Review by Ram, September 21, 2009

Options GPS
TycoonU
Tycoon Publishing

Not revealing the price until the product is available for sale is one of the marketing techniques. It is very common with Tycoon. This technique would force one to rush to buy it at the moment of product release, with a sense of irrationality - because he gets into a race between value and availability. This is one reason why figures like 87000, bla bla appears so often just before the release date.

For all people who decide to buy this, all I would like to say is that keep close check on the trial period expiration. If you are not 101% convinced, you should act immediately. There is no way in the world you can deal with Tycoon customer service after the trial period expiration. This is the experience that talks! Yes, I got burned down by Sector Hunter, but quick to learn and hence canceled my Swing Point Trader subscription before the 30th day.

I suspect whether this comment will survive the modulation filter. If it doesn’t appear, at least I will know that some of my theories are true. And I have saved this comment - which you can anyways see in StockGumShoe under the Options GPS name.

Ram

Review by snowram, September 28, 2009

Overall Rating
Performance of Picks/Advice
Consistency
Interesting to Read/Educational
Customer Service
Value for the Money

I base my ratings on their past products, CRISS, Trend Rider, and Sector hunter which I owned.
While they are great at marketing, they are poor at the product level. In the current sector hunter comments for members only there is only one person that thinks they are doing ok, and the tycoon people do not even comment in that area. The only thing a subscription does is give them money to trade with out of your pocket.

Review by ML, October 23, 2009

Overall Rating
Performance of Picks/Advice	Not Rated
Consistency	Not Rated
Interesting to Read/Educational
Customer Service
Value for the Money

This is an educational product (no recommendations). The content is quite good but can be found in many options education books. The production quality is awful - missing DVD’s, corrupted video files, etc. The customer service is beyond poor - extremely unresponsive and disorganized. Lack of response to my cancellation requests during the trial period is most annoying. I am trying hard not to think that they are intentionally dragging their feet trying to get me to exceed my 30 days and thus get stuck with a bunch of defective DVD’s costing over 2K. Will never buy anything from them again.

Review by James Franklyn, October 28, 2009

The above comments, especially the one above from ML on October 23rd are not true. What happens in this website is competitors, who want to keep a company from taking the market share that competitor has, will spend time writing bad reviews.

It’s one thing to write a negative review when you honestly don’t like something. But look at ML’s review, and it makes me question all the others.

ML said: “The production quality is awful”. Anybody who bought OGPS will immediately know this person is lying because the production quality is the best in the business and is of the same quality you would find if you watched CNBC. In fact, I already know who it was who left this comment (Ron’s Old Firm, who he left, to be with Tycoon). If you look at the quality of the DVDs that firm disrespected Ron’s teachings with, you would be blown away. The quality of those things are embarrassing. And offensive to Ron, or anyone who bought them. That’s one reason he left that firm, went to Tycoon, and created Extremely high production quality videos. So again, if anyone who is real wants to chime in here, please do. Anyone who bought that DVD set will immediately know this is an outright lie, and therefore must be the old firm trying to keep competition down. (They are very afraid, and should be).

Review by ML, October 28, 2009

I have to respectfully disagree with Mr. Franklin. His allegations of me lying may well be Tycoon’s attempts to defend the product. I hate to disappoint the insightful Mr. Franklin but his assertion of my identity is a miss. I am not a competitor, just a private party and a soon to be ex-subscriber to options GPS. There is no need to try misstating my comments as they had no bearing on the course material and merely reflected the poor production quality of the DVD set, as well as the unacceptable deficiency of the customer service. To be specific, the package I have received had one missing disk, two duplicate ones, one with corrupted autoplay, and one with defective video file (not a physical DVD defect but that doesn’t help). I am happy to state that the rest of the contents were viewable and the video quality was in fact good. I doubt however that a $2500 package with the defects specified above can qualify as “the best in the business”. I did in fact like Ron’s delivery of the course material and hope he finds better luck with Tycoon but find Mr. Franklin’s praise of the product quality a bit disconnected from reality. Ultimately however it was the combination of the above production defects and the poor customer service that made me terminate my subscription.

Review by trader, December 17, 2009

Overall Rating
Performance of Picks/Advice	Not Rated
Consistency	Not Rated
Interesting to Read/Educational
Customer Service
Value for the Money

I don’t work for anyone, and don’t sell anything - I trade my own accounts for a living, so I have no axe to grind here.

Options GPS is an educational product, not a trading or timing service, so there no picks to rate.

I loved the course! It’s a very solid education in options, starting from theory; going into depth on all the Greeks except for rho; covering synthetics in detail; and only then - after the foundation for true understanding has been built - covering 14 specific option strategies.

Each strategy is covered well, including not just theory but also practical tips and things to watch out for, and suggesting specific actions to take in response to changing market conditions. The latter include more-than-less obvious ways to roll positions that are working, and less-than-more obvious ways to morph positions that aren’t working anymore (for example, if in a bullish diagonal spread and the underlying stock starts tanking, you can buy puts at the same strike and expiration as the near-month short calls, and that morphs the entire position into the synthetic equivalent of owning just long puts with the strike price of the far-month long calls).

Of course all of it can be learned elsewhere, given enough effort. This is by far the most /logical/ development of the topics I’ve ever seen, though. Indeed, it’s the first time I felt I finally /understood/ many options concepts I had only memorized before. My option trading results have already improved enormously as a result.

The DVD production quality is excellent. I did have one DVD with a corrupt video file, and sent a note about it to customer service. They never replied to my note, but a replacement DVD arrived within the next week, so I don’t mind the lack of reply. Their customer service department does appear to be overwhelmed (I /suspect/ this “department” consists of one person, and that customer service isn’t even their full-time job).

Ron Ianieri recently published a book (via Wiley Trading) covering much the same material in much the same order, and that’s certainly a much cheaper way to get many of the benefits of this approach. There’s some info in course not in the book, and vice versa.

The course (but not the book) also includes a subscription to a web site with a virtual community of other people taking the course. That can be very helpful if you get stuck. There are several students there with decades of investing experience who are happy to clear up confusions and share knowledge. Ianieri also participates on that site.

The site also offers regular, free, interactive Q&A “webinars”, where students can ask Ron Ianieri and Chris Rowe questions live. And the site offers some tools, like option chains with an optional custom filtering function (for finding only out-month options with “suitably high” delta); an options calculator (theoretical calculations of option values and Greeks, based on the binomial pricing model); and a graphical volatility cone generator (give it a ticker symbol, observation period, days to expiration, and current implied volatility, and it graphs the historic volatility of the underlying against time, plotting the mean and a couple std deviations on each side).

The site also has online quizzes to take after completing each lesson, and a variety of ways to earn “points” (e.g., passing a quiz earns points).

All that “social stuff” may or may not be to your liking. I didn’t think I’d like it, but turned out I did

In short, it’s an excellent course, but much of the material can be gotten from Ianieri’s book instead. The less you know at the start, and/or the less confident you are that you’ve truly mastered it, the more valuable all the focused Q&A help & webinars on the companion website will be. Is the latter, and the DVDs, worth about 2 grand more? It was to me, but I don’t at all mind paying $X for solid ideas I can turn into 1000*$X. Knowing your way around options definitely has that kind of potential, and this is a very solid nuts-to-bolts education on the topic.

Review by Jacob Kaul, January 10, 2010

I received this course from my mother as a gift. I trade futures, as my father was a commodites trader when I was a kid and it is what I know. I want to trade equities and options and was talking about this before my birthday. surprise! I like the production quality of the course, it is solid. The course is in depth and seems complete too. I have been reviewing their picks on boards for their paid trading service - they have stocks, options and one for sectors and etfs. I need a good leader there. I need a service that will help me execute what I think I have learned in the course, but according to what I have read- their courses are not a good choice. Any thoughts? I don’t want to loose my money on their picks, despite my satisfaction with their course.