Financial Services 

Investing Resources

 

It doesn't matter if you are researching your first potential investment or you are looking for your thousandth day trade of the year, we all need ​information to make informed decisions.

With the constant advancement of technology the amount of resources available is constantly growing. There is far too much information for any individual or even super computer to absorb and we wouldn't want to anyways because this would just cause paralysis by analysis. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that a lot of what you can read on the internet is false and there are people and sources that you can trust more than others. 

Over nearly two decades I have tried almost every reputable information source I could find, I have tested most of the major trading groups, I have monitored social media accounts and I have tracked the results with data to differentiate between what I consider to be reliable sources and scams. These are all personal opinions based on my observations and analysis and surely others will have different opinions, but these are the conclusions I came to with significant analysis and input from others.

I will go over news sources, social media accounts, trading chatrooms and e-mail newsletters.
 

News Sources

First of all the mainstream news sources that can usually be trusted that I sometimes use are:
Bloomberg
Reuters
Barron's
Financial Post

You can also trust the research and news reports from your brokerage if you're with a major bank or trading firm.
On the other hand sources to be wary of are the likes of Motley Fool. These are just bait click articles that can be written by anyone and you may notice conflicting articles from different writers or constant promises of the next big winner (with absurd comparisons like the next Amazon or the next Google) that obviously will perpetually lead to disappointment.

That being said unless you are going to dish out tens of thousands of dollars for the Bloomberg terminal,

or are looking for delayed longer-term investing articles almost all print or online news articles are generally not useful for any breaking information that will impact your trading.

Instead you can opt for live networks (CNBC in the US and BNN in Canada) and audio news squawks that you can listen to in the background like Benzinga, which has a delayed version included with TD ThinkOrSwim and it is also available for a fee on many other platforms. Another well-known option is Trade Ideas. I don't advise rushing into trades based on the latest news headline, no matter your source there are still others who will get the news before you and have already made their trades, but being informed as quickly as possible is never a bad thing.

Social Media

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Social Media has become the dominant news source and this extends to the financial sector as well. StockTwits and Twitter can be the quickest and broadest sources of breaking news, but you have to be very careful of what you believe. Some of the top Social Media Accounts to Follow in my opinion are:

For breaking news from with less bias and more credibility than most others TraderTexMex @TraderTexMex and WalterBloomberg @DeItaone are two of the only people I bother giving my attention to.

For anything biotech Adam Feuerstein is extremely knowledgeable and outspoken: @adamfeuerstein

For Canadian small-caps David Jr Stock Forte is often one of the first to find new high risk high potential reward companies long before they get much investing attention: @thedave2006
 

You can hate sell side analysts as much as you like if you are long only but they are a necessary component of efficient markets and one worth a follow that gets my attention ever time ever since it exposed Sino-Forest sending the beloved shares to 0 is Muddy Waters: @muddywatersre

The list of people to avoid would be much longer but here are a few Social Media accounts to be particularly skeptical of:

Social media is famous for pump and dumps and some of the worst are Zack Morris, The Stock Sniper, and their friends. They work together along with others tweeting and commenting in discord chats about the same stocks over and over to try to get initial moves up on each new post, but in the long-run a lot of the small-cap runners they chase end up crashing. Many times I've seen people buy up a stock they tweet about 10-20% the minute they mention it, only for it to crash back down to below where they claim to have bought it the next minute. Trying to follow these types of accounts is actually a quick and easy way to lose money fast. Markets and market makers are wise to these pump and dumps and will fade irresponsible FOMO (fear-of-missing-out) chasing. You'll see ridiculous profit claims, but I've actually looked into some of their supposed buys and the entire volume on the stock is not even a fraction of the size they are claiming to buy in one shot, plus they use and push their followers to use the WeBull trading platform, which is well-known for paper trading. Add into that the comments and pictures living in small houses with their parents and it's pretty safe to say they are complete frauds with absurd up to million dollar a month profit bragging. 
 

Another mostly bearish stock commentary source is Citron Research, but unlike Muddy Waters they are not usually searching for complete frauds but instead sharing numerous shorter-term trade ideas, sometimes even flip-flopping from long to short or vice-versa. Although they usually get an initial move in stocks after a new report is released the moves usually reverse right after and they have been dangerously wrong often so don't go betting the farm on one of their calls and expecting nothing can go wrong: @CitronResearch

 

Trading Chats

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There are so many new chat rooms popping up with so-called experts claiming they will teach you how to make big profits like them. The truth is there are people who make a lot of money in markets initially, even without experience, but this does not make them an expert and does not mean they can do it again. Many beginners get lucky early in their trading career only to give it all back and more (see my blog post about someone who Lost a $2.5 million in 2 years). If someone won a million dollar lottery you wouldn't all of a sudden go mold your life around them, go work the same job, drive the same car, and play the same lotto numbers expecting you will win too. That is exactly what a lot of people do though when it comes to investing. They hear stories about a friend, someone online, or a so-called professional who made a large sum of money so they believe they just have to do everything the exact same and that will happen to them too. There are successful professionals who trade for a living, but these are few and far between and there are more scams and routes to failure than there are to wealth. 
Most of what are out there right now are Pump and Dumps, which is basically a pyramid scheme. The people at the top make all of the money at the expense of the people at the bottom who all rush to buy and drive up the asset price for the people at the top to sell, then it crashes back down to normal and they are all left with the losses.

I have tested all of the following and can comment based on my experiences as well as the experiences of others. 

I would advise against trying to mirror or blindly follow anyone no matter who they are. Pick and choose your own trades, how much to invest in those trades and at what price to enter and exit. I am skeptical of even most financial advisors, who act in their own self-interest, and no matter how good you are I know from experience we are all wrong at times too. That said none of us can do it all on our own. The market is comprised of many players and working together with others we trust is essential for all traders.
I no longer actively use any chats to directly influence my trading since my win rate, profit percentages and extended stock performance after the initial spike some large groups or news plays can cause, is much better than anything else I have found. 

However, if you are looking to learn to actually trade for a living then one of your best potential choices out there is greatstockpix.com. You won't get text and e-mail alerts and fancy big chat trade alerts plus they will admit the chat looks like something from a teenager's desktop in the 1990's. All that said though if you actually want to learn to be independent and not just follow this is one of your only options. Mike runs the chat and has brought on one of the members Wayne to help him call out trades with live audio and they have also put together a trading course that is an extremely encompassing extra expense for those interested in the undertaking. The main chat itself is reasonably priced if you can get a lifetime membership although the trading course is more expensive. Unlike almost every other chats out there they are in chat most of the day basically every day the markets are open with very few days off. Along with other members they will share news and reasons behind the stock moves and try to share investing ideas before or at worse as they are looking at getting in, which is not the case for almost every other chat I know of that just randomly alert after the buy. Each day around lunchtime they will go over some of their trades and answer any questions along with being available for help at other times throughout the day and into the early after-hours. They are long only and just stocks so you are not going to get any short or option calls, but others in the chat do other types of trading. Don't expect any penny or over-the-counter stocks, they will trade liquid stocks from around a dollar to into the thousands usually with large size, but they will never brag about profit amounts and discourage that among members as well. Therefore, don't expect the big 50% moves some other larger groups trading penny stocks will get and they can still be quick in and out if things do not work as planned, but this doesn't mean their trading methods can't be just as profitable if you learn the why behind the trades instead of just trying to chase the when of the trades. 

RagingBull is being sued for $137 million fraud so you can't even join if you want to right now, but I will still share my warnings since it may apply to others as well. They constantly bombarded potential clients and social media with advertising bragging about their huge gains in hopes of getting more members or existing members to sign-up for new services. They would do free webinars and literally send 20-30 e-mails a day to existing or prospective members because they needed new members or existing members to sign-up for new services to replace the members who were leaving after realizing their scams or losing all of their money. The founder Jason Kowalik (Jason Bond for his trading service to hide his real identity) has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars trading over the past few years but would still brag about his wins and the wins of others they brought into the service. In the end they had many different traders with dozens of different services that were constantly changing from small-caps to biotech to options, each with a different membership fee many in the thousands of dollars a year. They also would re-brand their services regularly, which was a clear warning sign that there were legal troubles behind the scenes. In the end only one of them, Jeff Williams, would actually trade live in chat regularly and was actually trying to provide some education to members. The rest of them (Jason Bond, Kyle Dennis, Jeff Bishop and more) just alerted trades after the fact in chat, by text, by e-mail and later through their app. Even the quickest traders would notice these stocks were usually already up 5%,10%, sometimes even 20% higher that the price they claimed to have bought by the time the alerts were received, so following their trades was a losing game. Even with at times thousand of members pumping their trades they still managed to trade surprisingly horribly and as a result stopped doing live trading because when members could see their trades and holdings they couldn't lie about their entries, exits or profits, which were always exaggerated. I have spoken to members complaining about spending $20,000-$30,000 on fees to join their services and then losing from a few thousand up to $250,000 trying to follow their trades. Imagine paying someone handsomely to teach you to trade and then losing a quarter of a million dollars! In chats and webinars they banned private messaging other members and would screen comments so nothing negative would get posted and they could keep up the charade. Eventually though the authorities came calling with a major lawsuit and cease operations order.

WarriorTrading is another well-known trading chat run by Ross Cameron. He has steadily grown over the years to the point where now he has many members all rushing to pile into his chat alerts each day and so he has also steadily grown the size with which he goes into stocks. He usually finds the biggest pre-market movers puts them on watch and then jumps in whichever one or ones he chooses huge right at the open or early in the day causing massive spikes and then massive falls. He uses speed keys for trading and sometimes is in and out before the average trader could even bring up their order form. Again it's a sure fire way to lose money quickly for almost anyone who follows him, yet some still think they can be fast enough to make a quick buck or that they can guess what he will buy before he does but in these efforts you will be wrong much more often than you are right. He usually only trades for about an hour at the start of the day and has apparently had $100,000 profit trading days, but with this also comes $50,000 trading losses on other days. Overall he appears to make a very good living but most of these profits are made by selling to his followers who are rushing to buy higher and higher right after his alert, only to get filled much higher than his entry and then watch the stock crash down after he sells. Markets and market makers again adapt to these pump and dump scams so he is no longer able to move markets like he once did and now his size and profits are dwindling and many are keen to short those irrational spikes up. He is probably the most dangerous trader to follow as he touts large positions in very volatile stocks and the potential to lose half your money in minutes when things go wrong is not abnormal with trying to mirror his trades.

Tim Sykes has been around for a long time as a penny stock trader initially successful shorting. He tries to sell books and videos and almost everything from him is just a lot of talk with no actual substance. If you go on his website he'll have pictures with private jets or huge stacks of money and make all these claims of big profit strategies that have made him millions which has been emulated by many other trading groups, but in the end you see there is nothing behind all of the smoke and mirrors. He now mostly trades long over-the-counter stocks alerting trades in a chat and by e-mail. Possibly worse than any others the stocks alerted will always be much higher when you get the alert, but somehow he still manages to make very little on most trades. Even with at times almost a thousand members in chat he can barely move tiny over-the-counter penny stocks, so after the initial spike they come down and he usually sells within a few minutes flat or for a slight profit right before the stock goes below his entry. This is a guarantee that everyone who follows his trades and is paying 5-10% higher even right after his alert is losing money as the stocks fall below his entry after he sells. He even talks negatively about stocks to make them go lower so he can buy and tells members to sell when they go above his sell price trying to convince them that they are doomed to crash. Also, after saying how terrible a stock is he will then often buy shortly after, or after saying how great a stock is he will usually sell shortly after as soon as he's in a winning position. To top it all off his e-mail alerts for those who are not in chat often come out with his buy alert right after he has already sold so he is literally telling people to buy after he has sold. Then he annoyingly comments all the time that either he made the right decision selling knowing it would go down further or that he just missed a bigger move when they go up after and others should cash in before it falls back down. He never holds for more than a few minutes and sells as soon as he gets a small move up so of course he's never going to get any big percentage gains. Everything he says and does is just completely catered to his positions at the expense of everyone else. I knew he was a bit of a shyster based on reputation alone but actually observing his chats and trades I was shocked at how bad and immoral of a trader he actually is.

Luke Murray started as a moderator for Jason Bond and Raging Bull then left and started his own chat, often shorting stocks that Jason or other Raging Bull traders would buy. From when he was with Raging Bull and continuing now on his own he makes his money trading stocks very quickly for pennies per share, most of those moves in his favour being caused by his followers'. Almost all of these traders scalp quick gains at the expense of their members but Luke Murray and Tim Sykes are probably the two worst closing out trades usually within minutes for usually small percentage moves that were only caused because of their followers trying to emulate their trades even at worse prices.

Bulls On Wall Street just annoyed me way too much to take seriously. They have several different traders and try to sell trading boot camps, but I can't imagine how anyone could stand listening to Kunal for even a few minutes. He would come into chat blaring music and shouting loudly all pumped up to make big money, then he would shout out trade ideas usually on higher priced very liquid stocks which usually had no movement and he would later sell for a loss. Even some free webinar days where he had tons of prospective members trying to pump whatever he would buy he still could barely get a tick in the right direction after he bought. They are also relentless marketers with non-stop e-mails and promotions if they ever get your information. Just the approach of loud in your face hyped up trading and education with very little actual results to warrant any excitement is extremely irritating.

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E-mail Alerts

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This is an easy one, I don't know of any e-mail subscription newsletters I would use to influence my trading. Some like Capital Ideas Media can bring attention to some smaller-cap Canadian plays you may not be aware of, but trying to outbid everyone else trying buy their latest recommendation is not something that will give you any kind of investing edge. 
That strategy only gets more futile with the likes of the US small-cap newsletters Ultimate Alerts and Fierce Investor. Those two are actually comical in their approach and I am actually shocked they haven't been shut down by security regulators yet. Anyone can sign up for free to receive their e-mail because they get paid tens of thousand of dollars from companies or others with a vested interest in the company to pump their stock. They send out a few promotional e-mails trying to talk up the stock to get others to buy. If you watch the stock moves though you will always notice a big spike in the pre-market or the afternoon before, obviously insiders who know the alert is coming and trying to front-run, then when they alert the stock usually has a big spiked up (the smaller the stock the bigger the spike so some of these penny stocks can move a lot) then again they crash down leaving those chasers bidding it up with huge losses. As with all of the other Pump and Dumps this one can make the early insiders a decent profit if they sell at the right time, but the average person getting one of these e-mails and trying to chase a gap up is destined to lose more often than not. 

Nobody should be sharing dollar amounts of profit claims in my opinion. Everyone trades a different sized account so it is irrelevant if a billionaire made $20,000 on a trade. Do you think Warren Buffet does that every time a stock he owns makes him a few thousand dollars? These are usually just marketing ploys and often lies or tiny profits in percentage terms. 
In summary, be careful of where you get your investing information and no matter how good something sounds never invest more than you are willing to lose. Keep in mind that the information could be false, old news, or the market may react opposite to what you expect.
I hope that I can be of some help to your trading and you can always reach out to me if you have any questions or comments.