Wicked profits I’m writing a review about options trading site called “Wicked profits” – http://www.wickedprofits.com. The site trades options spreads. They are in business since 2000. Very impressive long-term record: 2009 YTD 27.22% 2008 36.58% 2007 48.00% 2006 55.78% 2005 48.03% 2004 26.83% 2003 31.07% 2002 96.56% 2001 55.32% 4/2000 – 12/2000 132.13% They put one trade per month, only one small monthly loss of 0.21% since December 2004. 36% gain in 2008 – how many services you know that can show positive result for 2008? If they think the market is too volatile, they won’t a trade that month… Read more »
Guest
0
Dave
December 23, 2009 8:35 am
I have been a subscriber for over 6 years. The annual performance figures of the prior review are fact and obtained from actual trades executed by auto-traders, where a subscriber has an account with OptionsXpress and the one recommended index option spread trade per month is automatically executed through that firm. You are able to use there recommended spread trade through any firm, but most subscribers elect to auto-trade through OptionsXpress. All trades are open for no more than 35 days; thus there is no bias leave a losing trade open. The single recommendation each month is well reasoned, and… Read more »
Let me start by saying that I have not subscribed to this service, but I have a good reason, and that reason is MANY RED FLAGS. FIRST RED FLAG – they have no names of who they are listed on their website. SECOND RED FLAG – their address is a Las Vegas mail forwarding service called MailLink. THIRD RED FLAG – they have no phone number published (it’s hidden behind a password). FOURTH RED FLAG – a very limited number of reviews (above) and both give the service 5-stars in every category – could be both fake, as neither reviewer… Read more »
Guest
0
Kim
March 15, 2010 9:45 am
SnoopyJC, First of all, let me say that I have no vested interest in this website. I actually cancelled my subscription because for me the risk/reward is too high. I’m implementing the same strategy, but with different risk/reward. How can you rate a service that you did not even use? All your red flags mean nothing. They don’t list the phone number, but if you email them, you will get a response within 24 hours, usually less. Regarding the returns – you can subscribe and see exactly how those returns are achieved. Nothing mysterious about this, just credit spreads with… Read more »
Guest
0
grnthmb55
March 19, 2010 7:37 pm
I really don’t feel that someone who hasn’t joined this service has any right to give a review of it. I have been a member for two months now, and can attest to the fact that last month we returned 3.09% and this month’s trade was also a success, bringing in 3.62%. There is nothing “Bernie Madoff” about this system. Wicked Profits never takes any of your money… your money stays in your optionsXpress account, and if you sign up for autotrade, then the service will automatically invest your money in its net credit spread for the month. The net… Read more »
Guest
0
Portfolio Man
March 19, 2010 11:54 pm
Snoopy – you shouldn’t comment on something you don’t have first hand knowledge about. Although, you are correct that they really don’t publish their names which is 1 correct fact. All, I did the 60 trial period . Here are my thoughts on the service: Pro’s 1) I made money 2 months in a row! 2) They do credit spreads in hopes they expire worthless; 3) They have a 61 month winning streak (cannot validate other than the last 2 months I joined). Maybe the are both good and lucky (just my opinion). 4) Nice stream of income as long… Read more »
Guest
0
Bigtrader
March 20, 2010 1:24 pm
PortfolioMan, I agree with alot of your comments (high risk/very low reward)except you made money on this last trade. Impossible!! I did a 60 day trail as well and just found out my trade settled today for a loss of net $2K plus. Hence, I experienced a 20%+ loss for the month!!!!! Thier note on Thursday said the offical trade is to close the short call if the SPX hits 1,170 and it never did. But they did say it is up to people if they want to close the position at the end of the day. They should have… Read more »
Guest
0
Bigtrader
March 20, 2010 1:31 pm
I meant to give them all 1 star as I lost 20% in 2 months!! For some reason the stars were improperly coded on my last post.
Guest
0
Chuck
March 21, 2010 1:44 pm
One of the worst option advisory service out there. High price, low return and exceptionally high risk. Expect 2 or 3 time per year where your trades will get within 1 or 1/2 point of being stop out at a potential loss of from 30 to 40% of your capital on each trade. I’d been with this service for 2 years now and I’d lost 50% of my capital because I chose to close out the losing trades instead of waiting for it to get to within 1 point of being stopped out at an even bigger loss. It is… Read more »
Guest
0
Kim
March 21, 2010 6:15 pm
It is interesting that all bad reviews appear when one losing month happens after 61 positive months. You don’t gain $350 while you have $9,650 at risk. This is why they have stop loss. The maximum loss is usually limited to 20-25%. However, I’m surprised that they didn’t cover the trade on the last Thursday. It is a well known rule of credit spread sellers – you NEVER take a settlement risk when the index is so close to your short strike. So if you just started – bad luck. If you followed their advice for the last 5 years,… Read more »
Guest
0
Portfolio Man
March 21, 2010 8:13 pm
BigTrader, You are right as I just checked my account and lost about 26.5% net on the February trade alone. I posted this review thinking I was on the side of a winning trade. I apologize to everyone as I was wrong. I called my brokerage and they said the SPX settled at 1,172.96 Friday morning. I had 30 1,170 contracts. Not a good first time experience with this service. One bad trade can ruin many good trades. This services is very high risk for little reward. I am changing my rankings accordingly. It is up to the individual if… Read more »
Guest
0
Pete
March 21, 2010 9:02 pm
The risk/reward just isn’t there for this service. Case in point, if you traded $100,000 or roughly 100 or so contracts with an index credit spread of 35 cents, your maximum gain on the trade would’ve been $3500 and your potential loss, assuming you had been stopped out earlier, can vary from $15,000 to $30,000 depending on when the stop is hit. Most bull/bear vertical credit spreads are generally conservative and profitable — I think he’s had something like 60 profitable trades, but as his February subscribers can attest, if you get stopped out (or worse, the price settles in… Read more »
Guest
0
Kim
March 22, 2010 8:01 am
When you subscribe to a newsletter to need to have at least some basic understanding about the strategy that this newsletter implements. There are two basic approaches to credit spreads. First is using 70% probability trades. They seek bigger credits but accept the fact that more months will be losers. Second is using 90-95% probability trades. They are ready to accept less credit knowing that more months will be profitable. Wicked profits uses the second approach. Both strategies can work. In both cases the key is limiting your loss in a losing month and NEVER allow the maximum loss to… Read more »
Guest
0
Portfolio Man
March 22, 2010 11:03 am
Kim, I changed my ranking from Friday because the trade did not clear until Saturday. As a new trader who just lost 26.5% capital in one month, I need almost 8 straight winning trades at a credit spread of $.35 (last 2 months track record) to catch back up without adding no new capital. For me and new people to take that risk and if he has another bad month can drop that capital in half. To much risk for me and not the best use of my capital. As you for you, it seems like you have a lot… Read more »
Guest
0
Kim
March 22, 2010 12:40 pm
Portfolio Man, Like I mentioned, I was a subscriber for two months and cancelled my subscription for exactly the same reasons as you mentioned – the risk/reward was two high for me. I don’t work for Wicked Profits and not affiliated with them – I just like to put things in perspective (of course you are free to believe whatever is convenient for you). Again, if you blindly follow any newsletter without understanding its strategy and overallocate at your first (or second) month, a big loss might happen. I personally use the 70% probability version of this strategy. In the… Read more »
Guest
0
Bigtrader
March 24, 2010 10:13 am
Kim, All good points but I still think you are with Wicked profits for the following reasons: 1) You gave the first review back on November 10 and for some reason you were only in the program for the first 60 days (which is fine) and did not renew afterwards but yet you post to this website in a timely manner if someone post something you don’t like????? I don’t understand, why??? 2) I don’t see you reviewing other subscriptions on this website? Hard to tell but I looked at other high rated subscriptions and Kim is pretty generic. Maybe… Read more »
I have no idea whether or not Kim is “with” Wicked Profits and have no particular knowledge of that service, but the same person (as far as we can tell) and ip address has reviewed a half dozen other newsletters, both good and bad, and didn’t raise suspicion with our monitoring system.
Guest
0
Bigtrader
March 24, 2010 7:13 pm
StockGumshoe
I appreciate your post and respect your control process. It just seemed odd to me the flow of her notes since the beginning of the chain for a person with no vested interest. That is all.
Thank you for clearing up one of the points above and thank you for letting the reviewers post their thoughts openly.
Guest
0
Randy
March 24, 2010 9:27 pm
Kim,
I agree with your comments on Wicked Profits. I’ve only been a member for 3 cycles, so this months lost was kick in the gut. Nevertheless to demand that a service never have a loss is unresonable. Their overall record is still stellular and their support is top notch
I must say though I am interested in larger returns so the losses can be made up quicker.
I’m curious if your still using a service to get the >10% returns you mentioned. Any advice on another serivce to look into.
Regards
Randy
Guest
0
Kim
March 25, 2010 7:17 am
Bigtrader, You are definitely free to believe whatever you like. Just to put things in perspective, I actually reviewed the following newsletters: China and Emerging Markets Report Option Advisor Stock of the Month Elliott Wave Financial Forecast Global Investing S&A Short Report WaveStrength Options Weekly Options Hotline The Communique Blue Chip Growth Why am I doing it? Call me naïve, but I believe that 90% of reviews are real, so you can ask everyone the same question. Those reviews have been created so traders can help each other, and I’m so thankful to Trevor for doing this (btw, you can… Read more »
Guest
0
Dave
March 26, 2010 12:23 pm
I posted a very positive review on Dec 23, 2009. Yes, just like the many other AutoTrader subscribers, I did experience a 26% capital loss on the March-dated option spread. Anyone who invests is accepting a level of risk, and even keeping money in a bank account can be a risk in these times. To control my risk for my total portfolio, I practice position limits and stop losses. My position limit with Wicked Profits is that I have only a set percentage of my investment capital allocated to this service; stop loss limits are automatic with this service through… Read more »
Guest
0
Paul
May 9, 2010 3:41 am
I subscribed for three years and recently switched to another system that I ran in parallel for the past year. Reason for dropping wicked profits was that on the day the SPX trade in March settled, my subscription was cut off. Even though I had a yearly subscription, my access rights ended not at the end of the expiration period, but one day earlier. My email was lost and it was about getting out or staying in, I could have gotten out with a 10% loss but since I had no reply I assumed I should wait for settlement the… Read more »
Guest
0
Pete
August 30, 2010 5:13 pm
Although I no longer subscribe to Wicked Profits after the February debacle, I know others who have. Since then “Brandon” has had multiple winning trades, but his credit spreads for these trades are tiny — like 30 cents. Given the poor risk/reward ratio of his bull and bear put/call spreads, beware small-time investor — you can lose 20 to 50% of your capital if the trade goes bad! You’ll also need a cast iron stomach to endure some of the drawdowns he’s had on his last few trades.
Guest
0
adagio
October 27, 2010 1:00 pm
The worst investing (i.e. gambling) mistake I ever made was to do a trade recommended by Wicked Profits. It was my first and only options trade. This was the trade in March that many other reviewers suffered through and have reported here (but it’s only now, in late October, that i can stand to revisit this event long enough to report on it). At the time, and based on their reported steady successes, I put in way more $ than I should have and lost a very large amount. This trade shouldn’t even have been recommended imo because there were… Read more »
Guest
0
TraderJim
November 15, 2010 6:08 pm
I have been a subscriber to WP for several years now, and have followed the trades consistently and precisely. This is key to following any advisory service – any monday morning quarterbacking will generally cause you to do much worse than the service does. I have been actively trading options since 1985 and have subscribed over the years to more than a dozen advisory services. I have also evaluated the performance of dozens more through independent sites like Timers Digest and others, so I feel I am well qualified to say that WP is one of the best, if not… Read more »
Guest
0
Milachka
November 24, 2010 6:11 am
Hi, I’ve been a subscriber to WP for many years and I confirm the performance that is posted on the website. I agree with other posters that for a while now he has been going for credits that are too small. I was out of the February 2010 trade that went sour on expiration day. I had been tracking the index on Thursday and found it too close for comfort so I exited the position myself. Too be honest, I thought it was a HUGE mistake by Brandon to leave that trade open on Friday (when your stop loss doesn’t… Read more »
Guest
0
ikcots
November 27, 2010 11:39 am
I have subscribed for about 2 years, and find that they deliver as advertised. Their reported performance is true and fantastic.
The reason for my leaving was the low reward to risk ratio. The only thing I can ask is that Brandon provide more info and impact of drawdown…
Guest
0
D Singh
March 11, 2011 1:39 pm
To give you some background about myself, I have been trading for about 10 years now. I was a near-day-trader for about 2 years and have subscribed to over 20 stock/option services and have trial-tested just about all the ones out there. I can say with certainly that only about 1% of them don’t manipulate their numbers and Wicked Profits is one of them. I have been a continuous subscriber of Wicked Profits since May 2003. As they say, numbers don’t lie – and in this case, they *really* don’t lie – I personally vouch for these numbers (since I… Read more »
Guest
0
Bob
March 25, 2011 12:09 pm
This advisory recommends selling one bear call or bull put spread on an index like RUT or SPX each month. These are far out of the money spreads and almost always they expire worthless (since you’re selling them short, that’s what you want). The problem is that the risk/reward is frightening. Typically the spreads sell for $30 and have a worst case loss of $1000. So if you want to make $1200 in a month you have to risk $40,000. The stopping rule is to buy back the spread if the short strike is reached — typically that means that… Read more »
Guest
0
Bob
April 17, 2011 5:02 pm
The most recent (March 2011) trade exemplifies the issues I mentioned in the previous post. The recommendation was to sell the April RUT 865/875 bear call spread. The spreads were sold for 0.40 ($40 per contract) risking $1000 per spread. Supposed you sold 40 of these. You would receive $1600 up front. The RUT spiked up a couple of days after the sale and continued to march straight up for two weeks, reaching a peak of 859. At that time the spread was worth about 3.00, meaning that at that point you were *down* 40 * (300 – 40) =… Read more »
Guest
0
JC
June 27, 2011 12:56 am
I am reading about a lot of people wanking that their first trade was a losing one. Well you know what, my first trade lost as well and then I rode that 61 month train to major profits. I have been with Brandon since 2005 and have been very happy with the service. I have many friends and family members that have also joined and taken advantage of the profits. At one time I was trading 100K per month on this system before I decided to cut back and diversify into several other strategies. His system and website have evolved… Read more »
Guest
0
Walter
November 26, 2011 11:56 pm
Looks like they took a nasty hit in July and lost over 50%! No trade results on the site since then and the latest comment refers to an October cycle that hasn’t expired yet.
Someone said that they’ve evolved nicely over the years… looks like from a 5% gain to a 50% loss. Not the type of evolution I’m looking for.
For those of you that put them on a pedestal, are they still doing business? Are you still trading with them?
From what I heard this site and its service will be shut down for good at the end of the year.
Guest
0
Bob
May 14, 2012 3:41 pm
Wicked Profits’ web site hasn’t been updated in many months, I’d say they are indeed dead. Well, look at my earlier reviews and you can’t say I didn’t warn you. Earning 3% in a month with a credit spread is not the same thing as earning 3% a year in a bank’s money market account. In the latter case you can put in $100,000 and be confident of having $103,000 at the end of the year. In the former case if you are crazy enough to use all $100,000 as margin in a credit spread trade you will most of… Read more »
Leave a Reply
34 Comments on "Wicked Profits"
I meant to give them all 1 star as I lost 20% in 2 months!! For some reason the stars were improperly coded on my last post.
**Editor’s Note**
I have no idea whether or not Kim is “with” Wicked Profits and have no particular knowledge of that service, but the same person (as far as we can tell) and ip address has reviewed a half dozen other newsletters, both good and bad, and didn’t raise suspicion with our monitoring system.
StockGumshoe
I appreciate your post and respect your control process. It just seemed odd to me the flow of her notes since the beginning of the chain for a person with no vested interest. That is all.
Thank you for clearing up one of the points above and thank you for letting the reviewers post their thoughts openly.
Kim,
I agree with your comments on Wicked Profits. I’ve only been a member for 3 cycles, so this months lost was kick in the gut. Nevertheless to demand that a service never have a loss is unresonable. Their overall record is still stellular and their support is top notch
I must say though I am interested in larger returns so the losses can be made up quicker.
I’m curious if your still using a service to get the >10% returns you mentioned. Any advice on another serivce to look into.
Regards
Randy
Although I no longer subscribe to Wicked Profits after the February debacle, I know others who have. Since then “Brandon” has had multiple winning trades, but his credit spreads for these trades are tiny — like 30 cents. Given the poor risk/reward ratio of his bull and bear put/call spreads, beware small-time investor — you can lose 20 to 50% of your capital if the trade goes bad! You’ll also need a cast iron stomach to endure some of the drawdowns he’s had on his last few trades.
I have subscribed for about 2 years, and find that they deliver as advertised. Their reported performance is true and fantastic.
The reason for my leaving was the low reward to risk ratio. The only thing I can ask is that Brandon provide more info and impact of drawdown…
Looks like they took a nasty hit in July and lost over 50%! No trade results on the site since then and the latest comment refers to an October cycle that hasn’t expired yet.
Someone said that they’ve evolved nicely over the years… looks like from a 5% gain to a 50% loss. Not the type of evolution I’m looking for.
For those of you that put them on a pedestal, are they still doing business? Are you still trading with them?
From what I heard this site and its service will be shut down for good at the end of the year.