I just got a direct mail piece about a free book and how to make 17 profitable trades every day the market is open. It was sent as a newspaper clipping with a "post-it" from someone named J, trying to give me the impression someone who knew me sent it. The book is free, all I need to do is call a machine and leave a name and mailing address (which it appears they already have). What the %&^$? Will this put me on the mailing list from hell, or what? Anyway, who is Gary Halbert, and why does he want to give me a free book?
From what I can find on Google, he is a marketing guru who claims to be able to sell anything. I think the stock deal is just his latest foray into trying to market a product. I found where he was convicted and served some time in jail. If anyone has any other experience or information - especially firsthand - I would like to hear. But, from my research it appers this is more marketing spin than anything else.
got the same thing in the mail, to look like someone I knew sent it to me (with no return address) , I think it had a fake newpaper-like article enclosed. best place for it was the trash bin.
A few years ago, he gave a seminar about trading of stocks. I believe he advised traders to look at pertinent news releases (don't remember now where he said to look)before the market opened. IF anyone could learn to pick the really important news releases, and as I recall he had a program to teach what to look for. supposedly one could buy the stock, as supposedly many others would buy the stock when the news was released to general public. Sounded like a good idea, BUT too often the insiders already know the news before it's even released by "fly on the wall" or Blumberg or others. That's most likely what is now being talked about, as I too received the free offer. HTH. Oh yes, IMHO Gary is a genius on direct marketing etc.
When I first started trading (about 4 years ago) I responded to the same ad, from the way you guys are explaining it. The deal at the time was, you send him a check (postdated 30 days in advance so you can stop payment if you aren't satisfied) for $3700. I did this, and I stopped payment of the check of course. He really didn't teach anything revolutionary. There were 2 audiocassettes, and basically he told you to go to Businesswire.com and PRNewswire.com at the end of the day for a couple of weeks, reading every headline and looking back at the chart to see what happened immediately afterward to each stock that was mentioned in the story. He told you to look for key words like 'FDA' 'surprise earnings', etc. This would give you a feel for how stocks reacted to market news. When you got the hang of it, you could start trading news releases as they happened, and 'sell into the spike' that was created by the buying pressure. Also, if you watched CNBC, you would buy a stock whenever Joe Kernan or somebody mentioned it in some sort of favorable way. There was nothing wrong with this approach 4 years ago, but it's something anyone could have figured out without too much trouble. Also, he made it much easier than it sounds; he claims he could make $150k/day with this strategy. At the time, he was also claiming he was almost finished working on some way to beat the options market, which or course was going to cost another 3 or 4 thousand to buy the tapes for that one. So I don't even know if he's peddling the same thing now, or some other strategy.
he may be the greatest direct mail letter writer of all time. he can sell ice to the eskimos.TRULY!!!!!!.... however i seriously doubt that he has anything of value to offer traders if he been promoting this for 4 years and almost no one can substantiate any success using whatever method he is promoting.... look even WAXIE.... the info slickster has a boatload of testimonials......