Why Aren’t We All Rich Then?

Yes I have signed up. Very disappointed. I would like to collectively have input from a number of skilled traders onboard as to what they like. I can then view and then see charts to help me better understand.

I trade looking over other shoulders but would like to hear more from all those doing this.

Sig

Aj, It will be great to have this service.

Thanks,
Raj

I don’t compare them because I used them for different reasons. I will not renew any of them or join any others. I found them pretty useless. I often did not take their suggestion.

Options Hotline

It’s track record is impressive until you realize that many of the returns listed in the track record happen long after a sane person would get stopped out of the position. As an absolute out of the gate beginner I did better picking options on my own than using that service. A problem with it is that you don’t know the strategy used to select the option so you don’t know when the strategy has been violated.

The only services/systems/gurus I pay any attention to are ones that say, in some form, “This takes dedicated effort.” Everything else is snake oil.

1. My experiences have all been negative. Some of the services have even disapeared on me with out refunding my money as promised.. I have learned from all of them and what I have learned is that you must develope your own style of trading. With your own rules that best suit your personality and situation. If these “services” where making their authors so much money then why do they try so hard to sell them to the rest of the world. The methods of really successful traders seem to kept under lock key and only an occasional glimpse of them is ever allowed

My Email has been bombarded with these offers but I just delete these messages.Trading trainer is offering me what I need right now.That is to learn the right way to trade.Furthermore I wont allow anyone to rob my pocket for something that will not be beneficial to me.

Mr. Brown , thanks 4 entertain while at the same time you telling us how to fish

Anyone can pull up old charts and claim an entry and exit profit. Giving a predictions plays, say for at least 3 months first, so that one can follow to see a real profit is proof where then one could say I need this service and will pay for it´s true value. No one does this as far as I´ve seen! Otherwise, buying or selling is an emotional trade, This brings up the questions are they in the Internet business selling a name or really traders? It seems they are more of an Internet business, one that sells hype something a discipled trader would not buy.
So if these services prey on those who hope to get rich, certainly a red flag goes up for me. I´m sure the get rich scheme works for most or you wouldn´t continue seeing the same ads with the hype!
As far as stocks goes they are most likely promoting a company stock where there´s a kick back.

Hi AJ,
Wow, did you ever just hit a button, there, on the trading services. In an attempt to improve my trading, in addition to classes, I needed to see the daily practical application without spending an absolute fortune for mentoring. I wanted to watch the “pros” trade, thinking I was going to learn from that, so I opted for a service. I figured out that the problem is you have to find one that has a trading style like yours or you’ll hate the service. And you can’t know their style, really, until you start seeing their trades. So far I’ve tried Bernie Schaeffer, Pete Stolchers(OneOption), RedOption(calendars, ProFocus-Peter Reznicek), and Big Trends (Price Headley et al). I’ve just plain been disgusted with Bernie and Price. I’ve found they don’t do trades any better than I do, and sometimes they’re worse than me at position maintenance. I can tell you that Price Headley (Mr. ‘Hall of Fame’ trader) has issued NO trades whatsoever in his Shark portfolio in over a month. No puts, no credit spreads, nothing. Some Shark. I wanted to see how good traders trade in a hard market. Well, he doesn’t trade. Yea, I’m largely in cash too, and I don’t need to pay anyone to see them sit and do nothing. Bob Lang, who maintains about half of Price’s services, doesn’t do any better. (I have lots of stories about his trades. And they’re not good.) Some of the rest of my services have been better or ok. Pete S/ OneOption was mediocre, but not impressive. RedOption’s, calendar service was so so for profits. But at least you learn from their trades. They explain them. I really like Peter Reznicek - ProFocus/ ShadowTrader/ RedOption/ TOS. I don’t necessarily do every one of his trades, but I have learned quite a bit from him. I do like his service/comments. He actually teaches you and you learn from his trades, whereas Big Trends keeps you in the dark (so you “need” to stay with them). Peter’s service has been best all around for me. It’s inexpensive, too. For $20/mo you can try it and if you don’t like it you just quit, no strings. All of the RedOption services are like that, which is nice. You can try different strategies and watch how the guys trade them. Kudos to TOS/ RedOption.

As for how I picked/compared these services, for Bernie and Price, I got lured in by a very enticing email/internet ad and a “sale”. I thought it was the easy way to improve my trading by learning from the pros’ actual trades. How wrong I was. I looked at what THEY told me their record was (which I later came to see was filtered), and in Price’s case, I attended free webinars he gave. The info was good stuff, and I wanted to see it in action. In the case of RedOption/ShadowTrader/Peter R, that was through TOS. I picked them because I was impressed with their education. And I still like them a lot.

What I’ve learned about “silver spoon” services is if they look too good to be true, and if they have to toot their own horn, stay away.

Hope that helps in your quest to uncover the truths about services! It sounds like you probably have similar stories.

Thanks for your blogs/thoughts!
Michelle Beierle

Hi:
Four times I have been suckered into buying a stock that was recomended by these people. Two are now worthless and I later found them on a hyped up sight, the other two are fair companies that may see profits in years to come.
I have also bought into many trading systems that dont seem to tell u much.
I no longer buy any service from anyone…I just read and study all I can.My trading is now just about paying the commissions.
gary

Hi A.J.: I had a couple of auto trading services that specialized in options. One was a $5,000. per year service and it only lost about $2,500. in a year for me doing 5 contracts per trade and about 4 issues per month. It was fully guaranteed to make a profit or money returned in full. It took only 8 months to get the refund but it did come. Another was only $60 or $70 a month and about broke even over a year. A friend of mine tried auto traded services and one made about 15 percent for him on Q’s and the other lost a little. My feelings are like yours. If they are so smart, why aren’t they rich and spending time on the beach or their yachts instead of trying to get a few bucks from me.

Elton

Let me start off saying: I have wholeheartedly decided that your trading method is the best fit for the trading style, that I want to emulate. I want, and have the time, to learn how to make my own trades, for my portfolio,(with your insights). I have decided to use your website amenities, administrate a trading group, and immerse myself in your daily teachings, after much consideration. I hope your company realizes that there are a WHOLE LOT of competing trading ideas, and options that prospective clients have to chose from, so a loyal customer is a hard won one.

I have a fairly large portfolio, so have been checking into over a dozen trading systems from the most popular known, such as- Vestor Veck, and Metastock, to lessor know Trading Concepts, Tradeology, Signals, EZstock options, Technical-Investor, Pro trading profits, Money and Markets, your Trading Trainer, and several others. All of these have been in business for several years and have advantages and disadvantages, depending on your time constraints, knowledge of markets, and trading preferences. I have previously been a “Buy and Hold” INVESTOR and outperformed the general market through carefull fundamental study, but am looking for better gains through technical indicators. I plan on taking a small percentage of my portfolio ($20K) and seeing how I do with your techniques, after carefully studying them. The as you say “services that hand you trades” are no different than multi millionaires, and even billionaires, handing their portfolios over to the many, “Wealth Managers” and “Wealth Protection” firms that exist. I’m sure you are familiar with some of the names: Morgan Stanley, AG Edwards, JB Hanauver, etc. that handle accounts a million and up. Most of the Ultra Wealthy, DO NOT HANDLE THEIR OWN ACCOUNTS. Most of these smaller firms that “hand you trades on a silver platter” are for smaller investors with smaller accounts, but some are probably just as successful as the larger firms, in their performance. I read that you had a bad experience with your former portfolio manager “churning” your account, which is a common practice among inferior account managers. Those of us that have used brokers have probably all had bad experiences, until a competant one is found, if that is the way an investor wants to go.

Question 2. A lot of the “services that hand you trades” list their history for the last 3 to 5 years, so that prospects can check their “win/loss” rate, and see if it would be a good fit for people that just don’t have the time,skills, or motivation, to do the study required to make daily trading decisions. A prospective client needs to see many months of trading history, to make a comparison, through all types of maket conditions, to make an informed opinion of such a service. This is really the only way to “check” the performance (assuming the data is truthfull)for a service such as this, since you have no idea of the technical and fundamental idealogicals of their system. In the end, each investor/trador is different, and has to make the choice of the “best fit” for himself.

I fell for a “Black Box” deal and it was a bummer. The deal is if THEY don’t show a profit in six months you can get half of your entrance money back. Even if THEY make money you could lose because they don’t count slippage or broker’s fees. Since we both lost money in the first six months I am waitung for my refund-which they have agreed to and promised.

A.J.

I stay clear of all other offers and believe me I am bombarded with offers. The reason I signed up with you is because you actually did it. Until I understand your teachings I am not going to dilute my learning capacity with other stuff. I have been with you over a year now and things are beginning to get clearer. I like that you hammer home the same consistant messages. It’s like walking down a dark corridor and at some point in time a light goes off. And I will say to myself, wow, that’s what he means even though you may have said it many times before. If I allow other stuff to occupy my head I won’t be open to those AH HA moments. Keep up the good work!

Glenn

Wow!!!

I woke up this morning to a handful of great thoughts and comments. Thank you all for participating with your own views. This is great. I can’t wait to see more.

Schaeffers Research has a introductory course that
provides a balance between reasoning and execution of
the mechanics of option trading-because of this,I am
now following your outline more dilegently.

Schaeffer teaches true aspects of win/loss
possibilities which made me more aware of Money-
management rules.
If I could win 90%,Buffet would be working
for me in 5 years.

I also have had some Ah Ah moments…thanks to you explaining things over and over. I made a big paper mistake and thought I did it perfect, I did make money, however I forgot one thing and I couldn’t see it until you explained every step again. Thank you for your patience. Linda

These are the services I’ve subscribed to in the past: Big Trends Grand Slam Options, Schaeffers Research Master Portfolio, Optionetics Channel Trader, and Index Spread Options Trading. Of the four services only Index Spread Options Trading was consistently successful.

With Big Tends and Schaeffers the holding period was too long for my appetite – three months to a year. And Optionetics was hit and miss. Most trades I selected were losers and the ones I didn’t were winners. Go figure?

I liked Index Spread Options Trading the best because I would get consistent monthly returns (2% - 5%) on credit spreads. The first 60-days are free and if a month was not profitable the service would refund your subscription for that month. In addition, trades and trade adjustments were explained clearly and concisely. I liked the service however, because I have a small account I could not take advantage of spreads greater than 10 points. I did create my own credit spread system base on what I learned from this service and started using it January 2008 with very good success.

I too have had not so good experience with services. I’m not a member of trading trainer - yet. I wouldn’t sign up for any service that didn’t provide me with at least 1 year of historical data. I then used a technique to normalize risk vs reward taught by van Tharp to evaluate these systems called r-multiples and a separte calculation to look at max drawdowns. I looked at the offerings from Headly, Schaeffer, Trester, Njarin. The best historical results came from GrandSlam (bob lang) from BigTrends (mentioned by others in this blog) followed by Trester and the PowerTrends service from Schaeffer. I then set up OptionVue for historical trading of options to see if I could duplicate their results to ensure that I could reasonably get their trades. It turns out that many of the trades from Trester could never be entered at the recommended price but schaeffer and GrandSlam looked good. I actually subscribed and autotraded PowerTrends and GrandSlam. Starting in November/december time frame. I usually use loose stops but decided to religously follow the services and allowed the option value be my stop if the service didn’t exit. The first trades were astronomical for GrandSlam (about 10%/month) and not so good for PowerTrends ( small loss) - then the market went against them and the service did not take profits (believing that it was temporary set back I’m assuming) and I really got hammerred losing about 30% of my trading capitol before scaling back. I’m still with Grandslam but holding my investments to 1% of trading capital. Still not doing good. I have an April 30 evaluation to determine whether to continue. So what went wrong. It’s the newsletter syndrome. Service A shows outstanding historical results (I have no data to show they’ve been doctored) and idiots like flock to them only to realize they just had a good run and their consistently was related to market dynamics and possibly not their skill. I’ll continue reading the blogs - they seem to be well grounded and may join the community soon. Thrice burned - many time cautious. Hope this helps some people and thanks to others who have shared. (sorry for the long post)

I love to handicap the horses. Once I became interested in the market I thought the horse touts were very bad. These jerks in the market are far worse that I have ever seen. I get e-mailed from all 0f the same so called experts who claim they are all rich. Yes they are experts at getting stupid people to pay for their knowledge. I tell them to keep it. No one really has a idea on what the market is going to do it just does what it wants and we must learn to follow it. The big boys control everything for the most part. Learn that and we will not be paying these jerks for their picks. I really like Peter the shadow $20.00 is very cheap I guess

I signed up with an option pick service that promised 50 plays 50 winners guaranteed.Another statement was 77.5% per recommendation for the entire subscription.There was one new trade per week and trades were held for 2-3 weeks or 4-6 weeks or 8-12 weeks.

Some of the trades were losers right from entry and were retired after 4 months.It was a white knuckle ride with $10,000 invested on each trade.In the weekly updates, trades which were losing were just listed as maximum gain 0% and when the trades were retired as they reached front month status,the percent loss wasn’t mentioned.Gains were calculated on maximum gains reached but I wasn’t told when to exit so I always made less than the gains listed by the trader.There were some large gains on many options.

I make my own decisions now as I didn’t like staying in a trade for months and I didn’t like waiting for large losses to turn into smaller losses.

I compared option signal services by looking at the percentage of winning trades.I looked for 60 to 100% of the trades to be successful.

Good point made by Doug - “The only services/systems/gurus I pay any attention to are ones that say, in some form, “This takes dedicated effort.” Everything else is snake oil.”

Anyone that often trade in the markets know it takes dedicated effort, at least to some extent. Those “get rich” programs that sound too good to be true mostly play on the speculators. Investors and definitely “smart money” can see right through them.

WOW, I have also tried many of these services. I no longer follow any specific options trading service.

I currently use Zacks.com, premium membership, for fundamental ratings. I log their daily stock highlights into TeleChart for future reference, and build my lists from that and scans I run.

I also use OmniTrader to help find patterns within large lists. But I mostly look for stocks with a good range and supporting trend, and swing trade into the trend.

I have learned to follow all of the rules AJ has presented so far by the process of elimination and the school of hard knocks. However I am still experimenting with shorter time frames, spread trades, other trading vehicles, etc.

As for these other services:

Price Headley’s Option Shark cost me the most, both in losses and subscription price. It had a fantastic track record, I reviewed almost every trade for a year, and liked what I saw. I set it up with a 10K account on auto trade, with a 5% position size, and allowed it to lose half the account before trying to get out. Non refundable 3,000$ subscription. Ouch.

Steve Sarnoff’s Options Hotline. This was an early mistake. I wanted to learn and thought this looked good, learn and earn. A new recomendation every weekend, but limited details and no follow up. He would follow every trade but never offered sell advise. Every trade expired worthless. I promply quit and got a full refund. Amazingly in future promotions he was quoting the same trades as profitable. I did some research and realized that the only way he could claim those profits was by tracking the highest intraday price and claiming it as his profit. Some stocks never went his way, but he still showed a slight profit. Be suspicious of anyone who shows a profit of 10-15% after only 1 or 2 days when they’re aiming for home runs!

WaveStrength. The first service I subscribed to. I learned a lot from them, but found it imposible to follow the intraday trading alerts. Many good trades, but the cumulative results werent that good. Strictly short term OTM options on the index ETF’s. Unfortunately they tried to set in the market stops on these and got taken out unnecessarily all the time. They fed a lot of their subscribers to the market makers.

Bernie Schaefer. Anouther first newsletter, his basic service. Never followed the recomendations, but learned a bit about options.

Ken Trestor’s Options Report. Interesting service, but I canceled quickly. By this time I realized this was the wrong direction for me, and set about reading and studying seriously.

Tycoon Report. Great free service. I learned a lot reading Chris Rowe’s postings and mini reports. Very similar rules to AJ, mostly following the short to mid term trends with calendar and diagonal spreads. Not as many short term swing trades as AJ. Very dedicated to teaching. His trading service is expensive, $2500 on 50% discount, when open. However, I again cancelled, I realized quickly it wasnt what I was looking for.

I compare services by who gives me usable information.

I’ve learned that I dont care for services that try to feed me trades, with precise entrys and exits. I appreciate knowledge and assistance when reasonably priced. Anything to help speed and streamline the process of finding good potential trades.

I’ve found that it is more important to develop ones personal trading style than to follow any one person, no matter how good they are.

What I look for from blogs like this are new ideas and points I might have missed. I’m always willing to read trading tips and explore new ideas.

I’m very interested in Trading Trainer, your profits are far ahead of mine, and I agree with your rules and general trading style. However much of it still falls into that “to good to be true” trap. The profits are certainly possible, Ive seen them many times, but in the long run it comes down to personal effort and style, and building the skills and experience to work successfully and consistantly.

However, Trading Trainer is reasonably priced, and the pricing structure is very fair. I will join, although I’m not sure I can keep up with all the daily and weekly e-mails, and also study all the information you’ve collected, and be actively involved, while also getting my work done. But it is a wothwhile endeavor.

Ken

KEVIN
Great post Kevin. Sounds like you have been around the block…as have I. The “if it’s too good to be true” statement, that websites use, to try to steer you away from others, and try to get you to join THEIR site, works both ways. If their site was so great, why wouldn’t everyone be using THEIRS, and so on and so on.
also, I haven’t seen too many of the “silver platter sites” offer a “get rich” offer. Most just promise that they will make more profitable trades, than losing trades. Good idea to be wary of ALL sites until you feel confident in them, and don’t expect too much from them. I agree with you, I have engulfed myself with AJ’s site, and the time it takes to really follow the techniques, is far more than the 30 minutes a night that is advertised. But for now, I have the time to get the full usage out of the site.

Hey Bob… A couple of thoughts.

The primary reason we have found through market research that people stay away from sites that promote education and knowledge in trading over sites that promise delivering more profitable trades than losing trades, is because learning a skill is perceived as being harder than just having a service deliver trades to execute.

The secondary reason the research identified was that when people have a service that promises delivering more profitable trades than losing trades, they feel more comfortable because, should something go wrong, they have someone to blame. When people are presented with the opportunity to learn a skill, they, often subconsciously, steer away because of not wanting to take responsibility should they make mistakes.

As far as not being able to follow the Trading Trainer techniques in 30 minutes a night, I suspect if I were to look over your shoulder in an evening, I would find that you are not following the process exactly as I lay out. The Trading Trainer process can be performed in 20 to 30 minutes per night. I stand by that statement. We spend a lot of time in my apprentice program doing just that; focusing on time management in one’s trading practice.

Thank you Bob for your comments. I appreciate you for contributing to the Trading Trainer blog. Cheers!

“If these “services” where (sic) making their authors so much money then why do they try so hard to sell them to the rest of the world.” The reason these guys sell their newsletter service is to provide a consistent source of income to pay their rent, mortgage, etc while they trade. This is the same as any other field.
And the reason that everyone doesn’t do it is because 90% of people are unable to follow simple instructions, or, politely speaking , could figure out how to screw up a good dream. How many of the original Turtle Traders were able to follow instructions?

[...] 2008  |  Popularity: unranked  |  0 Views Last week, I asked the question, "Why aren’t we all rich then?" I used this question to bring up the topic of stock-picking services and "experts" who [...]

Your asking the wrong type question. What needs to be changed is the following:Your site along with 90% of related sites, is one very professional MASTER MARKETING pieces. You do not in a genuine or honest effort try to give a REAL picture of the true success of your services. It comes down to almost All hype. !!! You present one of the most common marketing frauds by selling the SIZZLE instead of the actual Steak. In rare situations, but there are some, and i subscribe to a few of the BEST, you are actually given facts and figures,CURRENT performance, relating to actual performance of ALL recommendations. One that comes to mind is the 25 year publication by Dan Sullivan.There are a few others.They give a small candle of hope that honesty, integrity, ethics, and self dignity still exists in your profession.It is so REFRESHING when you come upon that rare site where the transactions, winners and losers are honestly presented blow by blow, with real numbers and performance. The individuals doing this seem to survive, have customers reorder and celebrate their success by being around 25 years or more.

AJ…I too have tried many "listen to me and I’ll make you rich" newsletters or websites. I’ve found all of them to be very disappointing. They all sound very good in their promo ad but don’t seem to deliver once I started trading their recommendations. I really want to be taught how to fish and not shown or told. The best service that I have seen in my 13 years in the market is Trading Trainer.com. Believe me, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on seminars, books, email services, websites… my list goes on and on. It would be embarrassing to list them all. All I can say is, go with A.J. He’s the best I’ve seen and I’ve been around the block… a few times.