Author/Editor
John Thomas
Description
Overall Rating
Rating: 2.2/5. From 30 votes.
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2.0
Rating from 123 votes
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Investment Performance
Rating from 34 votes
Rating: 1.9/5. From 34 votes.
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Quality Of Writing/Analysis
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Rating: 2.2/5. From 30 votes.
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Value For Price
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Rating: 1.8/5. From 29 votes.
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Customer Service
Rating from 30 votes
Rating: 2.2/5. From 30 votes.
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I subscribed to the free version (the paid one is $4,500/year.)
Based on the trades I have seen so far I don’t believe in his published results. He very well may have his e-mailed trade alerts “audited” but he doesn’t trade them so the audit is nothing more than tabulating his fictional results.
He sends out trade alerts on low price, deeply ITM or OTM thinly traded spreads. 0.10-0.20 slip is not unreasonably in this type of instruments and that can change a hypothetical profit to an actual loss.
OTOH subscription to his co-author the Mad Day Trader comes with this subscription and I found his posts and videos quite informative. I don’t day trade but if you do, I am interested in your opinion.
I have to agree somewhat. I know that at least some of this suggestions are doable, but for the most part it does not seem to be possible for most people to get in and out at his suggestions. I signed up my son for a year of the services since he is thinking faster than I am. He learned a great deal, made some money, but in the end decided that other than general economic conditions he did not get enough out of it.
I agree with Joseph Janos comments, except I was a subscriber and lost money where he posted 35% and said you goal should be half that.
1st problem is results posted are based on where the options market is at time of trade AND the reality that markets move fast AND over 1/3 of trades don’t fill, but he counts them as successful or unsuccessful trades. Ironically most of the biggest winners are ones that don’t fill, and you need the winners to offset the losers.
2nd problem one can have with MHT is commissions eating half or more of profits. Always negotiate your commissions with broker.
3rd problem is testimonials although they may be legit what you don’t see is these folks MAY not be following exactly what the MHT trades say to do. They could be leveraged higher.
So your mileage may vary, and BY FAR not a slam dunk as marketed.
Just read John’s bio. He supposedly graduated from UCLA in 1974 which makes him at least 64 years old. He also says he was “Drafted” by the US Marine Corp to be a pilot when Iraq invaded Kuwait. I would challenge anyone that claims they were “Drafted” to be a military pilot in a war at age 48. He’s full of something.
Dead on, Gilbert. If you didn’t see his recent post in which he recalls B-52 missions from Anderson AFB, you’ve missed another whopper. That people would throw hundreds of $ a month at this clown without assessing his phenomenal claims is tragedy.
As a career Marine Officer, I can assuredly agree this guy never flew anything. Those drafted under
Secretary McNamara’s reign were mostly mental category 4’s who could not perform most basic tasks.
I also subscribed to the free version of his service and received a few trades, in which he describes the trades (usually debit spreads; debit spreads are not that easy to defend if the trade goes against your assumtions as credit spreads). He also provides a screenhot of the order (so you know which leg to buy and which leg to sell) but for 3 out of 5 trades he provided the *closing* screenshot instead of the BTO screenshot.
If you subcribe to his Facebook page or receive his emails you will notice that he often recycles his previously written articles.
Therefore, I decided not to sign up.
Unfortunately, I bought his book “Stocks To Buy For The Coming Roaring Twenties” instead ($50).
The contents of this “book” are all recycled articles from his website – which you can read for free and contain no actionable information – without any chronology, additonal context or logic, or clarity.
He is certainly the king of recycling his content over and over again.
He was a journalist after all.
Also subscribed to the $499 3 month service and quickly lost money on trades he claimed to have made outstanding profits. Looking further, I found his service claims the best exit and entry price that might have been true for an instant. I protested requesting a refund, and the service informed me they never refund unless you demonstrate you have taken the trades for the full length of the service and don’t show a profit! I persisted and did get the refund.
However, John Thomas is an interesting person, and covers lots of territory.
Read Gilbert Specht’s view again, and magnify by 5x.
John Thomas’ “history” is an impossible fairy tale. In answer to a commenter in a Sept 16, 2016 SA Post (“The Mathematical Impossibility of a Trump Win”), he states “I did 10 years at the Economist, 1974-84. Covered Reagan, Thatcher, Cho Enlai, and Deng Hsiou Ping.”
But in a recent article on SA (“The Next Korean War And Your Portfolio”, Apr 24), he regales potential subscribers with the tale of his mission as a Co-Pilot on a B-52 stationed at Anderson AFB in Guam in 1980. So… he was a SAC pilot with a TS clearance and SIOP access AND a global correspondent travelling to the PRC at the same time.
He imagines what his readers would like him to be: valiant aviator, international financial journalist rubbing shoulders with giants, hedge fund founder… whatever people find appealing to make himself appear wordly, and thus worth $thousands/year. If you believe a word of his fantasies you’re falling for a charlatan.
Did you know, for example, that he had lunch with Janet Yellen back in January? Why, of course he did, and she recalled his quirky manner as one of her students when she was a professor at Berkeley.
If you cannot trust the stories your advisor tells, how can you even imagine he should be an investment advisor?
He’s a pathological liar.
Stay far, far away.
The man is a pure sociopath, buyer beware.
This is the most expensive and least worthwhile service I have ever seen. Huge promises with claims of past successes. Very little to show for it. His emails are mostly gossip about hanging with his rich friends (Branson, Musk, Former to name a few recent ones), about all his expensive toys. and about his travels. All bragging gossip with nothing to do with making me money. And when he does make a suggestion, it is usually something most of the market is aware of, like a recent IWM suggestion that’s successful, except his exit recommendation arrivedFriday at 2:30 PDT. He has yet to offer anything original or worth the price, and so far I have not seen any position management. He looks to me to be all bluster and no substance. I am interested to see that he actually gavea refund. I was stonewalled. I should have checked with the Stock Gumshoe first. Beware!
“a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience” is the definition of a sociopath. In this case he is role playing a nice guy. His favorite saying regarding trades is “don’t chase it, there are plenty of fish in the sea. Can you guess who he thinks the fish are?
I paid $2,000 for the Mad Hedge Fund Letter; it is not listed in any of the drop-down fields. His emails pontificate on an extreme knowledge and grasp of the unknown. Otherwise known commonly as BS. He rambles on as tho he has not had his pablum. If this individual ever made real investments, it certainly was not based upon his intellectual ability. Those out of reach within the hour to buy options are already priced out of reach. This group is dangerous with the poor advice they put out.
All I can really say about him is, if he was making 30%+/year as a he claims, would he really need to keep making constant huckster pitches at potential clients? Also he just makes no sense at times – says “college students have started his program” with as little as 5k to invest. Well the best discount cost he offers is 2k/year, even that mythical 30% gain doesn’t cover it and even if it did, how much would be left as profit?
now he had to pay $3.6 MM tax on $10MM earnings… I wonder how much is from trading and how much from the paid services
Thank you for all the good work and the exceptional work you do. Your webinars give us a wonderful understanding of what is happening in the markets and undergirds, enhances, and makes your recommendations so meaningful.
It opens up our understanding and confidence in trading. Also, all of your interesting pictures and your travels make me think I know you, which further increases my understanding of all you do and ties me into your work.
You are a gem.
All riskit & No Biskit
I subscribed to John Thomas’ flagship newsletter for $999 in late 2020, buying a six month subscription during one of his flashy webinar sales patches. I was naive enough to be impressed by the track record he constantly boasted about, and foolishly subscribed without a money back guarantee.
After about two weeks, I realized that this service was a complete waste of money, and never based a trade on his advice again. Thomas’ trades are generally very deep in the money call or put spreads, where you risk about $10 for every $1 of potential profit. The profit or loss on these trades are hypersensitive to the entry and exit prices, and even a slight difference can mean the difference between a gain or loss. I strongly suspect that Thomas is “tweaking” his entry and exit prices to make himself look good. In fact, I couldn’t come close to matching Thomas’ entry prices, even when I rushed to my Think-or-Swim trading page as soon as I received an alert.
In one of his publications Thomas claimed that he addresses the integrity of his track record by showing the screen shots on his trades. This is a joke, since he covers up the trade price on these screen shots. Thomas could easily prove the integrity of his track record by putting his brokerage records on line, but I’ll be astonished if he ever does this.
The track record that Thomas advertises is indeed impressive, but if you expect to come close to matching it, you will be sadly disappointed.