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S&A Short Report (defunct)

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EL
Guest
EL
August 4, 2010 9:56 am

I subscribed to Jeff Clark’s Short Report for 3 months at $500/quarter and pulled the plug after the first quarter. He makes a very good case for each of his recommendations, but unfortunately they were almost always wrong. Eventually his advice will turn out to be right, but there’s no point because everyone can make the right call EVENTUALLY. So the best thing you can do is to take the opposite side of his recommendations each time, but this takes guts. To be fair to Jeff, his logic while sound, has no place in a market that is artificially propped up by the Fed. Whenever he thinks the market is primed for a fall, some mysterious force will step in and drive it up. Until the Fed stops interfering, there is simply no point in listening to any analyst who uses conventional logic and extrapolation from past events.

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Rdoc
Rdoc
October 6, 2010 5:18 pm

‘The Ultimate Home Business’ is being advertised again for the modest amount of $3000, a 25% discount from the regular $4000 price. When you see 1 positive and 26 negative reviews here of this or similar products, you can usually assume that the overblown copy writing hype typical of financial service firms (second only to ‘male enhancement products’ copy) is what you think it is – crap – and buyer beware. Possibly the loss of another large batch of subscribers this past quarter has triggered another advert cycle. It will be interesting to see the comments over the next quarter…

Anon subscriber
Guest
Anon subscriber
February 14, 2011 10:47 pm

I subscribed to S&A ‘Flex’ Alliance which includes Short Report. Tried *one* option he recommended, went to 50% loss in uder a week, now a week or so after that is almost to ZERO. Should be a complete loser by the time the option expires. His other two options he recommended at the same time are *also* losers, so I predict three total losses by March Options expiry.
He also assigned *no* stop loss to any of these! WTF! Plus his service is the most expensive!!! Fortunately with my lifetime subscription I can pick any 5 newsletters and that one *won’t* be on my list. F-

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Wild Rose
Wild Rose
February 26, 2011 7:47 pm

I agree with many who say that Jeff Clark is very knowledgeable. I understand the term front running. But my gut tells me that is not happening. Yet I am totally surprised by one of the reviewers here who mentioned watching the minute by minute changes in options prices recommended by Jeff and noting a spike in price 20 minutes ahead of his email recommendation. I have had a lot of faith in Jeff’s integrity based on a few years of reading his reports and his comments on “Direct Line” Doggonit I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But that does not mean that after he makes his recommendations, if they are reviewed prior to his hitting the send button, someone else in Stansberry is not getting an order in ahead of the subscribers.

I have also experienced the quick rise in the option price on may of his recommendations. I believed this was due to a multitude of subscribers jumping in there before I received the email. Believe me I have a life, I don’t sit there and wait for these recommendations to be emailed to me.

Another subscriber mentioned that three of Jeff’s recommendations all failed. I have gotten into a few and learned quickly that they can change direction in heartbeat. So, I have held a tight and “greedyless” reign on myself to achieve some profits. By the way I consider myself a novice even though I work hard to educate myself and learn from others – and Jeff Clark is a good teacher.

What I have done is reread some of his possible trades he never initiated. I was reading one of Jeff’s comments about a trade surrounding the BDI index when it was at 14. By luck when I read it BDI had dropped to 10+ and the shipping company he recommended as a proxy to the BDI index had followed suit. Looked to me like one of Jeff’s converging triangles so I made the trade he was thinking about and no one was there spiking my price. That was worth a 2-1/2 time gain. But the very next day the market changed directions abruptly and that trade was almost worthless.

What I hear many people say about many of these high priced options newsletters is the same thing subscribers here are saying by assessing a poor grade to Jeff. And I wonder if our expectations are to high for these folks. We are really betting that they have more experience in forecasting the future trends for us than we have. That’s what I am paying him for! Maybe modest success is all we really should expect out of any of them and not 80%? After all none of these guys are ancient biblical prophets!

By the way I am a long term subscriber to Stansberry and I get all the news letters except that big spendy one. I believe that if I would have followed more of the direction given to me by other newsletter writers at Stansberry instead of getting in the way ( I am my own worst enemy) I might have been more successful.

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Mark
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Mark
March 7, 2011 2:48 am

Joined around Nov of 2010 and stuck around for the 3 month period offered in which I could cancel and still get most of the 3k back. Figured by then I could get a good taste of what type of “Ultimate Home Business” I could rely on!
I am pretty sure I lost most of my money on about 90% of the options I bought. I do think I learned alot about how to invest and have learned overall from Stansbury. I am shocked to hear that this Short Report has been such a loser for so long. Should have realized the only time they hyped his report in the reg newsletter was the only time it made any $.

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Grifon Joel
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Grifon Joel
March 11, 2011 7:08 am

The S&A Short Report is consistently making a loss! The newsletter is hyped up beyond reason and only the winning trades are hyped up, with NO REGARDS to the string of losing trades! I bought the S&A Short report based on the newsletter touting that it is the ‘BEST PERFORMING’ product from S&A, and also based on the long list of recommendations they have for the trader, jeff clark. However, upon my subscription activation late last year, I looked back at the track records and found that there were a LOT more losing trades than winning ones! As usual, before putting money into ANYTHING, I backtracked about 1 year worth of records, detailing down ALL the recommendations, email updates, and every update on its buy/sell prices. In the end, the results showed that after a year, the account BARELY broke even, and that is when the trade is executed PERFECTLY at the EXACT price short report asked to enter! However, after testing a few entries, I find it IMPOSSIBLE to enter at the defined price!

Another annoying habit of this short report is that they almost always use ‘YESTERDAY’s’ price as their entry. Of course yesterday’s entry price would be a lot more favorable than the price they suggest to get in today! That easily puts another 8%-10% margin for them.

The recommendations are always very hyped up, and always asking you to ‘exit when you have 100%’. however, if you were to look carefully at the trades, you’ll see that 100% trades are FAR and FEW in between, with a lot more trades hitting stop losses of 50%! For an average person who cant get in at Yesterday’s price, be sure to consistently lose money as even the BEST case barely broke even within a year (not counting trading costs etc)

Yet another annoying thing is the REFUND structure put in place. Yes, they DO refund within the 3 months, BUT, they make you jump through hoops and pass you from one sales person to another and they DO NOT practice the ‘no question asked’ policy. Even when I try to explain WHY I wanted a refund, the sales person(s) on the other end was snap and bordering rude, and kept telling me that I am taking advantage of their service, about how I did not try it out long enough with real trades, about why I am canceling so soon etc etc, and passing me from one person to the next where I have to explain over and over again! Finally, exasperated, I just said that I wanted the refund and thats it, and the person just HUNG UP! No closing statement about ‘yes, you’ll get your refund by when and when..”. It was just stopped so abruptly that I did not even know if it was understood that I wanted the refund! Fortunately, they DID process the refund, so there’s some honestly on their part and they did keep to their word about the refund.

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Ferndok
Guest
Ferndok
December 5, 2011 7:51 pm

I lost $35,000 trading the S & A Short Report. So much for the “Best Performing Secret Key” Jeff talks about. If he was retired from actually using this technique, he wouldn’t be selling subscriptions to his newsletter. Another con, and I fell for it…to the tune of $35,000.

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pseudo
Guest
pseudo
December 6, 2011 4:04 pm

I’m a new subscriber to the s and a short report. I really feel for the guy who lost 35k. When I subscribed I asked how many people subscribe to the S & A Report? I didn’t get a direct answer but when I politely addressed the question I was told nomore than a couple of thousand. Hm. This morning, 12/6/11, I received an email that it was time to buy HL Jan 2012 $6 calls at about $.50. I was told not to chase the postion. What I observed: One of the Arminian Brothers who is co owner of MonsterOptions publicly said on Squack on the Street CNBC, there was a huge call positon of 50,000 contracts of the same position (recommended by the s & a short report). He said this about 2-3 hours into the trading session. What I observed at open, was an open interest of 7027 and vol of 42k. At noon it was 59k. At about 1 pm it was 62,749 contracts. At 10:03 EST it was 64,337. At 11:23 EST it was a vol. of 70,675. I saw the price go up from $.65 at open to around $.82 for a 67% gain. When I called the company I couldn’t get through for hours. Their toll free was busy and there non toll put me on hold with a recording and never picked up. I finally hung up after about 20 minutes of waiting. Several hours after Stansberry and Assoc was opened I received an email from them that there phone number was down and I was given a new number to call with a different area code other than 410. It was 443. I asked another rep in customer service how many subscribers. He didn’t know but said those numbers are tallied at the end of the year. Reading what I have on this sight has caused me to be very suspicious and disappointed with these folks. Any suggestions how I can find out how many subscrbers the s & a short report has or how many folks are part of the Flex (that costs 5k for life I was told)?

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nelsontcpa
Guest
nelsontcpa
February 29, 2012 11:39 am

Subscribed 12-6-11. Reviewed prior recommendations and found most were losers. All buy-in price points were lower than the actual price when I received the email to buy. Not impressed with the research and the hype is over the top, plus every email is selling something from Stansberry. But I must say my refund experience was easy. No hassle from the lady on the other end. Got my refund to the CC in 5 days. I’m staying away from these high dollar subscriptions. There are plenty of $49/yr option newsletter.

Paul
Guest
Paul
March 20, 2012 7:54 pm

I am writing this review of Jeff Clark’s Short Report (“Short Report”) published by Stansberry and Associates (“S&A”) to help others make an informed decision regarding the cost of the service versus its benefits. The benefits include realized trading gains based upon Clark’s recommendations and the costs include both the $4,000 fee for the subscription and realized investment losses from his recommendations. I have analyzed many of his recommended trades, and feel I can deliver a fair assessment of the service. Some of his recommendations I traded; fortunately, most I did not. This review reflects my opinion only.

Let me unequivocally state that I find the Short Report to be a terrible product/ service and Jeff Clark to be an equally bad trader. I grant the readers of this review that Clark is extremely knowledgeable of the mechanics of options trades and the variables that impact options valuation. He is also good at educating his subscribers regarding the same and on basic technical analysis. However, understanding options trading mechanics, the Black Scholes model and writing educational newsletters does not make you a good trader. In the final analysis, that is what his subscribers pay him for – to advise them to enter into and realize profitable trades, and equally important, and an area where Cark utterly fails, to advise them when to exit a position when they are clearly on the wrong side of a trade. I grant that his subscribers should not blindly follow his recommendations and should have their own exit points established if they enter into a trade, but Clark’s atrocious risk management skills are an even greater indictment than his bad initial trade recommendations. Clark will typically indicate in a trade recommendation that you should sell ½ your position if you are fortunate to be up 100%. However, he commonly does not advocate an up-front stop-loss exit point. In a recent trade recommendation to buy DHI put options, he actually did recommend a stop loss exit point, namely to sell the options the next day if the underlying share price closed above a certain level the previous day. At the end of this same day DHI had soared, well above his stop loss target and the put position was down 35% from his recommended maximum entry point earlier in the day. His recommended stop loss level in DHI just six (6) hours earlier had been breached and the option position should have been sold the next day by anyone unfortunate enough to have acted on his recommendation. However, immediately prior to the close of the market that day, he reached out through his Direct Line service and advised his subscribers to not sell the DHI put position for now, essentially to ignore the original stop loss recommendation. Early the next day he gave a formal Short Report update to hold the DHI put position without a stop loss. This utter lack of discipline in risk management from an apparent professional trader and the string of extremely unprofitable trades he has recommended recently are what prompted me to write this review and to never act on his recommendations again. To continue the DHI story, the stock has continued to soar, and the DHI puts are under water even deeper. Here is a brief summary of his most recent recommendations, the date of the recommendation and the trading result if you followed his advice:

1. Buy DHI Puts; 3/8/2012; open position at a 71% loss
2. Buy FAZ Calls; 2/29/2012; open position at an 82% loss
3. Buy TVIX Shares; 2/14/2012; open position at an 11% loss
4. Buy IYT Puts; 2/7/2012; 50% gain realized; ~50% stop loss originally recommended then changed to 40%
5. Buy RST Calls; 2/1/2012; proposed trade never allowed subscribers to get in below maximum buy price; stop loss originally set when RST falls below $7.40
6. Buy YUM Puts; 1/24/2012; expired worthless; recommended to be held without a stop loss
7. Buy IAG Calls; 1/4/2012; expired worthless; recommended to be held without a stop loss
8. Buy JAG Calls; 12/21/2011; stopped out for 55% loss; ~55% stop loss recommended
9. Buy PAAS Calls; 12/13/2011; stopped out for 50% loss; ~50% stop loss recommended
10. Buy HL Calls; 12/6/2011; expired worthless; recommended to be held without a stop loss
11. Buy NGD Calls; 11/29/2011; expired worthless
12. Buy Kinross Gold Calls; 11/22/2011; expired worthless

In summary, I looked at his last twelve recommended trades, one of which was impossible to get into. Only one of the remaining eleven (9%) resulted in a realized gain. Ten of his last eleven recommended trades (91%) turned out to be, or are currently, losers. Of these ten, three remain open but at significant losses. Five positions expired worthless and two were stopped out for ~50-55% losses. Is it possible to be this bad? This is almost laughable if money were not at stake. I understand why he is writing a newsletter for a living and doesn’t trade for a bank or hedge fund where profitable trades are what matter. I am also amazed at the poor risk management practices and the many trades where he recommends holding a position without a stop loss. Again, investors have to establish their own exit points but many rely on “professional” advice such as Clark’s. Imagine the money he could have saved these subscribers?

He also seems obsessed with precious metal (“PM”) plays and has recently begun talking them up again. Five of the above twelve recommendations were PM trades. All were losers.

FYI, Porter Stansberry apparently gave Jeff Clark an A+ grade in 2011. I would hate to follow the recommendations of those he delivered a C or D grade to.

I have tried to be as accurate as possible. Feel free to take this review with a grain of salt. But in my opinion you would be utterly foolish to subscribe to the Short Report. Hopefully this review will save you and yours some money.

Paul

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Peter Delevoryas
Guest
Peter Delevoryas
March 23, 2012 4:23 pm

I agree with all the reviewers who said this is a terrible service. I’ve been following the Short Report for over a year, and subscribed to it along with a ‘basket’ of S&A newsletters, so theoretically I’m not paying full price for this awful service. I have to admit that I must have a bad case of cognitive dissonance because I can’t believe how much this guy charges for his service and how much of a failure it is. I agree with the reviewers who mention that S&A trumpets the Short Report whenever it gets a winner, but they deceptively fail to mention the preceding string of losers. I also would like to offer my sympathy for the poster who said he lost $35,000; I can see how that happens as Short Report writes their recommendations with irrationally exhuberant titles such as “How we’ll make 250% on a pullback”. It appears to me that these predictions are based on wishful thinking and probably poor research. After the recent TVIX recommendation which is now down around 50%, the cat is definitely out of the bag, and this fool has now parted with more of his money for believing this over-hyped failure of a newsletter.
I’m going to try to salvage my losses and subscription by trading the reverse of the recommendations. I bet I’ll come out ahead if I try that approach. Others would be better served to avoid this service altogether.

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Hangman
Guest
Hangman
April 8, 2012 3:07 am

I cannot still rate Jeff Cark’s performance, but I do like his educational material. The one thing that annoyed me is that on March 26 2012, Mr. Clark published ‘We’ll Live to Trade Another Day’, in which he explains the failure (over 50%) of his TVIX recommenadation. Some days later this commentary vanished… Rewriting of history is a bad thing that causes me concern about the good faith of S&A staff. It is a matter of principal that S&A should explain why it has happened.

brianpatrick5@yahoo.com
Guest
brianpatrick5@yahoo.com
June 6, 2012 9:01 pm

Jeff Clark is full of shit. Not many of his option recommendations make any money at all. The DHI and FAZ options picks lost a bundle for investors. People did exactly what he recommended and ended up losing. This guy is so full of Bullshit it’s rediculous. Jeff Clark is a total baffoon. A Scam artist. Stay away from the S&A Short Report or anything Clark is involved in.

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macrobody
Member
macrobody
March 3, 2013 1:37 am

Unfortunately I didn’t read the comments on Gumshoe before I took the subscription. It was actually the subscription to Jeff Clark’s Pro Trader service but you get the S&A Short Report as a bonus. Well, what a bonus that is. All recommendations lost money because Jeff is a gold stock lover and if the first time it doesn’t work out he just tries again, and again, and again! I should have been wiser not to follow his opportunism. His ideas might be right but his timing is way off. I cancelled my subscription with a refund of 90% so another 10% loss can be added. If you want to lose money consistently you can sign up with Jeff…

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jakersbg19
Irregular
jakersbg19
April 10, 2013 1:32 pm

No need to repeat all of what has been already written. It is all true. Trust me, the only way to make money with the Short Report is to do the exact opposite of what is recommended. I would give 5 stars for consistency – consistently wrong.

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doc327hank
Member
doc327hank
September 27, 2013 10:34 am

I’ve had SR for many years, The first year I would have made some money If I had learned about position sizes early. The losses in the first 3 trades held done to first year to almost breaking even.

I eventually found out 1) do not exceed the Buy up to Price.- If it goes wrong, you have risked too much money. and if it goes right, you have made less for higher risk. 2) if you miss the recomendation because the price has run away, that’s going to be a great trade, and makes his overall success rate look decent. 3) even if get a winner, it can turn out to be a loser, if you don’t get out at the right time.

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matrixgeo
May 15, 2018 9:43 am

Why does this newsletter continually change names and publishers? Ahhh duhhhhh….because of brand recognition? Maybe because it has to! Its a great appealing pitch but apparently does very poorly.

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