Tim Sykes Weekly Fortunes Tim Sykes Agora Financial Bill Bonner Out of date investment advice Baltimore MD Maryland
The publication Tim Sykes Weekly Fortunes is supposed to provide subscribers with weekly alerts to purchase penny-stocks which Sykes believes offer potential for substantial short-term gains.
In the short time I've been receiving the publication, virtually all of the buy alerts I have received have arrived in my email after the price of the stock has passed the limit price which Sykes recommends buying it at. Then, (as anticipated) he sends out a sell alert to either take profits or minimize losses. On too many of these alerts, the price available on the market has already dropped below the limit price which Sykes recommends the subscriber sells for.
To really add insult to injury Sykes reports in his alerts that subscribers who followed his advice had earned returns which are calculated using prices which existed when he made the determination the stock was a buy or ready to sell which were far different from what any subscriber was likely to receive.
An example is a recommendation to buy CNET at no more than $3.20 issued at about 11:34 am on April 19th. A review of the chart of stock prices reveals that, at best, subscribers had about 5 minutes (or less) to enter in their purchase, and then when the sell alert was issued the next day at 10:45 am to sell at $3.35 the price had already dropped below that level within 2 or 3 minutes. With the delay in delivering the email alert, it is unlikely that anyone was able to sell at the recommended level. In spite of this Sykes reported that people who had followed his advice should have realized a gain of at least 20%.
The fact is that to gain 20% on a purchase of $3.20 one would have to sell at $3.84 without taking into account commissions which one pays to do the trades.
The scam these people are engaged in is that there are no refunds issued for cancellation of the subscriptions but a guarantee is made that over the course of a year Sykes will extend the subscription free-of-charge if he has not made at least 20 profitable recommendations. If he is calculating a 20% return on a trade that none of his subscribers had enough time to react in, he is pulling off a scam because nobody is realizing any value from his recommendation.
Agora Financial is the publisher of the report who administers the subscription and Bill Bonner is the founder of Agora.