Gone are the days when an aspiring trader could get a job as a runner on a trading floor to learn the business from the ground up. Most of those support jobs are gone along with the traders they served. Markets still need traders though, and those traders still need a training ground. That training will likely occur in front of a screen rather than in a pit. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) hosts three to five Webinars each month, the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) hosts about 10 a month. And all around the Web other exchanges and brokers are putting on countless free Webinars, making them one of the fastest growing means of online education for traders.
“I did about 85 Webinars in 2005 and at the rate I’m going at right now it’ll be about 130 by the end of 2006,” says Barbara Schmidt-Bailey, director of business development at the CBOT. “We’re very, very active in the Webinar space; having been doing them for the past four years,” she says. “They are a major communication tool for us and they’ve been extremely successful.”
She says there has been a trend in the last two to three years in online education, including Webinars. “At the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004 there already were some active trading rooms with industry educators who were running trading rooms all day long where people would join in; and the idea of a public forum was a very new idea but it has caught on since then,” Schmidt-Bailey says.
Gail Osten, director of market education at the CME, agrees. “You’ve seen a very steady increase in the use of Webinars, and also in the use of presentations that were once in-class seminars, which are being repurposed so that people globally can look at them online. And you’re going to see a lot more of it,” Osten says, adding people have limited time and prefer to get information in bits and pieces when it’s most convenient for them.
The ability to record Webinars and archive them, making them available to traders at their convenience, has made Webinars more useful and fueled their growth.
Hot Topics
The introduction of mini contracts, like the CBOT’s mini Dow, have helped the growth of the popularity of Webinars. “Such smaller contracts are geared towards the retail audience, and having a product you can promote to the retail audience helps us come up with topics traders have an interest in,” Schmidt-Bailey says.
She attends industry retail conferences and speaks with traders to generate Webinar topics. “I try to figure out what is important to the individual trader, what they are interested in learning about and who are the industry speakers they’d like to listen to. I look for where they need education. Through that exposure there are constant themes and topics that come up that lend themselves very well to turning into a Webinar event,” Schmidt-Bailey says.
She says Webinars that are technically based attract the most attendees. “Those average about 150 people,” she says. The number of people who can register for an online event is usually unlimited. Popular topics for CBOT Webinars include technical analysis, support and resistance, candlesticks and trend analysis.
Schmidt-Bailey adds Webinars with speakers who are very well-known also draw a lot of traders. “My Favorite Options Trading Strategies” with Price Headley, founder of BigTrends.com, drew a large crowd. “He happens to be a very well known options speaker and he consistently has a very large draw every time he speaks for us, and our CCI Webinars with Ken “Woodie” Wood are also very popular. He brings an army with him. What he does is very simple and straightforward,” she says.
The CCI Webinar and another popular CBOT Webinar, “Trading the $10 Gold Channel” with Tom Logé, co-founder of TradersHelpingTraders.net, each had a registration of about 1300 to 1400 people. “Logé trades using support and resistance with a very straight-forward strategy and it’s popular,” she says.
Other topics covered by CBOT Webinars include live trading of the mini-Dow, using cascading technical studies, stop strategies, using volatility for short-term trading and trading CBOT metals.
Osten says any Webinar that has practical application, one that will help people sort out a strategy or a new look at a market, will have good attendance.
A recent CME Webinar covered live trading of the CME’s E-mini futures, which was a two-hour event led by Daniel Gramza, president of Gramza Capital Management Inc. “There were more than 500 attendees from more than 22 countries,” Osten says. “Two hours is a considerable length of time, and at the end of that two-hour period there were still 400 people online listening.” Some attendees log out of a Webinar during the question and answer period.
CME Webinars average between 200 and 600 attendees depending on the topic. Topics range from an introduction to historical pricing to seasonality in livestock markets.
Because education is important for beginning traders when it comes to trading, brokers are offering their own Webinars to bring new traders more information on key topics.
Futures broker Lind-Waldock has hosted many free Webinars on topics that include how to trade foreign exchange, seasonal outlook for grains and oilseeds and a precious metals outlook. The length of its Webinars depend on the topic. Forex broker FXCM offers free Webinars on how to trade forex using RSI, interest rates, candlestick charts and stochastics. Its presentations last about half an hour.
The most important aspect of Webinars is the ability to use them for continuous educational material. Being able to record Webinars and seminars extends their shelf life. “I’ve spoken to people who register and they have no intention of attending the event live, they just wait for the e-mail I send out saying ‘the recording is available now’ and then they view it,” Schmidt-Bailey says. All of the CBOT Webinars are archived on the CBOT’s Web site: www.cbot.com, and most are about one hour.
The majority of CME Webinars are archived through their Web site at www.cme.com. “What typically happens with Webinars is you sign up for one in advance, but when the time comes you’re involved with something else that keeps you from doing it and you want to be able to go back and listen to the entire Webinar, or even a portion of it, and the archiving really extends the life,” she says.
Lind-Waldock and FXCM archive their Webinars and offer free access to them through their Web sites: www.lind-waldock.com and www.fxcm.com.
Despite the popularity of Webinars, classroom lessons are not left behind. While the two-day seminar is no longer common place, there is still a place for face to face interaction.
“Webinars are really a piece of an integrated marketing push; you’re still going to talk to people face-to-face. While a lot of things are going the way of the Web, there’s still personal contact; you can’t make one thing be all things to all people.” Osten says.
The CME offers many basic and advanced classes for traders in topics that include futures, options and technical analysis. The CME also takes in-class seminars and video tapes them so they can be put online too.
Osten says the CME held a 150-people seminar in New York in March called “Housing Futures and Options.” The seminar was filmed, edited and made available on the Internet. The CME has upcoming seminars on trend analysis for traders and trading psychology.
Schmidt-Bailey says the CBOT still holds in-class events regularly, often using the same speakers who give the Webinars. While such seminars are not free, they usually only require a minimal charge.
FXCM and Lind-Waldock both offer seminars. Seminar topics at FXCM include major technical indicators for currency trading, secrets for trading the certain currency pairs and the best time to trade which currencies.
Making it work
Software programs like HotComm, which is a real-time desktop solution for conferencing, collaboration and content delivery, can turn any computer into a communication system for delivering online events to as many as thousands of users. HotComm is used for on-demand meetings, online training, distance learning or corporate Webcasts. Programs like HotComm offer live video and graphics, the ability to record sessions, e-mail reminders for registrants and chat capabilities for speakers and participants.
Schmidt-Bailey says the CBOT uses HotComm exclusively for its Webinars because it’s easy to use and it’s portable. “I can walk into a ballroom at the New York traders Expo and with an Internet connection and my lap top I can turn a live workshop into a Webinar simulcast,” she says.
Schmidt-Bailey appreciates the advantage of being able to connect people all over the world, and the efficiency of not having to fly people around, citing a time when she had a speaker stuck in Hong Kong and she was in Chicago, and they still were able to have the event.
Webinars are a convenient way for traders to access information and spend time with speakers who are experts on the subjects they speak. Almost all Webinars offer a question and answer period for attendees. “These people are real traders and they have real questions that are very in-depth questions about stops, indicators and charts,” Schmidt-Bailey says.
“We’re not going to see the number of Webinars let up and you’re going to see online education continue to grow. The growth in online trading has led to the growing need for education and we’ve found and developed a tool that gets people to educate themselves in the same way they trade, which is at home in front of their computer,” Schmidt Bailey says.
