Tim Alerts Review – the good and the bad

I signed up for Tim Alerts back in September as my blog shows below. The first thing I’ll mention is that during the entire time. I did not make one trade which Tim recommended. This however, has nothing to do with Tim’s capability as a trader. It was a combination of having funding in a brokerage which allows short selling of pennystocks, as well as timing.

First I’ll say that Tim knows what he’s talking about. And he’s a very smart trader. His track record speaks for itself. You can see his track record at his site www.timothysykes.com. Up 252% or so at the time of this writing on verified “TimAlerts”. However before you go run off to sign up for his service, there are a few things which need to be mentioned. One major thing which people need in order to ‘mimic’ his trades, is that you have to have a broker which allows you to ‘short’ penny stocks. This is not a hard thing to do in theory, however don’t expect to be able to do this with TD, RBC, or Scotia. This pretty much has to be done with a discount brokerage such as TOS (thinkorswim.com), or Questrade, E-trade, etc. The reason for this is that the big ones simply don’t have the shares to short (if you don’t know what this means… please look up shortselling), and won’t borrow them. Tim gets around this with TOS ‘reserving’ shares, which generally has a small cost associated with it. Again, not something I did nor wanted to do in particular, however to ‘copy’ or trade with Tim.. this was something that you’d have to do.

Another issue that a lot of users had with TimAlerts was with the way he sent out the Alerts themselves. He has recently modified his service to utilize SMS alerts, which I think is a GREAT idea. Immediate text alerts directly after Tim made a trade. Previously he had only used emails, and there were complaints about lag times with email, since once Tim made a trade and posted the alert.. there was a chance the stock had already moved a few percentages due to both market movement and Tim and his followers making it move. Neither of these can be helped, even with SMS alerts, but I think it would be interesting if Tim posted or sent out the Alerts.. BEFORE he made the trade.. after all, he’s the guru, I’m sure he can get in and out at the right times (Plus he’s making over 50K with his blog alone, what does it matter the few points that he may miss getting in or out of a position to help his business?)

**UPDATE**

I saved this draft of a review more than a month ago.. and since that time, I believe Tim has had a few more losing trades and is now up 229% at the time of this writing. (down a bit from 252%.. still unreal)

I want to get this review out, so I want to make a few other points before I do. Firstly, don’t expect him to short or buy most stocks that you’ve heard of before. Not that this should matter to anyone since making money is making money, I would short pretty much any company if I knew or thought it was going to tank. Tim is good at finding the plays, no question. Risky? Sure.. but trading in this shitty market is risky even for the long plays!

I’ve also received word that they will sent out SMS Alerts to Canadian customers with an additional cost involved. Kind of sucks if you ask me.. especially when you consider most cell phones have an email type of address associated with it anyhow? ([email protected] for example).

Hmm.. that’s all I can think of as of now. To sum up.. TimAlerts wasn’t for me, but it could definitely be for a lot of other people out there. If you like shortselling and having people tell you what to do, give it a try. The price is most definitely right.