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Options trading service.
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Options Intelligence
http://www.options-intelligence.com/
I have been coming across stock gumshoe for a while now, it has saved me tons of money. The reviews of different newsletters are great, although I wish there were more reviews of options newsletters. Today i am writing a review (my first review of anything ever!) of a website that I started to subscribe to in the middle of the 4th quarter last year. Im not really sure how to structure this review, but after reading a bunch over the months on this site, il try by best to cover all the main points.
Before I start the review of this site, I want to give you guys some history of my trading and other newsletters Iv tried to get a feel for me, the reviewer.
Iv never really looked at Options until I moved my account to TOS in august. I came across their “autotrade newsletters” link and was suprised and excited that such a service existed. my previous broker TD ameritrade did not have such a feature. So i proceeded, without knowing anything significant about options trading, subscribing to a couple of news letters. One of those was Profitable options (its the option subsidiary of stocksfreeway), it looked cool at first but I ended up losing 2-2.5k and peaced out. now looking back, it could have been a lot worse. I wasnt still ready to give up on autotrading and liked the idea of it.
Option Intelligence review:
Now that you know a little about me, I can start the review of this newsletter. I came across this website one day, randomly googling “options” and “Options newsletters” hoping to find something to autotrade that would turn out to be successful. Options intelligence looked good, their performance looked too good to be true at first and I didnt think (after being burned before) that it was possible for me to achieve this.
I started out with the CORE PLAYS (its $1,000 for a lifetime membership w/ no free trial).
This is how the core strategy works:
Dave, the owner of the service, releases 4-10 picks on the 2nd friday at 2:30 every month. He posts his thoughts on the market 30 min. before the picks are released. The play time is during the options expiration week. Some additional Key points:
1. Most of them, over 80% of these picks are winners, but you would have to decide whats your profit target and when to exit. But, if something really bad happens, like a downgrade from a major broker to one of the picks, dave would immediately email you to let you know and advise you to close the position.
2. You do not initially enter a Stop loss on any Core strategy picks. Instead, on monday morning, if your pick has moved over +5-10%, you apply a stop loss at break even to your position, so if the pick falters you do not lose money. the way to sell is to set clear limit orders like +25%, and so on. You will not achieve the results on the website but you should easily achieve a nice gain between 25-50% per month playing the core strategy.
also, if your pick opened down and you are feeling nervous, you can quickly shoot an email to Dave to have him look at your position before you sell. He has seen pretty much everything, especially since he only trades calls on a handful of stocks, and gives you his honest opinion on your position, I know for a fact that it has helped me greatly. I stayed the course and eventually made money on many of the picks sometime later in the week.
3. The performance numbers are based on the high the pick reached during the play time. So, since no one can predict the high of a pick, dave suggests setting limit sell orders based on your risk tolerance and taking profits. It took me a month or so but i finally got the hang of it, it was rough at first because i kept hoping for 100% and 200% gainers and should have set clear limit orders to sell and taken the 25%-50% profits.
His second part of his service is SPECIAL PLAYS:
this one costs $200 every quarter for Non Core strategy members and $100 every quarter for Core members. its much cheaper than most newsletter services. some key points on this service:
1. Unlike the Core plays, there is an initial 25% stop loss on every position
2. Calls and Puts are traded (unlike the core, where only calls are traded)
3. you can expect 10-20 trades every month.
4. you receive the pick via text message and dave usualys sends great charts with most picks if you wanna see what he is seeing.
I started subscribing to special plays at the middle of january. So far its been fantastic beyond belief. Its made me much better as an options trader and now Im glad that I do not autotrade and do it myself. My best week came last week when I had over 70% return on my IRA at TOS, mostly from dave’s picks and my own research to supplement them.
I have only tried one month in the core strategy, december, and didnt make much money because i had no idea how to trade and was being stupid and greedy. after participating in a lot of Special plays picks, i feel like iv gotten much better and know what to look for and set clear sell limit orders to take the emotion out of trading. even if the pick goes up 100%, im cool with it.
So, sorry for sounding like im rambling, iv never written a review before. Dave’s outstanding customer service, he responds to every email..no matter how stupid the questions are (mine are sometimes dumb, b/c im not that knowledgeable about the markets!), and always looks out for you if there is something that alerts him whether a pick is going against us. You will not be dissapointed by any means with the customer service, thats the main reason I decided to write my first review, of course the performance didnt hurt!
Also, if you decide to sign up, either the special plays or core strategy, I highly suggest you start by papertrading the picks, espcecially if you have never traded options before. Trust me, it will pay off in the long run. Options are really volatile, im sure you have heard that before, but they are not any more scary than trading stocks. So, start papertrading atleast for a little while and then you can go trade the picks.
This newsletter has been great to me and dave’s customer serice has been the most proffessional and detailed (answers questions in detail, not with a few words) I have ever seen or had experienced. His picks are even better, I high suggest that if you are interested in options trading or maybe already know a lot about options, to give his service a try, you wont be dissapointed.
Sonny
akacmb@yahoo.com
as soon as you bought the option go to charts,type in the box .option symbol.the year it trades,the month ,the day and the strike price C for call and P = put set the chart to to your desired time frame [5 Min.=day etc.] and you can put SMA5 on chart for dayly etc— for example= . .aapl180817c207.5 — for a apple 207.5 call expiring on Aug.17
questions contact me-ollitogo71@gmaiil.com
I subscribed to the Special Plays for 3 months. Dave is in this business since 1999 and he knows what he is doing. His picks are usually pretty good and can make you money.
The biggest problem of this service is lack of exit alerts and extremely misleading performance reporting. As we all know, the exit is 80% of the trading success. As the previous reviewer mentioned, the performance numbers are based on the high the pick reached during the play time. Dave has some guidelines for exiting the trades: 25% initial stop loss and 15% trailing stop once the option reached 10% gain. I found out 15% trailing stops to be too tight and I was stopped out to often only to see the option bouncing.
The reporting rules say that once the pick achieved 10%, it is considered a winner, so if you bought an option, it went up 20% and then down 25% he reports 20% gain. If you were stopped out at breakeven and next day the option doubled, he will report 100% return, but according to his trading guidelines, you should be already out. If you take profits a 20-25%, it would not be enough to compensate for losers. This reporting method makes the whole performance numbers and statistics absolutely meaningless and misleading.
The results are not consistent. In March, I had an average return of 28% per trade (Dave reports 125% gain). In April, I had an average loss of 11% (Dave reports a gain of 7%). I followed his guidelines of taking profits and trailing stops. The site reports 70% winning rate, but any pick achieving 10% is considered a winner, so those statistics are very misleading. It’s very difficult to know the real performance of the newsletter since no exit alerts are given. From my experience, if you follow his exit guidelines, winning rate is closer to 50% and average return per trade is around 6-8%.
Overall, you can probably make money with this service if you can follow the plays very closely and have really good skills to manage your trades, take partial profits, setting trailing stops etc. But if you have those skills, you probably don’t need a newsletter anyway.
The customer service is a mixed bag as well. Sometimes you get an answer within minutes, sometimes no response at all.
If this newsletter had exit alerts, it would probably deserve 4-5 stars. Otherwise, 2 stars only.
Update:
Dave sent the following email today:
“Got tons of email this morning… Those that say they have “lost tons of money this month” were not playing my calls correctly. All gave returns over 20% except one at 18%. Come on. If you cannot book profits when they are there you are in the wrong game. That is free money. The market is very difficult right now. Take what you can get, when you can get it. Sorry don’t mean to be comin down on people but you do have to think for yourself just a little bit.”
So now he is blaming the subscribers for their losses. He knows they are legitimately losing money based on his service but will not admit this is his service’s fault.
What he wants you to do is contradictory and totally unachievable. He wants to set stop at 25%, and then he expects you to take profits at 20%?? Your profits will never cover the losses because you will get stopped out way too frequently.
He also expects you to “protect” a 10% gain. It is impossible to protect such a small gain with options. Some picks did go up 10-15%, then down, the up again. So if the maximum gain was 36% but you were stopped out because you protected the 10% gain, the play should be dead but he still considers it 36% gain.
pro-trading-profits started tracking OI in Feb. 2010 using TWSF real fills. Those are the results for the core strategy:
Feb 2.3%
Mar -6.3%
Apr -2.3%
Dave reports 92%, 17% and 140% gains for the same period.
I’m changing my ratings based on the latest info.
Kim is completely correct. The results shown on the site are very irrational, according to the advice given. For example: last time I looked gs had a profit and it actually was stopped out at 50% loss (you could NOT buy it at the price mentioned and you are “supposed” to save out some money to buy more on Monday…the original buys on core are Friday…but after having done that the stock and option have only gone down.) Several of the excellent plays with over 100% profit would be purely guesswork to know to keep them that long. I was making good money with this service but there is little guidance and it’s almost all guesswork on the subscriber’s part.
I have not subscribed to it, but is is autotraded at Tradewallstreet.com.
My broker has emailed me the autotrade results since they started May 5. From May 5, to June 25th, there have been 16 trades (I beleive both core and special). The average gain per trade is 12.3%. Highest gain 60.8%, largest loss 14%.
If that holds through July, I am going to try it.
Tom, have you tried it?
I must say that the results are actually pretty good. The fact that he doesn’t give the exit instructions might be actually an advantage. It makes you think and learn. You cannot rely on someone else all your life.
If anyone has any additional feedback about this service, please email me at ak100467@yahoo.com.
I have been with Dave for about 3 years and am quite pleased. Yes, you do have to watch the markets and think for yourself (although Dave will always be there to answer your questions-great customer service). Be realistic with your profit targets. In my opinion, this is one of the best option services.
Garry, what are your profit targets? Are you scaling out of positions? What is your average gain per play on Special Plays?
Its evident from my initial review how I feel about Dave and his service. after over a year of searching for a decent newsletter that can help me make quality trades on my portfolio, this is the absolute best financial newsletter you can find on the internet. Kim joined it when i recommended it to him in February, it took some time and after over 7 months im sure he agrees that there isnt a better directional options trader, who publishes a newsletter, on the internet.
He does not give exit alerts, but you can make consistent returns via limit orders and autotrading it (i autotrade it through Trade Wallstreet Financial) under plan A
im more than happy to forward you my actual trade fills on core and special plays, via trade wallstreet autotrade, should anyone have any questions. I am not in any way affiliated with OI, Im just a extremely satisfied customer who appreciates the amount of knowledge and quality alerts give to him from this service.
please contact me at my new email:
sonnybanerjee24@gmail.com
I appreciate all the customer reviews. It has always been my goal to make each of my customers better, more consitent winning traders. With 90% of all option traders losing money it is important to make sure the options are moving in your favor when we pull the trigger. We may not give out the most trades but we do give out what I believe to be the best consitent winning trades anywhere.
After being with Dave for about 8 months, I can confirm that this is the only options service that made me money consistently. The secret is to manage the exits. You will never get the results published on the performance page (since they are based on the pick of the option) but Special Plays should be able to produce about 15% return per play. With 8-10 plays per month, you can do the math.
Bottom line: highly recommended.
Kim
ak100467@yahoo.com
Ok, good picks GENERALLy, BUT>>>as we ALL KNOW, the exit calls are KEY…DAVE RARELY GIVEs exit calls on the Special Plays..and NEVER on Core Calls. You get sucked into staying on for the Special Play calls, since no exits called then you are in one where the last 5 went 100% or more then you are in the next and get in the DOWNDRAFT..you are screwed. So ya, easy to look “good” when you hever call exits..so you can claim the max % move when realistically you have 10% chance of getting it..and your PORT gets a HUGE HIT>>so this service sucks.
Ja,
Obviously you won’t achieve the numbers shown on the performance page. However, autotrading implements a simple exit strategy: 25% initial stop loss and 15% trailing stop once the option reaches 15%. Using this strategy, the results are pretty good. Based on 44 plays, the average return per play is 18.6%.
If someone started with 100k and allocated 10% per play (risking 2.5% of the account), he would have now 217k. That’s 117% return on the total account in 5 months while risking just 2.5% at any given time. Pretty amazing I would say.
I subscribed to this service earlier this year for 3 months and paid $400. I followed the recommendations but did not actually make any trades. I was very frustrated by the discrepancy between the real-time performance of many of the trades and the results Dave posted on his website. the performance figures actually posted on the website can only be described as fantasy land. And yet, it does appear that over time it’s possible to make some money with this service. The hangup I have is a question of Dave’s integrity in using such a grossly misleading way to represent the performance of his service. I exchanged e-mails with him expressing my concerns. He simply reiterated his non-responsive explanations. It seems he shouldn’t least list the performance of the plan B and Plan B auto trading strategies as well as his fantasy-land results. I would like to see the actual results of these plans before I consider subscribing to the service. Some of you have found a way to make this successful, obviously, and I would love to hear from you. My e-mail is keithginny2@yahoo.com.
The Reviewers who complain that the stated returns are fantasyland and unattainable simply do not understand how these returns are used to make real-world trading decisions with this system. That was the case with Kim, who has since had a change of heart. I think Dave’s mistake is semantic in that he lists these projected returns under “Performance,” and on most sites that would imply returns that were at least theoretically achievable.
Dave’s picks are largely based on the historical performance of options under certain conditions. That’s the basis of the CORE picks: he buys calls only (not puts) during the most bullish week of the monthly cycle.
In actual trading, you can use the autotrading method of 25% stop loss with a 15% trailing stop. Asking TradeWallStreet for the results of this strategy would be a more accurate gauge of attainable results. But in OI Blog (no subscription necessary), he recommends trading with limits rather than stops. His performance figures simply give an historical record of how likely a certain return is in a certain month, based on past performance. If a BIDU call has an 80% likelihood of returning 40%, then you may want to put in a limit sell order with a 40% target for at least part of some of your contracts, rather than having it hit 40%, then drop back and trigger the 15% trail for just a 25% gain.
To reiterate: the performance figures are not an actual record of attainable gains. It is a tool which lists the maximum historical excursion under specified parameters.
Trading with OI is making me change my trading style. You have to eliminate greed and pretty much abandon the fantasy of every trade giving you a double. Instead, you shoot for 10 to 50% gains over short holding periods. I usually scale out if there is a decent profit so I still have some contracts in place for a big run up. The goal is consistent profit, short holding periods (reduces risk) with the occasional home run.
It works. If you’re a good option picker, the trading style would probably work without the picks provided by the service, although they are pretty good.
I have autotraded this at Trade Wall Street since 8-5-10.
I just do the special, not the core. There have been 85 trades. The average return per trade is 5% before commissions.
However the average was 22.4% on 10-11-10. So the first few months were great, and it has been downhill (over all losses)since then. I am still up a little, but I am considering dropping.
I agree with the semantic comment, maybe instead of “Performance” it should be labled “Maximum Possibility”. I belong or have subscribed to 4 newsletters of which Options-Intelligence is one of them. What I have found is all of them that publish their results use the same method of rating their performance, they all show what the maximum gain possible might be if entered and exited at the ultimate price points. Dave explains this on his web site, the user needs to look at and understand that even though it might be possible, it is most certainly not probable.
I joined Dave’s newsletter the first week of January this year and learned a couple of important points:
1) He provides good customer service and has answered evey question or email that I have sent. One of my other subscriptions only gives lip service.
2) It is the responsibility of the trader not the service to establish your rules for both entering and exiting a trade. Most importantly is knowing when to be satisfied with a single and not always be looking for the Home Run!
3) Even a professional service will sometimes pick a losing trade, however Dave does acknowledge when a trade sours and lets you know it is time to cut your losses.
Good Work Dave!
Happy Trading
Michael
This service employs 2 strategies, special play and core. I have subscribed to core strategy for the past 12 months, the results were quite good during the first few months, since then, winners have become losers. March, April and May were horrible months. My account has lost about 30% with his recommendations. Instead of buying puts he suggested buying calls. I believe his strategy works well in a strong uptrend market but not during a correction or downtrend market. Its not worth $300.00 every quarter. I have lost more money then what I have made.
I agree with Michael comments, indeed he does provide excellent customer services. He always answers all my questions. He does pick loosing trades and acknowledges when the trade goes wrong. He does warn you, when the odds are against you. For example, March, April, May and June were difficult months to trade. Overall, I do enjoy his service. I have been with OI for the past six months. His strategy works well when the world markets are in synch with each other.
Dave Drabik is not a miracle worker. He makes informed plays based on his considerable experience and experience. NO ONE CAN BE RIGHT ALL OF THE TIME. Everyone who trades options needs to realize that you are not going to win all of the time. End of story.
As for Dave himself, the man truly cares about his clients. In fact, he has personally called me to discuss problems i was having with trading. I will never leave this service as long as Dave runs it. The man shows a lot of integrity.
what is the phone number for them?
please send to ollitogo71@gmail.com