me, I break even and I'm committed to doing this thing for one year and in that time if I break even I'll use that money to continue buy my membership and from there everything else is a profit. I just thought I'd add in a blurb about that because it's really interesting to me and I didn't talk about the distributors enough during this video so that is why I'm here and editing Madison out. I Am Market's Live also has some pretty shady characters involved like the vice president of sales Alex Morton who was a distributor for Vima and if you know Vima and what that company is Yikes. The dangerous thing is the website looks fairly normal. Yeah, it has some kind of overzealous claims but the website itself kind of reminds me of like the website for a hospital. It's clean. It usually has the white and navy blue color scheme but something about it is very like cold and makes me uncomfortable for some reason. The co-founder of iMarkets Live and CFO Isis De La Torre has a quote where she explains why she helped create iMarkets Live. First it was always my vision and goal to empower women around the world because my personal belief is that women are the pillar of our families. Women are responsible for the well-being and stability of our spouses, children, parents, brothers, sisters, community, society, country, and the whole world. Thanks but no thanks. Excuse me. I did not ask for that responsibility like you can have it back just so you know. But how very boss babe have heard that's what's so funny is I always find that these MLM companies that sell the boss babe mentality always have like a twisted way of doing it. It's either like hey woman you want to work from home and be with your family right? You're a woman so you have children and you take care of house and you clean and have husband who is working so you have to stay home but you want money too right? Join our MLM or hey woman I'm going to empower you because you are the caregiver of the world and you are responsible for the well-being of everyone in the world somehow for some reason that was put on you. So join this MLM company so that you can do that. So yeah that's the deal with iMarkets Live. I was planning to go into other forex MLM companies like Quest Markets but when looking into Quest Markets and other forex MLM companies they're pretty much the exact same thing as iMarkets There's not much else to report on but basically any money that claims that it can help you make money on forex through purchasing their courses is most likely 100% bullshit. Add the recruit others to buy courses aspect and run. It's a pyramid scheme. I know the stock market sounds enticing. I mean people do actually make legitimate money on it so it can seem like a legitimate avenue to pursue in the quest of making your own money but reality is for the majority of people this type of investing especially on forex and especially in an MLM company is just not going to work out. I am 99.999% sure that it will not work out for you. That's a real bummer of a way to leave this video just telling you that it's not gonna work out for you. So to end this video I'll leave you with a bit of uplifting Christopher Terry motivation and I'll see you in the next video.