Description
Options service that focuses on trading around earnings announcements.
If you’ve subscribed to Winning Edge, The, 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 1 votes
Rating: 1.0/5. From 1 vote.
Please wait...
Your vote
- 5 Stars 0 Votes
- 4 Stars 0 Votes
- 3 Stars 0 Votes
- 2 Stars 0 Votes
- 1 Stars 1 Votes
Quality Of Writing/Analysis
Rating from 1 votes
Rating: 3.0/5. From 1 vote.
Please wait...
Your vote
- 5 Stars 0 Votes
- 4 Stars 0 Votes
- 3 Stars 1 Votes
- 2 Stars 0 Votes
- 1 Stars 0 Votes
Value For Price
Rating from 1 votes
Rating: 1.0/5. From 1 vote.
Please wait...
Your vote
- 5 Stars 0 Votes
- 4 Stars 0 Votes
- 3 Stars 0 Votes
- 2 Stars 0 Votes
- 1 Stars 1 Votes
Customer Service
Rating from 2 votes
Rating: 2.5/5. From 2 votes.
Please wait...
Your vote
- 5 Stars 0 Votes
- 4 Stars 1 Votes
- 3 Stars 0 Votes
- 2 Stars 0 Votes
- 1 Stars 1 Votes
“The Winning Edge” ,is an OPTIONS picking email service. $795 per year with a 90 day trial period . I must say that customer service is very efficient, and you will get an unquestioned refund if not happy. The Editors are Chris Johnson and Jon Lewis.
I had some success in the beginning with some of their picks , but then the picks semed to have gone wrong , and I wound up losing $800. My big mistake was not setiing a 30 % stop on the options . Mr Johnson does not have any recommended stops with his options picks……BIG MISTAKE!
The Big problem with options is getting the right price. Most of the times when I purchased an option , I was already in the hole when the trade cleared.
It seemed like Mr Johnson was always on the WRONG side of the trade for the last few picks ! After losing the $800, it was time to say Sayonora.
Fortunately , praise the lord , my 795 subscription fee was credited back to my credit card account only days after cancelling!
I am a subscriber for about 1 1/2 months (signed up for a quarter only) and have kept a very accurate record of the newsletter’s recommendation as well as my actual trade costs and outcomes. Overall, this advisory service is going through a very rough spot right now (March 26). He has been short on several stocks during earnings and even though the call on the earnings was right (i.e. miss) the stocks went up any way creating loosing trades. He also recommended some long term bearish plays that started with a great gain but ended up with severe losses. To make matters worse, a few recommendations to get out of plays were a bit too soon, and the trades actually would have improved a day or two later. The picks have now turned bullish so I am waiting and see.
My only saving grace is that I have not blindly following the recommendations, in fact a couple of times I went against the recommendation and ended up with positive trades. overall, I am even at this point, but only because of playing spreads (instead of straight calls/puts), skipping bad recommendations and going against others. On the website, the % of losing versus winning trades is pretty miserable.
I will wait until the end of the quarter, and unless I am even or better (including the cost of the subscription) I plan on canceling and requesting a refund.
I papertraded it and had more losers than winners. Avoid it.
Just a note before I continue: I rated Customer Service as One Star, when actually it is excellent. You won’t have any problems in that area. However, since the whole business of a stock newsletter is to help you make money, I didn’t feel like 1/5th of the overall rating should be weighted towards customer service — that would skew my negative opinion of this news letter in the wrong direction. After all, if a news letter is making you GOBS of money, and the customer service is bad, I think you’d still want to rank it highly, since it’s “bringing home the bacon” and that’s what matters.
Having said that, I concur with the review by Trader. Chris Johnson was doing very well for a while with his free advisory called the Earnings Edge (a teaser to get you to come onboard with his paid service). I did well with it, and got onboard with the Winning Edge in March, around 3/25. Ever since then, it’s been an UNMITIGATED DISASTER. As of the last time I looked (about a week ago, so April 20th or so), the win/lose record was running 2 wins out of 17 closed trades, and the win/loss amounts for winners vs. losers were running about even, more or less. In other words, by no means did those two winners make up for the many losers.
I have no ill will towards Mr. Johnson, but his track record speaks for itself: he has no better insight into the market than you or I, and in fact, his insight might even be WORSE! After all, he really is doing much worse than a coin toss, trying to pick the direction of his trades (call or put). And, in his highly-leveraged style of options picking, its all about that, getting the direction right. If you don’t, your premium goes down VERY rapidly, ensuring a very probably 50%, 60% or even 100% loss.
Clearly, the current market conditions are baffling to Mr. Johnson. He doesn’t “get” it. I cannot recommend his newletter based on performance. And, while mildly entertaining to read and somewhat informative, I find Jon Markman’s Traders’ Advantage newsletter to be much, much better at discussion, informing, and actually picking some winners! Mr. Markman’s track record as of late (last few months) has been pretty stellar. Check it out.
It is very clear that Chris Johnson’s value comes not from following his Options picks, but from betting against him. The only honest part of this scam is that he posts all of his tremendous losses for his members to see once you’ve signed up; almost all of them being in the high double digits.
Using your money as toilet paper would be a better investment than listening to this clown.
I have been a subscriber of the winning edge since early April. At first, the trading was a little rough as the portfolio that I allocated for these trades had more than a couple of losses. There were a large number of puts traded that wound up as losing trades.
Starting in late April, the service’s performance turned around quickly as I have booked many more winning trades than losers following their recommendations. The current open trades are 3:1 puts to calls which has served well as the market has started selling off.
I like the approach of the service and the theory behind the recommendations, which is why I subscribed in the first place. They mix a fair amount of technical analysis with their form of sentiment trading to come up with their recommendations.
I plan on renewing my subscription as long as the bottom doesn’t drop out of the performance as I am interested in the longer term potential and enjoy some of the commentary.
I subscribed to this service for about 3 months but as a subscriber, I had a chance of reviewing the trades for the last year or so, and the short summary is that average performance is awful. It does not take a genius to look at the history of trades and realize this is a losing proposition.
The plays are mostly around earnings and follow a contrarian attitude, for example a stock with high expectations for earnings and high ‘buy’ recommendations for analysts would be a put candidate. Problem is that this strategy occasionally works (providing fuel for the ads) but more often than not fails and the net profit/loss is terrible. Making maters even worst, there is no way to implement money management; holding options through earnings is a hit or miss, and when they miss, 80 to 90% of the value is gone.
Since I committed to trying the service, I implemented a system where I put $500 on each trade, and it only took a few trades to wipe my threshold, so I asked for a refund, which was promptly returned; the guy on the phone asked why, and sounded surprised that it “wasn’t working for me”. Since then I have been receiving offers to extend/rejoin the service for ever decreasing prices, but no thanks.
Another thing I find particularly misleading is reading the teaser ads about the gains. As a subscriber, I have had a hard time connecting the performance mentioned in the ads with the performance I was getting when following the recommendations. I would stay away.
Hello, just wanted to provide a summary of May’s performance for the Winning Edge service as promised earlier in the month. I have to say that the Winning Edge service continues to improve as the trade management has improved. The services’ returns have grown positive. For the month of May, I netted somewhere around 8% following each trade from the service. There were a few losing trades that were closed quickly after sharp after-earnings moves but there were also sharp winning trades that were closed out over 100% in days following their recommendation.
I noted that the trade holding period has shortened up and the traders running the service are now changing their holdings with the changes in the market outlook. For instance, the market appears to be vascilating at the top of its range and the Winning Edge is currently holding no open positions. Their weekly outlook said that they will be adding positions as the trend emerges. This makes much more sense to me than throwing trades out and hoping the market moves in your favor, like many services tend to do.
The tables I pasted below this commentary are the May trades for Winning Edge. I keep these in spreadsheet form and they tend to match the closed positions report on the website on every trade. Summary for May, 17 trades, including trades that were carried as half closeouts after locking in profits on a half position, 11 of 17 trades were winners for an average win of 54.6 percent. The max winner was 125.6 percent (in three trading days) the max loser trade was 44.2 percent (two week holding period) average losing trade was just under 40% on 6 trades.
So in summary, the win/loss ratio is at 55% and they are making 54.6% on winning trades while giving up 40% on losing trades. That’s not too bad, especially in a market that traded in a range for the entire month.
I may be trying to make myself feel better about my subscription, but I made roughly 8% following the Winning Edge recommendations in May which means I’m going to continue the service. While I’m not hitting the “triple digit winners” as often as one might think from the promotions they send (if you really believe these I’ve got a bridge for sale) but they’re making me money while others aren’t. people that are getting into these services to get rich quick will tend to leave negative comments on these boards. In this case, there is some value for the premium paid for the Winning Edge’s advice.
I will continue to pass performance and open trade information on as my subscription continues.
Sam
Winning Edge May Trade Results
OptionTicker Position Date Bought Entry PX Date Sold Sell PX return% $ Return
PRQFW COST June 47.50 Calls 5/27/09 2.6 5/28/09 1.45 -44.2% $278.85
TDFI TD June 45 Calls 5/22/09 1.4 5/27/09 2.45 75.0% $875.00
TDFI TD June 45 Calls 5/22/09 1.4 5/26/09 2.3 64.3% $821.45
ABTRW ABT June 47.50 Puts 5/11/09 3.3 5/22/09 3.5 6.1% $530.30
AROFK ARO June 32 Calls 5/21/09 2.1 5/22/09 3 42.9% $714.30
TGTFO TGT June 41 Calls 5/19/09 2.72 5/20/09 4.2 54.4% $772.05
QAVRH QQQQ June 34 Puts 5/12/09 1.65 5/19/09 0.99 -40.0% $300.00
FRORE FRO June 25 Puts 5/8/09 3.5 5/14/09 4.7 34.3% $671.45
KSSFP KSS June 42 Calls 5/5/09 4.3 5/14/09 2.55 -40.7% $296.50
DFQX DF May 22.50 Puts 4/24/09 3.1 5/11/09 4.4 41.9% $709.70
KHQEB HCBK May 10 Calls 4/21/09 2.25 5/11/09 2.75 22.2% $611.10
DFQX DF May 22.50 Puts 4/24/09 3.1 5/7/09 4.8 54.8% $774.20
PCSEW PCS May 17.50 Calls 4/30/09 0.8 5/7/09 0.45 -43.8% $281.25
CCLEE CCL May 25 Calls 4/28/09 1.95 5/7/09 3.5 79.5% $897.45
NQDFT NDAQ June 17.50 Calls 5/1/09 3.1 5/7/09 3.1 0.0% $500.00
CCLEE CCL May 25 Calls 4/28/09 1.95 5/5/09 4.4 125.6% $1,128.20
MYLEV MYL May 12.50 Calls 4/30/09 1.25 5/1/09 0.85 -32.0% $340.00
here are my results of the june and july trades.-$1456 this does not cover all their picks as i did not enter everyone. again the result is a minus 1456 and that is just an approximation. thinking that this guy has his act together, prompted me to choose other option prices around his picks.that would just compound my losses much more. enough to say that he called a goog put on the friday before earnings. goog started up from that point without looking back causing me my largest loss of almost $1000. the whole week they did not send a sell order. do you get the picture?
I joined this service recently and have yet to make any buys of their recommendations.
I paid $99 for a 2 months trial as a result of a “Today Only” email special. After the 2 months, I would be automatically billed $295. per quarter.
In looking over their open and closed plays, I found:
For 160 plays from Oct 20 2008 (the earliest buy) to Oct 25 2009 (the time of writing):
Number of profitable plays: 53 out of 160 or 33%
Number of loosing plays: 107 out of 160 or 67%
Number of loosing plays with a 100% loss: 9
Average % gain per profitable play: 71.7%
Average % gain per loosing play: -61.6%
Average % gain for all 160 plays: -17.4%
I will leave it to you to determine if this is a “Winning Edge.”
When I called to cancel, I was told there were no money back guarantee that was mentioned in their other ads.
They had advertised a one year subscription for $795.00. (The so called regular price was $1,495 less $700 discount.). This offer did have the money back guarantee.
I am a subscriber to this and a couple others right now.. I think its a very good service but just like the others only if you trade your own charts. There are many open trades right now on the current month and I am in none of them because my charts dont agree with any of them yet… there are two closed that my charts did agree and I made 30% and 50% respectively on those two trades.
I think it can be very good as long as you trade the recommendations when and if your charts agree.
Does anyone else have a service they recommend
they use like I suggest using the winning edge?
I always like more solid good picks to
watch with my own charts.
thanks
Brian
Hello, I am subscribed to TA for more than a year and I did
quite a bit of analysis on his portfolio and picks before I
started investing real dollars. It is also important to say,
that I was (?)a big fan of Jon after having read two excellent
books of him. After 3 months of trading I was down and his
portfolio was too, so I stopped real money trading, but I
continued to monitor his portfolio and to read his newsletter
(now daily). Have a look what happened to the portfolio in 2010:
Jon Markman Trader’s Advantage Portfolio 1 Jan – 23 Aug 2010
Winners 60, Looser 110
Average Performance in %
Jan 10 -1.60
Feb 10 -0.40
Mar 10 0.99
Apr 10 -14.39
May 10 -8.48
Jun 10 -4.48
Jul 10 -0.98
Aug 10 -5.65
————-
Average -4.37 (please see below on my calculations of the ave)
What I don’t understand is how someone like Jon, who uses
excellent information sources and who has a brilliant background
knowledge about the markets just doesn’t get his picks right.
60 winning to 100 loosing trades is a pretty bad ratio, in my
humble opinion.
While I still think Jon’s newsletter has its merits in giving
you a good birds-eye look on the markets, I would not recommened
to subscribe to the service for building up your portfolio, you will be disappointed. I have to say that I also very much dislike Jon’s misleading advertising showing a list with five +100% winners. To put this into perspective, Jon had his last +100% in Dec 2009, while he took his last total loss (-100%)only May 2010. Just for the
information provided in the newsletter, this service is too expensive. I will therefore discontinue my subscription.
(NOTE: the performance averages above are calculated by equally-
weight averaging all the trades from Jon’s CSV-file on “sold positions” available on his website. This does not exactly match
what Jon is doing, because he sometimes closes only 1/2 of a
position, and then at a later time the second half. Nevertheless,
changing the calculations will not make this a winning portfolio).
The Winning Edge is the opposite of its name. It should be called “How to Lose Your Money Quickly”. I subscribed for only about six weeks and, following his recommendations, lost about $30,000.00. You read that correctly. Thirty Thousand Dollars. The few small gains were a joke to the massive mistakes he makes. For instance, he recommended to buy puts when T was going up on huge volume. He also recommended buying puts on SPY and IWM when they were at the bottom of the stochastic and MACD curves. Massive losses. My reccomendation: Hey, Chris, give me my $30,000 back!
Somebody complained about Jon Markman above. Losing money is certainly NOT the case recently not only on stocks but options also. (I swear I’m a subscriber and not actually Jon) Some very serious money has been made with him in the last couple months and I haven’t seen a losing month here (around 2 years) yet that he caused but I am doing other things and don’t always take the trades. Sure should have this month.
All these guys like everyone else have strong and weak points. Learn what they are and double up on the strengths and avoid the weakness. I bet after awhile, starting with the same money, if they play their own calls and I pick and chose from them. I can make more than they do..on their very own stuff.
A big problem with with straight options services is the option is already swarmed by the time you get there.