This is part one of our new series, Newsletter and Trading Service Takedowns. In this series, we examine prominent option trading sites and newsletters, testing them on four important factors:
- Honest marketing
- Repeatable returns
- Risk management
- Reasonable price
For now, we will focus exclusively on sites that deal with options, and not only those that trade iron condors. Some of the sites we review will pass our test, and as unorthodox as it is, we don’t mind giving a thumbs up to our competitors when they’re honest and provide a quality product. But we are also ruthless when it comes to deceptive publishers who are only out to grab your money. Today, unfortunately, we must be ruthless… we’re reviewing a site called Options Success, and our summary opinion is that we can’t imagine why anyone would ever subscribe to this particular site.
Honest marketing - Pass
Options Success gets a pass on marketing, but only by default. That is to say, they do no discernible marketing, at least online. However, the cheesy message that greets you on the main page of their website tempted us to change our minds:
This guy is wearing a tie, and holding his hands out toward us, so he must be honest! I mean, we all know that everyone who trades options has “all the money they ever dreamed of,” right? And just what are those three magic things we need to get right? Get this: 1) “get the direction of the stock right,” 2) “don’t lose,” 3) “create an automatic money machine.” Hmm, a pretty tall order.
Repeatable returns - Fail
This is the section where we assess the discernible quality of the product on offer. Can it possibly live up to the marketing claims; are signals easy to follow and accurately tracked; does the system produce repeatable results?
Now, you’d never know this, since it’s buried halfway down the subscribe page, but if you sign up to their site expecting, you know, actual trades, prepare to be disappointed:
“We won’t suggest specific options to buy or sell—you’ll be able to figure that out much better on your own from what you’ll learn in your Options Success trading package…of course you are free to modify that approach at will based on your own trading style.”
From this section we learn three things: 1) As a subscriber the most you should hope for each day are a couple of stock picks, and it’s entirely up to you to find a good options strategy to act on those picks, 2) you’re expected to buy something called the “Options Success trading package” in order to actually benefit from your subscription, and 3) “you are free to modify that approach” is code for “we will not be tracking performance or assessing the quality of our picks, since it’s up to you to trade them.” So it’s literally impossible to track the performance of this service, since there are no concrete trades on which performance tracking could be based. And that means that a subscriber has no guaranteed way to repeat any claimed results.
Risk management - Fail
The site fails in this category for the simple reason that neither the product on offer nor the site instructions make any mention whatsoever about hedging risk. If anything, the methodology on offer here discourages risk-defined positions: the entire purpose of subscribing is to get the directional stock picks of the publisher, and if the publisher is right, why bother to hedge those picks? We know that risk management is one of the most important aspects of trading - which is why we’ve made it a separate category - and this site certainly does not pass muster when it comes to risk.
Reasonable Price - Fail
A monthly subscription costs $97, which isn’t a big deal for a quality service. Since we have a hard time discerning any obvious quality in this service, that makes $97 a bad deal. Stock pickers are a dime-a-dozen, and the lack of any performance record whatsoever makes it impossible to know whether this picker is a good one.
What makes matters worse is that, as mentioned above, subscribers are expected to purchase a separate trading course in order to make use of the monthly subscription. That’s an extra $395 up front, just to get things started, and from what we can tell the sort of information on offer is readily available for free in any number of excellent places online.
Conclusion
We honestly don’t see the warrant for the existence of this site, and we feel a little guilty and dirty now for having called so much attention to it. But they’re obviously still in business after some time, so if one or two traders save their money as a result of this review, it’s worth the trouble.
