Misleading Options Service
What You Get
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You get an email that contains a link to their website. It provides a fairly well researched trade idea and a recommended options contract to buy.
An example of what this looks like:
** OPTION TRADE: Buy MSFT APR 14 2023 285.000 CALLS - price at last close was $5.74 - adjust accordingly.
What You Don't Get
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You are responsible for the trade entry, exit, and position sizing.
There are no alerts telling you when to exit or take profit.
The lack of trade management is why I classify this as a service for "trade ideas", it doesn't work like the majority of trading alert services.
Performance
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I loaded the 2022 performance results in a google sheet and these are the numbers.
Wins 120
Loss 29
Trades 149
Win Rate 80.54%
Using the posted potential profit numbers and trading 1 contract per trade:
PnL $43,290
Avg Win $401
Avg Loss -$166
Using the recommended 100% profit target:
PnL $20,483
Avg Win $211
Avg Loss -$166
Without accurate entry/exit timestamps there isn't any way to know average drawdown and time in trade. So we don't know how mush pain there is on these trades.
Red Flags
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1. Their website guarantees a minimum of 8 trades per month.
From their website: "You will receive a minimum of eight (8) weekly option trade alerts a month"
No trading service should claim a minimum number of trade over a period of time.
2. There are "trades" on the results page that have no entry or exit prices:
February 16, 2023 TSLA MAR 03 2023 240 CALLS ---/--- -60%
February 16, 2023 CSCO MAR 03 2023 50 CALLS ---/--- -60%
February 15, 2023 AAPL MAR 03 2023 155.00 CALLS ---/--- -60%
February 14, 2023 MU MAR 03 2023 60 CALLS ---/--- -60%
May 12, 2022 COIN MAY 27 2022 50.000 PUTS ----/---- -60%
3. There are "trades" on the results page that have no exit prices:
November 10, 2022 CRM NOV 25 2022 140.000 PUT 0.82 / ???? -60%
I emailed Ian about this and he said it is up to members when to exit the trade...
4. The results page doesn't have exit dates but it generally has exit prices.
5. The results page on their website provides trade performance since 2020 broken out by year. This page feels like a serious misrepresentation of what this service provides, there are no disclaimers on the page that these results are not the personal trading performance of Ian Harvey. I emailed Ian Harvey, Director for Harwell Holdings Incorporated, several times asking lots of questions, most of which he ignored.
This is my understanding of what is happening with this service and the results page.
5.1 This page looks like a trading journal but it isn't. It is a log of published trading ideas and possible entry and exits, it doesn't reflect the recommended trading strategy.
5.2. There are NO trade statistics provided like win rate, wins, losses, average win, average loss, total return, etc. This is because these are not real trades, they are hypothetical trades that are only possible if you apply a discretionary/adhoc strategy on a per trade basis.
5.3. The service itself recommends a 100% profit target, a -60% stop loss, and risking ~5% of account depending on size. If this trading strategy was applied then a 400% return isn't really possible except in the case of an overnight gap. If you look at the performance results you see that almost none of the trades that are profitable are near 100%, this proves that these results are not possible with their recommended trading strategy.
6. There is no recommended entry price on the alert, so the result page's entry prices are cherry picked.
7. No archive of previous weekly alerts, can't compare what was really alerted to the results page.
8. weeklyoptionsusa.com's 80% win rate in 2022 is a serious outlier compared to other swing trading services I use.
Conclusion
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1. The results page should have a proper disclaimer on it explaining that it doesn't reflect real world trading.
2. I would prefer the results page reflect the recommended trading strategy and show the performance on a hypothetical 100K account. The results page, in its current form, feels like a scam once your realize what the service's alerts provide.
3. I did spot check some of the trades to see if the contracts were at least trading near the entry/exit prices. I used TD Ameritrade to review the historical performance of some the contracts, most of them seem to check out and maybe 1 or 2 what were on the fence.
4. The lack of an entry price on the alert, no archive of previous alerts, the lag on the trade appearing on the results page.. all of this leaves the door open to cherry pick the best possible entry from the intraday session. If this is happening then performance results are posted are meaningless and I would say this service is a scam.