What is MDC Trading Academy?
MDC Trading Academy is a trader training school founded by Manny Cabrera, who, after teaching at Day Trading Academy (DTA) , decided to create his own team and intraday trading program to compete with his former school. Manny is no longer part of the academy, which is now run by his former partners, Dany Perez and Sebastian Zuluaga.
I'm telling you right now, this trading course is as bad as the one offered by DTA (or even worse).
MDC Trading Academy reviews:
They don't understand the student's problems, they think all cases are the same, and they make you believe that if you fail it's because of your emotions and not the strategy. I don't recommend them at all. I feel terrible knowing I was deceived, and I completely regret the time and money I wasted.
Joshua
Is it possible to profit in the stock market with the MDC Trading Academy system?
Let's start with the basics. This trading course will teach you how to set up your NinjaTrader platform , you'll learn about tick charts and bar charts , you'll understand the difference between the various order types, and you'll be helped to install each indicator you'll be using.
So far, the best part of the course (of course, you can get all of this for free on the internet).
Then will come the time to operate applying the school's strategy, a strategy that differs almost nothing from the one I have already analyzed in the Day Trading Academy.
MDC Trading Academy – TRAINING PLAN and Strategy:
MDC Trading Academy offers a scalping where the goal is to wait for a strong price surge and then see a pullback to the middle of the Keltner Channel to enter a trade in the direction of the current trend. I'm simplifying, but that's essentially it.
Nothing new under the sun, a poor strategy and nothing more
Essentially, the strategy boils down to: impulse, pullback to the moving average, and confirmation with the MACD. Nothing we haven't seen before (and that you won't find on YouTube).
The course says nothing about trading withOrder Flow, Market/Volume profile, Wyckoff, or algorithmic trading. Much less about building a stock portfolio, combining day trading with swing trading, orlong-term investing via ETFs.
Everything is restricted to a set of indicators and some scalping. The course's limitations are more than obvious , and the school knows it.
Keltner's Channel and the most pathetic trading strategy I've ever seen
Trading and emotions, a bad combination
With a target of 2 points (8 ticks) and a stop of 1.25 points (5 ticks), this strategy can easily fall into emotional trading. This is very difficult to avoid on these short timeframes, where trades last between 3 and 4 minutes on average, and there are so many opportunities to enter the market.
And although a kind of contextualization or analysis of the market (or pre-market) via price action is advocated , the truth is that with all the indicators used by the school, it is unlikely that this analysis will prevail when trading.
As with Day Trading Academy (DTA), the system used does not take volume into account, because according to the authors of this trading course, volume is contained in the price movement, which is totally ridiculous.
You only need to Google 'what is absorption in trading' and understand this concept a little to realize that the mere analysis of Japanese candlesticks only tells us half the story.
MDC and the marketing of stock market courses
When it comes to attracting MDC, it resorts to the same marketing strategies that I have often criticized on this website.
They sell aspirational stories, unlimited profits, and infinite time. On the academy's social media, you'll see the best of trading: happy people who have achieved consistency just a few months after taking the course.
They'll make you believe that trading is easy and that with a simple scalping strategy anyone can be their own boss. Trading on the beach? You got it. Making a living from trading? You got that too. Trading with real money after just two months of study? And of course, there's a video.
In-person seminars, they even hand out ridiculous certificates that have no use or value. The intimate, almost mystical-religious, or even self-help tone of many of these videosis quite cringeworthy and embarrassing.
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It doesn't take much to figure out who MDC's target customer is with its message and stock market courses. MDC offers quick and easy money. But of course, they don't put it that way.
The advertising and marketing strategies of this trading academy are much more subtle.
On the one hand, they'll tell you that trading takes time, but then they'll spare no expense in creating and promoting hundreds of videos that suggest the exact opposite. The prevailing message is that of easy money within everyone's reach.
An easy-to-sell scalping strategy
The reality of trading, however, is very different from how it is portrayed on academic social media.
And while it is true that the course covers both psychology and capital management, the problem is that you are taught to manage a very poor strategy (same problem as with DTA), which is useless.
I don't think that with this trading system you'll ever pass a funding test, much less gain consistency in the long term.
Don't be fooled. The scalping method proposed by MDC Trading Academy won't suit the vast majority of traders (there are correct ways to scalp, and the one proposed by MDC isn't one of them).
I still remember Manny Cabrera, in one of his ridiculous videos (one of many), saying that he was content earning one tick per trade, but since one tick per trade wasn't enough to live on, he opened the trade with 10 contracts.
I have rarely heard such a ridiculous thing.
Opening a position with 10 futures contracts is a surefire path to ruin. Beware of these trolls.
Simple trading students addicted to advertorials
The academy's founders claim to be successful traders with significant careers on Wall Street and decades of experience.
The truth is that none of this is verifiable. What we do know about its founders is that they were all simply trading students with almost no experience in the markets shortly before setting up a trading school.
But these bizarre stories with 'decades of success in the stock market and personal growth' don't end there, because like many other trading schools (e.g., Eurekers, Trading and Stock Market for Dummies, etc.), MDC Trading Academy often uses 'advertisements' to solidify this past success that they sell us.
This is an advertorial, and so is this one here, and this one, and even this other one. This last advertorial goes so far as to claim that one of the founders of MDC (S. Zuluaga) has been a 'senior trader' since 2012, when we've all seen him in a DTA video as a student in 2017.It seems anything goes when it comes to selling trading courses. Truly deplorable.
Reviews of very dubious authorship
This trading school has also succumbed to the temptation of relying on spurious websites that publish 'reviews of very dubious authorship'.
These reviews have the sole purpose of speaking very favorably about the stock market course offered by MDC Trading Academy.
These are trading websites with almost no content and no legal notice. I assure you that the people writing on these websites are not traders; they are content writers doing part of the school's marketing work (unfortunately, I must tell you that the people at MDC Trading Academy are not the only ones resorting to this type of 'marketing strategy').
This is a common practice among companies (or schools) that seek to 'make invisible' the negative opinions that their actions, or products, generate (it is part of the online reputation of companies).
The truth is, if you search for "MDC trading reviews" on Google, you'll most likely find this same review you're reading now, as well as many videos and 'fake websites' set up to defend the school's interests.
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Traders who don't trade
The stock market course business is a multi-million dollar industry, and MDC doesn't want to give up its share of the pie. If only they knew how much easier it is to offer a good stock market course.
Of course, to do that, you first have to be a true trading professional.
I recommend you be very cautious when researching this trading academy. The blatant lack of ethics the school displays when selling its stock market courses should be the first of many red flags to consider.
A plagiarized stock market course?
The second major alarm will be to learn that they have completely appropriated the trading system proposed by DTA (it's not that I like what DTA does, but that doesn't justify them 'plagiarizing' the course offered, however bad it may be).
Price of courses at MDC Trading Academy:
The school offers 3 types of training: the Face-to-Face Seminar, the Virtual Training, and the VIP Training (the latter is a One on One with one of the institution's traders).
The in-person seminar is usually offered for around $2,497 (reduced from $9,000... haha, no joke. This school's marketing is always laughable). Meanwhile, the online trainingranges from $1,500 to $2,500 (these prices depend on the country you're contacting them from, so use them as a reference only).
What do the students think?
✅ The best according to students
- Practical approach and live sessions: Some students value the opportunity to participate in live trading sessions, which allows them to apply the knowledge acquired directly in the market.
- Accessibility for beginners: The course is designed to be accessible to people with no prior experience, offering a clear structure that facilitates progressive learning.
- Supportive community: Students mention feeling supported by an active community and the team of instructors, which contributes to a positive learning environment.
⚠️ The worst, according to the students
- Outdated strategy: Several former students criticize the strategy taught as an adaptation of old methodologies that are no longer effective in today's markets.
- Lack of transparency and dubious results: The real profitability of the instructors is questioned, since the live sessions do not show operations in real accounts, which raises doubts about the effectiveness of the method.
- Aggressive commercial approach: Some users point out that the academy prioritizes selling courses over effectively training traders, using intensive marketing tactics.
- High cost in relation to the content: There are opinions that consider the price of the course to be high compared to the quality and depth of the content offered.
Conclusions about the stock market course offered by MDC Trading Academy:
One of the worst trading courses I've ever had the opportunity to analyze, and this is not surprising given that Manny Cabrera are ex-DTAs, you can see it here and here (now they call themselves 'Senior Traders' in a clear example of 'self-perception').
What you will learn in this trading academy can be summarized as: buying or selling on a price pullback that reaches the midline of the Keltner Channel.
Clearly, this simple strategy does not justify the cost of the course.
The proposed strategy leaves much to be desired, and this isn't just because it's prone to emotional trading. In my opinion, the most disappointing aspect is that they don't consider trading volume.
An inflexible course and ineffective trading
Limiting everything to trading futures doesn't help either. Every trader is unique, and perhaps your strength lies in stocks, or forex, or long-term investing with ETFs.
So why reduce the entire course to a simple scalping strategy? What if scalping isn't for you? Or do all football players play defense?
With MDC you'll have some winning trades (even flipping a coin), including the occasional brief period when the market is on your side and you can show positive numbers; but, in the long run, the strategy will fail in most cases.
The trader is always to blame
When failures pile up, they will give you millions of excuses, and they will tell you that the problem is psychology (in other words, they will make it clear that the problem is you).
But the truth is, just like with DTA, the problem lies in the strategy (working on the psychology of a mediocre strategy isn't the answer). As I said, this trading system isn't suitable for the vast majority of traders.
My recommendation is that you save yourself future frustrations and look for another option if you really intend to start trading on the right foot.
Far from consistent
In short, this trading course will teach you the basics of trading (how to set up NinjaTrader, a little about the Futures market, a bit of Price Action, and not much else), while also providing you with a strategy for day trading; but you'll never achieve consistency with it. Sooner or later, your account will suffer, believe me.
Alternatives to MDC Trading Academy
As an alternative to what MDC Trading Academy offers , I suggest you check out Ferran Font 's course . In Ferran's course, you'll find a true understanding of the market, and you'll even learn how to use Order Flow .
🛡️ Legal notice
This article is for informational purposes only and reflects personal opinions, user experiences shared on social media, and critical analysis of an educational product offered to the public. It is not intended to defame, spread misinformation, or damage the reputation of any person or company mentioned.
The images used in this article are illustrative, either public screenshots or images taken for critical analysis from freely accessible websites. Their use falls within the legitimate interest of informing and providing context.
We recommend that our readers research and compare various sources before making decisions related to financial products or services.
My name is Norberto. I've been investing and trading for over a decade. I'm also the author of the trading course Experiencia Topstep. If you want to learn how to invest and have any questions, feel free to contact me.
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Hello,
A word of advice for all newcomers: DON'T PAY FOR COURSES!! Most are scams. Pay for a trading room and start making money from month one by copying the trades of an experienced trader using the Zoom platform. You'll learn while you're at it.
Do this homework: ask all the academies you contact or all the IG gurus if they have a trading room, and 98% will tell you NOOO…
Just think: if I'm a profitable trader, it's better for me to charge you $200 a month to enter my trading room than to sell you a $1500 or $2000 course. I'm only selling it to you because I want to scam you. If you join a trading room and don't make money in the first two months, you quit. It's that simple!
PS: He was an MDC student, the course is very basic and costs $50 at most
Carlos, can you recommend a trading room? Thank you very much!
Hi, I was a student at MDC in 2018. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THAT ACADEMY TO ANYONE. That strategy doesn't work, no matter how hard you try; the problem lies in the strategy itself. It's a very old strategy that maybe worked 30 or 40 years ago. But today it doesn't work; it's ridiculous to trade with that strategy. I haven't met a single trader who is profitable and makes money with that strategy and can prove it. I highly doubt that even the MDC instructors make money with it. If you want to take a professional trading course, look for an academy that specializes in volume analysis, such as order flow, order book, volume profile, and price action. There you'll understand why that archaic MDC strategy doesn't work.
I took the trouble to compile the evidence that was shared from MDC Trading Academy and posted it on the Nexsson forum, for anyone who is interested.
https://nexsson.com/threads/mdc-trading-academy-es-una-estafa-pruebas.1893/
I hate to disappoint you, but you're just wasting your time, Andrés. In Manny Cabrera's live classes, you'll realize he's not a profitable trader. He loses way too much money. He tries to cover it up by talking about "the 1-2-3 process" and how his strategy has a 70% success rate, claiming that probabilities are random and so on, but it's all lies. I've spoken with several former students, and they have many screenshots of the live classes, from 2018 to the present. You can see that almost all of his trades are losers. That's why there are even suspicions about whether he's trading on a real or demo account. If you want to see the evidence, contact me privately.
Hello Sebastian.
I'm about to buy the course; can you give me some information so I don't make a mistake?
Hi!
In my opinion, the academy provides excellent resources and personalized support that helps students better understand the process. Not all academies offer this approach. Furthermore, their language is more accessible for new traders who need more understanding and practice to build a career in this field.
I've been with the academy since March of this year and have learned a lot about institutional volume combined with price action.
They also offer live trading twice a week, which is very important to me.
I hope my experience sheds more light on the academy's methodology.
Hi. I'm glad you're having good experiences. But those of us who went live and have had the course for a while now have realized that the strategy is very poor and not profitable. For most, it was a waste of time, but I hope your experience is different.
It's a repackaged copy of the DTA strategy that didn't deliver the expected results. Another academy that's failed. The only chance they have left is to become YouTubers because they're practically nonexistent as traders
These are the people from the Center for Financial Studies and Research "CEIF" with Alberto Cárdenas.
A Venezuelan trader who is a CMT.
I'm not a student, but regardless of whether the academy is good or bad, what leaves much to be desired is that they copied someone else's work from the DTA (Digital Transformation Association). Any company that does this is a criminal, because the law protects intellectual property. Being students of another academy and copying and selling the same strategy shows a lack of originality, creativity, and innovation. Only those lacking in critical thinking would copy someone else's work. That's why we're in the mess we're in
I'm a current student at the academy, so for security reasons I'm not giving my name. But realistically, the course is quite basic for the 5 million pesos I paid. I'll finish the course in a week; I'm currently on the psychology section, but I feel there are many gaps in my technical knowledge. Sebastian and Manny seem to be quite empirical; they don't have academic training in economics to understand things in more depth. I feel the teachers lack technical knowledge in their teaching methods, and what I've learned I already knew. I think they should offer a leveling course to determine if it's worth paying 5 million pesos. It's not fair to pay so much for something you already know. The videos are very short. I practically finished the course in a month, but to be honest, what they teach on the website is already available online: trend lines, momentum changes, previous day's lows and highs. The course is really too basic.
I think this academy is a scam like DTA. I studied at both and they're practically the same. In fact, when I started at DTA, Manny taught the classes and never showed his trades. There were classes twice a week and on class days he supposedly didn't trade. The MDC course was technically the same.
In the end, I looked for another very affordable academy without expecting anything in return, and to my surprise, I actually became a trader without spending more than $1,500. The academy is called Ostrich Capital; it's not very well-known, but you can surely find it on their website, http://www.ostrichcapitall.com , and from the beginning, they are transparent about prices, curriculum, and real traders.
The MDC course is outrageously expensive; the same course on Udemy costs 15 times less and has the same or even better content.
To truly evaluate an academy, you need to delve deeper. My experience with them has been quite positive, and after attending many academies, this one has allowed me to achieve consistency. Now, 10 months later, I've been able to stay in the market and quit my job. But more importantly, there are several points to mention.
1. The support is there from the very beginning; it's not just answering questions. It seems whoever wrote that was never a student at the academy.
2. They fund their best traders with live accounts. The person who introduced me to MDC is actually starting their live trading today with one of their accounts.
3. It's a reputable academy that delivers on its promises. For me, it was the last course I had to take after three years of back and forth.
4. Everyone needs to develop a clear understanding of the process. Here, you'll only find frustrated people who aren't getting results, and with their mindset, they're unlikely to. You don't need to buy a course. Educate yourselves independently; there are good books, good software, and good trading platforms available. But please stop giving a false impression to people who are arriving for the first time, as the goal cannot be to speak ill of everyone just for the sake of speaking.
This comment is not intended to convince anyone; it is rather the opinion of someone who worked very hard and is now seeing results thanks to the guidance of these traders.
Juan
I don't know, Rick, it seems fake. Maybe you work for MDC? We're too old for Christmas stories.
Hello. My experience was very bad. I think everyone's experience at the academy has been bad, even those who gave testimonials, because none of them made any real money. I felt scammed, but now I take responsibility because I didn't know how these schools work. That recent comment must be from one of them, the one who describes everything point by point; it's obvious they're trying to promote themselves. Besides, they don't use volume analysis and they use a lot of indicators that don't work in the long run. They know how to read the market, but they don't make money, I assure you. The course is very expensive and very basic. I think they explain everything themselves in YouTube videos, and that's all you need because they claim to provide personalized follow-up, which isn't true because they're very busy and take a long time to respond, and their responses are very short.
There goes the salesman talking, hahaha
I've been enrolled for a year and I truly feel cheated and ripped off by this company. The support is only for answering questions and for completing assignments that are incredibly long, boring, and pointless. I only just found out about this comments section. How come I didn't investigate before making a mistake? The support is nonexistent. I spent my savings on a course just to watch a few basic and advanced videos that don't last more than 15 minutes each—all that money for two videos!.
I think Juan is one of the three from MDC. They use the same words.
I see people speaking ill of MDC, and what they say is true. I'll give you my opinion, based on my cousin who lives in Medellín and paid the 8 million pesos. I had already told him he was going to lose his money, but he didn't listen.
The MDC instructors are self-taught people with a very low academic background in macroeconomics. Just look at how they teach the trading psychology module, as if they were talking about soccer or playing ball. They're completely out of touch. They train a lot of traders, and I can assure you that not even 1% are profitable. For example, Marcelo Arrambide DTA stopped trading with the excuse of being too busy and losing money. Who wouldn't become a YouTuber? With losses of that magnitude, nobody goes back to trading. That's why the academy market is a waste of time; it's throwing money down the drain. Everyone becomes a YouTuber to recover their losses, but there are very few good trading courses. If you doubt my criticism, ask one of these academies for a record of statistics and I guarantee that no one will give it to you.
What a waste of money this course is! They just made me do some tasks to extend my membership. I never saw any personalized support. They make you watch pre-recorded course videos where they take up to a week to give you a response. What is this terrible thing? And the live classes are the worst days, Mondays and Fridays, when the recommended days to trade are Tuesday through Thursday. What a terrible course, a complete mess with errors even in the writing. 6 million wasted.
MDC or DTA are telesales companies promoting a course with 0.0% Money Management, or when have they ever published an audited account? NEVER! Their strategy is straight out of a beginner's manual, and they're practically begging people to buy this course like YouTubers. I don't want to be the one feeding such a vicious cycle. This reminds me of Juan Diego Gomez, who promoted signal providers as a way to invest better; in the end, he burned his own bridges and the accounts of his followers. Trading is the hardest thing there is, and these salespeople sell it as if it were incredibly easy. They need to find a way to recover their losses, and what better way than selling a course and becoming YouTubers? There's no other way.
WARNING: I do not recommend joining this Academy. The course is too basic and far too expensive to truly understand market movements. Who gets rich with A1, A2, A3, the 20, the 80, or the cbot? A realistic course value is US$50, not US$1500 as it currently costs. They lure you in with YouTube videos and excessive advertising. Based on my experience, it's a poor academy, and sadly, most academies are like this. Then, after you finish the training, they charge you monthly if you want to participate in the live sessions.
The truth is, this academy is all about marketing. They're hard at selling because they're salespeople, but they're not professional traders. None of them are profitable, and they could never prove their earnings. They claim to fund traders, but it was just a marketing strategy; no one knows of anyone who's actually been funded. Besides, I don't know anyone at this academy who's made a single dollar; they've all lost their accounts. They explain things very well, but the truth is, they're not profitable. I absolutely do not recommend it. Their strategy is very simple and doomed to fail; they're always hitting stop-loss orders. I would urge you to think very carefully before entering the world of day trading because there are many scammers out there who present false results.
Before taking the seminar with them, I saw this post and it really made me hesitate. However, I decided to do the training. I come from studying at very well-known academies in Spain, and I have nothing bad to say about the others; here I think it's important to share the experience of someone who studied at MDC.
The strategy is simple, but that doesn't mean it's bad; on the contrary, it reduces uncertainty in the market. They taught me volume profiling, and my results have improved significantly since I started studying with them.
I really liked the emphasis on psychology. Because they get straight to the point and explain how a person should approach markets correctly.
Regarding marketing, the only thing I've seen from them are videos that provide value; I never see them upload any other type of content.
The strategy includes indicators, but using them is not essential. These indicators only provide an explanation of the market, and they are the last thing used in analysis.
The risk-benefit ratio isn't 2:1 as many claim. In fact, during training and supplementary classes, we're encouraged to aim for higher risk-benefit ratios… The one that has worked best for me is 3:1, because it allows me to maintain a balance with my success rate.
For me, the training has been worth every penny I paid for it
Mr. Manuel, what you're saying isn't true. The risk-reward ratio that Mr. Manny indicates is 2:1. Nowhere in the course do they mention having higher profits; that's the strategy, and you can even find it for free on YouTube. With this methodology, the trader is prone to mental breakdown because, under psychological pressure to recover losses, they always end up abandoning the trade. Guaranteed. So what you're saying is false; it's not worth a penny.