*AV*-- I read your post here and decided to sit back and carefully evaluate what you have written and to respond in a non defensive manner. The best way I can do this is to just respond in bullter format.
1. I have no record of ever sending you a newsletter and I do keep records of all trial subscribers. If you would be so kind as to send me your email address and the name you used, I will go back and check the timeframe you received the newsletter and see what transpired there.
2. We make observations and present ideas for consideration and leave the final decision to the reader. If you made a decision based on the information presented, you do so with the knowledge you did additional work and felt comfortable.
3. If you waited until we made the actual purchase (we are watching and monitoring) you should have seen all of these doscumented in the newsletter. We are trying to bring as much information to the forefront as possible but we also document the trades that are made.
4. I do not recall doing some of the things your alluded to. As a matter of fact, we document all buys and sells and track them for all to see. Anyone who waited until they saw our actual buys and sells, then mimicked those trades a day later made equivalent or slightly less gains than reported. However, rarely, if ever, waiting for RadarView to make its move, has caused anyone to get involved in a losing situation, but rather less gains. And sometimes we got out too soon and those that waited, made significantly ,more profits (ASML, MKSI, LTXX, ADEX)
5. We have made wrong decisions and they have been documented in the newsletter for all to see and we have sold stocks for a loss, on occasion. We make mistakes but our success rate is far greater than the losses sustained.
6. I take exception to the spamming of other threads since CYMI and maybe 1 other thread are frequented by me. Each of the ventures over to those threads was by invitation. As far as the contests are concerned, they were not of my doing. I responded to requests made by private email to offer some prizes for the CYMI contests. I agreed.
7. If I were really spamming, I would not keep it to the minimum threads and I would be going after the high volume threads like the INTC, AMAT, or other mega threads.
8. The spamming on Stock Swap I will not disagree with but most of it is also due to private email that I choose to respond in public with on this thread.
9. EBNK was a debacle but we did caution everyone about the risk and we eventually cried uncle and took our lumps. However, we also brought another high risk stock to light on Stock Swap, namely ESFT recently . Not that one balnaces out the other, but the gains in ESFT, a $5 stock when first brought to attention here, was lowerer than the price of EBNK. ESFT is now in the mid 30s. In addition to this, we shared PKTR with the community here, another risk play, which went from $30 to $75.
10. While the above is self-serving, you have pointed out EBNK which was the worst stock of the year and a stock where the select readers were advised of its risks. We went overboard trying to keep EBNK current through private mail. We, on numerous occasions asked for email addressses to keep people current as the stock started to fade away. We kept current with those interested. If you had participated we might have been able to reduce some of the losses
11. On many occasions I have made it perfectly clear where my core competence was and that when I go off into non core areas the risk rises exponentially.
12. Probably the most distressing part of your message is that you managed to lose money on the following stocks. Wfr, sybs, alyd, ebnk, asyt, etec and some others.
13. First of all, I never have spoken about SYBS and have never taken a position in that stock. I find it extremely hard to see how anyone could have lost money on WFR, ASYT, and ETEC. We spoke of these stocks when they were extremely low and we made extreme profits on these stocks. I would suggest that greed got the best of you on these stocks. We were swinging from a chandelier on WFR when it was in single digits and took it to $21 on 2 occassions. Presently we are in a $1 loss position on WFR, but have been in and out a half a dozen times this year. At current prices, it is attractive.
14. ASYT was virutally impossible to lose money on all year long. You would have to have waited for it to hit $51 this past week and bought it then. This would put you down close to $2. Anyone who is a subscribers know that we had a "do not chase" on this stock after it reached into the mid 30s. So it was virtually impossible for anyone to have invested in ASYT at much higher prices to crearte a loss position.
15. ETEC - I believe we had one exit that was at a loss but we had a few gaining positions that offset the losses.
16. ALYD - I tkae full repsonsibility for that stock even if it was brought to our attention by another member of this thread. But if you remember, when the shenanigans began with some private placement of shares, we were very vocal on this thread about what was going on and made our exits. As a matter of fact, we had close to 8 profitable positions in ALYD before things went south and we were vocal about taking our lumps and exiting. Not that is make a bit of difference but I still own 1000 original shares at $8 per share from the very first entry. This is not such a loss right now, given that we rode this stock up from $8 to the mid 30s, got out (Documented here), watched it back down again, and rode it up and down a few times.
We mentioned we were getting to close to the flame at times and that eventually we would get burned. As the CSGI-ALYD wars continued, we all saw that both were going to suffer. Part of the game is to know when to walk away.
As we said, we made money on many occasions on ALYD over the last few years. We also never had ALYD in the newsletter other than to share a story or use it as a negative example.
15. You are 100% correct in our not giving specific buys and sells for many of the stocks. On the tables we do explain the concept of Buy Zones that are adjusted as a stock retreats. We also have always had LLTs (lower limit triggers) in place to protect profits and to minimize losses. Every reader of the newsletter is fully aware of most of the LLTs and BZs. We present good ideas and try to provide enough background information for the reader to make a decision as to whether it is appropriate to monitor, watch, or do more extensive research. We refuse to tell anyone when to buy ans when to sell. Beside it running afoul of the SEC, we need to leave the final decision to the reader. If you were looking for specific buys and sells implemented, all that was necessary was to look at the tables that documented the entries and exits. Normally a one day delay (the next market open) does not have too much of an impact on the prices achieved.
16. On the rader screen is simply that we are watching the stock. NO more, no less. We are looking for an appropriate entry. Most of the time we are looking for the stock to hit a bottom and show a small positive turnaround before entering. On other occasions we are buying on the "U" curve by taking 3 positions. Hopefully it is a position as the stock is bottoming, when it hits bottom, and when it starts moving up positively.
17. If you read the newsletter correctly (and in the original response to a trial request) you will see I tell everyone to feel free and ask questions if they do not understand something. I would have gladly explained anything you may have questioned.
18. Watching a stock that winds up being a sell normally has to do with the stock getting close to a lower limit trigger exit. The market is dynamic and when we see profits erode we exit to protect them. The market acts in cycles and eveyone knows that. We try to buy low and sell high. Once a stock declines significantly we hardly ever use that as a selling point. We either average down or ride out the storm until the stock recovers. Most of them recover nicely. IF you remember the CIEN-TLAB debacle from earlier this year, CIEN collapsed in dramatic fashion. If you held your ground, you would have been in a significant profit position right now.
19. In your newsletter I also saw where you would write about maybe 10 stocks, a week later when one of them jumps in price you say something like "hope you bought 'xxx' last week when I shared this with the subscribers, if you had only bought 2000 shares you would have paid for a lifetime of subscriptions." You conveniently don't mention the other 9 stocks that went down in price. This puts you right there in line with the other newsletters I have taken. Write about lots of stocks, and then claim victory by picking out the ones that were winners.
I do take somewhat of an issue with this last comment. For a period of time, during some heavy trial interest, I did use that phrase since we had highlighted 2-4 stocks for the week. Most of these concentrated discussions yielded decent profits within the week. It was intuitively obvious which stocks were being heavily discussed by the paragraphs and data presented in the newsletter. If you chose to go with one of the other 70 stocks that appear on tables or to chase a new idea prematurely, that was apersonal decision. We only used that term for those stocks that were heaviliy emphasized.
20. Most of the statemtn you made above in italics is patently untrue and false. Every reader sees the transactions as realtime as possible and can differentiate stocks we are discussing to bring people up to speed, with those that we are ready to make an appropriate move.
My newsletter is different because we never wave a flag and say you have to buy this. Everything is to be evaluated and the final decision is the reader's. However, if you wanted to use the newsletter as a means of determining what to buy and what to sell, all you had to do was follow the transactions in the Buy Zone Acquisition table and mimic some of those trades and not read the other information.
21. Do not get me wrong and I am trying not to be defensive, but you pose a very uncharacteristic situation. Our overriding strategy has been to let profits present themselves and to protect profits. The one thing that sticks out in my mind is how you could have possibly lost any money on ASYT. It was almost an impossibility since it is trading at historic highs right now. Just because a stock retreats due to herd mentality, it is no reason for an exit on a fundamentally sound company. We have been outwardly bullish and vocal on both CYMI and ASYT for all of this year and played a few volatility cycles. However, each of these stocks is trading near record high levels and have been very profitable. Your timing had to have been way after the cows were out of the corral to buy high and sell low here.
22. Not to insult you, but if your losses came back in 1997 when the downturn was at its worst, good portfolio management would have had you go to the sidelines and wait for the recovery like many of us did. IF your trial subscription was earlier in this year, you would have seen we held fast to our Q2-Q3 recovery timeframe from more than a year and a half ago. That is why it is imperative to verify you were indeed a trial subscriber and what the time frame was. Once I know that, I will review the week's worth of newsletters and respond again to your claims.
23. This is a thread that is always tolerant of all comments from all sources and your comments are welcome here. I hope I have not said anything offensive since I am just responding to your comments. I am truly sorry you lost thousands of dollars, but I am at a loss at to how it happened.
24. If you were unfortunate enough to make some investment based on the trial subscription of just one week and did not email me about the positions as they might have changed in this dynamic marketplace, this is unfortunate. I respond to almost all of the email I receive. Sometimes it is not timely but I do make the effort.
25. While I am not going to use this as an excuse, it appears to me you failed to ask relevant questions prior to taking whatever positions you took that resulted in losses. Furthermore, to take a position on the trial week and not follow up with me was not wise. The reason for the trial subscription was to get a feel for the style and content and hopefully help you make an informed choice on a stock that you felt comfortable with.
There are many Stock Swap members that are not subscribers that I converse with through email and this thread. The fact that we have not corresponded through private mail or email(I have no record and I can't find your email address in your profile)suggests that you might have not taken the time to have meaningful discussions with me on any of the losses. My private responses are not based on who is a fee paying subscriber.
I have received negative private email from people and have published the messages here with a response. Therefore, I am curious as to why we did not have any private discussions prior to this public one. It also doesn't help that this is the first post for you as a member which did not preclude you from prior conversations.
26. RadarView's intent was to bring as few losers to the table for discussion and to maximize the winners. We did not adovate chasing Internet stocks like YHOO, AOL, etc. since we do not believe the risk reward equation was in our favor. Hoever, we were wrong since psychotic exuberance rules the day here. We did not discuss EBNK in the newsletter extensively and it was taken offline as an extremely risky proposition, which ultimately did not work out. If we were prefect, we would be living in an exotic environment and would not need to be investing still. We make mistakes, we own up to them, but our mistakes are minimal compared to the successes. So when you state you have a 96% failure rate, it is inconceivable to me that is could have occurred.
27. I made maybe 25 buys and lost on all but 1, following your tips. You are a much more talented writer than I am, and I am sure you can come back with very good sounding reasons for all of this. I am not asking for a response. Just think of me as a very unlucky investor.
28. No, I will not come back with a very good sounding reason for all of this. I have readers who have tracked their own trades and those of RadarView. Over the past 12 months we probably have not had 24 losing positions in total. Whe stocks went down,we were patient and waited for them to present profits. It appears that you have to be the unluckiest person or that you were not patient. You may have even mixed up some of your trades with other posters since SYBS was never a trade. The 24 losing positions could not have come from a one week trial either. Therefore, most of these losses have had to come from discussions here on Stock Swap. For that, we have the netire community here who have a good idea of how accurate our discussions have been. And when you consider that MIPS, ESFT, PKTR, DY, CYMI, ASYT, and a few others are as close as I have ever come to waving the BUY ME flag, it is surprising that you only had one winner in the bunch.
We have had our share of losing positions since we never said we were perfect. As a matter of fact, we have a few positions like PLXT, SGI and WFR we are in the red presently, but we see good thing happening down the road.
At the end of every month we have a documented record of all the exits and current positions. We would appreciate an email from you with the list of losing positions with the dates of purchase and subsequent selling and match it with what we have documented in RadarView for that timeframe. We do not mind, if you are willing, to have those positions posted here on Stock Swap and allow me the opportunity to respond to each and every trade.
It is not that I question you but rather we need to understand why your trades went sour and which trades they were. The reason for the email is to determine which group of trial subscribers you were in such that I can contact the others in your group and ask for confirmation of how well they did during that timeframe.
I am running a business and gladly accept the criticism you put forth. however, if indeed you beleive we were not clear enough, we would like to remedy that situation inorder that it does not occur again. You can be a great help in improving the newsletter and make it more understandable.
A vast majority of the subscribers have made significanat gains and you are in the minority. Information from you can help us reduce that to a bare minimum if we understand where you got off track. Of all the original subscribers from last year, we had a 90% renewal of their subscription. Therefore, I have to assume that 10% of the original subscribers were either displeased or did not find value in the newsletter. IF this holds up into the next renewal cycle, we will be very pleased with a 90% success rate but will try to improve upon that next year.
Finally, I did admit to spamming the newsletter here but on most occasions, it came with some decent information on other ideas or it was inrepsonse to an email or prior post. Anytime you can get some advertising, it does pay off, so I will not apologize for doing it. However, I did try and will continue to try to revitalize this thread and to bring more independent and indivudual ideas to the forefront like what stevieboi has done recently.
I have taken the time to respond and ask that we analyze your particular case since it would help others. And if anything contained here sounds like a cop out or a good sounding reason for failure, please do not interpret it that way. I provided a response and want to revise this reply to reflect the specifics of your particular issues. This is truly the only way to understand what took place. So, whether it is here on Stock Swap or through private email, I want to get to the bottom of this.
Andrew Vance |
