Author/Editor
Tom Essaye
Publisher
Weiss Research
Description
Real-money portfolio of Martin Weiss’ million dollars, previously managed by Claus Vogt, promises to alert you 48 hours before trades are made, with monthly update newsletter and phone helpline.
Overall Rating
Rating: 1.7/5. From 3 votes.
Please wait...
1.8
Rating from 12 votes
If you’ve subscribed to Million-Dollar Contrarian Portfolio, please click the stars below to indicate your rating for this newsletter, and please share any other feedback about your experience using the comment box below.
Investment Performance
Rating from 3 votes
Rating: 1.7/5. From 3 votes.
Please wait...
Your vote
- 5 Stars 0 Votes
- 4 Stars 0 Votes
- 3 Stars 1 Votes
- 2 Stars 0 Votes
- 1 Stars 2 Votes
Quality Of Writing/Analysis
Rating from 3 votes
Rating: 2.0/5. From 3 votes.
Please wait...
Your vote
- 5 Stars 0 Votes
- 4 Stars 1 Votes
- 3 Stars 0 Votes
- 2 Stars 0 Votes
- 1 Stars 2 Votes
Value For Price
Rating from 3 votes
Rating: 1.7/5. From 3 votes.
Please wait...
Your vote
- 5 Stars 0 Votes
- 4 Stars 0 Votes
- 3 Stars 1 Votes
- 2 Stars 0 Votes
- 1 Stars 2 Votes
Customer Service
Rating from 3 votes
Rating: 1.7/5. From 3 votes.
Please wait...
Your vote
- 5 Stars 0 Votes
- 4 Stars 0 Votes
- 3 Stars 1 Votes
- 2 Stars 0 Votes
- 1 Stars 2 Votes
I have recently subscribed to the million-dollar portfolio because it offered a 90-day money-back trial. I have noticed a few disturbing things: (1) Responses to the “blog” are moderated, and 2 of my recent comments [mildly critical of the negative returns thus far considering that stops were not specified] were filtered out. (2) The investment returns are not honestly presented: only 10% of the $1M has been invested at an overall loss of about 12-13% last time I calculated it, but because the other 90% has been “invested” in short-term treasuries, that 90% (with minimal or no loss) is included in the calculation of the over-all investment return, and greatly dilutes the loss from the 10% of actual investments. (3) There is no attempt to make use of the current rally, and instead Martin is still advising selling virtually all of one’s holings. I had followed his advice in early March and hence have since missed most of the very substantial gains of this past month. (4) Within the Weiss Research camp, there are substantial differences in opinion about where the market is headed–not all are in agreement with Martin that we are heading for a depression; yet that scenario seems to more or less be a prerequisite for making money in the Contrarian Portfolio.
I worry that Martin (as others here have alluded to) is intent on re-living his father’s experience in the ’29 crash, and is unable to be objective about the current market. It is all very troubling.
I have also just subscribed to Larry Edelson’s service, and he has kindly sent a batch of “reports” that were published in Feb, 2008. Incredible.
Update: now down about 15% in current positions (no gains in any of the current investments), and having ignored a 25-30% INcrease in the market, the MCP will need to appreciate substantially just to get back to where we would have been (had we not followed Martin’s advice a month+ ago to exit the market) and to recover current losses. The hype for subscribers is, in part, the intention to stay “flexible”, but flexibility was not in evidence during the current very substantial run-up in the market–not one iota of advice to gain from the run-up (the advice was to sell) — no investment in even an S&P 500 ETF, which would have been rather better than nothing, and certainly better than the current losers. As Dr. Weiss makes clear from his freebie pubs, he expects DOW = 5000 in the near future, and that is the bet we are asked to make with the MCP.
Dave, I am sorry to hear about your experience. I was very interested in the million dollar contrarian portfolio because it sounded so good and I wanted to make up for some of what we had lost in our accounts. But after talking it over with my husband I did not do it. After reading the blogs, I was glad I didn’t. It was a too good to be true scenario for me. But my spouse broke it down for me like this. (I am NOT stock market savvy. Just a stay at home mom that saw Martin Weiss’ ad on GlennBeck.com) He said that if Weiss just got enough people to join at $1500 or $2500, it would cover his cost, no matter what the market did, he wouldn’t lose any money. He has your membership dollars. And he had Claus spouting out that they were looking at “long term” that was key. If they said that, long term, meaning 5-10 years, they were off the hook because most of the investors thought they would recoup their losses within 30-90 days. But you [members] have to hold onto your gains for over a year or you would get screwed on taxes if you cashed out before the year was up. The bear market is a tricky one to play and that was why he was only going to allow me $5000 to invest with Martin. But when the market had the gains it did, I was glad I did not join and listened to my husband. We didn’t lose as much as most people did since we pulled out at 14000, but it still hurts to lose money you work hard to earn. I am sure you are a very intelligent fellow and know a lot more then I do about the markets. I hate for anyone to get taken advantage of, but at least you have the 90 day money back guarantee. I was reading the Weiss contrarian blogs for awhile and it broke my heart, but as of today, I can’t access it unless I have a usernam and password. That says a lot to me. I wish you luck.
There are some misunderstandings of this Weiss portfolio.
The portfolio has apparently been gingerly dipping its toes in the short side (i.e. negative expectations) which turns out to have restrained the portfolio from larger losses.
Weiss and Vogt’s expertise is understanding the big picture, the economy, and looking past the fluff presented by the dominant media. They are not week to week market timers, and they are sure to get that wrong like anyone else.
There is no reason to expect them or anyone to have predicted that the last few weeks period would be a sudden melt-up in the markets. (People that predicted that also predicted a lot of rises then never happened, so forget them.)
There are few people, if any, that can “time” any given period of a few weeks or a few months (maybe Jeff Clark of Stansberry Research can do that, and even he is very choosy as to when to venture a prediction).
So far this should all be obvious — even to the whiners who expect perfection from everybody except themselves. So lets get to the less obvious.
The tragic flaw in the Weiss portfolios is that they use inverse ETFs that recalculate and reformulate on a daily basis.
They love these products because they are convenient and because unlike with classic shorting, their subscribers cannot lose more than they invest, even in the worst case. (The alternative of stop-lossing can cause whiplash so it is no magic bullet either.)
The inverse ETFs have the built-in flaw, with examples given in their prospectuses, that they inexorably LOSE MONEY over time caused by daily fluctuations and rebalancing, even if their underlying indexes come back to their starting value over a period of time.
So buying these ETFs only makes sense for quick in and outs, like intra-day trading or a few days or maximum a few weeks. Weiss uses these inverse ETFs as long-term short positions, a no-no. That’s hoping that a crash will come soon enough and sustained enough to rescue this kind of shrinking instrument.
Finally, before whining about Weiss honesty and lashing out, Dave, look into the mirror.
Wiess includes ALL positions, from what you describe, which is the correct and fair thing to do. Their accounting/reporting job is to be objective and not to focus on your personal pain but on the net result of the portfolio, whether it is bad or whether (hopefully in the future) it is good.
I am a charter subscriber to the Million Dollar portfolio. I have invested in some of the recommendations, but with all of them in the tank, have stopped doing so. I have to echo many of the critical comments above. It is likely I will cancel in the next several weeks. I am looking to unwind from some of these positions.
I, too, think I finally understand how inverse ETFs work and now agree that we have no business investing in them for long term plays. Thanks “UnderstandWeiss” for noting this. There was an excellent analysis of the dangers of EFTs done recently in a mea culpa mailing by Justice Litle of Taipan
http://www.taipanpublishinggroup.com/taipan-daily-051309.html
However to say that the portfolio has restrained losses by “gingerly dipping its toes in the short side” makes no sense to me. The shorts cannot be considered an offset to either its small long positions in gold, or certainly not the bulk of the holdings, which are in T-bills. If the shorts were meant to offset long positions in the general market (gold related stocks are really a special case), then I’d agree with you.
When this service was marketed – they had produced a video that showed hundreds of positions supposedly recommended by Claus in the past year scrolling by, all with huge gains. Of course you couldn’t read the symbols in the video. Now, with a huge bear market opportunity missed, subscribers will need to wait for the next big drop to recover some of their losses.
The other thing that was a big selling point to me was the blog. Some of my comments have been ignored, and to see that this has also happened to others – the apparent censorship now has become a big irritant to me.
Overall, I don’t see any different strategy with this service so far than with Weiss’ $99 Safe Money Report. So I’ll plan on getting my $1500 back.
I signed up only because of the 90 day money-back if I don’t like it. I’m about ready to request the return of my money. Hopefully, I will get it and without any hassle.
So far all the rally opportunity has been missed.
One of the stocks recommended seems to be doing okay, although that’s only because I bought more after a substantial decline after originally purchasing it on the recommendation–somewhat of timed, dollar-cost average. The same thing is true for a reverse ETF in the S&P 500. The initial buy turned out bad. With my own research, I picked up more at a buy point I thought was good. Since then, that has gone up enough that the loss from the 1st buy is offset, barely.
The service has just not performed, yet, as the tape has moved against it. Even though I think the fundamentals as well as technical, market is overbought is sound, the rule is to not fight the tape. The market’s going to do what it wants to do. –wait for it? Well, yes. That usually works, but there are lots of lost opportunities along the wait.
The only way I have made money is by averaging the loss by buying more on the way down. The good thing I can say is that I’m pretty good at cyclical market day trades. And that’s what has saved me, to break even.
Today, I will ask for instructions as to how to unsubscribed and get my money back. I noticed that the fine print says such a request must be made in writing. I hope that should I decided to ask for the money back, they won’t say they never received my request. –oh, I’ve sent in comments to his blog, asking hard questions. they were never published.
Thanks everyone. I too get Martin’s free email service. His MCP was too dear for me @ $1,500. Some people however, did catch this rally, notably Peter Grandich (his service is free) and Chris Weber. Incidentally, both Grandich and Weber have turned bearish again as of this past Friday (so maybe Martin will make up some lost ground).
I answered his ad by asking what is their performance to date, and he wrote back that he is “down by 2.05%, but mostly still in cash”, so he must be down a pretty penny on the investments that he DID make!!
He’s excellent in his Macro views, but not in playing them properly in a dynamic portfolio – this is a very challenging market, though, especially with his self-imposed rules of giving his subscribers 2-days notice before he makes the trades!!
–joe
>>So far this should all be obvious — even to the whiners who expect perfection from everybody except themselves. So lets get to the less obvious.<<
As a non-stop whiner about Martin and Claus’ failures in the MCP [and BTW I regularly whine about my own lack of investing smarts, nicely exemplified by my much-regretted decision to follow Martin’s advice and divest at the recent market bottom; and actually I do expect both Martin and Claus to be better at this game than I an–otherwise why would I fork over $1400 to get their advice?], I’ll continue the whine by pointing out that Claus did rather precisely predict the current bear market rally–to within less than 2 days! Very impressive. What is less impressive is Claus’ lack of interest in playing that rally, or in playing the rally in China that seems at least partly disconnected from the Wall St. rally. I would (selfishly) love to see another serious Wall St decline, as I would then recover some of my losses in Weiss-recommended inverse ETFs and have another chance to buy companies for “pennies on the dollar” (a Martin phrase), as I stupidly missed the recent chance to do just that.
Re what appeared to be blog censorship: to their credit, they have substantially loosened up and are allowing comments which question the wisdom of the current investments. Those comments are now outnumbering the sycophantic comments.
Another charter subscriber here. I have also been disappointed in the total miss of the recent 30% run-up in the market. Our short positions are still under water, the stock picks are barely positive (finally), and now they are recommending another short ETF. In the past I jumped on the recos (and paid the price), this time I will wait to get a hint on the the market direction before grabbing this short. If things don’t rapidly improve in next 2 weeks, I will bail.
First off, I would like to say Martin is a genius for calling the crash way before it happened. However, the new MCP that started in March 2009 was misleading and has cost me a lot of money for the following reasons:
1) One of his first war-room/free 1 hour marketing webinars (11 laws to bear market trading) was like screaming fire in a crowded theater when there was no fire. His first war room meetings took place when the Dow and S&P were at the bottom (around beginning of March). This scared me so much, I sold all of my longs.
2) Afterwards, I started buying his reco’s and each one went down after my purchase (2 days before him). However, MCP is losing less because he waits 2 days while it is lower. All of the ETF picks are in the red (some double digits).
3) During the initial 2 webinars, the advertisement said they had 66 of 68 winners in this portfolio with the average return being double digit. Not sure if these are actual or backtested results. Backtested results are tweaked and look great but than once applied in theory, the methodology blows up and everyone quiet. People on the blog keep asking but no answer. Maybe he did if he was short from August to March but doubt it. This is what should have told me to stay away. How can you be 66 winners out of 68 trades and now be 2 for 6 in the actual portfolio (this is unrealized losses so far)???
4) MCP missed the 35% to the upside. Originally, he said he was an opportunistic trader but missed this run??? How did that happen??
5) I believe MCP is a bear market trading strategy. I can’t believe the long term outlook is going to be down for the longer term. There are no targets on exit strategy.
6) Usually subscriptions that charge this price should introduce winners at some point. This was like Crisis ETF Trader by Martin Weiss. A lot of hype and I took a bath on that one as well. This was the 2nd high priced MOM service that I have paid for and have taken a bath on it.
All in all, Martin has great call on the overall market but I believe he is just one big marketing machine. The MCP subscription does not take into consideration when people started investing. He starts off saying sell everything now the next shoe is dropping. That comment was said at the end of February. Now it is the end of May and the market is up huge. Not helpful to scare people after they already lost 50%. Some of us could have recouped our losses. The only way to cover my losses in the portfolio is to get my subscription money back before the 90 days expires. Also, in his initial advertisement, he said this service would be locked out for a long time. Well I guess a long time was a month and a half. That tells me so many people dropped out that he had to reopen it again and recover some of the $1M he put in the portfolio. Hope this was useful.
I too am a charter member of the M-D C P. Unlike most of the people commenting above I’m not ready to pronounce judgement after only 2 short months. I do believe that Claus makes educated, well thought out recommendations and backs up his selections with great analysis and support. If your idea of a market trend is 1 week, 1 month or 90 days then this service isn’t for you. It was never touted as a trend trading program (whether day or swing) but an investment program based on fundamental research and the macro economy. If you disagree with Martin and Claus then get a refund and go follow the talking heads on CNBC and get whip-sawed 5 days a week. Just don’t come back crying when the bottom falls out and you lose your a.ss.ets. For me, I’ll stick with the program a full year and then decide whether to renew or not. I’m satisfied that when Claus sees the fundamentals of the economy recovering he will switch gears and suggest long positions in the appropriate companies, industries, currencies, commodities, etc. Most people these days have the attention span of a 30 second commercial and the investment track record to prove it. Claus won’t ever pick the exact bottom or the exact top but over the long run I think I’ll be able to sleep better at night knowing I’ve got a professional reading the tea leaves of the economy for me and that my money has been properly diversified and protected. Just my 2 cents.
I subscribed on March 16’th 2009 and am currently still a member but am re-evaluating my subscription as I have 10 more days remaining to qualify for my 100% refund.
Martin is very intelligent and perhaps a macro economic genius. He’s excellent at informing the subscriber in layman’s language what’s happening to and with the economy and what the probable economic and market scenarios will be as a result of actions taken by the government and others. That said he peddles his goods (stock market subscription services) in a Chicken Little ‘The sky is falling’ manner. Each new email bringing even worse news than the last with the usual need for one of Weiss’ services to protect your money. The truth being that in the second largest bull rally in US history since the 50% bull run of the early 1930’s the MDCP is nothing but a sea of red ink. My portfolio of Claus Vogt’s picks is down over 17% not counting the cash position which he does so it makes his portfolio performance appear significantly better than it is. Even the portfolio’s long positions are all down….. despite the fact that some major market indicies are up nearly 40% in 12 weeks! This kind of performance on Wall Street would lead to the portfolio manager being escorted from the building by security guards.
Their response is always dismissive of the questioner and is that they aren’t a timing service. However I say “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck…… well by golly it’s a duck! In my way of thinking unless you’re systematically investing equal amounts of money at and in equal time frames in both good and bad markets, you’re trying to time the market. Timing of equity purchases at the MDCP has to this point been nothing short of appalling to date. However to be fair this could change, seems Martin Weiss has come up with a new market timing scheme…. for a little extra money of course. Where was this market timing for profits scheme when the MDCP was sinking faster than the Titanic? Like a broken clock that’s right at least twice a day this portfolio is still waiting for its first time to be right. I sold almost every stock I had, at a loss, at Martin’s behest only to watch them rise to levels higher than I had originally paid for them. Let me tell you the truth…. that hurts, that really hurts to see. How does anyone loose nearly 18% in a market that’s up 160% on an annualized basis? I didn’t think such a thing was possible, but folks it’s possible here at the MDCP (at least to this point of almost three months after inception). Martin’s biggest problem is he’s like a kid who knows he’s going to Disney World someday but wants to go today, so badly indeed he can taste it. His desire to be right skews data and accepts only information that confirms his views and where balancing information appears to be tossed aside. The site’s blog was never really participated in by either Claus or Martin in the beginning but the blog’s sentiment had turned so negative by the end of May that Claus seems to have felt compelled to address concerns that had been raised by members for months that they had failed to respond to.
Original member still with the program for now. I paid for lobster and got bottom feeding suction eel. Martin’s emails are like reading a horror story in National Enquirer. The only thing missing are the aliens. I can’t afford one of those family size underground nuclear bunkers he almost infers we’ll eventually need when society breaks down and the banks all close down with our money inside. You know, they’re called banking holidays. I don’t think I’ll be with them past Thursday. Not a single pick making money, not a one. 9 picks /9 losers and a 38% market gain. I didn’t realize that contrary meant loose money to these people.
Finally gave up on this one last week. All the picks are negative now except for the Treasuries! Yikes, how do you miss a 3 MONTH trending up market? The inverse ETFs are of course all down big, took a bath when I dumped them. As mentioned above, no specific price targets or stop loss levels have been provided, so the hits just keep coming. Claus is quite educated & very interesting, but the markets have their own logic and they have been almost 100% opposite of his vision.
This service wins the award for losing the most amount of money in the shortest time in strongest bull market in over 70 years. All this in under three months, thank you Martin and Claus. Edward Scissorhands would have done less damage to my money than the MCP did. If red is your favorite color than this service is right up you alley cause that’s all you’ll see for as far as you can see.
I am an MDCP subscriber and like the others that have posted here have incurred losses. After initially investing in the first 5 recos, I have not invested in the last 3.
While I can accept that no one can get everything right almost all have gone south at least at this point in time. Because of the long term strategy MDCP failed to take advantage of bear rally which if done would have helped mitigate the other losses and probably would have not caused such a reaction by many. Note I am not stating that he is wrong in his view of what will happen in the long term, but I don’t believe the portfolio was managed in the best way possible. It seems he and Claus were convinced that the downturn was imminent and did not have a contingency plan.
The thing that I find very unacceptable though is the selective omission of blog responses that have been critical of what is happening. I have had at least 5 of my blog entries not posted. IMO, they were not written in an offensive manner, did not contain any offensive language, name calling or any other such things that blog entries often contain. However, there were some tough and challenging questions that in my opinion deserved answers.
I have now taken to posting under a pseudo id and fake email address. At least my entries are now indicated as “awaiting moderation” as opposed to being deleted upon entry indicating that my name/email address have be flagged. We’ll see if they get posted as the content hasn’t changed from my original entries.
That really rots especially since Martin claims to want to hear comments that are “critical” of the service.
Don’t know what to say as others above have nailed it with their reviews. How do you miss the biggest rally in 70 years!!!! Martin scares the heck out of you in the webinar and war rooms about the sky is falling at Dow 7,000 and to SELL SELL SELL!!!! Claus tells you how the world is coming to an end and that he is not concerned about short term blips (bear market bounces) in the market and to trust his approach and strategy. So far, all of my inverse funds are in the red big time. What is the strategy, I have no stop losses, just his mental ones. I AM NOT A MIND READER, WHAT ARE THEY!!!!
They call it a contrarian portfolio but he bought inverse funds after the largest drop in the market already happened. He bought gold after 6 year bull market and reaching new highs. He just bought FDO and AAN after they just hit their 52 week high. WHAT IS CONTRARIAN ABOUT THAT??? Usually contrarian’s buy out of favor sectors before they rebound not after they had a huge run and people are selling. That is a losing strategy. So far, the portfolio is 20% lower than the S&P and 40% since he scared me at S&P 670 saying to sell before the index hits 500.
Plus one of the members above brings up a great point, in his initial war room he said he was 66 out of 68 wins (incredible if it were true). Now when we join he is 1 for 9 and that one is breakeven at best. I think those were backtested results and a bunch of marketing hype. A couple of members have asked the question but no response for Martin and/or Claus.
All I can say is Martin is a marketing machine. I have lost 20X the subscription price by cashing out of the market and buying inverse funds. This subscription couldn’t have came at a worse time. To add insult to injury, Martin is having a 1 hour session on how to profit on short term market swings next week for free because his members on the blog asked for it. WHAT ABOUT THE PAYING MEMBERS THAT PAID $2K TO LOSE A BUNCH OF MONEY IN MCP!!! WHAT ABOUT MAKING A PROFIT FOR US!!! That is just another marketing ploy for another big subscription service with a hefty fee. His goal was to help preserve capital (his motto and rule #1 in a bear market). Well I got news for you, you did more harm to my portfolio than I did to my own all last year. I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS SERVICE AS I THINK IT WAS FALSE ADVERTISMENT AND PLAYED ON PEOPLES EMOTIONS. There is another war room on Thursday which I will attend and then cancel my subscription before the 90 days is up for a full refund. If he says the sky is still falling, I am going to do the opposite of his suggestions!! By the way, for those who think this is an educational experience, just read the newspaper and watch CNBC for free!
Just look at my satisfaction reviews for this service and you’ll know exacly what my experience and feelings have been and are. Even from Germany almost everybody, except for Claus, realized that we had a serious bull market upswing in a bear market. Not after one month, not after two months, not even after three months did we participate in the upswing. I’d like to see Claus’s own personal portfolio compared to this Nightmare From Hell portfolio I currently own thanks to the MD-CP.
Well from what I hear from other members and see for myself the censorship of the MCP has started again. This sort of thing is NEVER good for either side. Has Kim Jung IL taken over from Claus?