Edited by Dan Amoss, this newsletter makes recommendations to bet against stocks using options and short sales.
If you’ve subscribed to Strategic Short Report, 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.
SSR-Strategic Short Report- Agora- Dan Amoss-$995/ year-Options service
This one is a winner. Dan is very good, good commentary, updates, interesting analysis, when to buy and when to sell. The service rec’s buying options.
He has made very good picks so far.I have been a member since 11/08 and have made over double the subscription cost in profit in 3 months.
Not a lot of picks, very careful, 1 or 2 month, sometimes none.
Tends to rec options further out in time so you will hold them for a while (months). On a few picks I closed positions for nice profit not long after entering and renentered after pull back for more profits.
Confusing title for a report. He has three longs and one short. In reverse purchase order, +23.08%, +26.53%, -27.14%, and +244.83%. Very short track record, (11-14-08), but seems to know his stuff.
I have had very good success with this service. Dan seems to have an almost uncanny ability to spot opportunity. I have several services and this is the one I value the most. The explanations given are logical and easy to follow. The details make his trades easier to connect to a logical trend. I feel very comfortable with his trades. It today’s markets comfort is scarce, very scarce. May God grant and guide you to health, happiness and prosperity.
Guest
chaken
February 20, 2009 10:58 am
I signed up April 2008, I must admit I was dubious for sometime…but to this date as the previous commentators have stated he has been on the money.
The main issue I have (If you can consider it an issue) is that he only gives you one pick a month…but and this is a BIG BUT!!
True to his word…when he gives you the pick “IT WILL BE THE WELL THOUGHT OUT”
That pick is generally a winner, I plan on reupping with him until/unless I find a new “HEAVY HITTER”
Guest
NK
February 27, 2009 2:32 pm
One disadv that all newsletter advisories suffer from is making picks every month. I have yet to see someone make 6 or less picks for the entire year. So in such cases it is important that the editor look for both buy and sell recos to improve his chances of scoring. Dan does both.
His portfolio did great in 2008. His picks are sound for his fundamental analysis which looks diligent sometimes too diligent. An ocassional loser does show up but thats cool. Since he recommends options his margins are huge. Till now given the great market upheaval Dan has performed great and I think it will continue to do so as long as we have a clear bear market for a couple more years. I would recommend this service.
This is the best service I’ve used. I’ve lost lots of money with other newsletters, but had some big gains in this one. I think he’ll do well in any kind of market — not only because there are always losers, but because Dan recommends good calls as well as puts.
johnK
March 23, 2009 7:49 pm
subscribed for a short while. Couldn’t get into the trades at reco prices. Very fustrating. This is definately a service for a fast mover. You have to be absolutely right on top of the recos to profit substantially.
I called customer service after about 2 months and received an instant refund AND was offered the remaining time on the ninety day test drive.
Absolutely amazed by customer service. S&A is the first anything I have ever bought on the internet that made good on thier promises. I received a 100% refund because the service wasn’t for me. Amazing.
I may re-subscribe later this year after I retire and can play the game the way it should be played.
With most newsletters I regret ever having tried any of their picks. This one’s different. I mostly regret the picks I *didn’t* try. Dan Amoss has been right much more often that he’s been wrong, so just try every pick and be ready to stop out of the few that go wrong. He uses fundamental analysis and recommends long term options that give plenty of time for the fundamentals to work out. (It can take an earnings release or two before reality hits the market.) So while this is an options oriented newsletter, it’s very different from the short term trades based on tea leaf reading of charts that other newsletters use.
This is one of the few services I’ve made money with. There are, however, some losses, to be expected. What I like is that Dan admits he was wrong. He just says it straight out.
My main problem is that there are so few recos. On the other hand I’d rather have fewer and more winners than more.
Guest
SnowCrash7
July 24, 2009 4:39 am
There is no doubt that over a very long term this service might have a good record. There can also be no doubt that up until a few months ago he had some winners. Picking shorts is a hard thing to do as we all know the market very often does not want to cooperate.
However for the past few months the performance has been nothing less than abysmal. There are currently 9 holdings in the portfolio. 8 of them are under water with most of them in the -30 to -40% range with some as high as -89%.
He latches onto a theme, provides reams of research to back up his selections and then we get to all sit around and watch his selections get slaughtered. This has most recently been the case with his sell recommendations on a few restaurants and the Pool corporation. Just a few days ago he was claiming that with Pool stating earnings this week that it was a good buy. Many readers were complaining that Pool just kept ‘ticking higher’ The day after earnings the stock gapped up HUGE!. I can’t recommend this service.
I have to agree with SnowCrash. I subscribed to this newsletter mainly on the recommendations from this site but the performance the last few months has been terrible. The RJF put has been a shocker down 100% and the POOL put down %90 with most of the others down 20-45%. It is easy to make good recommendations when the market is heading in the one direction but when it is up and down or turns completely against you that is the hard part. I think most of the profits made on this newsletter were during the general market pull back.
Guest
Steve
August 16, 2009 7:00 pm
Dan is obviously a well informed guy and I respect his incredible work. The abysmal performance lately I believe is due to the apparent lack of technical analysis and ignoring overall market sentiment. These factors should be studied and then be used to accompany his thoughtfully laid out thesis’. Personally, I never have just taken someone elses “tips” and plunked my money down. It really is up to us, the subscribers, to do our own due diligence. He definitely provides the “what”, just not the “when”.
Guest
carodox
September 27, 2009 9:59 pm
I subscribed a year ago and the first few picks were good, but he has had a quite a loosing streak with recent picks just expiring for a total loss. I was astounded when the day before BMO was to announce earnings, he sent out an e-mail suggesting we buy more before the conference call because the conference call was going to cause the stock to lose ground. It did exactly the opposite and has been up until the last few days! I was so glad I hadn’t taken his advice. How could he be so wrong! Actually, he may be a genius, but if investors don’t see things his way, what does it matter.
He made recos on GDX puts and last week they were way up, and he should have told us to sell, and didn’t, and now they are way down. Yes, they still have time to run and may go up again, but what an opportunity to sell and purchase again at a lower price with a longer strike date.
If he’s going to make recos on options, he should be watching the prices daily and making timely recos. This service is not worth it.
Subscribed 8/20/09. Subcribed because of a hype letter saying subscribe by … to get great information of a stock to short. On it’s earnings day BMO was recommended by Strategic Short Report as a short. Bank of Montreal. He had recommended it as a short previously. BMO went up and has been stable to up since then. I observed his shorts had been doing poorly. He had even admitted it and hoped to do better later. BMO was recommended for a short by Strategic Short Report. The blogs were announcing people were upset about their losses with shorts on BMO recommendation. He’s a die hard he says BMO should go down and so should other bank stocks. Also, I had been taught it is poor trading to trade on earnings day. Yet he recommended a short on earnings day.
I have followed Dan Amoss in Stratigic Short Report for over a year and disagree with the majority of submitted reviews.
I have lost money, lots of money using the advice from Stratigic Short Report. Now, no one can predict the movement of the market and there are going to be winning trades as well as losing trades. I understand that but since April (of this year) Mr. Amoss has made 10 recommendations. Only two have been profitable, the other eight are losers. Not just losers but BIG LOSERS. Most of those losing trades decrease in value between 50% to 100%
I will admidt that the write-up/article explaining the trade is very well written and educational, thus I gave that catagory 4 stars and for “consistency” I gave 5 stars because the trade(s) are consistantly LOSERS!!!
Of the two winners one was gold but I already had gold in my portfolio. The other profitible trade returned 5% when closed out. 5% did not even cover the cost to open and close the positions. So, if one were to really analyize the last 10 trade recomendations of Mr. Amoss, 9/10th are losing postions.
If you choose to follow Mr. Amoss bring a lot of cash but be prepared to kiss your hard earned money good bye.
Terrible performance (90% losers) and Dan Amoss has completely misread the overall market sentiment. Yes, he may be right in the long run that stocks are overpriced but with options trading you have to give yourself enough time to be right and he hasn’t done that. Follows his picks at your peril. BTW – relying on picking some winning trades over 12 months ago doesn’t make a good track record.
I’m a successful and experienced (been doing it for a while up/down/sideways market) options trader and had to just put in my “2 cents” after reading the, regrettably, huge losses suffered from what appears to be, inexperienced options traders.
First, know how options are designed folks. It is very important to trade with the trend, if such exists, b/c long options (calls or puts) experience time decay and lose value if the underlying (stock or etf) does not go immediately in the direction of your thesis. Options of 3 months to expiry or less lose the greatest time value.
Employing spreads, like Bull Call Spreads (verticals) etc., will nullify the time decay to a great extent but I see that’s not a common strategy.
Personally, I trade most successfully with the market indexes and average about 80% to 90% success rate but I do on occasion have a losing streak and it goes down to 70% success rate. My advice is trade the market indexes or major ETF’s, avoid individual stocks b/c few are good at options and fewer still are good at options applied to individual stocks. Good luck to all.
Brought on the hype about BMO going to crash. Good thing I only dipped toe with one contract, lost $140 the next day. Took several emails to get refund. Last I know, he is STILL recommending to hold BMO puts (there are actually two recos, from July and Sept) Pity the July ones that are still holding. Sept put is now down 75% and way OTM.
Guest
Paul
November 24, 2009 7:32 pm
Dan Amoss saved my portfolio in 2008. He was short investment banks, retailers, you name it, he was short and we all made a killing. Here we are at the height of a tremendous bear market rally and wouldn’t you know it, Dan Amoss is still short. Moral of the story, don’t buy put options in an upward trending market. If you do, you will get your head handed to you. As previously mentioned, his market commentary is top notch. His logical approach to identifying stocks that appear ready for a nose dive of a cliff is more than likely bang on, except for one small detail, this market ain’t logical.I am a lifetime reserve member, so I am not going anywhere. Needless to say I haven’t bought many of his recommendations this year. This guy will be on top of his game as soon as this market rolls over…. and it will.
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SSR-Strategic Short Report- Agora- Dan Amoss-$995/ year-Options service
This one is a winner. Dan is very good, good commentary, updates, interesting analysis, when to buy and when to sell. The service rec’s buying options.
He has made very good picks so far.I have been a member since 11/08 and have made over double the subscription cost in profit in 3 months.
Not a lot of picks, very careful, 1 or 2 month, sometimes none.
Tends to rec options further out in time so you will hold them for a while (months). On a few picks I closed positions for nice profit not long after entering and renentered after pull back for more profits.
I like Dan and this service, would rec.
Confusing title for a report. He has three longs and one short. In reverse purchase order, +23.08%, +26.53%, -27.14%, and +244.83%. Very short track record, (11-14-08), but seems to know his stuff.
I have had very good success with this service.
Dan seems to have an almost uncanny ability to spot opportunity.
I have several services and this is the one I value the most.
The explanations given are logical and easy to follow. The details make his trades easier to connect to a logical trend. I feel very comfortable with his trades. It today’s markets comfort is scarce, very scarce.
May God grant and guide you to health, happiness and prosperity.
I signed up April 2008, I must admit I was dubious for sometime…but to this date as the previous commentators have stated he has been on the money.
The main issue I have (If you can consider it an issue) is that he only gives you one pick a month…but and this is a BIG BUT!!
True to his word…when he gives you the pick “IT WILL BE THE WELL THOUGHT OUT”
That pick is generally a winner, I plan on reupping with him until/unless I find a new “HEAVY HITTER”
One disadv that all newsletter advisories suffer from is making picks every month. I have yet to see someone make 6 or less picks for the entire year. So in such cases it is important that the editor look for both buy and sell recos to improve his chances of scoring. Dan does both.
His portfolio did great in 2008. His picks are sound for his fundamental analysis which looks diligent sometimes too diligent. An ocassional loser does show up but thats cool. Since he recommends options his margins are huge. Till now given the great market upheaval Dan has performed great and I think it will continue to do so as long as we have a clear bear market for a couple more years. I would recommend this service.
very intressting
This is the best service I’ve used. I’ve lost lots of money with other newsletters, but had some big gains in this one. I think he’ll do well in any kind of market — not only because there are always losers, but because Dan recommends good calls as well as puts.
subscribed for a short while. Couldn’t get into the trades at reco prices. Very fustrating. This is definately a service for a fast mover. You have to be absolutely right on top of the recos to profit substantially.
I called customer service after about 2 months and received an instant refund AND was offered the remaining time on the ninety day test drive.
Absolutely amazed by customer service. S&A is the first anything I have ever bought on the internet that made good on thier promises. I received a 100% refund because the service wasn’t for me. Amazing.
I may re-subscribe later this year after I retire and can play the game the way it should be played.
With most newsletters I regret ever having tried any of their picks. This one’s different. I mostly regret the picks I *didn’t* try. Dan Amoss has been right much more often that he’s been wrong, so just try every pick and be ready to stop out of the few that go wrong. He uses fundamental analysis and recommends long term options that give plenty of time for the fundamentals to work out. (It can take an earnings release or two before reality hits the market.) So while this is an options oriented newsletter, it’s very different from the short term trades based on tea leaf reading of charts that other newsletters use.
This is one of the few services I’ve made money with. There are, however, some losses, to be expected. What I like is that Dan admits he was wrong. He just says it straight out.
My main problem is that there are so few recos. On the other hand I’d rather have fewer and more winners than more.
There is no doubt that over a very long term this service might have a good record. There can also be no doubt that up until a few months ago he had some winners. Picking shorts is a hard thing to do as we all know the market very often does not want to cooperate.
However for the past few months the performance has been nothing less than abysmal. There are currently 9 holdings in the portfolio. 8 of them are under water with most of them in the -30 to -40% range with some as high as -89%.
He latches onto a theme, provides reams of research to back up his selections and then we get to all sit around and watch his selections get slaughtered. This has most recently been the case with his sell recommendations on a few restaurants and the Pool corporation. Just a few days ago he was claiming that with Pool stating earnings this week that it was a good buy. Many readers were complaining that Pool just kept ‘ticking higher’ The day after earnings the stock gapped up HUGE!.
I can’t recommend this service.
I have to agree with SnowCrash. I subscribed to this newsletter mainly on the recommendations from this site but the performance the last few months has been terrible. The RJF put has been a shocker down 100% and the POOL put down %90 with most of the others down 20-45%. It is easy to make good recommendations when the market is heading in the one direction but when it is up and down or turns completely against you that is the hard part. I think most of the profits made on this newsletter were during the general market pull back.
Dan is obviously a well informed guy and I respect his incredible work. The abysmal performance lately I believe is due to the apparent lack of technical analysis and ignoring overall market sentiment. These factors should be studied and then be used to accompany his thoughtfully laid out thesis’. Personally, I never have just taken someone elses “tips” and plunked my money down. It really is up to us, the subscribers, to do our own due diligence. He definitely provides the “what”, just not the “when”.
I subscribed a year ago and the first few picks were good, but he has had a quite a loosing streak with recent picks just expiring for a total loss. I was astounded when the day before BMO was to announce earnings, he sent out an e-mail suggesting we buy more before the conference call because the conference call was going to cause the stock to lose ground. It did exactly the opposite and has been up until the last few days! I was so glad I hadn’t taken his advice. How could he be so wrong! Actually, he may be a genius, but if investors don’t see things his way, what does it matter.
He made recos on GDX puts and last week they were way up, and he should have told us to sell, and didn’t, and now they are way down. Yes, they still have time to run and may go up again, but what an opportunity to sell and purchase again at a lower price with a longer strike date.
If he’s going to make recos on options, he should be watching the prices daily and making timely recos. This service is not worth it.
Subscribed 8/20/09. Subcribed because of a hype letter saying subscribe by … to get great information of a stock to short. On it’s earnings day BMO was recommended by Strategic Short Report as a short. Bank of Montreal. He had recommended it as a short previously. BMO went up and has been stable to up since then. I observed his shorts had been doing poorly. He had even admitted it and hoped to do better later. BMO was recommended for a short by Strategic Short Report. The blogs were announcing people were upset about their losses with shorts on BMO recommendation. He’s a die hard he says BMO should go down and so should other bank stocks. Also, I had been taught it is poor trading to trade on earnings day. Yet he recommended a short on earnings day.
I have followed Dan Amoss in Stratigic Short Report for over a year and disagree with the majority of submitted reviews.
I have lost money, lots of money using the advice from Stratigic Short Report. Now, no one can predict the movement of the market and there are going to be winning trades as well as losing trades. I understand that but since April (of this year) Mr. Amoss has made 10 recommendations. Only two have been profitable, the other eight are losers. Not just losers but BIG LOSERS. Most of those losing trades decrease in value between 50% to 100%
I will admidt that the write-up/article explaining the trade is very well written and educational, thus I gave that catagory 4 stars and for “consistency” I gave 5 stars because the trade(s) are consistantly LOSERS!!!
Of the two winners one was gold but I already had gold in my portfolio. The other profitible trade returned 5% when closed out. 5% did not even cover the cost to open and close the positions. So, if one were to really analyize the last 10 trade recomendations of Mr. Amoss, 9/10th are losing postions.
If you choose to follow Mr. Amoss bring a lot of cash but be prepared to kiss your hard earned money good bye.
Thanks for the outlet.
Terrible performance (90% losers) and Dan Amoss has completely misread the overall market sentiment. Yes, he may be right in the long run that stocks are overpriced but with options trading you have to give yourself enough time to be right and he hasn’t done that. Follows his picks at your peril. BTW – relying on picking some winning trades over 12 months ago doesn’t make a good track record.
I’m a successful and experienced (been doing it for a while up/down/sideways market) options trader and had to just put in my “2 cents” after reading the, regrettably, huge losses suffered from what appears to be, inexperienced options traders.
First, know how options are designed folks. It is very important to trade with the trend, if such exists, b/c long options (calls or puts) experience time decay and lose value if the underlying (stock or etf) does not go immediately in the direction of your thesis. Options of 3 months to expiry or less lose the greatest time value.
Employing spreads, like Bull Call Spreads (verticals) etc., will nullify the time decay to a great extent but I see that’s not a common strategy.
Personally, I trade most successfully with the market indexes and average about 80% to 90% success rate but I do on occasion have a losing streak and it goes down to 70% success rate. My advice is trade the market indexes or major ETF’s, avoid individual stocks b/c few are good at options and fewer still are good at options applied to individual stocks. Good luck to all.
Brought on the hype about BMO going to crash. Good thing I only dipped toe with one contract, lost $140 the next day. Took several emails to get refund. Last I know, he is STILL recommending to hold BMO puts (there are actually two recos, from July and Sept) Pity the July ones that are still holding. Sept put is now down 75% and way OTM.
Dan Amoss saved my portfolio in 2008. He was short investment banks, retailers, you name it, he was short and we all made a killing. Here we are at the height of a tremendous bear market rally and wouldn’t you know it, Dan Amoss is still short. Moral of the story, don’t buy put options in an upward trending market. If you do, you will get your head handed to you. As previously mentioned, his market commentary is top notch. His logical approach to identifying stocks that appear ready for a nose dive of a cliff is more than likely bang on, except for one small detail, this market ain’t logical.I am a lifetime reserve member, so I am not going anywhere. Needless to say I haven’t bought many of his recommendations this year. This guy will be on top of his game as soon as this market rolls over…. and it will.