The High Court yesterday dismissed Clemen Chiang Freely’s appeal against claims awarded by the Small Claims Tribunal (SCT) to 48 people amounting to over $150,000.

The group of people had filed the claims after The Straits Times reported that Clemen Chiang allegedly obtained his doctorate in option trading from an unaccredited university.

The 48 people claimed they would not have attended Mr Chiang’s three-day course on option trading or bought a $960 computer program if he was not the holder of a PhD from an accredited university.

With the appeal out of the way, the SCT will be able to hear another 400 plus pending claims against Freely.

Freely Loses Appeal Against Payout (Today Newspaper)

Clemen Chiang, an options trader and chief trainer of Freely Business School, was in the news last week for a lawsuit bought against him.

Trading ‘Expert’ Ordered to Refund Fees (Straits Times)

A group of his ex-students (49 of them), won a decision from the Small Claims Tribunal (SCT) for a refund of the fees that they paid Clemen Chiang.

According to the group, they felt misled that Clemen’s doctorate was from an unaccredited university. They only found out about it when The Straits Times published an article on degree mills last August.

The SCT awarded the group a 80% refund of their fees and a 100% refund of any software or webinars that they bought from Clemen.

A post in the Channel NewsAsia forum has gathered steam with many of his other ex-students discussing on the claim process. At this point of writing, it is already up to 28 pages long.

According to one forumer, all ex-students of Clemen can lodge their claims as long as they do it within a year of the initial SCT claim. As that claim was filed in August 2008, that means everyone has until August 2009 to file their claim.

Edited: The post in the Channel NewsAsia forum has been deleted. Some of the students has setup a google group for discussion. Please email  tanhanfung@hotmail.com if you would like to get involved. 

A check at the Freely website showed that the physical address has been removed and replaced with a PO Box address.

Clemen’s students number by the tens of thousands and if a significant number of them come forward to file a claim, it could turn out to be a huge financial liability for him (each 3-day course costs a few thousand dollars). e.g. 10,000 x $2000 = $20 million

Unless Clemen keeps a lot of his assets in the form of cash, he will probably have to dig deep into his options trading skills to “generate” the cash required to settle the claims.

In Clemen’s case, he said that he was not aware that the university where he got his doctorate was a unaccredited one. The decision by SCT is a landmark one as it shows that ignorance does not work as a defence.

For other trainers currently in the market, they will have to make sure that any claims they make are properly backed up otherwise they might be haunted by a similar judgement in the future.

Dr Clemen Chiang was the first speaker of the day at the Wealth Expo. Clemen is the CEO of Freely and one of the pioneers in the options trading coaching industry in Singapore.

The first part of his presentation focused on analysing the history of US recessions and the impact on the stock market.

According to Clemen, over a 60 year business cycle period, the US recession lasted for an average of 10 months where the expansion phase lasted for an average of 57 months.

There were 2 instances where the stock market undergone a severe correction. One was during the oil shocks in the seventies, another was during the savings and loans crisis in the eighties.

At this current moment, we are faced with a double whammy. We have both the high cost of oil and the subprime crisis.

Clemen provided two strategies for making money in this climate.

Strategy 1

The first plays on the Fed’s decision to cut interest rates. Whenever the rates are cut, the market tends to rally.

From Jul 90 to Mar 91, the rate was cut from 8-3%.

From Jan 02 – Jun 03, the rate was cut from 6-1%.

The lower range is usually between 1-3% before the FOMC reverses the direction.

During the Mar 01 to Dec 01 recession, the recession only kickedin on the 3rd announcement of the 3rd Fed annoucement of rate cuts. If we take that information and apply it to the current situation, the end of recession should be in Sep 2008.

His Predictions

1. From Oct 2008, markets to rally ahead of presidential election.
2. From Mar 09, markets must rally otherwise we could enter into a stagflation phrase.

Strategy 2

Clemen has studied that whenever there is a casino development, the property prices within a 5k radius will appreciate greatly. That was the reason he bought a home in Sentosa Cove.

The Sentosa opportunity is obviously not there, but Clemen points us to the fact that Taiwan might be opening a Casino resort too. This might happen on Pescadores, or Penghu County. The conditions appear just similar to Sentosa and there could be a potential property play there.

The rest of his presentation was pretty much a sales pitch for his options trading seminar.

This is the second time I have attended Clemen’s presentation. When it comes to investing, Clemen’s a guy that does his homework and uses his own independent thinking. However, one thing that was quite irritating in his presentation was his never-ending examples of his students making triple digit percentage returns on individual trades.

Making a 1000% return on a single trade is always possible, especially when you are using leverage. But we all know that the consistent returns over time will be much, much lower than that. Unfortunately, the sizzle and not the steak is always the thing that sells.

Yesterday, I was at Singapore Expo for the Wealth Expo seminar. This 1-day event was part of the National Achievers Congress 2008.

The lineup of speakers and their topics included:

• Dr Clemen Chiang on “Make Money in 2008 Now“
• Peter Elsworth on “Financial Freedom Using Eminis“
• Steven Molnar on “Real Estate Mastery“
• Kishore M. on “Instant Forex Profits“

I will be posting some updates on what the different speakers talked about but generally the event was a huge disappointment. I could very well have stayed at home and I wouldn’t have missed much.