We recently connected with Alan Dell and have shared our conversation below.

Alan, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s jump into the story of starting your own firm – what should we know?

In 1997, with the birth of the Internet and the recent popularity of web pages, my wife and I decided to launch a new domain, futuros.com, related to the little-known futures market, where I decided to post news, articles, market charts, and sell some investment manuals that I wrote myself.

This new web domain was developed (and is still being developed) entirely in Spanish because the information on these markets in the Spanish language was, and still is, very little.

Success was relatively good at the beginning, several manuals on “How to invest in the Futures Markets” were sold. This manual had to be printed at a Kinkos because it has more than 120 pages, and then we had the hardcovers made by a third company and bought a bookbinding machine to seal the hardcover with the 120 pages, and then mail it via US Postal Service, quite a job!

The popularity of the website grew gradually, and I had to make another 3 manuals related to options and hedging due to the growing demand for information in Spanish.

If you want to establish a company you have to have the knowledge base and then have patience to attract clients little by little. Over the years my company grew much more when we switched from being a simple seller of manuals on the internet to becoming a brokerage firm for commodities investment.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

In 1994, I received a small 5-page flyer in my mailbox about investing in oil. It was sent to me by an investor who lives in California and was selling a manual with VHS videos explaining how to invest in futures markets.

This flyer interested me a lot, because I had never heard of these markets, and I immediately sent him a check for the $199 which was the cost of the course (manual and videos).

After 2 weeks, I received what was promised and read the manual in 1 day. I was very excited! I watched the videos over and over again to understand how these markets “worked fully.” Then I went to the nearest library and asked for all the books on futures markets that I could get my hands on.

Three months later, I opened my first account with the Lind Waldock brokerage (which was bought years later by REFCO) and began my adventure of investing in futures markets, especially with futures options.

What I am most proud of is having learned over the last 30 years about markets that in my home country (Peru) were unheard of in the 80s and 90s. Now with my long experience, I can teach not only futures but also other investment instruments such as stocks, options, forex, CFDs, and cryptocurrencies.

Have you ever had to pivot?

In 2009, my company, Futuros Trading, was already an independent futures broker and we had many clients in Latin America and Europe, but an accounting error that the market regulator discovered forced us to close the office.

The blow was very hard because we had to deal with clients who did not know what was happening and had to be transferred to other brokers to continue their operations.

Futuros Trading had to reinvent itself in 2010 to be able to continue its operations as a company and we decided to transform the company from a futures brokerage to a futures academy and only teach investment courses.

It was a slow transition because we had to create many different courses to be able to attract a good number of interested parties and to ensure that the sales of the courses were sufficient to be able to keep the company running.

Now Futuros Trading has more than 15 different courses, many of them with 3 levels of teaching (basic, intermediate and advanced) depending on the level of knowledge that the student has.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best sources for getting new clients have been two: 1) the internet, our website futuros.com is the domain equivalent to futures.com which is the source of information about this niche market and anyone who does a Google search for courses or investments in the futures markets will find that our web domain appears among the first on the list of domains that have some relation to these markets.

2) The other source of new clients is word-of-mouth recommendations from clients who have already taken courses with us and were delighted not only with the quality of our courses but also with the customer service and help we provide to all our students once they finish the course.

All our courses come with three months of personalized help after finishing the course and if the student did the three levels (basic, intermediate and advanced) then they have nine months of advice and help in their daily practices that they have to do before opening a real account.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.futuros.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/futurostradingllc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FuturosTradingLLC
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/futuros-trading-llc/
• Twitter: https://x.com/futurostrading
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@FuturosTrading

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