Author/Editor
Andy Crowder
Publisher
Wyatt Research
Description
Options trading service that aims for limited gains and lower risk. From their website: “Andy doesn’t swing for the fences or take undue risks; rather his proven, patient method delivers income producing wins the majority of the time.”
Overall Rating
Rating: 3.6/5. From 29 votes.
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3.4
Rating from 118 votes
If you’ve subscribed to Options Advantage, please click the stars below to indicate your rating for this newsletter, and please share any other feedback about your experience using the comment box below.
Investment Performance
Rating from 36 votes
Rating: 3.1/5. From 36 votes.
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Quality Of Writing/Analysis
Rating from 26 votes
Rating: 3.7/5. From 26 votes.
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Value For Price
Rating from 27 votes
Rating: 3.2/5. From 27 votes.
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Customer Service
Rating from 29 votes
Rating: 3.6/5. From 29 votes.
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Hello Jim
first of all, apologizes for my English (I am Spaniard). I am a 7 months old suscriber of Options Advantage and I recomend his work.
I have followed his trades in paper trading – I am new in options – and the results have been good along this period. He is mainly an option seller. His favourite trades are vertical credits spreads (bear calls and bull puts, … and covered calls). and he looks for trades with a high probability of expiring OTM, mainly in ETFs and blue chips.
He offers webinars to suscribers and send emails and SMS with alerts when the conditions are OK to set up a trade. I am learning a lot.
As I told you, I am satisfied with my suscription.
Kind regards
Pedro
Madrid – Spain
I just started a trial to his service this weekend. He has a long come-on ad where he tells you he really knows what he’s doing with options w/o telling what that is. On my 1st look I saw that he keeps to a small number of etfs and some stocks for the verticals and has a better win rate with these than with a section dedicated to trading apple where he has been put the stock too many times for my taste. Part of his ad says he will give “adjustment points” to attempt to save trades that would otherwise lose. This may allow him to claim wins that you might not be able to duplicate, i dont know. Theres a 30 day guarantee period so i hope they are honest about that. I found no reviews on the web and was surprised because he’s been around long enough for someone to say something.
Do you recommend his service?
In addition, if you go to wyattresearch.com and scroll down there are about 6 months worth of Andy Crowder’s public videos that anyone can sign up to view at the time they are held each month explaining his system in detail–what and how he trades, win rate and losers as he quantifies this for a high win rate– and giving sample trades as well as doing teaching on options topics in general. You get a detail-rich idea of what he is thinking, his approach for this service. He just did a Nov video that will hopefully be on the site soon that was very thorough about this. There are also older videos on Youtube. The question is then whether this service works for you and I wonder if 30 days will be enough time to figure this out.
tabano and franey,
How’s your experience with Andy after a few months?
I would really like to hear some feedback on Andy Crowder as I am looking to sign up for a relaible Options traading trainer.
Hi if your ok with 10% gains and the odd 20% gain along with the odd 50% loss then its ok. I like the initial training and his videos but the push push by Ian Wyatt on the XXX% gains is nonsense. They give an example of how to tun 10000 into 100000 and I can tell you this is not possible with-ought a 10 year window. they add all their deal percentages up ie win 10 trades with x 10% profit and they suggest that is 100% gain. Personally I count this as a 10% gain. Both with Andy Option and with earnings season trader the wins are about the same 10-25% max and some losses. Win ratio is quite hight but you can lose all of your options stake in a loss. I was told if not happy then we will give you 12 months free , which they actually don’t want to do they offer 4 months then you have to keep asking. So the guarantees are worthless and I for one have not bothered trading since sept 2018 . I particularly don’t like the fact that if he gets a good winner then in the close deal notes he says close deal for a great win , but if the deal is break even or a loss they hardly ever stipulate the percentage , so there is a lack of trust formed in my opinion.
Andy seems to be quite capable , but Wyatt’s persistent hard-sell efforts to sign people up is a bit nerve wracking . Each time , he tries to recruit people he claims there are just a few spots left for new members to join in the next 20 minutes or so . But , then a few days later they are trying to sign up even more people !
How many clients can Andy service or advise properly ? And …… are there THAT many BUYERS out there for all of his clients to SELL Options to ???
I would like to see more feedback , on this website , from satisfied clients.
Having been a subscriber to Option Advantage service as well as a fan of stock gumshoe, here is my review for what it is worth:
2015 was an incredible year for Crowder’s subscriber’s with – I recall – one loss and over 20 gains. With an average gain in the region 12%-13%, that is huge.
2016 is a totally different ‘kettle of fish’ and the market whipsaw is laying waste to his system of using overbought/oversold indicators to fade the the trend.
No doubt position sizing helps mitigate the losses but consecutive losses doesn’t help. Also, he seems rushed in 2016 to force trades which results in not entering trades at the correct time (vertical credit spreads will require a decent timing element to make it profitable). As a laugh, I have used his trading alerts twice in 2016 to make the opposite trade to his suggestion – and was profitable.
Overall I would say he offers a transparent service and though I am unsure if I would renew the subscription, that however is down to Andy’s sharing freely of his expertise to the point where there is little to gain by renewing.
I will echo the sentiment that 2016 has not been a good year for this service (although I believe that may be the case with many services as the market kept whipsawing in 2016).
Although Andy seems to be knowing what he is doing and I have definately learned a thing or two from him, I believe his results can never be “above average” in the long term. He tricks you into thinking that these are very safe trades with each one of his individual trade having a probability of success of greater than 85%. Here is an explanation of why it is difficult to make it work and I think Andy himself can benefit from it:
Although the 85% success rate is true if you take it on per trade basis, the problem is the premium he accepts (like 36c for a 2$ spread). In order to have positive result you cannot have a loser in 200/35 = 5.71 trades and that is just to break even. Now with a win probability of 0.85, over 6 straight trades the probability of winning all 6 is 0.85 * 6 = 0.37.
Given the time frame of these trades are an average of 1-1.5 months, even one loser in 6 sets you back by about 6-9 months/trades. To win all 6 you only have a 0.37 probability. Its upto you to trade with such odds. I know I wouldn’t and also I am not going to renew my subscription.
Another thing to be aware of is that they do NOT prorate the subscription if you cancel after first 30 days.
As a follow through to what Jazz so eloquently pointed out, part of Crowder’s system relies on the ability for a vertical spread trade not being “too wrong”. One can even be partially wrong with the direction however, YTD, too many of the trades have gone very wrong and some of them almost immediately upon entering. Crowder does not believe in adjustments (he has legitimate reasons) so trades tend to go to max loss. There are ways to mitigate vertical spread damage but these are not discussed here.
For me, a ‘strategy’ which has proven to be less risky in 2016 is simply to sell out of the money naked puts on ETF’s and other large securities which I would like to own in any case. Cheaper and less riskier than the vertical spreads and also less exciting.
Andy is an excellent teacher, but I am still waiting for the video on how to set up Think or Swim, without which it is difficult to use his method. Yes, Ian is always doing the hard sell on subscribing to his service. This makes me wonder-if his method is so successful, why is he still going to the office and working this instead of just relaxing at home and making enough to thrive?
Wow, good stuff re Crowder . Now , are there any opinions on Stephen Mauzy and his Dividend Confidential service and also Ian Wyatt ??
here is a link to an article by Ash PsychonoMystic that will shed some light on ANDY CROWDER
http://tradersutra.blogspot.com/2016/10/why-credit-spreads-are-stupid-idea-if_5.html#links
Andy Crowder will get your portfolio wiped out if you are not careful.
I was a subscriber and I must say that you must not trust these guys. He will show you like 11 profitable trades in a row. In webinars, he will show you safe trades. But you would then subscribe for $800 which is only refundable within first 30 days and that is not sufficient to verify the worthiness of the scheme. If you trust him and start taking his trades blindly, at one point you will get all your trades wiped out 100%. After Brexit, he started sending trade alerts when the indicators had not fully reached appropriate thresholds. I made the mistake of following his trades and lost on everyone of them. As an experienced trader (that he claims to be), he should have known that when a stock has depressed, then it could abruptly spike up unless he is a complete idiot. Yet he put bunch of alerts before proper threshold was realized under the circumstance, which makes him look like a total clown. Also, his AAPL alerts are almost always loser. It has been like I paid Wyatt Research $800 to get my allocated options fund totally wiped out. Even a bank paying negative (say -1%) rate might be better than Wyatt’s options trades unless you can read his wrong vs right trades.
I was a subscriber and I must say that you must not trust these guys. He will show you like 11 profitable trades in a row. In webinars, he will show you safe trades. But you would then subscribe for $800 which is only refundable within first 30 days and that is not sufficient to verify the worthiness of the scheme. If you trust him and start taking his trades blindly, at one point you will get all your trades wiped out 100%. After Brexit, he started sending trade alerts when the indicators had not fully reached appropriate thresholds. I made the mistake of following his trades and lost on everyone of them. As an experienced trader (that he claims to be), he should have known that when a stock has depressed, then it could abruptly spike up. Yet he put bunch of alerts before proper threshold was realized under the circumstance. Also, his AAPL alerts are almost always loser. It has been like I paid Wyatt Research $800 to get my allocated options fund totally wiped out. Even a bank paying negative (say -1%) rate might be better than Wyatt’s options trades unless you can read his wrong vs right trades.
Thanks all for the discussion and warnings, I probably will pass on paying any $ for the service at least for now. John mentioned $800, I doubt I would pay anything like that unless people were saying they had great and consistent success with his advice. But I would like to get more info on one thing: If there is a really high % of losers over time, I can see how I could lose a lot of money. But even without using stop loss, how coud you use a lot on one trade? Of course, you can lose several times more than you get paid, but unless you are betting a whole lot on any one trade, it seems to me you could not lose a lot of $ on any one trade. In my trading history, I have bought a lot of options(often as insurance to limit risk) most of which have expired worthless, or at least did not go far enough in the money to make a profit over what I paid for them. That means that 100% of those options- which are the vast majority of options I have bought- would have been winners if I had sold them. But if I sell a spread, and do not bet a large amount of money on any one spread, how am I going to wipe out a years worth of profits or worse? (not wanting to be be offensive here, just seeking info).
For example, if I sell a march 2017 2210strike SP500 mini call option at the Fri(11/25/16) close of 61.75 points/ $3087 and buy the 2230C as a hedge for 50pts/ $2500, I collect 11.75pts/ $587. If the market moves immediately upward against me and never comes back, and I do not stop it out to limit loss, seems to me my max loss is 2230 – 2210= 20 points, @ $50 a point, = $1000 loss. Minus the original credit collected $587 for a net loss of $413+ commissions. OK, that is not good, but it is the worst case, right? Do I have that right? If I am getting even a bit over 1/2 of these trades right, I should be at least break even or better. If I had several winning trades in a row, this had this bad trade, it would only wipe out the last trade, more or less. Do I have that right, or am I way out of line and missing something?
But I think I can see where the problem might arise, especially if you consistently have the market moving against you. And that is if, by trying to greatly increase your odds of the options closing out of the money by selling way out of the money options, I am collecting very little premium. As in my example, if I instead go further out of the money and only collected say $50 premium, and the market still managed to move into the money and I still lost the same difference of 20 points or $1000, minus the $50 for net loss of $950, then that would wipe out 19 $50 profits. That would be quite frustrating to say the least. Is that what is happening?
One final thought: In my above example of selling the call option spread to collect $587, what if I – on the same day- sold a similar pair of puts for a similar collection of premium, with a total collected of $1174? Though it does seem to me I have doubled the ability of the market to move big against me, by going up as in the original and now also if instead by going down too far, I lose some money either way, it can NOT do both. I can only lose in one direction. It will either have a worst case of going UP $1000 against me (minus total premium collected) or DOWN( by a max loss of $1000(minus total premium collected), but obviously not both. So my max loss remains the same $1000, but now subtract the collected $1174, minus commissions. Of course, since I am selling near the money there is a pretty good chance that it will go at least a bit against me either up or down over those months. But it might go sideways ending up near where it started, leaving me all the premium. But, is this worst case roughly a break even trade? Am I looking at it wrong?
Thx for your thoughts
Bill
The credit spread style Andy Crowder follows usually has $2 spread; eg, IWM 130/132 credit call spread for which he would get say around $300 for 10 contracts with a risk of approximately $2k-$300=$1.7k. So loss is 6 times the profit. So if IWM stock at expiration is at $138 around expiration you have pretty much lost it all out. Now you have to have 6 continuous trade with full profits just to break even. And that is hard to do, if at all.
If you blindly followed Andy Crowder’s sell and buy recommendations over 2016, you will find out that you have lost out most of your options portfolio for credit spreads.
Andy Crowder’s utterly HORRENDOUS track record across Brexit and US post election rally demonstrates that he is a completely CLUELESS and an absolutely LOUSY trader. Andy Crowder is exactly the gambler he claims not to be.
Steve793, I think you are being a little hard on Andy Crowder. Although I absolutely and completely don’t know him and I got the invitations for High Yield Wealth and the Dividend Calendar, this was an idea I particularly liked, even if I can’t afford it.
I don’t have your knowledge or experience either to be able to truly understand and follow completely what you have said vis a vis for example: “the credit spread style”, nor billybob67’s contribution of November 26th, 2016 8:49 pm paragraphs 2,3 and 4.
I don’t know IWM either.
But five questions I have for you though on your contribution come to mind as follows:
1. Is the option portfolio different to credit spreads?
2. How did you see the “HORRENDOUS track record” and can you say more and elaborate about this please?
3. How do you loose “it all out”? Do you mean like on a candlestick and it’s just a position that can or does just go up and/or down?
4. “he would get”, you mean offering the put?
5. “10 contracts”, do you mean 10 x 100 shares = 1000 shares? Does this not depend upon the price of the share to mean anything? For example Rosneft (ROSNEFT OIL COMPANY GDRS (EACH (ROSN.IL)) [ https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/quote/ROSN.IL?p=ROSN.IL ] I noticed last night looks like about GBP0.065/share, thats about GBP60. I for 1000 shares. Each share is only about 6.5 PENCE each! (not much) but I don’t know if this will hardly pay the brokerage?
Thank you for your contribution Steve793. It is appreciated.
Richard Addison,
Steve793 and John Petrilla are speaking the truth and you of course may choose to argue with them; they have signed up to the service and you have not but go ahead and pontificate.
I also lost a considerable amount of money and there is absolutley nothing one can gain from that service that one will not gain from YouTube. If the least Andy would do would be to NOT send out any trading alerts, that in itself would have been a very important lesson as it would have taught the subscribers to importance of patience and of waiting for the right set-up. That in itself would have made the subscription worthwhile.
You are correct on the 6 trades to break even Steve, but that assumes zero brokerage fees! My assessment is a bit different in that he tends to take winning trades off the table 1/2 the max gains, and losing trades he caps at a 2x loss, which still equates to 6 trades to break even.
I never lost so much so quickly on a service. I was able to get a refund, but that’s small compared to losses. Under the right market conditions it can work, but so can any other options strategy.
I do not advocate joining this service. I joined for a short time in 2017 and lost way more than expected. It’s advertised a safer as you’re making upfront with credit spreads, but when the market has momentum as it does now, you lose. On winning spreads, Andy has you taking money off earlier than expiration, which, based on a number of trades, equates to about 1/2 of your investment. On losing trades, Andy wont take them off the table until the spread ratio is 3x, meaning you’ll lose twice as much of what you might have pocketed. Bottom line is you need about 6 good trades to one bad trade to break even. As I right this, this to losses are little above 50%, so I’m losing big. It’s also very cumbersome getting in & out of trades. Not worth the hassle or the losses.
As bad as Jim Fink!!!!!!
Following Crowder’s advice from late 2016 until the Spring of 2017 in Option Advantage, I saw my Roth IRA go from over $37,000 to less than $7,000. Doing Vertical Spreads and Iron Condors (IC), he had several failures, including two max losses. In the Spring he entered an Iron Condor on Netflix just days before earnings started. The market screamed higher when earnings for the Market, overall, was better than expected. The only thing dumber than entering in to Verticals or ICs on the eve of earnings season is to follow the advice…which I did, and again lost. Here’s the thing; Crowder often exits successful trades early, say when he can score something like 25% +/-. However, the losers can easily turn in to 100% losses (you have to pay double the premium received to get out…and often more). You can see the math problem here. ONE loss, and not even a max loss, which is ALOT more costly, and you will need approximately 4 winners to get your money back on the loser. Multiple losers, and you’re screwed. He devastated my Roth. I got a refund of less than $300. Stay away!! You’ve been warned.
I was looking into this service because I feel like I am in need of another options adviser, mainly I have spent the last 3 years using various product from Money Map Press, currently I am about at the end of the Weekly Cash Clock subscription a weekly options product. To date everything from this company has failed to preform as indicated and the arrogance they show in taunting you into their next product is amazing given how poorly they have preformed. I kept very good records of the past year of Weekly Cash Clock and over 90% of his offerings do not preform as he claims they will. Some manage to eek out a small profit, rarely do they double, when they lose and this is the majority outcome it continues to take your bank roll down. I have narrowed my focus to small yields, (weekly income takes) and I am need of something that is offering a more solid even low yield return that I can work and capture weekly, was hoping to see this Wyatt product as being an option but it does not seem like it.
i too did not make anyting from the weekly cash clock…
lmk if this works or if you find something else…. thanks! and good lck!
Simon thank you for your comments. You have echoed my sentiments exactly on the MoneyMapPress options service. I have asked them for portfolio value at the beginning of the year and value at the end of the year and nobody has ever dared to give me an answer, not even Tom. In the end, after spending tons, I have concluded that nobody and this means absolutely nobody has the answer that will make you profitable. You will absolutely loose whatever you have spent on the service; this will be your first loss with many more to come from using the service until you begin to lose confidence and see it for what it is. A way to grab your money.
I’m so upset I did not think to check for Gummy comments before I started with Andy’s Options Advantage! STAY AWAY AND SAVE YOUR MONEY!!!! Everything others have posted (find plenty from 2106) about being forced to just take max losses 3X the premium or max amount could profit, then needing 6+ winning trades to just break even is all true. I lost $3700 plus paid them $1500 for their subscription which was an upsell from $1k I paid for Dogs of the Dow service. They did not explain that in order to participate in the Dogs trades you have to already own 100 shares of each of the blue chip stocks which if over $100 a share is quite an investment.
Am in the process of trying to obtain a refund 🙁
see this link for an experienced traders assessment that Andy Crowder does NOT know what he is doing other than steering people to big losses..
http://tradersutra.blogspot.com/2016/10/why-credit-spreads-are-stupid-idea-if_5.html#links
Just another internet charlatan. None of these guys have the cojones to put their money where there mouth is. Easy solution. Offer customers E-sign contract forming partnership. Option Advantages funds working investment account for customer. Customer follows recommendations step- by- step and profits from trades are used to pay for subscription plus 20 percent. I don’t think we will hear anything from Andy Crowder, Ian Wyatt or Wyatt Research. The biggest risk these guys take is messing around with peoples money.
I have been a subscriber to Andy Crowder’s Options Advantage for coming up on 2 years. So far in 2018 (as of Sep 17th) I have 37 winning trades out of 47 for a win rate of 78.7% with an average return per trade of 6.2% and an average holding period of 19 days. I’d say that’s a pretty solid record. I’m happy with Andy Crowder’s results, I like his methodical trading method and his educational videos. I will be renewing my subscription when it comes due again next month.
having spent too much for Wyatt research, I am disappointed that Ian promotes Andy’s program for yet more money when Ian’s pics have not done very well for me to date!