Well, it's not even about that. How much does he manage, own or others' money - not important. You trade every day yet you've never encountered shorting restrictions/unable to borrow...right. It's not about liquidity either, liquid stocks often can't be borrowed, it's not rare.
I may not trade stocks but I've failed to encounter positions even if with 0 on the shorttables, specifically TQQQ/SQQQ, where I'd be able to short at IB. Seriously, it's like saying the broker won't try to fill your order best efforts agency capacity and they'll do anything you tell them to. If you're saying Sykes shares can't be shorted, he's shorting them. I do see Fidelity doesn't have any shortables for MSTG, and just tried seeing the warning about no shortables, but it's telling me more about hours of operation than whether they'd reject my order if I were to place it. I think it's also that the market's closed, and I can't see any shortables for all stocks anyway.
I don't know what "best efforts agency capacity" is. Makes no sense to me. Sykes may be able to get a few shares short, earning 40% on 10k isn't significant for me, maybe it is for you. Do you see hedge fund people selling signals on Covestor or C2? Real edges don't get sold for change.
So Tim was paid 100K by a penny stock promoter to tell his sheep to short the stock? http://stock.ly/content/display/14735 bwolinsky, I admire your passion on the subject, you must be close to Sykes.. by chance, do you have a mild addiction to sushi?
Purist on food. No condiments. Sykes is an easy target on ET, but only insofar as he's been able to build a very solid track record is the reason I'm speaking up for him. I don't know anything about the conspiracy, and I've never even spoken to him. Cursory glance another newsletter that may make or lose money, but I'm going with make money because most of the penny stocks newsletters involve buying and Sykes only wants to short them, which makes his alerts unique with a very impressive third party track record to boot.
Sykes is a clown and most real traders on Wall Street have no idea who he is, and the ones who have heard of him think is a joke. Anyone with an ounce of trading ability/experience can see right through his bs. He preys upon the new traders/traders with little to no money to trade. Those are the ones who sign up for his alerts and actually think the guy is worthy of following. The fact he aligns himself with some new offshore broker who is looking for underfunded accounts that will get "commissioned" to death speaks volumes of what he is trying to accomplish.
When was IB an offshore broker? Sykes does not earn commissions since he's not a broker. Really, if he doesn't make money then nobody will subscribe. I happen to think he does (make money), but knowing that most of his trades don't qualify, at least we have an idea what the performance might be like for someone who follows him.
Sykes is a shark, he's got no problem pulling in clueless subscribers, largely due to efforts to control his reputation online.. A google of 'tim sykes scam' reveals his own website as the top result, a page filled with unbiased info, addressing any concerns new subs might have. In addition the now defunct site TimothySykesExposed.com appears to have been set up to promote his business and possibly divert web traffic away from real, unsatisfied customers.
Watching his third party portfolio validates the results, but I admit I do not know if what he does for his portfolio are necessarily what he recommends to TimAlert subscribers. I would assume they are similar, but also know that what he does for his subscribers and the trades he makes may be two different things. The trades show a profitable result from real money results, and while I think there could be some difference with the subscription alert service it probably does not reduce the effectiveness of his portfolio that I would assume are the trades he recommends both to TimAlert subscribers and the trades he makes in his Covestor portfolio. Google will always feature negative items before other more relevant items.