Review: Robinhood

I’ve been using the Robinhood app for a few months now and have executed a small handful of trades. There is much to like about the app as the aesthetics of the GUI have been carefully implemented so as to achieve a very neat streamlined feel. There is certainly no danger of cluttered data views overloading you with information as some other apps seem to do.

Unfortunately, sleek and sexy interfaces are not the qualities I value most in my trading applications. Relevant, concise, and consolidated data views in conjunction with intuitive interfaces catered to speed are the qualities that will help you make money with your trades. While using the app there were too many times I found myself stumbling through views looking for my order history or even my open positions. It’s a special kind of frustration to be stuck in a trade for longer than you’d like because you have to waste time figuring out how to get out.

It also worried me that being offered only a single point of access to my account, the app, I could become stuck in trades if my device froze up, broke, or otherwise became unavailable for use. There was no backup computer-based application to turn to.

Before I make myself seem too much like a bumbling old geezer struggling to grasp the concept of technology, I should say that it was actually the simplicity of the app that caused me the most problems. The linearly nested structure of navigation made me feel as though I were sitting at someone else’s computer attempting to find files hidden within arbitrarily named folders. I would have preferred a navigational scheme that branched out from a central point so getting to what you’re looking for required fewer clicks. Don’t fear the clutter Robinhood, we need speed!

Worse still, I would never have felt confident basing a trade solely on the chart views offered within the app itself. It simply wasn’t robust enough to allow me to make an informed decision. And by forcing the use of secondary software, it really limited the usefulness of the app.

So at this point the free trades were the only remaining attractive quality but what demographic does this serve? Serious traders who place many trades might benefit the most from a lack of fees but would scoff at the limited set of features and deprioritizetion of speed. And would the casual trader who only places a few trades a year actually be saving money if they made those trades using the limited information offered by the app? My guess would be that a more developed, feature-rich application is worth the cost of trading fees.

If Robinhood has any hope of success, they need to expand their offerings to entice more people. Have some sort of backup to trade with if the app isn’t working (even if it's just another android app). Offer margin accounts or an API to extend its usefulness. There is hope, but at this point I can’t offer any enthusiastic endorsements for Robinhood.

Review: PennyStocking DVD

This DVD offers the basics of not just Tim's strategy, but also the basics of how penny stocks trade in the bigger picture, which makes this DVD uniquely helpful to people who are just starting out trading. Considering this, I would recommend this DVD to those people who don't have much experience with trading and aren't familiar with the nitty-gritty of trading.

Potentially the most helpful part of this DVD is the overview of the most relevant technical analysis. The reason I like these sorts of DVD as opposed to some of Tim's recorded seminars that are then recycled as DVD's, is that you get to see example after example of stock chart along with the technical indicators that can tip you off to how to trade it. Since the patterns don't change from pump to pump, these examples are extremely useful to see and absorb into your mind.

Of course the downfall is that stock charts are always viewed in retrospect. Regardless, Tim does a good job of identifying the sort of patterns that occur BEFORE big moves, thus allowing you to learn and profit from current pumps. What's nice is that he is very aware of this problem and even includes some charts that don't include the big moves so you get a sense of exactly what you would be seeing if the stock were trading today.

If on the other hand you've been trading for a while already, you might prefer something like Best of LiveStock, since it skips the more basic and general trading orientation, instead concentrating on Tim's short-selling strategy itself.

There is also some interesting but useless stuff like advertising of Tim's book and how he published it.

Review: TimFundamentals Part Deux

This DVD is like paying 400 dollars to watch a worse version of the first TimFundamentals. I was extremely disappointed in this DVD as it does not feel instructional. It is another recording of a live seminar which I really don't like because the presentation is designed for the people who were there and not for you as the video viewer. Throughout the DVD you cannot hear the comments of the audience as they ask questions, make comments etc. Worse still, Tim sits far away from the mic for a good portion of the video which is quite frustrating because even on max volume on my computer, it's tough to hear at times. It's not like you can't hear him though so it's not the end of the world.

I was surprised to find this quote in there: "According to covester I should go all in. Remember that." I'm not sure why he would have said something that contradicts his own rules but I guess that is just a reflection of the lesser quality of this DVD.

The latter part of the DVD is better as it involves live trading so you get a sense of Tim's thought process but throughout the DVD I never really felt like I was learning anything I didn't already know.

One fleeting example of the value in this DVD is exemplified in the quote, "Yesterday is the best indicator of today." Feel free to send me your $400 dollars for that piece of advice.

Tim is a much better teacher than this DVD puts forth. I encourage people to check out some of this other DVDs and just steer clear of this one.

Review: BigCharts.com

There's a reason I use BigCharts more than any other web-based charting service. The charts may not be very pretty, but they are extremely clear and the limited number of options makes navigating those options quick and painless. Since I don't rely on any indicators other than price action and volume, BigCharts gives me everything I want and strips away everything else I don't want. What more could I ask for?

Review: StockCharts.com

The problem I have with stockcharts.com is that it has more than I want. I know that sounds kind of strange but it just takes away the practicality for me. When I want a detailed chart with lots of options, I would use my trading software, not the internet. It's faster and you can save what you're looking at as well as draw lines etc. Thus, a feature loaded chart it not what I look for in an internet charting website.

If I want a simple easy to read chart I prefer BigCharts.com. It is less elegant but it has everything I want and nothing more. So really I don't have much to complain about shockcharts but it just doesn't come in very useful to me.

Review: Best of LiveStock DVD

I'm actually surprised I don't hear more about this DVD as it offers a whole slew of lessons that are very neatly organized and clear. All of the flaws of normal livestock are stripped away from this DVD package and only the meat of the lessons are left for you to learn from.

I would probably put this up there with PennyStocking Part Deux and highly recommend it to those people who have enjoyed Tim's other DVDs. There is no annoying lead up to the valuable lessons as in some other DVD's and there are just so many great examples of patterns and companies that I couldn't really ask for more.

The DVD also captures a lot of Tim's personality which makes it more entertaining than many others.

The one flaw is that the video quality on the screen capture is poor so you can't read the numbers or symbols on the charts very well but for each section the tickers are edited in and Tim talks through the price action so it isn't ever a big problem.

Review: Shortstocking DVD

This DVD is very well organized and I think covers everything you need to know about short selling. Everything from the basics to what to look for in chart patterns is covered in detail. Some of Tim's DVD's can seem like a long rant that touches on the topic at hand but this DVD actually presents more as an structured lesson which is nice.

I think I would only recommend this to people starting out with Tim's strategy since if you've been following it already, you already know what shorting is, and how to do it. The strategy for shorting is definitely covered in this DVD but it would just make more sense to buy a DVD that focuses on the strategy if you're already comfortable with shorting.

That being said, if you want to get a better handle on how shorting works, or you want to revisit the fundamentals, this DVD is a good choice.

Review: TIMtactics DVD

Only good if you're just starting out.

This DVD was just a recorded webinar and I think that takes away from the value of the content. It is structured for the people who paid for the webinar and not necessarily for the people who buy the DVD later.

Most of the lessons contained in the DVD are basic so it wouldn't be worth it to buy this unless you're unfamiliar with Tim's strategy. The parts that should be useful, when he goes over stocks he has traded in the past, seem obvious. At several points he shows a supernova chart and the lessons are things like, "You can actually make money on the upside, if you buy this early." Such a lesson is obvious in retrospect when you can see the chart. The lessons should really be focused on how to identify charts that could supernova and what the indicators are for when there is more upside. I just didn't that sort of information in this DVD as much as I have in Tim's others.

It almost feels like this is 5 hours of explaining what Tim's strategy is, and less about how to do it yourself. There is no live trading which I think would have been a big help. I was just pretty disappointed.

Review: Interactive Brokers

When I originally reviewed Interactive Brokers on Investimonials, I summarized them as "an unfortunate necessity for pennystocking." The rest of that review is as follows:

I recently switched to IB and made my first few trades. I have to say, I hate all of the interfaces they offer including the website. Everything just feels bulky and overwhelming when it doesn't need to be. I can't even bare to deal with their software so I still use TOS's software to watch my stocks. So even though I'm far from thrilled with them, I can't really do any better for shorting microcaps especially for the account size that I have (small). Even though the minimum is usually 10k, I think the minimum is only 3k for those 21 and younger so keep that in mind if that applies to you.

I would like to amend my review to add that I have never had any problems with Interactive Brokers and although all of my previous complaints still hold true, they are minor compared to the utility IB provides in playing penny stocks. No other broker I have thus far encountered has allowed such a great ability to find borrows on these microcaps and with relative ease. There is no need to contact anyone to ask for borrows which is nice and the website allows for the availability of shorts to be searched here. Considering this, I would certainly recommend to anyone hoping to get started playing penny stocks to open an account here and try them out.

If you'd like me to refer you so you can try them out, send your full name to promopennygather at gmail dot com. I get a lot of email so if you don't get a response within 48 hours, feel free to send it again.

Review: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

This book, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, was very entertaining and definitely influenced my way of thinking. That being said, the whole work was not completely relevant to trading and where it was, it tended to be redundant. The whole book can probably be boiled down to the single lesson of keeping an open mind. The difference though is that this one lesson that I'm sure everyone has heard, is now being framed in the context of probability which is what makes this book unique.

I would definitely recommend reading this but it is probably best suited to the coffee table rather than your bookshelf of trading materials. The author himself is, or rather was, a trader though so it's not as if the book never relates the ideas back to trading. It does on occasion but the lessons are so broad that they aren't really able to be applied to single trades. Rather, the hope is that you will alter your mindset so as to trade more carefully and understand the influence of what seems highly unlikely.

Review: Profit.ly

I think profit.ly's greatest attribute is that it provides a well laid out design that lets you keep track of your own trades. The innovation comes with the community surrounding profit.ly although I find this aspect still very much in the development phase in terms of reaching a greater purpose. It might be mildly interesting to see what people have been trading in the past but ultimately it usually isn't helpful.

I think one of the motivations of the site is for Tim Sykes to advertise the gains of his subscribers, which I certainly don't blame him for and its a perfectly fine motivation to have. The problem is just that there is so much more potential for the site and the concept that I can only hope is being worked towards. Rather than just be a site for Tim's followers, it needs to be a site for the average trader and I just don't see a whole lot of appeal for them right now. Furthermore, one of the great flaws is that people can post fake trades if they choose to do so which may be motivated by a desire to get a pat on the back from Tim.

I have actually found profit.ly useful during tax season though because it gives me a general sense of my P&L as well as the time-frame of my trades. If you submit all of your trades you can use profit.ly just to double check your filings to make sure there are no major discrepancies. Unfortunately, profit.ly isn't flawless yet so you can't actually use it as a surefire method of tracking trades for tax purposes, but it's user friendly design certainly lends a helping hand when doing so.

Some quick suggestions: Perhaps require a certain percentage of reported trades to be verified? Have certain benchmarks of verified trades trigger a free 24 hours of the premium stats on Profit.ly?

In order to make the community aspect more useful, there should be a way to encourage helpful hints. The best trade posts include comments that explain why the trader went in and out. Maybe feature such helpful posts somewhere on the site, or allow people to vote posts as helpful to create a new category of ranking?

Review: How to make money in biotech stocks

This book by Mike Havrilla and Mark Messier is essentially an infomercial for biorunup.com. While it does have some original content of it's own, I don't think this book is worth much more than $6. Nearly half of the books pages are profiles of biotech companies that were only relevant at the time of the book's release. Thus nearly half of the book is completely worthless.

The value of this book is the explanation of the process in which drugs are approved by the FDA and how that affects the stock price. The process is made clear and the glossary is also well done which makes the book a decent reference for various drug trial events.

While the book offers some interesting strategies, it by no means allows you to perform them using this book alone and instead expects you to buy into their website subscription which I am not a member of so I can't comment on the value of the website. Based on the lack of foresight that went into the making of this book though, I am not interested in trying out their service.

Review: Read SEC Filings

This DVD is the most informative of Tim's DVD's that I have watched thus far. It is packed full of tips and tricks that would be difficult to learn just from googling. This information comes from people who know what they're doing and watching how they do that is hugely valuable.

That being said, this DVD is painfully boring and unfortunately there is so much great stuff in this DVD that you're not going to be able to pick up everything from watching it just once.

The first section of the DVD, done by Michael Goode (Reaper), I think is the best part of the DVD because he is highly methodical and does a great job of walking you through all the important things. Tim's section feels like a "quick and dirty" review of everything Michael went through which is also really helpful because maybe that's all you want to know how to do. But the great thing about this DVD is that what you learn isn't specific to just Tim's shorting strategy. You can definitely apply what you learn here to whatever trading strategy that you personally prefer.

Final Review: SureTrader

This is a followup to my initial review of the new broker SureTrader based out of the Bahamas. I've copied that initial review into this post so as to add to and comment on my previous ideas. I will also modify the color of the initial reviews text to make it easier to follow along.

Also just to give some context to this review, I was a customer for about 3 months and I only used the free web-based SureTrader 2.0 platform. Since I use another broker for market data, I am not subscribed to any premium SureTrader service.

The account opening process was also a huge hassle for me (it took about a month and half). My wire bounced back the first time, and the second attempt went through but wasn't properly attributed to my account. Eventually I was able to contact them and they were able to identify the wire that came from me and credit my account. I've opened several other brokerage accounts in the past and never had so much trouble as I have with SureTrader.

So after deciding to setup an account I was quickly met with some troubling aspects of the brokerage. Basically, their website it horrible. The first thing that tipped me off was the fact that it is formatted so all your typing is in caps. The second clue was a typo of the word "your" as "yout" which means they didn't even bother to spell check their web content and generally just indicates they threw this together too quickly.

I still maintain their website is pretty bad but it is manageable. Now that I'm more familiar with it, I find the lack of features more troubling. There is no way for me to view my past trades which is a major shortfall.

Now to the more serious qualms. Compare the URL bar of your trusted broker with that of Suretrader. Whenever you are dealing with sensitive info/documents at a place that cares about your privacy and security, you will see the prefix https://... which is indicative of a secure connection. This is sadly not the case at Suretrader which makes me apprehensive about submitting my personal information to them. It's not even that I don't trust them but rather that the information is retrievable by third parties with malicious intent. My fears were further realized today when I was posting a document to my dropbox. Upon doing so, the page refreshed and I was somehow looking at dropbox files from several other accounts. I mean how disturbing is that? The only reassuring thing is that since you can't even access your own dropbox files after submitting them, I wasn't given the ability to look at other peoples files but I was able to see the file names and descriptions. Thus I think it is important to warn others at least to exclude any personally identifying information from these fields in case such an error occurs again.

Since writing this, the problem has been resolved, at least in terms of the secure website with a "https" web address. Since I don't need to use the dropbox anymore as an approved customer I can only assume that this issue has been resolved as well. However, I have had issues with letting my session time-out and then when I refresh the page I am redirected to a server error page rather than a custom error page. Admittedly this is a minor and aesthetic issue but again speaks to the amount of time that went into the website before its launch.

Overall though I think I would have to recommend against this broker since its main appeal is the lack of the PDT rule since it resides outside the jurisdiction of the SEC. The reason for my discontent is the commissions which really eat into a small account (which you have if you're looking to avoid the PDT rule). At the time of this writing they are $4.95 for the first 1000 shares and then $0.00495 for every 1000 shares after that. While this isn't horrible, it really sucks for penny stocks which you might be interested in if you were referred to SureTrader through Timothy Sykes. Consider the following scenario:

You have only $2,500 in your account and want to buy SNPK at 0.67, so you purchase 3,000 shares (risking 80.4% of your account). That is $14.85 in commissions just to open your position. The stock runs to 0.72 and you look to get out. So in making this best case scenario trade, you only make $120 while risking a huge amount of your account. That's certainly an inherent disadvantage of a small account but it just feels aggravated by SureTrader's fees. You have to trade perfectly to make money since mistakes cost you big time in terms of commissions. If the previous scenario doesn't bother you, than cool. This is just my opinion after all. I just wanted to point out that the two attractive qualities of SureTrader at first glance (low account minimum + no PDT rule) may not be so attractive once you've thought about it a bit more.

Another supposedly great feature of SureTrader is their great borrows for shorting stocks. From my limited experience at this broker, I have not seen good borrows. In fact, I've attempted to short 5 or 6 stocks that were available to borrow elsewhere and not been able to get shares. This is a HUGE problem for me and if you have any plans to short with SureTrader I suggest you wait to open an account when they get their superior borrows back. In the mean time you can make more money by keeping your capital in an account such as Interactive Brokers (Tim is in the process of making sure SureTrader can get Interactive Brokers' borrows as well so this may be a non-issue in the future).

One good thing I can say about SureTrader is that I have found their customer service to be helpful. It is far from efficient but every problem I have had, I get an answer to in a very reasonable amount of time by seemingly friendly staff. Other brokers just send you an automated response that vaguely relates to your issue and they let you figure out the details on your own.

Some additional complaints I have heard from others:

ST software occasionally goes down during trading hours. This complaint seems only to occur for those using the free web-based trading platform and not the premium PRO platform. One customer who experienced this allegedly lost money as a result of this downtime and received the following response from support following the incident: "SureTrader does not reimburse clients for losses incurred due to trading malfunctions or system disruptions. Please make reference to our risk disclosure found on our website."

Review: TIMraw DVD

The following post is a review originally posted on Investimonials and features a DVD by Timothy Sykes, a great penny stock short seller whom I highly recommend.

Good Overview Of A Successful Trading Strategy (4/5 Stars)

I think this DVD compliments Tim's two pennystocking DVDs quite well. It will be most valuable for people who are new to Tim's strategy though, as many of the concepts in this DVD are very basic. If you have already been trading with him for a few months, you've probably already learned many of the things that are in this DVD. That being said, I myself found this DVD helpful even though I'm one of those people who have been with Tim for a few months now. Even though nothing was completely new to me, there are big big lessons that require constant reminders before you really learn to respect them and this DVD has all of those. This being the case, I think this DVD may actually be one of the most useful to watch over and over because of those core ideas that this DVD highlights.

Review: Learn Level 2

 Review as posted at Investimonials.

If you've ever had any questions about how L2 works or how to use it in trading, this DVD will answer those questions. Tim explores all aspects of L2 while using all sorts of examples, from charts to screenshots to real-time trades.

Considering the topic at hand, this DVD is also unexpectedly entertaining thanks to Tim's crazy analogies. The only thing I can say that is mildly negative of the DVD is that it's longer than it needs to me. L2 isn't that complicated so I felt like I had a good grasp on everything long before it was over. Maybe that's just a testament to how well it's explained.

Oh actually I have another thing worth complaining about: Tim is unshaven throughout the DVD and his face made me want to vomit. Vomit, and then laugh at his crazy analogies, so I almost wound up choking.

Initial Review: Suretrader

**UPDATE**

Final review now posted!

Review: TIMfundamentals

First off, I would recommend buying this despite the flaws. They are minor and largely aesthetic in nature.

The first half of the DVD I found rather disappointing. Based on the cost of the DVD I would expect a professionally assembled DVD and that's not really how it appears. The menu's are unsophisticated and ugly. But who cares? They're practical and fancy menus don't earn you any money in trading. The problem is that the content of the first 2 hours is pretty useless. The video is of Tim coaching a private student and thus all of his commentary is aimed towards the student and not the viewer. Worse still, Tim is discussing all the websites he uses but you can't see his screen so it's difficult to follow along. These 2 hours seem like they would make a better podcast than anything since the video itself shows you nothing but a super awkward kid eating M&Ms. You can skip the whole first 2 hours and not lose anything.

Everything Tim describes in those first two hours is outlined in the TIMfundamentals booklet thing and it is way easier to follow along with since all the websites are listed and their usefulness is explained. The booklet itself is super useful for this reason since it walks you through all the tools Tim uses to compile his nightly watchlists.

The 2nd half of the DVD is where the real value lies and by itself, justifies the cost of the DVD. It consists of screen capture footage of TIM creating his watchlist and it turns out to be a great night for him to be filming because it is packed full of great stocks from a variety of different backgrounds. In this way, you see how Tim takes into account things like short interest, news, hype, and earnings. I've already heard how to deal with a lot of this stuff in Tim's video lessons but this DVD really makes it completely clear and thus I think it is still worth seeing for those people who have been studying Tim's lessons for a while.

You really have to think about the value of it in terms of what you get out of it. Which is a lot. But can you really blame me for being bothered by its sloppiness when it has such a high price tag?

Check out my other reviews here.