Questions about 2 of Agora’s pitches
by Anonymous Questions | September 25, 2017 4:29 pm
Hello Travis,
I am an Irregular Gummie who loves what you do! It is great to have a place to test and validate (or mostly not) all the wild claims out there.
This week I saw a pitch for Weekly Wealth Alert, Alan Knuckman[1]’s ”patent pending” ”weekly paycheck indicator,” which is basically an analysis of spikes in options[2] activity for any stocks, leading to a giant leap in value within about 7 days. He says something called ”fast-cash contracts” are the best vehicle. I wonder what those are. He claims they are not options and are cheaper than the stock shares themselves. This WW Alert is published by Joe Schriefer[3] at Agora[4]. I plan to call and ask these questions but I waited too long today to call from the west coast.
I looked up Knuckman on your website and found a mostly-debunked offering from 2015, I believe it was.
Lou Basinese appears to be about to introduce something along the same lines–predicting which stocks will jump in price. He is called it the M.A.R.K.E.D. system.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Thanks for your amazingly helpful, honest, down-to-earth work.
- Alan Knuckman: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/alan-knuckman/
- options: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/options/
- Joe Schriefer: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/joe-schriefer/
- Agora: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/agora/
Source URL: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/2017/09/microblog-questions-about-2-of-agoras-pitches/
Most systems that claim to identify stock movements in the short term like that are going to fail most of the time, at least in the eyes of individual investors who are trying to trade based on those movements. There are whole office buildings full of MIT data scientists creating these kinds of quantitative indicators, testing them, and tracking them, and if they can get it right 55% of the time they make billions… but even they struggle much of the time, because supercomputing means that any regular indicators that should serve as quantitative triggers stop working as soon as more than a few folks start using them.
And when it comes to the really short term stuff, like options or futures, individuals are even more at a disadvantage. I haven’t written much about futures, but I get a lot of complaints about options trading systems — partly that’s because they’re just overpromised, they sell these systems with the headline numbers of 100%, 500% or 1,000% gains but they can’t deliver that for a whole portfolio, but often it’s just because options are so thinly traded for all but the biggest stocks that any trade a newsletter recommends to its subscribers quickly overwhelms the market and sends the price out of wack.
That’s just my quick reaction, I haven’t looked at either of these pitches or systems recently.
Thanks very much!
Thanks Travis, ditto robbins Oct. 7 entry on this discussion: “Once again, Travis, you have helped save this Irregular thousands of dollars, and more than paid for my subscription.” I suggest any of the Guest or Member entries on this thread subscribe to the Premium membership to become an Irregular membership of Stock Gumshoe.
October 8 I asked similar question to the original above post but (s)he put it much better than I; Lynn in customer service suggested I read this thread. Thanks Lynn!
oops, I should have signed in, the above was written by me, a Stock Gumshoe Irregular member – steveflick
I really would like to know your thoughts about weekly wealth alert.
Eduardo.
I have started to trade Alan Knuckman’s Weekly Wealth Alert, and I would say that I have not had the success with Knuckman’s system as I have with Zach Scheidt’s Income on Demand, which also involve relatively short term option plays. I made the decision to trade with Knuckman, since Zach had recommended him so highly, and I have grown to have a lot of respect for Zach. Knuckman had a recommendation this past week on buying Sept. 29 $17 calls on Twitter, which turned out to be a bust. He has had some other dogs as well, but, I am still in some plays of his, such as MOS or Mosaic Co. Oct. calls. I have already sold some of my positions for about a 40% gain on this one. Will hang in there for the time being with Knuckman.
Is Knuckman’s WPI “Weekly Paycheck Indicator” through his Weekly Wealth Alert newsletter using options (you said “also involve relatively short term option plays)? He said it was not options. What is the investment made in if not options or stocks? Futures, not that I’m up to speed on what they are exactly? Thanks, was considering signing up for this newsletter, so your reply would be helpful. I don’t like them not telling the investment vehicle, as I’m not comfortable with options for instance. Thanks in advance for your answer or from any others that know the answer to this.
I received an invitation to join Alan’s Weekly Wealth organization for $2000.00. I am way below the poverty line with an income of $600.00 a month. I am 74 and would love to experience not having to worry about money. I am an artist but no one seems to want to purchase my work.
Melissa,
I can’t speak for the Weekly Wealth Report, but I’d stay away if I were you. At only $600 cash flow monthly, you probably shouldn’t be messing with such things. If it sounds too good…
PS I would be happy to buy an art work piece from you. My email is tvmcguire@live.com
Good to know there are still good and kind people out there!
Do yourself a big favor and stay clear of Alan Knuckman. I wasted thousands of dollars on his recommendations.
try house painting, $500 per day.
I am disappointed in Agora and Zach Scheidt (whose newsletter I subscribe to). Zach recently endorses Alan Knuckman’s new Agora options service using the following “c’mon” line: ” . . . can help you turn $1,000 into $464,200 . . . .” in a short window of time. True enough. But what Zach fails to say is that the probability of actually achieving this is infinitesimal.
Once again, Travis, you have helped save this Irregular thousands of dollars, and more than paid for my subscription. Thanks to you and to the members who posted their experience.
I also subscribed with the Weekly Wealth Alert. Every trade I made was a bust. Stay away.
OK. Thank you for keeping me away from this one. Frankly, Agora products that offer a 100% guaranteed return may be worth a shot, but they seem to be moving away from the ‘free trial’ policy.
the weekly wealth uses fast cash contracts he calls them which I looked up and they have different names you can google it. It isn’t a safe investment, you have to be in and out with in 7 days. they do put a disclaimer at the bottom that it isn’t typical and you are at risk and don’t invest if you are not willing to loose everything basically. I wouldn’t give anyone $2000 to $3000 to give me adviceuinless I could look them in the face and see their eyes. Google” complaints Agora Financial”. You get your answer, at least from some peoples prospective.
I also got a guarantee from a whale boat charter, once. Sounded good at the time. Paid $100. Then we spent a whole day on the boat. Saw no whales. Got sea sick. Turns out, the last thing we wanted to do was go out on the boat again even if it was free. It’s the same way with these guarantees. Lose a lot of money first time around and the guarantee is not worth the paper er digital media that it’s printed on. The guarantee is pretty meaningless if you lose money the first time around.
The 100% guarantee statement I read is carefully worded to say that he will “give you the chance” to double your money at least 20X or the second year is free. That doesn’t mean those 20 chances will earn you a penny, he just has to offer them to you.
Thanks, Travis, for doing all the hard work in analyzing these “touts”.
Isnt there some simple indicator, like a volume indicator, that could be tracked by any broker’s analytic tools? Certainly that is what the MIT quants do…..in a more sophisticated way.
IOW, are we the people cut out of all the big gains and just have to rely on the longterm trend of stocks to go higher? Because, even if this bubble continues for 2 more years, it will burst, and I don’t trust the markets.
The quants are having a terrible time making any real money right now — too much fat processing power is pointed at the market, so any new systems or indicators that actually work are unlikely to work for more than six months.
There’s no magic, pros aren’t any better at picking the end of a trend… the good ones are just better, in general, at being prepared and hedged and acting rationally.
I paid $2,000 for the Weekly Wealth Indicator last June. I actively traded many of the recommendations and kept track of the results. Then when I saw the nets of gains and losses were not panning out, I began paper trading the recommendations. What I found was he was hyping the gains but not being truthful about the losses. For the six months ended December 31,2017 the recommendations lost a lot of money. Many of the options expired worthless. These more than offset any of the gains that were made. They told me I could renew for $1,000. I would be an idiot to pay to lose even more money. I am extremely skeptical of the sales pitch hyping a patent pending process for identifying insider activity.Why don’t they sell it to the SEC and make the finders fees There are some good services out there, but this one is not one of them. Buyer beware.
Not being truthful about losses? Sounds like typical Knuckman.
Alan’s reporting of his options trade are misleading if not FRAUD… He will use the ‘lowest price’ of an option on the day he is recommending to buy and always put the ‘highest price’ of an option to demonstrate a profit, that nobody in the world could have made… He should measure by taking the worst up to price of the day when buying, because you receive the reco and when you will be acting on it, will not be the same for anybody in the crowd, so just taking the ‘up to price’ would sound fair… And then, on the selling side of things, he should give a clear instruction about the way out.. Which he never does, so nobody knows when to sell… If you buy an option at 0.40, and he reported it at 0.25, then, when the option reaches 0.50, he claims you did 100%!! But you are just up 25%, since you could not get in @ better then 0.40… So when it reaches 0.50 do you keep it on its way to 0.60 or do you risk losing your 25%? In the end, he will report he did 100% which is a FRAUD… I think he misunderstood that his readers are more important than his false paper records… At the same time, assuming his system works… Assuming he makes 100% on all his trades… Then he is a multimillionnaire… So why bother writing up and telling other people about his gold mine? Well… maybe his paper loss are like is real life, and he is broke… So he needs to sell and market that he has a super system… Think about the guy selling you this for a 1000$, and let say through Agora he gets 1000 fishes… Well, he just got 1M$, without any risks! I wrote to him about it and never got a reply… I will also comment that I have been following Nomi’s 25 cents trader, it is just WORST… She claimed a 59% trade on a weekly option, traded in one day, but the stock went down ALL DAY after 10am, which is the time you should buy the option… Those are insulting behaviors.
I have seen a number of the “paycheck” courses popping up….I paid $999 for one and it was a waste of time – basically the teach you to sell option spreads out of the money with a low probability of expiring ITM (in the money)…which works….until it doesn’t and you blow up an account. What you collect on the spread takes about 10 winning trades in a row to make up for one that goes bad….and the probabilities on option chains are usually wrong – multi standard deviation moves happen way more than the estimated probabilities would imply. The only people making money in Option Paycheck courses are…..you guessed it….the instructors.
Thanks for the great discussion of Weekly wealth alert. They almost had me with the slick pitch; I shoulda known that such a long pitch was a “Red Flag”
Being on SS and having limited funds, I cannot afford any more losses.
Thanks to all who contributed to this discussion. You have helped me from, making a big mistake.
I have spent a shameful amount of money on Agora products. Especially the ones that seem to promise tremendous gains. I would love to purchase stock in there media firm because that’s what they are so very good at. If these people had the ability to do what they say, they would be working for Goldman Sachs earning millions of dollars a year. Unfortunately, I have had to learn the hard way that if it sounds to good to be true, IT IS to good to be true.
I signed up for Agora’s Weekly Wealth Alert in October 2017, first on the 3 month trial subscription and then another 12 months for a total subscription fee of about $2,000 US. I started with about $5,000 seed money in my options trading account. Ultimately the program proved to be underwhelming and disappointing from a results based perspective. In fact, I was tired of losing money and I stopped trading in June of 2018 and paper traded the remaining subscription time, another 7 months. I had about $1,000 left from my initial $5,000 seed money. I was very conservative in my positions only purchasing 2 contracts per recommendation (once a week on Monday) and I diligently followed Alan Knuckman’s advice on every trade possible. My results were as follows: 50 total trades, 26 winners, 21 losers, 3 break even., for a 55% win/loss ratios A handful of trades were never executed as the price went beyond the recommended buy in threshold. There were a few double baggers and some that were up 150-250%. The remaining wins were typically anywhere from 10-50%. In retrospect, 55% isn’t too bad a win/loss ratio but keep in mind that your losses are either 100% if you let the option expire worthless (easy to do, trust me) or if you incorporate stop losses, say at 50%, which is what I started to do after the first 6 months, to avoid being shut out completely. Well at a 55% win/loss ratio you’ll never make enough money to counter the losses. And don’t even bother trying to pick the good trades versus the bad trades, ya gotta be all in and play every recommendation So it was 2 steps forward, 2-3 steps back, over and over again and you see your trading account slowly erode. I was in it for the long haul hoping to steadily build up my account but the win/loss ratio is simply not good enough. The tendency for these type of subscription services is to highlight and hype the big gains and ignore or gloss over the losing trades when promoting their services. I don’t regret the investment in time and money as it taught me a lot about options trading, but it does sting that I paid a substantial premium for a service that proclaimed to be ahead of the pack in terms of timing and anticipating imminent big moves before the masses, yet would ultimately disappoint with meager results. As has been suggested on these type of forums/blogs if it was so easy everyone would be doing it. Even the seasoned pros have a hard time making money consistently. If you are willing to risk the subscription fee and your initial investment money, may be worth a try. Just be clear on what your strategy and end goals will be and be prepared to part with your investment if things don’t work out. Just don’t fall for the hype in their copy ads and presentations, that is absolutely a fool’s game.
I was more fortunate. I was offered a subscription for $49 with 180 day money back guarantee. Their website has past p&s for 7/25/2017 thru 7/17/2020 without reference to number of contacts traded. After determining the number of contracts based on the algorithm presented and assuming equal money invested in each recommendation, there were 153 executed recommendations and the final result was a loss of 282% of the investment in each recommendation, that is the expected loss per recommendation is 1.8% of the investment. The place a person might mess up in analyzing the p&s is to assume that each line represents one contract while the major loss (64 trades) is when both contracts are sold at the same time for a loss.
I just got another promotion for this service (9-15-19) to be a “charter’ subscriber. Ha! They no longer have a trial period, but by golly, if they don’t double your money at least 20 times in the first year, they’ll give you a second year FREE! Just what I would want, another year of bad investment advice. Worthless guarantee. It’s what they revert to when too many ask for a refund or don’t renew.