# Timothy Sykes, Cameron Fous - Thoughts?



## KaeJS (Sep 28, 2010)

Hey everyone.

What are your thoughts on people like Timothy Sykes and Cameron Fous? 
I mean - If these guys are so successful... How come we are all sitting around this forum talking about what we are buying and asking questions at all?

The purpose of buying stocks or trading is to make money. If these guys are making so much money on a daily basis, then how come we all aren't doing it?

Has anyone tried this before? I would be interested to know if anyone has signed up for a trading program like Timothy Sykes and Cameron Fous offer.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Sykes

http://www.timothysykes.com

http://fousalerts.com

Timothy Sykes posts his trades on Profit.ly. Looks like there might be some sort of sponsorship there?

http://profit.ly

Please discuss.


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## GoldStone (Mar 6, 2011)

You can't be serious man. You CANNOT be serious.


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## lonewolf (Jun 12, 2012)

There are some real good deals out there. I keep getting phone call with a recording that tells me if I sign up for a credit card I get a free trip.


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## The ruined man (Apr 10, 2014)

As a youngster i remember flipping through the pages of comic books and coming across the ads for "REAL XRAY GLASSES!!" or " IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS WITH A REAL HOVERCRAFT FOR 99cents!!"
Why do these pages remind me of that?
The only guys making money here are the website owners and advertisers because people sign up and fork over $74 a month believing they can get rich quick. While some may get lucky, i'm sure you won't hear them mention how some poor guy lost his shirt.

To be honest i would rather read the opinions of the knowledgeable members of this forum regarding investment ideas & stocks and do my research. I doubt i will get rich, but i would rather have my $74 monthly subscription making 8% with SGY than giving it to a huckster with a backwards cap.

I don't know if it's been tried on CMF before but why don't we set up a section where everyone posts their latest stock buys and keeps track of profits AND losses.


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## KaeJS (Sep 28, 2010)

Well, I'm not going to participate in their programs.

But I am interested to know "why" it doesn't work for the average investor who subscribes to their program. If they follow the program like they should, then should they not make money?


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## GoldStone (Mar 6, 2011)

Do you have independent audited report confirming their performance?

Assuming the performance is real, how you know that survivorship bias is not at play?

10,000 monkeys make outrageous speculative bets. One monkey bets right 5 times in a row. Voila!!! Call him a stock market guru. Put the monkey on profit.ly and market the hell out of him.

(don't forget to hire a good lawyer to write a bullet-proof disclaimer)


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## fatcat (Nov 11, 2009)

you are confused kae because you are missing what they are selling
it's right in front of you and you can't see it

they are making money selling their systems to you :biggrin:

if his system really worked he would be creating his own fund and selling you shares ... but he isn't

selling systems to make money in stocks, gold and real estate is a business in and of itself that goes back 100 years

all you need is a cheap suit and tie, a web design program and questionable moral values ...


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## KaeJS (Sep 28, 2010)

Thank you for everyone's input.

I do appreciate it.

fatcat - you do make a good point in terms of what their business model is. Ideally, if the guy can make $300k/year trading stocks and he is already a millionaire, why would he even bother with students at all?

If I knew how to make $300k/year trading and I already had a net worth of a few million, I know that I wouldn't bother with it. I'd just keep making my trades and call it a day. It seems like too much hassle to deal with the website, students and not to mention being infamous.

As I said - I never had any intention of purchasing a program. Although lots of people here question my trading techniques (which, is understandable at times and I don't blame anybody) I know that I am successful in trading. Yes, I take losses every now and then like everybody else and I don't have a million dollars in net worth. However, with the little money I do have I know that I am able to post better returns that simply buying and holding.

I would still be interested to hear some feedback from someone who may have tried one of these programs though. I am more interested in how successful it is as making the student or follower money, as opposed to how successful it is for the trader selling the program.


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## el oro (Jun 16, 2009)

The tool of their trade is penny stocks. If you want to get rich quick with penny stocks, there are a few options:

1) Analyze the underlying company and invest in the undervalued or high potential.
2) Buy, Pump, Dump
3) Short and expose pump and dumpers
4) Technical analysis or some such zero-sum method
5) Get great results doing a combination of the above (or claim that you did), then charge others to teach them how to do the same.

Penny stock trading, like poker, is a zero (or negative after fees) sum game. That is, unless penny stocks in aggregate are great wealth generators for buy and holders over time (I doubt it). So, like poker, the big winners are funded by a LOT of losers. Where else do you think the money is coming from?


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## Causalien (Apr 4, 2009)

Timothy Sykes I know pretty well. Been following him for a while but never signed up. 
A few fact I can tell you but I will refrain from personal observations since that'd be libel.
I don't remember which program it was, but he used to have his portfolio on some other investment tracking site and it showed impressive gains to the tunes of several hundred thousands shorting penny stocks. A few years later, that website had to discontinue his account due to violation of some policy. Mind you, these trade tracking websites are less than real time in their stock quoting. But that is just in my opinion since Real Time quote cost a lot and I don't know how they have enough income stream to cover that. The current website that tracks him has some business entanglement with Sykes himself. So incentive wise I do not believe the seperation is far enough. 

Timothy Syke's newsletters, like every rock star trader newsletters suffers from the coat tail effect. Where a bunch of people believe in someone's trade and give him a multiplier effect on his trade by following the buys and sells. Like any investor/trader who announces their trades, they are trying to leverage the public's money to move the stock in the direction they want when in reality, they are secretly doing the opposite. Just watch the recent Herbalife fight. 

In my own estimate, only the ones who sign up and gets the newsletter right away from Timothy gets the benefit of the trade. So about 5% benefits from the coattail effect while the rest will miss out. As someone grows more famous, a crowd of inverse coattail effect appears where people will short the Timothy Sykes spike just because they know it will eventually fade. 

So the more famous a strategy, the less effective it became. That's why, when you developed a money earning algorithm, you keep it a secret for as long as you can until it doesn't make money anymore for an individual. Then you sell it to those High Frequency Trading firms to eek out pennies in a milisecond.


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