Publisher
5 Percent Per Week
Description
Short term spread-trading system for options.
Overall Rating
Rating: 3.4/5. From 21 votes.
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3.2
Rating from 65 votes
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Investment Performance
Rating from 16 votes
Rating: 3.2/5. From 16 votes.
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Quality Of Writing/Analysis
Rating from 14 votes
Rating: 3.1/5. From 14 votes.
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Value For Price
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Rating: 3.1/5. From 14 votes.
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Customer Service
Rating from 21 votes
Rating: 3.4/5. From 21 votes.
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Another winning week for 5Percent! My autotrade broker, Thinkorswim, was able to fill their order for $0.35 so I actually earned 7.5% on last week’s trade. I’m up over 40%, including commissions, for the past 10 weeks! Thanks, 5PPW!!!!!
Keep investing with them. You will sustain a 100% loss eventually and wipe out all profits.
I was a little disappointed when I lost over half of my portfolio in one week. 5PPW sustained a 59% loss. The only problem is that they make it very clear in their website that the can manage losses well and have experience at doing so, so I gave them a try. The first week I made 5%. The second week Trade King did not fill my auto trade order at all and the 3rd week into it I lost $25,000. I was devistated. If you look closely at their performance, they do great for a while, then they lose it all in one hit. And this seems to be rather consistent. I do not see that much of profit over time. I was going to invest alot more, but I think I will cancel 5PPW and stay with 10PPM. They have the ability to get out fast because they do 3 trades a month. Lessonlearned. I would be very careful with 5PPW. It’s very risky.
I too am writing this review after having suffered a devastating 60% loss using this service. For $240 a month, you would imagine they’d have better controls for downside potential. After all, lots of loss mitigation strategies exist for vertical spreads (such as reducing short leg as delta crosses 18-20). This service trades vertical options spreads. Either a bear call or a bull put spread order is issued typically once a week. However, some weeks no trade is issued at all. On the plus side, they do publish their performance numbers on the website candidly. I have been with the service about 8 months and I have not generated a gain when you factor in commissions and fees for the service itself. The fundamental truth is that you generate small returns with high probability of success, but when there is a loss, it wipes out months of gains if not a entire years worth of gains as what happened this week. If you look at the track record, large losses always occur. Truth of the matter is *ANYONE* can pick high probability spreads…the trick is to be able to pick market direction. Thats why we pay $240 a month for this…and these guys aren’t cutting it. Avoid until they can prove that they have a better loss mitigation strategy and can consistently predict the market direction.
I was there for the loss and I got three different notifications of an exit trade having been submittd to close down the position so I know that they tried to get out sooner. I turned off autotrading to see if I could exit manually a couple of times by myself and couldn’t catch it either. I turned it back on and let 5PPW handle it for me.
Here’s my thing: The market DID spike 2% in one day driving the price of our spread skyhigh before prices stabilized enough to execute a trade. The only weeks that I remember them skipping a trade altogether were when the markets were too crazy to get into or when news and economic data being released very late in the week were expected to greatly impact the markets. They get caught the same as anyone trading options. Their system is solid and consistent and I know that 5PPW traders were watching becase they had been sending updates and trade alerts.
At the end ofsd the day, they got the job done. The very next day, the market continued to spike and we hwould have finished in the money and would have owed a lot more than what they got us out for.
Keep it up 5PPW – You guys are doing great!
I agree with Kennedi on this. The market was crazy last week and it moved VERY fast. I was looking at the spread prices as 5PPW sent out the trade alerts and they were jumping in 10 cent increments. By the time the order was received and submitted by the brokers, the price was above the limit price in the order.
5PPW continued to increase the price during the day but the market was moving too fast to get the orders filled. Finally, when the markets settled down, 5PPW’s order was filled and the trade was closed down. The markets continued higher the next day and if they did not close the trade down, the loss would have been much worse.
Those complaining probably traded with their entire account. 5PPW suggests to keep the profits from each trade instead of trading with profits from previous months.
It’s trading… these things happen. It’s definitely not due to a lack of trying. It was a very unique situation and I think 5PPW did their best, given the situation.
Would like to respond to ckendal4938 and Kennedi.
For one, I do not trade my entire portfolio. Regardless, it makes no difference. If you look at this service’s historical returns…you would *NOT* be making a profit when you factor in costs of the service and commissions…even if you have a great discount broker. Also, while they did try to execute trades to help stem the loss, the fact is that they moved too slowly, too indecisively, and in manner that *HURT* their customers greatly. For the price of the service, you should have had an aggressive exit move at points well above mid-point to simply close it down and stem the loss. Instead, customers were left to catch a falling knife to suffer that beastly 60% loss.
The bottom line…customers have *NOT* made money following this service when you factor it all in. Isn’t that what counts?
Look,
Kendall and Kennedi, you can thorw all the numbers and excuses why what 5PPW sustained a 60% loss. That doesn’t help my portfolio on bit. I just started with 5PPW on autotrade because I know nothing about options trading so I thought I would let the experts take care of it. They advertise that know how to minimize losses before the fire gets too hot and they know how to how to get out before too much money is lost. I was emailing back and forth with 5PPW asking alot of questions and I finally decided to try it. 3 weeks into it, I lost $25,000. So, I just cancelled 5PPW, but I’m staying with 10PPM for now. The haven’t sustained a major loss in quite some time and they are doing pretty good. Whoever reads these posts, just ask yourself this; Do I want to risk another 60% loss? They are weekly traders so they do not have the luxury of time on their side like 10PPM. If you look at the performance, they will do well for for a while and then take a huge loss which wipes out any previous profits. I would be careful. If you like gambling then go for it. I suggest you take a look at Active Investor and Trade Mavens auto trade newsletters. They have consistent wins over years. Active Investor has an average of 100% annual returns dating back to 2007. No annual losses and all gains around 100%, some a little less and some years a little more. They obviously know what they are doing because these major gains were in the 2008 crash and also the flash crash. I wish I knew about these guys earlier. Doubling my money every year sounds good to me. I’m going to try Active Investor, Trade Mavens and 10PPM at the same time to diversify trading styles. I’m really not too concerned about my $25,000 with 5PPW because I will make it back in no time with Trade Mavens and Active Investor. Do not risk 5PPW, they do not do iron condors.
Pretty amazing that people still defend them after 60% loss. 2% buffer is a lot of movement in one week? With weekly options, any significant gap will kill the trade, and there is NOTHING you can do about it. The comment on their website that “Losses are cut soon, and managed properly” is a complete nonsense. For weekly options, there is no such thing. If the trade goes against you, the negative gamma just kills you.
Btw, did you notice a nice trick they do on their performance page? Usually the trades start with the most recent trade and go back in time. But after each big loss (they have one every few months) they reverse the order so the big loss is hidden at the bottom. Not many people notice and scroll down.
At Henry. Just wait until you lose 60-90% of all your money and profits in one week. It will happen if you stay with them long enough. I was with them for 3 weeks and lost $25,000. And I didn’t have all of my money invested. The issue is 5PPW adverstises that they can manage losses and get out before the fire gets too hot. Well, what happened when subscribers lost 60% of their money about a month ago. Mark my words, eventually you will cancel after you sustain a major loss. Good luck though. I suggest you take a look at Trade Mavens or Spread the Trend. Look at their performance. Especially Spread the Trend. They only have 2 losing months (and they were small losses) in the last 3 years. I’m going to autotrade them both.
Thank for all comments about this service as i am almost to join in
Now it is no more
This week is the second time in just three months that they have had a large loss, this losing trade was entered Tuesday afternoon and exited on Wednesday morning for a 16% loss. For September 2012 through November 14, 2012 their performance percentage is at -27.58% with 7 wins and 2 losses. On Thursday November 15 they entered a trade to help mitigate losses from the previous position. This position was successful for a gain of 6.38% bringing their September 2012 to November 16, 2012 percentage to -21.20%.
Their average for 2012 as of November 16 close is at 52.42% with 39 wins at an average of 5.62% per position with 7 losses with an average of -23.93% per position. They have more wins than losses with the program, but that each loss takes between 4-5 wins to mitigate it means that the average loss can take a month or more of recovery. This in addition to service fees of $239 monthly or $2,629 YTD makes getting ahead difficult for smaller brokerage accounts.
Commissions of $25 per transaction puts them at $1,350 year YTD. With $5,000 for each transaction you would take in $2,621, then after service fees and commissions would be at -$1328 profit YTD. With $10,000 for each transaction after fees you would be left with $1,253 in profit YTD. With $20,000 for each transaction after fees you would be left with $6,505 in profit YTD. Taxes have not been taken into consideration for this review.
In September they posted an inaccurate loss on the performance page, at that time I sent an email stating that my auto-trade position was still open and that I didn’t get out at their published debit. I received an email that they were working on closing out the positions and would make adjustments to the performance page. Later in the day they removed that posting from the performance page and then updated it later with the accurate numbers, which were much worse than the initial posting. That weekend was when they reversed the performance page to show newest trades last.
On the OEX positions they have been favoring recently are entered on Tues or Wed for a net credit of between .25 and .35. Recently these strikes have been about 10 points out-of-the-money. Not much on an index that has average daily moves of $7 – $10, if the position moves against you don‘t have the wiggle room to exit with a minimal loss due to the bid X ask being so wide.
The bid by ask on those tend to be .25 X 1.00 or more at the open – so if you get into trouble the 5-10% losses that I was told was their MAXIMUM loss point is impossible to achieve. Most of their losses are in the 20% range, and by looking on the performance page you see that the losses have been happening more often now then they were when the company started. They also don’t seem to have the great rates of return that you see early in the program, those in the 15% plus range.
Even on auto-trade I have check the market a multiple times during the day. Many of the recent p