Trade Signal Services... a bit of debunking.

I've been testing some trade signal services in the background, I may have alluded to that in the past but I thought that I would put it out there now as I am doing a fair amount of that now. I figure that I may as well see if there is any truth in the hubbub.

My plan has been to sign up, pay the cost, do some back testing on previous trades that they have logged then do some testing with current trades. If the current trades, during the trial period, cover the entire cost of the membership then I may continue using them. So far I have ended up cancelling every one except two, those two are still in testing as their trial periods have not expired.

Some of these have been $2500 up front which includes an annual membership, others as little as $500 for the same time period. This is certainly not a case of you get what you pay for.

I have found that most are upfront with any guarantees and have been quick with processing any refunds. Usually the trial period is not quite long enough to provide a thorough test, at least not in all cases. I am in one now that has a 90 day trial... so far that is the best guarantee I have run across. Others are usually 30 days only.

Some have given far too many signals as they try to accommodate ANY stock I may select and provide signals on those. Others have provided picks with entry prices but the picks seem to be all over the place as far as numbers are concerned...and too many of them. Others have just plain been losers over the last six months, even though one case the trade that I tried worked out well enough... too few trades setup so I couldn't really do much testing live.

One of the current services, options only, has provided a few trades to get into, none have panned out yet but they are longer term trades, weeks instead of day... good thing it is a 90 day trial. Of four trades I have entered, two were ones that I was already tracking, one I had already entered a few days prior to their signal and I exited a few days prior to their exit signal ... profitable trade but can I give them credit for it? Perhaps. I was in a stock position rather than an option position and they had an interesting twist to trading that one with options. I must give them credit in that they did some research as they timed the entry well and the exit slightly better than I did based on more than just chart reading.

Actually, so far I find their information more thorough than other services I have seen. They are using information and data that I cannot easily get access to with paying a lot for it. They are also processing this data over many different stocks and making recommendations based on their prior trading knowledge...this is not a "system" so much as an advisory service... so far I like it and think that I may keep it running for a while. At least I will compare returns on their system with returns on mine... even though I am still tweaking I am at a point of looking for some profits to start showing up. My trades I have open I let go through the pullback this week past as I figure that the pullback is not going to be as long lived as thought.

What all these services have shown me, that I already knew to be honest, is that they don't really work out as well as advertised. The ads are either misleading, erroneous or just plain subversive. I have stayed away from the ones that talk about making millions, fast or only a few minutes a day and concentrate more on selling a lifestyle than talking about trading. With two unfinished trials as exceptions so far.

For the record, any trades that I have talked about here have all been my picks and trades with no overlapping into any service provided trades.

If anyone reading this wants to ask about a service that they might be considering or one that they tried and liked, drop me an email. If I have looked at that one I can give you my honest opinion. If I haven't seen It I may just give it a try myself.

Jeff.