For the life of me.. I keep paying this guy $30 or whatever it is a month.. and yet.. I’m not taking advantage! Well, truthfully.. the reasons aren’t anyone’s’ fault, I think the reason is more of a funding problem at to why I’m not trading much using his recommendations.

It’s certainly not from lack of emails that he sends out (usually more than 3 a day), nor the problem with the actual trades or pennystocks that he alerts us on. In fact the stocks he alerts on are usually very valid and certainly worth playing for the most part. I think part of the reason is that I get the emails or alerts likely 3 or 4 minutes after he makes the trade. By this time, the stock has already made a significant move for the most part, not always, but I’d have to say 90% of the time.

That’s not the reason I don’t trade them however, like I say, it’s more a matter of funding. Right now, I’ve had my money tied up in one stock in my ThinkOrSwim trading account, that stock is DRYS (averaged in at 5.98 an 6.66), using buy/write strategies to slowly make a good percentage over time. So far this has been working great, hopefully it will continue and I should really open up a seperate account to ‘play’ with.

I was going to try his latest short which was GVPB, however thankfully ThinkOrSwim didn’t have the shares to short as Tim has so far lost $4000 on it as it’s soared to 0.80 at the time of this writing (the short alert came out at 0.56-ish). Not a big deal as Tim feels like Kanye on the MTV music awards in that he lost a lot of people some cash on that one and feels horribly. That said, there is a real chance that the stock is going to break down to nothing soon enough, it’s just that Tim can’t risk the cash, nor reputation on one play.

So I keep paying over $30 a month (price has now gone up to $50 USD/month) and I really don’t have much intention of quitting the service, consider it a type of business insurance that I keep it. I know that Tim is going to make money, after all.. the man has verified trades and is up close to 500% if not more so far (turning 12,000 to 72,000 in almost 2 years).. so why would I quit the service right now?

I’ve reviewed his service in the past when I renewed TimAlerts service as well as when I originally started with TimAlerts, and I will continue to keep you up to date on it.

I guess the reason that I’ve not posted much, is that I’m actually not DOING much. The markets for some mysterious reason keep going up, and for the life of me I’m waiting for a bit of a correction to occur. There is just too much uncertainty to keep it moving forward in my opinion, what’s going on down there with our neighbours to the south anyhow? To think a few months ago in March the TSX index was under 8000 points, and it’s now hovering around 11500 at the moment..well, that’s a pretty darn good recovery if you ask me! Of course, you’d only realize those nice 40% returns if you invested at the bottom (which I realize no one did as they were way too busy watching their account balances dwindle)

I can tell you that I have once again begun to trade with CMC Markets… I can’t help it. I’ve given up poker for the most part, there’s something about the ‘knowledgeable gamble’ that really attracts me, and the leverage and ease of use for CMC Markets really attracts me. I’ve been playing Oil Futures almost exclusively as I really like the way it moves, and as long as I don’t hold over major announcements (such as crude inventories, etc).. the CRAZY swings aren’t as common.

The good news is that since I’ve put in $1000 not even a month ago, my balance is now at $1600 and that’s after cashing out $115 after about 2 weeks. Hmm.. 75% since the 18th of August. I’ll take that thank you very much.

I still own DRYS in my long-term account, which is kind of nice since it went up around 8% yesterday alone, nothing spectacular going on, so I will likely do another Buy/Write strategy soon if DRYS keeps moving up.

My Smith Maneuvre is still up in the air. I need to sit down and figure out what I’m going to do with the money that I’ll be borrowing to invest… I have close a lot of money that I could put somewhere however I’m trying to decide the best way to go long-term. I wouldn’t be opposed to a no-load (no fees/commissions) mutual fund, however I’m starting to debate that it’s going to give me the returns I want. I guess a fella has to get off his ass and do something about it if he wants to start soon. I still love my idea of putting $500 a month into one equity/mutual fund/etc.. in order to dollar cost average. There are lots of people that don’t like this strategy, but I think it’s a solid way to invest. What’s the harm in trying anyhow?

In the meantime, trying to decide how to purchase a new car for Liz.. will post about that soon.. Lease vs Own vs Used vs New.. GAH!

Well as you know from my first TimAlert trade, and subsequent missing of the exit of Tim, I had held onto my ‘GROW’ short a lot longer then what was likely a good idea.

I’m writing this post a few days weeks after I’ve closed my position. In fact, I’m sort of kicking myself cuz as usual, the day after I close my position, the stock moved rather large in the direction I wanted it to. It doesn’t really matter to me, I was right in my assumption that it was still a bad chart and it was going to move down again anyhow, this is actually not a PennyStock to Tim’s standards, so I knew if I held on, it would tank eventually.

I closed my position at 8.22 on the 19th of July, after watching it bounce of the 8.00 mark a few times (see chart below.. the cross hair is where I sold).

So as you can see, I did exit it at the proper time that day… almost nailing the low of the day actually. However if I had just waited until Monday, I would have realized a lot more gains in that it plummeted to 7.80 and below the next day. Oh well… left some on the table. A win is a win, and I’ll take it. 0.48 x 35 = $16.80.. yep.. a big winner indeed.. however wait a minute, I only invested $300… so a 5.5% gain… hey, that’s not laughable.

Mind you, I’m more interested in my buy/write of LYG which is working out pretty well so far… the 2 options I sold for $1.80 are now worth only $1.10 (0.75 for the call, and 0.35 for the put) at the moment, and dropping as time goes on… unfortunately the stock has dropped as well to 4.51, which, from my $5.90 entry price, is a good 23% decline… having said that, 11.3% was today.. BUT the big news is that it announced a huge dividend of $0.8477a share for people holding stock before June 23rd.. and who was? I WAS!! so that’s another $84.77 which I will be paid on the 30th of June (according to SEC filing).

Nice.

Well.. it did a 2:1 stock split in April of 2007, with it’s high being 34.95.. so that’s pretty darn close to $70.. anyhow.. you get my point.. Anyhow at 4:45pm Tim sent me an alert to short GROW (of course he got in at 5.95 but by the time I looked at the silly stock, it was at 5.55) So I took a look at ThinkOrSwim’s status on the stock and it is ‘hard to borrow’.. so I (for the first time) consulted the chat and here was the conversation:

19:53 lencurrie: Looking to short just 35 shares… fee involved?
19:53 TOS: ok we have that would you like me to place a order?
19:53 lencurrie: please yes
19:53 lencurrie: is there a different fee involved?
19:53 TOS: what price
19:53 TOS: 12% hard to borrow fee
19:54 TOS: it will cost you around a dime a day to short 35 shares
19:54 lencurrie: 8.60 is fine
19:54 lencurrie: oh ok thank you
19:54 TOS: that order is working
19:55 lencurrie: thanks very much
19:55 TOS: your welcome
19:55 TOS: bye

Ok first thing you’ll say is.. 85 shares?? are you kidding me?? that’s so little it hardly makes any sense to do!! And to your point.. I know. It is, in fact it’s so little I barely expect to make enough to cover the commissions.. however.. it’s still $300 that I have in action.. and I’m thinking that this may go down to $8 if I’m lucky.. profitting me $21, that’s a 7% profit which I will take. And this was my FIRST TimAlert ever shorted.. so we’ll see if it ends profitably.. and if so, I will continue with larger amounts.. I mean.. you have to start somewhere right?  Plus this was the first time I ever shorted a ‘hard to short’ stock.. so it’s nice to have that under you belt as well to be comfortable with it.

What’s interesting is the play after the TimAlert goes out .. check out the following graph:

You can see where Tim likely bought his short at 4:36pm or at 4:44 as he shorted 2000 shares at $5.95.. You can then see the amount of volume which crushed this stock leading into the close with the spikes as they are. Funny about that eh? To my estimation he could have made $800 just by sending out his alert and covering at $8.50 as the TimFollowers shorted GROW as well, however I don’t think he’s doing that.

I have another larger trade which I performed today as well which I will post right after this one.

We’ll see when the ‘COVER!’ Alert comes out on this TimAlert.. be interesting to find out when he’s going to cover up and if I’ve missed the big drop.. (personally I don’t think so).

Ok.. even though Tim never responded to my initial review.. I don’t hold it against him… Christ.. how can I? The guy has done unbelievably well.. now up over 355 % and is making a killing online in blog revenue.

That said, a lot has changed since that last review.. most notably, I have decided to return to Tim’s TimAlert service to see how well I (he) can do. I will make sure I post my successes and failure here.

I’ve also easily found out how to short ‘hard to borrow’ stocks using ThinkOrSwim software which is what I currently use. Its’ as simply as opening up a chat window ‘support request’ and asking to reserve them! I’ve asked about fees.. and they said that some are free, and some charge anywhere from 2% to 15% depending on how hard they are to find.

As I sit here waiting for my login to be re-enabled, I’m looking forward to reserving shares tomorrow and perhaps getting started… but we’ll see how it goes

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? (555-555-5555@txt.bell.ca 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.

I will post my review fully once I get into the groove a bit.. Right now I’m just funding my trading account to see how well I can do. I know one thing.. my main interest is preserving my capital!

Let’s see how you do Tim!