i think the wording "their scheme" linked with "its principal, Karen Bruton" is enough to call Scammer. obviously tasty trade doesn't give a rats ass about actual credibility rather they just want to bring in paper. On September 13, 2018, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia entered a consent judgment against Nashville, Tennessee based Hope Advisors, LLC ("Hope") and its principal, Karen Bruton, in connection with their scheme to collect extra monthly fees from a pair of hedge funds they managed.
Initially when I started learning about options I was fascinated with TastyTrade and probably learned a few things there. But soon later I realized that Tom Sosnoff is a duche. He trades like everyone else with basic assumptions about IV crush, and playing zero-sum game. It’s hard to tell if he even still makes money, except just trading for the sake of trading and running his show. But this can be useful for beginners and people who don’t have mental capacity to do more than following basic instructions. Anyone who can trade on their own will need to do better than Sosnoff to be profitable.
I hope no one here thinks I am saying Tom is the “be all end all” on options trading. However, his premis of basing trading decisions on sound reasoning and then backtesting is much more than I usually see online or even in books. As far as him running a scam, I wouldn’t know about that. I do see him being a positive force in options trading because his videos are likely to increase retail participation. This increased retail participation means tighter spreads and possibly increased profitable trading opportunities. The negativity that surrounds Tom may be related to the idea that some of his former competitors are mad at him for running a discount options firm in his past.
The vibe I am reading is that people don't like Tom so selling options must not work. The reason options selling works is the same reason auto or house insurance companies work, the premium sold often times overstates more than the claims received. IV overstates RV about 90% of the time. Only count times where IVR is high and that number is higher, like 95+% of the time. Karen the idiot super-leveraged trader was selling 3sd strangles which have almost no premium. The only way to make a decent profit is to leverage that crap way up. Selling 3SD strangles has a really high win rate, like 99%, but super leveraging jacks the tail risk way up.
I have known Tom since 1998. I was his neighbor for years. He personally opened my account and he's a good salesman ($1 rate, no ticket charge). I still have an account with TOS/TDA. People (rightfully) take issue with his condoning outright fraud.
If by "large sums" you mean less than $400,000 total or she's going to jail. CFTC Regulation 4.13(a)(2) specifies that if she manages a pool with greater than 15 clients or manages gross capital contributions received from all investors greater than $400,000 she has to register with NFA. Karen Bruton WAS indicted for fraud by SEC, she agreed to those charges in open Federal Court in Atlanta via consent decree on September 18, 2018 and there’s a very good reason why her NFA/CFTC Registrations were withdrawn a week after she paid a $1.5M settlement.
I hope that someone reading this takes the time to turn her skievey "Christian" ass in to the regulators.