As a matter of disclosure I recently subscribed to Chuck Hughes W.O.W newsletter to observe if his recommendations follow the strategies he described during an internet seminar hosted by Steve Bigalow.
That opened the floodgates to promotional literature from Chuck Hughes’ Wealth Creation Alliance as I expected. After watching a portion of his free training videos I availed myself of his free E-book, Extra Money Made Easy.
This E-book contains many of his trading strategies and what are purported to be portions of his brokerage records to support the huge claims he has been making. On page 19 of this book, Chuck writes “I use an option spread order to close out expiring options and sell to open the new options. My brokerage account spread order below shows that I closed out the expiring JPM Apr 13 45-strike weekly calls and sold to open the Apr 21 45-strike calls.”
He does indeed show the order page from this trade and then makes the claim: “My brokerage account transaction history below shows that my account was credited $886.80 in cash after commission for the sale of the 12 Apr 21 45 calls at .75.”
The problem is that the order page he provides clearly shows this was in fact a spread order with a net credit of .28!! That means the true net credit to his brokerage account was $336.00 BEFORE commissions, not the $886.80 that he claims. He has not included the $564.00 it cost him to close the other half of the trade!
I then noticed that the records he provides to support his trading record are not transaction history, but reports that can be sorted and manipulated to get any results desired. And that not a single report that I could find contained both sides of the spread trades he claims to be using to roll out his covered call positions. The huge credits shown as monthly income are only one half of any option sales that are part of a spread order. The cost of covering and closing the open position of the previous month are not part of the record. If the ratio of deceit for the entire account is similar to that exposed above, his true monthly income is only about 30% of what his is claiming.
In addition to the math used to calculate his annual percentage returns (which would embarrass a third grader), I must assume that with a large portion of his actual trades not being included in this promotional book, none of the rest of it can be accepted as reliably true.
BUYER BEWARE!!!!