I first heard about Timothy Sykes at the beginning of this year. I was skeptical of his claims of making lots of money trading and even more skeptical about his ability to teach others to trade successfully. My article, “Timothy Sykes is Full of Bullship,” started a dialogue between Tim and myself. I started reading his blog and following his trades. I read every single blog post he had ever written. I became convinced that he was a talented and profitable trader and that his trading system worked. I then decided to subscribe to his TimAlerts trade service, where he sends out pre-market watchlists and alerts of his trades via email, to see if I could profitably follow his trades.
In the chart below you can see my profits from trading Tim’s system. Sometimes I followed his trades, sometimes I didn’t, and sometimes I traded stocks he did not even find. I started out trading small and increased the size of my trades over time (the red and fuchsia dots indicate where I increased my max position size).
(note: while the blue squares represent trades, many of them are me just adding to or gradually closing positions in what is essentially the same trade)
As you can see from the chart, I have done well. In just over 3 months I have made $40,000 trading his system. In one trade yesterday I made $19,000 in two days. But the amount of money I have made is not nearly as impressive as the lack of drawdowns that I have had. The one large (percentage-wise) drawdown I had (on 7/29) was my first trade after increasing my position size and it was an accidental trade that I did not even mean to make! Otherwise, my maximum drawdown was 15%, and even that was due to making a dumb mistake–getting too large of a position in an illiquid stock.
After my success trading Sykes’ system, I became the first lifetime subscriber to TimAlerts and wrote a blog post, “Why I Paid Timothy Sykes $2,000.” So, if you ever consider trading stocks (and not just buying and holding index funds as an investment, which everyone should do), then why not learn from Tim Sykes, one of the few people who makes money trading and has demonstrated an ability to teach others how to profitably trade. I recommend reading his blog, buying his book, and signing up for TimAlerts.
If you doubt my performance of Sykes’ performance, I suggest visiting Covestor, where all of Sykes’ trades and some of mine have been verified directly from our brokerage accounts.
Disclosure: I am a customer of Timothy Sykes and am the
first TimAlerts for Life member. I am an affiliate of his and make a
25% commission on any sales he makes through the links on this article. This article excerpted from my blog, GoodeValue.com.