Options Trader

[Judge Mental]

Just seen this advert on ADVFN (you know, the one sponsored by Goldline!! ).

This advert is offering, for an annual fee of £487 (?) to supply subscribers with email or fax messages telling you which deals to make, when, with everything laid out for you even down to what you say to the broker.

Anyone heard of this or taken it up?

Judge Mental

 

[Skimbleshanks]

There was a thread earlier about it:

http://www.trade2win.co.uk/boards/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5849

 

[Judge Mental]

That thread is about the Goldline Trading System - my enquiry is about a different mob - its actually Fleet Publications offering "Options Trader", including email/fax messages advising about a deal that needs to be made asap

Judge Mental

 

[belgianbird]

Hi,
You guys saved me from making an expensive mistake a couple of weeks ago so I'm hoping you'll do it again.

I too have received information from Fleet Street Publications and in particular an Options Trader Service from Patrick Collier.

I've found links that reference him on the WWW.LIFFE.COM site http://www.liffe.com/liffeinvestor/else/info/optionstrader.htm. He is offering a money back advice service. Seems to good to be true!

He was apparently a big name at Bank of America and BZW Markets so I'm guessing someone must have heard of him.

Thanks
BelgianBird

 

[novice101]

Hi Judgemental and Belgianbird

I dont know if this is any help but I too am a learner and of the opinion that this kind of help if any good can be a real aid to us with L plates!!

Iknow of and had business with Fleet St Pubs and have never had a prob with them. They seem to promote a fair range but Im led to believe that they do vet the info to a reasnable degree first.

Also I have recently been to London Stock Exchange for a day long seminar by various speakers, one of which was P. Collier.

Not only was his talk on options very good but it was taught in such a way that something I had been stuck on for months was all of a sudden clear as a bell.!!

I met him after and he seems a nice guy, humble and genuine enough. He was as usual surrounded by the "clever" people who seem to know it all and he was having to explain something to someone who was so obviously greedy and wanted a quick fix. He managed to do it without losing it which I think was a miracle!!

Options can make you a lot but you need to be patient and careful.
The same can be said for all types of trading!!

I personally will be giving him a try when Im ready to get into that side of trading. I have a gut feeling that he is one of those people who will honour the guarantee.

Please let us know if and how you get on as this is what this site is all about....

Help for as many as poss.

.......Hopefully before hard earned cash gets wasted

'appy trading!!!

Andi

 

[jaykay3]

My yearly Subscription to Options Trader expires next month and I shall NOT be renewing. The guy in question is a nice enough guy but we have only had 2 winning trades out of 10. Have definitely lost a shed load of money with this guy. But HEY he might just be having a bit of bad luck or maybe he got used to spending other peoples money when he was a big name at Bank of America and BZW Markets. He has lots of good excuses though in his weekly communique about why we have to keep cutting the trades at a fraction of the option price paid. The only good thing that has come out of being a member is learning about Options and realising that the Options Writer is the one who makes all the money. Look at the service by all means but BEWARE ! Actually you can pay a 3 month subscription and if you're not happy with the service they do give you 100% Money Back Guarantee. It may just have been a bad year...............

Hope this may have been of help.

Regards

Jay Kay3

 

[XPat]

Just joined T2W, so a bit late finding this thread but here's my view of Options Trader:

I cancelled my subscription for a pro-rata refund at the start of this year after losing a small amount over about 6 months. I would have lost more if I'd followed ALL the tips. After about 3 months, and some options which became worthless, I realised that I'd be dependant on the advice if I continued trading, so I just sat back - and watched all of my existing options lose value ...

It was quite amazing to see a later mail-shot which claimed successful results for the same firms over the same period that I'd been a member. Even allowing for trading costs, I felt the profit figures were totally false. Maybe he calculates profit differently ...

Also, the profit potential forecast when a new trade is recommended seems to be far too good to be true, and very often the options expiry date is so far in the future that if you take the trade, you're probably committed to remaining a subscriber for a long time - during which time you'll get more recommendations, of course!

 

[stevet]

options trading is only for the most skilled and requires a far higher expertise than any other sort of trading - since options have wide spreads and high leverage, and to understand options pricing requires specialised knowledge of pricing parameters involved

even writing out of the money covered options may seem an easy way to make some income - but still requires holding the underlying shares on adverse moves - and therefore to really make money with this strategy still requires the ability to trade in and out of the options on a regular basis

 

[jaykay3]

Since posting above on 14/11/03, the 'Options Trader', which I am a member of until next month, have now dumped the 'Advisor ' Patrick Collier presumably because of all the money he has lost the clients who have followed his recommendations this past year.
They now have a new guy who is based in the USA and he is going to concentrate exclusively on US Options , something which Collier rarely did. I have decided to give the first recommendation a go and have taken out a very small no of call contracts
which expire in April and I will keep the BB enlightened as to how this new guy turns out for anybody who might be interested in joining the 'Options Trader'.

SteveT is right to point out to people that Options require great skills in beating the Option Writer - in fact when I opened my trading account the Broker warned me that very few people are successful at buying Options Contracts. My initial hope for paying a yearly subscription had been that my 1st profitable trade would cover the subscription and anything else made that year would be pure profit. Sadly it has not turned out that way!!

 

[dare2win]

Yes I am a subscriber to options trader too and went to a Patrick Collier seminar .. his presentation was good and logical but I have also lost money following his suggested trades indeed in the last thyree months since I subscribed I did not see one profitable one. Luckily I did not follow all of them otherwise I would have lost a lot more! I plan to cancel my subscription and hope to get a refund. I have no interest in trading options on the US market.

I have been trading options for the past five months and am generally ahead. Mainly through writing naked options ( high risk... take extreme care). A lot of the real options I bought just bombed not helped by big spreads required by the market makers.

Am now concentrating more on cfd's which are a kind of option without the spread as I see it although again they are high risk.

 

[XPat]

I have decided to give the first recommendation a go and have taken out a very small no of call contracts
which expire in April and I will keep the BB enlightened as to how this new guy turns out for anybody who might be interested in joining the 'Options Trader'.

Hi JK3!

Any good news for us regarding US options?!

XP

 

[jaykay3]

ermmmmm fraid not - the April Calls and one other trade have been the only profitable trades so far. The new guy doesn't seem to be any better than his predecessor. Hang onto your money for now ! I am still on a freebie trial that we all got when Collier suddenly departed but I won't be subscribing if this performance continues ! Will let you know if any come good.

 

[XPat]

Hang onto your money for now !

Thanks, JK.

Probably good advice for all Fleet Street Publication services, and I've tried quite a few others (Chart Prophet, Investor's Edge, D-Wave, Spread Trader, Red Hot Trader).

Strange how I always seem to join just before a flat period where nothing happens ...

Best of luck with it - looking forward to some good news from you one day.

XP

 

[Vinden]

Spread trader

Hi XPat,

You mentioned FSP's Spread Trader: I've subscribed to it for a while, but haven't made any trades using their services yet (was using something else). Do I assume that you had no success with that? I was about to start using it so any guidance would be much appreciated.

Incidentally, I used an FSP publication in the 80's with some success....

Further question: has anyone used FSP's "Swing Trader" service, signed by William Akerman? 2003's track record seems good. Not cheap at £495 pa but....

Thanks in advance.

 

[hampy]

Vinden,
I subcribed to Spread Trader last year and was particularly unimpressed. I think that in the short time I remained a member youl'd have done just as well sticking a pin in the pages of the FT to select trades. The suggested stoplosses were so wide that the risk/reward ratio was just appalling.
The only good thing I can say was that they honoured the pledge and refunded my subscription when I rang

hampy

 

[XPat]

Hi Vinden

Sorry for the delay, but actually on holiday in Kyoto at the moment so not quite as easy to keep in touch, and working totally from memory - if there ane any corrections necessary to the following, I'll repost the entire corrected message again about the last week in April.

If it's the service I'm thinking of, it sounded OK, but (from previous experience with FSP) I just paper-traded it to the point where I realised the guy that who was sending the alerts was a bit out of touch with events like spikes and the effects of dividends on spreads with some firms. This was only pointed out in bulletins after the event, and wasn't covered in the Guide. I would have thought that with the amount of experience that he is supposed to have, he would have warned his clients first.

Probably, this was (for three months trial) about the middle of last year. I felt it was time to pull out and get my money back.

With regard to 'Swing Trader,' my impression is that all FSP have done is re-launched 'Chart Prophet' under a different name with a different editor. If so, I wonder where the 2003 track record has appeared from? I think I had an information pack about it not long before I left - I'll check if I still have it.

In the 80's, maybe FSP was run much differently. My experience is that just about every service they offer fails to meet results as soon as I join ...

Anyway, I'll see what I can dig out when I get back.

XP

 

[XPat]

Hi again, Vinden

It's taken me a bit longer than I anticipated, but here is more information regarding my last post.

'The Essential Guide to Financial Spread Betting' I received in February last year is by David Jones. It's a 44 page A5 booklet (the first two pages aren't included in the numbering, so the last page is 42), It contains the equivalent of 14 blank pages, if I've added up correctly.

I wasn't impressed with the content of the remaining 30 pages. A list of five spread-betting firms is given on the top half of page 27, and it's up to the client to make a choice for whatever reason.

On the 4th April 2003, 'he' (I assume David Jones, but the bulletins just state 'Editor') recommended selling National Express June. On the 11th April 2003, the next bulletin carried an explanation why the price varied between Spreadex and FinSpreads because of the share going ex-dividend in May. In my opinion, he should have been aware of this and mentioned it in his recommendation.

On 24th April 2003, it was reported that this position was stopped out the previous week on a "spike," also a Kingfisher September short was stopped out the previous day, having been recommended on 26th March. At this stage, I decided Spread Trader wasn't for me - my last bulletin is dated the 8th May.

In general, I try to avoid getting into the long-term situations. My trial period was mid-February to mid-May, so June and September shorts were obviously out of the question anyway.

I've had a look at the Swing Trader pack. It sounds good, doesn't it? But all they appear to have done is changed the name and presumably now rely on using spread betting. When I belonged to Chart Prophet, there was a portfolio of about 40 recommended shares. It may be that FSP use the same charting methods for most of their current services.

Depending on the results of my next medical test, I might try it out. I'll let you know if I join.

Regards

XPat

 

[XPat]

Hi, all!

Just to let you know I signed up for Swing Trader some time ago. Unfortunately, my health is not as good as I hoped, so I figure I've some time to spare to follow the alerts.

The 2003 track record, by the way, either doesn't show any losses or doesn't distinguish between profit and loss - there have been 2 losses that I know of by just reading recent alerts.

If it works, then I'll be very interested in the Quantigma system. I'll try to keep you all posted, if I can - sometimes I find it difficult to login and post.

Regards

XPat