Financial Markets Training (FMT) - Commodity & Equity Derivative Training

The word education is derived from the Latin educere. Although there are different interpretations, we at Financial Markets Training prefer the sense that education is a process "to draw out". This goes against the expectation that training is simply lecturing - this is the traditional view that if you pour more content into people, verbally or electronically, they will improve.

One popular marketing technique used within business education seeks to establish the credibility of the trainer based on criteria such as how many departments they ran or perhaps how many people they managed in different geographical locations. However, we believe this misses the point. Many people reading this will have endured training sessions which essentially comprise of one or several days of lectures where the underlying message is essentially "look how much cleverer I am compared to you!"

Financial education should have the learner at its core. It is not what is taught that is important but rather what is learned and taken away. Our aim is to provide interesting and challenging classroom experiences. There was a time when training vendors rushed to provide on line training for the clients. In the 15 or so years since these products were commercially produced they have failed to displace classroom training as the dominant way of learning.

In their many incarnations they are often nothing more than a book on a screen. Clicking a few buttons, does not in our mind, make it interactive in any meaningful sense.

FMT prides itself in being staffed by professional educators. All of us have at some time worked in an investment bank with roles ranging from front office trader through risk management to operations. Our experience has resulted in the accumulation of a wealth of knowledge.

However, education is a relative thing - although we may know our subject, it is inevitable that in our classes there are people who may have specialist knowledge of a certain subject. Why should such knowledge and experience remain hidden away when it can benefit the class as a whole? Thoughtful design of educational activities should aim to "draw out" this experience.

We are all committed to improving every session we teach. A common question we are asked is "do you have a session on...?" Our reply is that every session we teach is to an extent different. Client needs are rarely homogenous and since the subject matter evolves we always look to make small incremental changes to the materials to keep them fresh and relevant.