I just went to one of these seminars and I must say that I am astounded by what I heard. I mean...I am absolutely shocked that they are getting away with these things. When they asked me for a credit card I was like: "Oh no...absolutely not...you aren't getting my credit card..." and the guy said "Well if you don't like it after the first day you can cancel and receive a full refund." And I said... "yeah...you say that now and then when I decline it you probably won't give me a refund." ...and then he just kind of looked away!!! So he knows exactly what is going on!!! So today I log online and start doing research and I find all this horrible stuff about this company. I am shocked but glad I didn't fork over my CC #. I also have read other blogs and posts where supporters of Investools tirelessly support this company like they are dear lovers or something and it makes me sick. What is even worse is that if you dig deep and find forums...just like this one...you find Investools representatives logging on a sticking up for the company trying to calm the storm while unhappy users are trying to fan the flames and draw attention to the wrongs committed. There is something seriously wrong with this thinking. For those of you that support the company after you see what bad it has done for people...you should be ashamed of yourself for supporting a company that has hurt people the way it has. The people that put their faces on Investools website...all the testimonial people specifically and all the sales people and workers for Investools...you should ALL be ashamed of yourself. This company is a scam and I am so glad I did not buy into anything they say. This is Amway...this is Herbal Life...this company is a joke. Stay away from this company. It for your own good. I have one word for you...SCAM. This company is filled with liars and scams. They tell you one thing...package it all up on a green wrapper and say..."Buy this NOW you'll make your money back LATER..." And if that isn't just a load of B.S. I don't know what is. I have two more words for you PYRAMID SCHEME. Need it defined...here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme Maybe this isn't exactly what it is but it kind of feels like a whole new version.
It's not only Investools but the entire stock market is a huge scam bucket with a bunch of sleazy soul-less assholes that make their living taking money from the naive little saps that fall for the get rich quick schemes. But with a corrupt and morally deficient government officials (they're all alike unfortunately) doing all they can to line their own pockets as fast as they can it's really every man for himself and the term 'buyer beware' is more apt then ever!
So far my experience with Investools has been good. One of my colleagues attended the free workshop in Irvine CA last month and was impressed and signed up for the Stocks class. She cancelled because she is on a slow dialup line and could not run the online course. They did not charge her credit card. I went to the free workshop in Dana Point CA last week and was impressed with their research tools that I have not been able to find anywhere else (and, believe me, I've looked). I signed up for the two-day stocks course that started today. They said they wouldn't charge my credit card until after the end of the first day and they haven't. Yes, there was a lot of upselling going on at the two-day class today, but I expected that; business is business. At the late afternoon break, an elderly man told the woman at the table that he needed to cancel and I eavesdropped. She did cancel him. So that's two cancellations I know of. Seems like they do keep their word on that. Last night I went to my first Orange County CA Investools users meeting (just people like us - not Investools employees). We were in a conference room and before the meeting started, I asked the group how long they've been using Investools and whether the tools work. There were more than 20 people there, all enthusiastic Investools users. Some of them have been using the tools for 2.5 years, some for only 6 months. Two of them are making enough to do this full time. So far they seem reputable.
I'm gonna put Optimistic on ignore. It's obvious he's a paid promoter for Investools. I find it hilarious how these Investools fans have only a few posts. Let's see how long they can keep the lie going. What Investools and others of its ilk are doing is pure and simple lying, cheating, and stealing. We will all get what's coming to us on Judgement Day.
1st PART (optional) about my background: In Oct 1987 when the market dived 21% in one day, I had no money in it. I had just sold during the last 6 months prior to that event three of my rental houses in anticipation of moving out of state and had more cash than ever in my life. (With no experience in the market other than trading in some loser mutual funds 10 years earlier, I bought rental houses starting in 1977.) I immediately after the October '87 tank purchased an Investor Business Daily newspaper, opened up three discount stock brokerage accounts and dumped all my cash into them (I eventually made up my mind and ended with one of those accounts). My only familiarity with the market up to that point was about 13 years of watching my favorite t.v. show .....Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeiser and those loser mutual funds. After buying a number of IBD newspapers after the October tank, I bought about 17 stocks. I was out of the market some 6 months later. I made a killing (relative to my personal history of making and losing money in a few enterprises). Two stocks never recovered (anyone remember Wang Computers ?) but the others worked well to varying degrees. During those 6 months, I subscribed to IBD. There was an article one day in the IBD about writing (selling ) stock options. I tried my hand at that during those 6 months I was in the market. Although my profits at call writing were less than 20% of my overall profits, it got my feet wet in options and I did options off and on since then (with not much reading on the subject). Absolutely loved option writing. In late 1997 I got excellent, live day trading training for about 6 weeks in Bellevue (next to Seattle) and then traded full time at home until the spring of 2000 (market bubble burst). Prior to the burst, I made 12 to 18 round trip trades per day using Level II software for those 2 and a half years. After losing money consistently for 6 to 9 months of beginning day trading, I finally made small money, becoming progressively moderate to larger money consistently each month. About 2/3 of my trades were long and the rest in short positions. During the bursting bubble, I consistently lost money for some three months, notwithstanding the fact 1/3 of my trades were short (obviously if 2/3 were short, I would have made money). So I never touched the stock market again, including thru today. I have probably missed only 2 or 3 Cramer Mad Money shows and watch a few hours of cable financial shows every night from recordings during the day. My occupation is a residential real estate broker and I occasionally originate mortgage loans for my clients.
I had paid $ 3,000 for the Investool kit (the DVDs) and the 2 day seminar in Dec of 2004 but couldn't go to the seminar at that time because of personal commitments. (Investools had a partnership with Business Week then.) Investools was good about honoring my getting the training later (they said I could get it online or live and I opted out for live when they came back to my area). In early 2006 I went to their two day training. On the second day we were told we were lucky because we had the instructor that wrote THE BOOK, whose name I don't recall now. He was doing well until an hour before the end of the day when he started talking about making money in covered calls. He was ok there until he trained us on one of his sure fire ways of making money in a steadily, long-term declining market writing covered calls. TIME OUT please ! I knew damn well nothing could be further from the truth. I raised my hand, and I (excuse the pun) called him on that. What followed was a few of the most lame-brained, weak excuses anyone could have made up, including the excellent value of taking the loss of your stock as a capital loss off-set to any earlier gains that year ! ! Now there is novel concept....His sure fire, make-money procedure included taking loses ! His other explanation I don't quite recall, but it was a line of esoteric, double talk that I followed but I am sure that few in that large, crowded room did. The seminar ended shortly afterwards and I went up to him and talked further to him to get clarification (I wanted to make sure I didn't miss a legitimate explanation). Nope, there was none. I can't tell you how bad it hurts when for two days your enthusiasm level is relatively high and you are motivated to move forward with their program, only to have their heavy hitter pull the carpet out from underneath their program with such a bucket of crap. I logged on once to the Investools website a week or so afterward but never went past the home page. Later that winter, Investools called me and asked me if I wanted to extend my subscription to the website. I told them probably not. They offered me an entire year for free extension and was invited to go to another two day training which I did (the market was going strong and I wanted to invest and I might as well use their software). I needed to refresh myself on their program and use it as a part of other resources I knew was available to me. So the second two day training I went to this last winter was pretty good, too, as a refresher. Different instructor. They gave the hard sell closing near the end to get you to sign up for more of their advanced courses. For those that didn't want to, one of their reps was just outside of the door to make one more pitch which I listened to on my way to the parking lot. It was intriguing, but having been around the block a few times in my 50 some years of life, it just was not credible enough. After reading many of the posts here, I see I saved myself time and money. The other bad thing about the two day training was there was virtually NO reference to losing occasionally when using their software except in the most fleeting and superficial way. It was painfully obvious to me that in spite of the credibility it would have added to their training to talk more about losses as being to be expected (like my many months of initial day trading losses), Investools purposely opted out of that in favor of keeping the enthusiasm level up 100% of the time. I promise you the odds are incredibly high that in a down market, a sideways market, or a mildly bullish market YOU WILL LOSE much more than you will gain when you are the traditional investor. Even with a few years of highly intensive experience, in the end, I couldn't get myself to short more trades than long trades as the bubble was bursting in 2000. How do you think you will do with many months of making money going long in today's very bullish market when the sectors you are investing in start going south ?
3rd Part I like the software as a beginning tool (I have never used any other before or after and have no benchmarks to judge it by). I paid attention in class and I read their books to learn it. Some of the other posts here are correct....You can save yourself a lot of money by (1) training yourself easily enough with some great websites and books that have been posted here; (2) You can subscribe to some programs like E-signal, Trade Station, VectorVest, etc that can probably do equally as well for you on a monthly subscription basis without the huge $ 3,000 capital training cost. I have not tried them, but they must have at least as much merit as Investools. (3) Jim Cramer is a text book wired for sound, rich in sound fundamental analysis and preaching the psychology and discipline to make good money (if not Mad Money). The key here is not to be intimidated by the notion of having to integrate those books piecemeal with a good screening software and some great free websites. The attraction of Investools is to take you from kindergarten and lead you by the hand like mother duck. It is also to keep your enthusiasm up. But the alternative is NOT overwhelming and you can eat the elephant a little at a time and ENJOY the experience.....I am very sure of that. Patience with fun pays.
4th Part Full disclosure here. For a guy who traded his brains out for 2 1/2 years, I still have not pulled the trigger in a single trade since 2000 bubble bursting. I still watch my daily recorded financial shows. I have done my paper trading IN MY MIND these last couple of years. For some reason, I cannot get myself into "investing" in any format (day trading, swing trading, etc). There have been a few BIG dives of the market in the last few years that were small scale to the 1987 tank that IN MY MIND I jumped in to. Each time would have led to terrific gains. I have very busy work days and after trying to fast forward thru hours of recordings each night, trying to cherry pick the best meat, I don't get a lot of sleep. But just like I counsel my real estate clients that there is always another opportunity after the deal they did not get, the stock market is like that 10 times more. There are so many great opportunities. I guess I am waiting for the REALLY big one to happen, like 1987, all over again with the right macro-economic environment like 1987 that allowed stocks to come roaring back in well less than a year. We had a mini-preview of that end of February thru March. I have one piece of really important advice for consideration. It is very easy to understand and implement. It is a little tough, though, for most to get their mind comfortable to doing this. Just as virtually everyone wants to pick "winners" buying at one price and seeing them appreciate upward nicely, always invest in short positions simultaneously of an equal or near equal amount. There are plenty of opportunities with easily identifiable stocks subject to going down even in a strong bull market, e.g. Starbucks. You can make money handsomely with one stock going up while the other is going down; you can also save your fanny when the market dives 21% in one day or two by most likely having your short protect your long positions. I feel confident one day there will be an event domestically or globally and either economic or terrorist, that will spin the market dramatically downward. These days, there is no way I could sleep well at night with 100% long all positions. Best of trading and investing to you all !
The tools Investools offer are OK but as I said before they can mostly all be found elsewhere for free with a little searching. Their site makes it easy to track stocks and some of the 'additional' training might be good but it is very expensive and in my opinion many will just be wasting and risking their money. In my opinion, for most people, they would benefit from doing the homework to find a good trustworthy broker (not easy either) and invest in some strong mutual funds or other investment vehicles as appropriate for their individual situation. In the meantime, take a small amount of discretionary income and open a trading account. Read as many books as you can (you can use the library for this) and begin to do some trading on your own. Most brokerage accounts offer paper accounts so be sure to use those to try out your strategies before investing your real money. Once you have gained some actual knowledge of trading if you are still so inclined then and only then go attend an Investools session or other to see if they have anything of value to offer based now upon your somewhat knowledgeable opinion. My advice is- Do not by any means just trust any of these 'get rich quick schemes' and related companies no matter the hype. Be sure to protect and keep your assets guarded at all times. Take personal responsibility for your own money and always remember that if it sounds too good to be true it probably isn't.
LOL but I thought "our" system and way of the life is the "Best there is", and any other system is evil? this is the best?