Just for curiosity, I attended a local Investools 2-hour seminar. There were approx 180 people in the room. The first hour plus, were to wander all over the functionality of their software. They were trying to ooh and aah the crowd with "up to 700 parameters on indicator x" and "1200 data points on function y". Things would turn red, yellow or green to warn or alert you. Positive up green arrows and negative down red arrows. Just count the +s and -s to decide. And of course, they had Phase 1 indicators "which is equivalent to a drive-by view of a house, and Phase 2, which is equivalent to "doing an inspection." Snake oil, snake oil, snake oil. ZERO proof of any of their claims; it is basically "trust us" sign up now and don't verify anything Basically, it depends on a naive audience. They are mainly trying to dazzle the audience into paying for an online/in-person class for $1K (sorry, "$995"), which of course, is designed to have you pay much more for followon classes. Strangely, they showed you how easy it is to use their software during the demo - 15-20 minutes a day to have it do all the screening of 14,000 stocks, then point and click - sort - and decide, so why wil it take days to weeks of expensive lessons, if it is so easy? Problem is, i doubt using all of this will make much difference in longterm performance. I kept thinking, isn't ANYONE here going to ask intelligent questions? The second part, was focused on covered calls. It basically was about buying stocks, and then selling nearby covered calls on them, bringing in a nice stream 2-4% or higher a month. Problems with this? It ignores that you have given away all upside in the future, and leaves out the fact that people pay these premiums, because they price in all the benefits and drawbacks. That applies to the call seller also (they never mention this). If you ignore the downside risk, than you can become rich slowly. They give 3 testimonials of elderly people who took small amounts of money and become multi-millionnaires (evidence of what 30% a year can do), who made, in the midst of the covered call portion. You were supposed to think they did this via CCs, but it was obvious these were just buy and holders, not CC sellers. I vigorously waved my hand to ask about this, but they just kept ignoring questions and continued talking. Boy, did I wish i was from the false-advertising govt watchdogs... About the only thing worthwhile, were they served, sodas, coffee and cookies
Lucky for you they are a public company, ticker symbol SWIM. If you have the balls, you can leverage your insight about the company and its products by trading the stock (or its options). This offers you the possible satisfaction of being right AND making money.
Doesn't help. There is an everlasting supply of lemmings who will pay to learn that Investools will not make them wealthy