Description
Maintains several portfolios using technical analysis, including Elliott Wave.
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I have been subscribing to McHugh’s letter for 2+ years. He has not committed any funds from his paper portfolio since the options calls in 2007 went really bad. Overall not bad in terms of timing the market, and the big picture Elliot Wave.
http://www.technicalindicatorindex.com
For the past 4 years I have subscribed to Robert McHugh’s excellent Technical Indicator Index publication. I pay $450 for a 2-year subscription although there are less expensive, shorter terms.
McHugh is often interviewed on shows like Financial Sense. He uses a combination of proprietary signals,Elliott Wave, Fibonacci turns, and Dow Theory—and he’s most often spot on with his market indicators. These indicators provide “buy” or “sell” assessments for the major indexes, gold, Treasuries, the dollar, oil, and natural gas.
He also provides free access to his Australian Report which includes some Asian countries as well and arrives in my mailbox every mid-day.
I get 40 pages of graphs and text every weekend and an updated dozen-page update each evening. On top of that, McHugh provides a daily email executive summary of his observations and advice.
He also lets us know when he buys and sells out of his model portfolio that beats the S&P 500 every year.
This service is a deal at 3 times the price. You can get a free issue and subscription information at technicalindicatorindex.com.
It’s ok, just ok. I went from May 2010 to June 2011 and did not renew.
While interesting, the market timing to me wasn’t accurate enough to trade money on. It was around 55-60%.
They have around 6 times per year a high probability options play. The first one hit with a bang. But the next one was not so great. He entered 3 days too early. All the while me losing big $. The next ones were so-so as I recall. But the timing was not spot on. With all his fancy proprietary indicators I expected more.
The worst was around August 2010 he was predicting a major market crash. On three different days he said we had a fully confirmed “Hindenberg Omen”, which is when certain market technicals conform to certain parameters. All major crashes have had this. He said to tell your family if they are in the stock market, etc. I was quite alarmed, and emailed my brother, who had quite a bit of money in stock mutual funds (mutual funds that invest mainly in stocks). He pulled his money out of them. No type of crash, or even a significant correction, ever came. In fact, the market rebounded and went on an upswing. I felt embarrassed for relaying this recommendation, as my brother could have made some good profit if he would have left his money in the stock mutual funds.
This is an interesting newsletter but there is not much provided that you can trade off of. He likes to use big phrases like “jaws of death” to describe patterns which I could do without. The primary purpose of this review however is to warn people away from the Platinum trading service he offers. My experience has been positively catastrophic. He takes huge positions, like 400 IWM calls, out of the money. If it goes right, there are profits. But he is terrible at taking the profits and more than once has stood by and watched large profits evaporate to nothing because he was going for the homerun and ended up striking out. He does not use stop losses and loves to “rollover” a disastrous trade. While that might sound fine, a rollover, what it means is you sell your 400 IWM calls at a huge commission locking in your huge loss, and turn around and buy 400 or more at a huge commission a week or two later in expiration. If that one does not go well, you get another rollover a few weeks later in expiration in out of the money options, locking in another huge loss plus more huge commissions. While he says that no trade exceeds $1600 (approx.) in capital, that has not been my experience and he takes multiple trades at a time so you may have that $1600 on the line 5 times over. Just lately he completely missed taking profits at the top of the market and watched it all melt away for thousands of dollars of losses. No stop losses. When queried his reply was take profits when you want to, which is not what you want to hear from a very expensive “Platinum” trading service. I will update if things change as I am stuck with it for 4 years even if I dont use his trades, but right now I am MANY thousands of dollars poorer plus the cost of the service and in just a couple of months he has done enough damage to my portfolio that I will be years recovering. And if you ask him by email what the heck is happening and what is he thinking or planning he just blocks you, or he did me. Make sure you get all of his trades before you think of paying the fee to join, and look for all the rollovers. Also keep in mind that what he doesnt tell you upfront is he is making these trades on a half million portfolio (real or paper, I dont know). I discovered this by accident when he took a big position and said it was 1.75% of capital. That was news to me. No chart to keep track of where he is in positions, so you have to scroll through numerous emails to figure out what he is doing. So if you are trading a 50,000 portfolio you simply cannot take full positions and his claimed profits must be reduced to 10% of what he claims if in fact he is basing this on a real or hypothetical half million portfolio. He claims he made approx 16,000 in net gains last year, so if you have a $50,000 portfolio and trade 10% of his size thats $1600 profit net for the year, less commissions and the cost of the service, and all the lost sleep. I would avoid at all costs. No refunds. One more thing, you get his trades 15 minutes after he does them, and there is slippage of course. Run dont walk away from this one. If he turns it around I will let you know in the interest of fairness.
You hit the nail on the head… the premium service is an absolute disaster. In Sept 2017 there was a constellation in the sky that predicted a stock market crash. McHugh wentvall in on the puts…. I watch him lose big
I was absolutely amazed that anyone would follow such nonsense!!! He is selling snake oil.
Also, you are dead on with respect to his ability to communicate in writing. RM is a absolutely disgusting and cannot have a rational discussion without name calling.
I’d give this service a thumbs down overall. And definitely stay away from the ‘Platinum Trading Service’. I’d echo Jason’s comments on 2/26/13 and concur. This service is very deceptive because commissions are not figured in. They should be because when you’re buying four or 500 penny options a month from expiration like Jason said, the commissions add up. Then the rollovers and more commissions. None of that is counted when the website touts the big gains. For an RIA, I’m surprised they’re still in business as that is highly deceptive at a minimum. Customer service is atrocious. If you ask a question you get belittled. If you even hint at not agreeing with him, you get cursed at and called all sorts of names. My impression is this is one giant ego at work and while he’s right about a lot of things, so are many others – without the arrogance and hubris. I’m sorry I subscribed to the service even though I’d say I about broke even, maybe a tad down overall. Not a good experience at all.
Again, you seem like an inexperienced trader that does not have an online broker account which allows options trades with negligible commissions. He makes it clear in his disclosure form that commissions are not included in performance results, however commissions have to be less than one percent of his profits. Anyone trading in this program has to be happy and is not complaining about commissions unless they are using a live broker and not an online service, or are trading on their own and losing money outside the program. I am very satisfied with the program.
As for customer service, I have had nothing but courteous and prompt replies, very professional. Sounds like you have a personal ax to grind.
Mark,
I mean Robert McHugh..!! LMAO!!
Because people have an opinion you don’t need to be a bully and ridicule.
If you like McHugh… great. You stated your case. Many people on this blog have stated factual statements. If you are a subscriber and you are honest then you know that he has been a disaster.
He has been bearish on the market during one of the greatest bull
Markets in history. That’s a simple fact.
OK, I have followed the newsletter for over 10 years and I can say it is pretty good, especially the indicators.
But I am concerned about the truthfulness of the Premium program and let me tell you exactly why with an example:
On 2/8/2016 they closed out in multiple iterations, a slew, and I mean a slew like nothing I have ever seen before, of open GDX (and GLD) call positions for what they say is a humongous profit. Now the range on that day was 17.44 – 17.90, so we’ll give the benefit of doubt for the high 17.90.
The (GDX) calls sold were strike price 16, Jan 2018, a full two years into the future, with obviously tons of premium left in them, which is fine.
To quote: “We originally purchased these in 2012, and rolled them over several additional times, to add time for the trade to perform, and improve delta (the amount of profit for a given move in the options price).”
Now I know its been mentioned here about the rollovers costing a lot in commissions, but let’s just leave that part out for now. Lets instead look at a chart of GDX in 2012 which ranges from $40 – $58. So the options position was initiated somewhere in there, again lets give the benefit of the doubt to the bottom of $40, and was closed out around $18, was rolled over multiple times over 4 years, for sure resulting in lost premium over that period, and were wildly profitable, when in fact the LOW for GDX was $12.40 (which admittedly no human in the world could have ever guessed it would go that low, but that is another story).
How in the world someone could buy options starting say in the $40s, sell in the teens much closer to the bottom than the top, and make a huge profit through 4 years of time decay for each of the traces is beyond me. It would require a timing that is impeccable and even if it was perfect, I don’t know if it even could occur. The ONLY way I could see this as possible is if they kept dumping more and more money into the rollovers parabolically, with the hope that eventually it would turn around (which it did).
Now, had they sold the calls around the price where GDX is trading now ($30), then that would be possibly believable, but to be wildly profitable when you bought much higher than were you sold, I have a real issue with that.