There are many services and trading products on the net today, so how do you know which ones are good?

I have provided a few helpful hints below. I also provided some detail about our own service and products as well as additional info on ways to investigate online trading systems and services yourself, and how to decide which ones are legitimate.

The basics:

Do your homework before you buy anything online, but especially before you purchase any trading products!  Trading systems, recommendations and trading products of all kinds are sold by reputable online companies and businesses as well as by many hucksters and schemers who are online too. By simply doing some homework and research using the net, you can help ensure you make a wise decision (and avoid getting ripped off)

Futures Trading Systems and Services -
How do you know which ones to avoid and which ones are ok?

 

1. Check the business or person out yourself on Google and/or yahoo by searching the name. Look through many pages to review a thorough history. See if there are any complaints or anyone unhappy. Don't worry about praise and in fact, beware of over-done praise as it might be shills hyping up a service or product. When people are happy they generally are quiet. When people are unhappy they tend to voice their unhappiness. But some praise is of course ok and can be good. However, over-done praise (where someone is pumping and or hyping up a product or service, saying things like HUGE profits, really great service, and so forth, should be suspect).   Also watch out for individuals that are constantly trolling the internet with ads and spam. 
   
    
2. If a business is engaged in a futures advisory service, check with CFTC and NFA.  Are they registered? If not registered then - Buyer beware.  Why aren't they registered? If registered, do they have history?  What's the history.
   
    
3. Check for a phone number.  No phone number - Buyer beware!  All businesses and individuals should at least have a phone number if they are offering something for sale online.  A phone number is not to much to ask for.
   
    
4. Check public trading message boards and ask about services and products.  However, do this smartly.  Check through the discussion board to see which posters are professional and specifically ask them about the service or product. Avoid listening to or asking questions from pranksters or dirty posters (those with dirty language and foul typing). Beware that some posters on public discussion boards will try to stir up trouble anyway they can.
   
    
5. Also check the popular public message boards and chat rooms for messages from businesses and individual educators (CTA's) selling products or services.  If individuals are constantly posting on message boards or chat rooms then they are probably most interested in selling their products and don't actually follow or trade the markets. 
   
    
6. Is the product, trading service, CTA or business recognized in the industry? How long has the business or person been around?  If dealing with an individual, has anyone published any written books about the individual's product or trading strategies? Who is the publisher? Is the publisher a reputable publisher (large or small) or unknown?
   
   
   Okay, that's the basics!   Now let me share some specifics about my own service and my trading products as well as myself and my views about other services and trading products too!
   
    

An important principle of success in all walks of life and in all occupations is a willingness to Go the Extra Mile. For myself and the service I provide to traders and investors, this means rendering a better service than what one is paying for. I don't care about my so called "competition". All I care about is the service I provide to my clients (focusing on the individuals not the institutions). My goal, aim and indeed my purpose with this service is to provide individual traders and investors with unique, timely, and powerful trading information (some of which in the past has primarily been available to big money hedge funds and institutional investment firms). I realize I could charge individuals far more than what I currently charge for access to our proprietary systems, data and my professional mentorship assistance. However, I choose to provide what I believe is the best service in the industry for individual commodity speculators, at the very best price as well. I have my reasons too which I'll explain. But don't just take my written word for it. This is my website and I can say and type anything I want here.  So please check me out on the web.

My name is pretty unique (Floyd Upperman) and I don't hide behind any other name or business. If I write an article online, say anything online, or when interviewed online, TV, Radio or whatever, I go by the same name - Floyd Upperman! My business name contains my name too  - Floyd Upperman and Associates! I have a few associates at the moment, several technicians and my wife Kim is the chief associate!  But check me out for yourself.  Google my name and do your own research before you consider any of my products or trading services. Do note however that I am properly registered and licensed with the NFA (National Futures Association) and have been registered since day one when I started providing online access to my trading systems in 1997. I am not licensed to accept any money for the purpose of trading individual commodity contracts or options however and I am not a broker.  I am not part of any brokerage firm either!  I am my own guy.  I dutifully pay my annual NFA fees for my CTA license, I have taken all their required classes (primarily for ethics) to do what I do (100% legally).
 
The bottom line is that basically I am a by-the-book kind of guy. I am also a no-nonsense kind of CTA. I approach my own trading like a business and that is what I recommend and teach individuals to do as well. Speculating using leveraged contracts is a very risky and serious venture. Its not play. I don't view it as play or entertainment either. I view it as business and I have one goal (aim) in mind - TO MAKE MONEY. And why not?  Its much better to make money than lose money, right?

Absolutely, I think we will all agree to that. However, all businesses cost money to run. Professional futures trading is no different. Losses are part of the cost of doing business. Learning how to control, manage and contain losses is crucial.  Learning to do this well will save you plenty in the long run! Remember also that extra risk is associated with leveraged instruments. You've probably heard that leverage is a double-edged sword. It is. It can work for you and against you. As a professional trader, I have experienced and will continue to experience both sides of this fact as long as I continue to trade leveraged instruments.  That's because there is no such thing as a 100% guaranteed 100% of the time profitable trading system! 

Lets talk more about how I got started with this service and how my service is unique from others. Now that you probably have done your home work and googled my name to check me out, you may have noticed a few things. I have several websites, and some of them are older than others. One of the unique things about the web is that it has a very long memory! Many of my old websites are still on the web as we simply kept them on the servers.  And why not... It took a long time and a lot of work to create the sites, so we might as well keep them up - they look nice!   Anyway,  you may also notice some old membership sign up forms and pages too.  I want you to look closely here.  I will talk about something very important shortly.  Again, the web has a very long memory and that is important and can be useful to you when checking a business or person out.  Anything I've ever done online is still logged somewhere and you can probably access it.

One of the things I want to point out is the fact that I did NOT start this service attempting to charge some ridiculously high fee as many others have done. This is very important to note. There are plenty of people on the web that simply want to sell you something. And much of what they want to sell you is nearly worthless in my opinion. The number one worthless item is trading recommendations, opinions and commentary sent via email.  Opinions are a dime a dozen, yet people will pay big money for them. I recently came across a service that boosted they only charge $10 for their "profitable trading recommendations"!  How about that!   Can you believe it? Sure!  So what is the catch you ask?  Well, here is how it works. They send you 100 recommendations a week. About 20 of them are profitable. You pay $10 each for the profitable ones ($200 the first week) and nothing for the losing ones.  Whether you act on the trades or not is your own business.  Every week you only pay for the profitable recommendations!  What a deal, huh?!   So you don't have to pay anything for the 80 losing recommendations every week!  Do you get it?  I hope so!  Because if you don't, you may end up falling for one of these schemes.  The bottom line is this -  You have to decide on your own which of the 100 recommendations a week are going to be profitable!  If they could tell you which ones would be profitable and which ones would not be profitable (ahead of time) then that would be a good deal!  But that is not the deal here!   Buyer beware (of course there are no refunds too - that's in the fine print). 

These are the kinds of schemes and scams people are dreaming up on the net. They are created for one purpose -  To take your money and to rip you off essentially.  So please, DO YOUR HOMEWORK!  Check out every offer on google first.  See if they have a real business. Look for a phone number for example.  WE HAVE A PHONE and the phone number is provided right on the front of my site for everyone!  In case you missed it, our phone number is 614-920-9746.  Give us a call and we can talk!  Want to fax us, we have one of those too!  The FAX is 614-920-9749.  Any business that doesn't at least have a phone number or a fax is immediately suspect in my book. So don't even go there - just don't do it - Save your money!

The old saying "If its to good to be true" olds true on the web too! Don't believe any website or email that promises overnight success, easy money or tons of profitable trading recommendations. Folks pension funds are struggling to make a decent return in the market right now (from 2000 - 2005). Pension funds have billions of dollars, top notch advisors and money managers. If they are struggling to make a decent return in the market, don't expect "joe blow" to provide you with the golden goose that lays golden eggs and provides 1000% returns on your money! It just won't happen - don't go there!

Use the internet to your advantage. Mainly you want to see if people have been unhappy or complaining about a service or product. If people are happy, they are usually quiet.  We don't hear from members or clients for years some times.  We some times wonder if they are even using the system.  Then when the expiration date on their CC expires and their service is not renewed they suddenly come to life!  They email, telephone us and make all kinds of fuss about access and why they can't get access and so on.  We get the new CC expiration date and then all is fine again.  Thus we have learned that a quiet client is a "happy client".  

So don't let that worry you. In fact, if you do your home work and find a service or particular person has been around for a long time (we've been online for 8 years for example) and you can't find a lot of hype or praise from happy clients on google or yahoo and at the same time no complaints either - then don't worry.  Happy traders are often quiet.  As long as there's no hype either!  So do further home work.   What you want to avoid like the plague however is products and services that are advertised everywhere and hyped everywhere by everyone!  There is nothing more suspicious than hyped up praise all over the net.  That is suspicious. The praise may be false. They could be using shills to go around pumping and hyping their service and products. The shills make profits when someone buys the service or products too via affiliate programs!  Shills aren't just people but they can be entire organizations and businesses too. People have created entire websites, hundreds of fake chat room names and discussion board names simply to pump up and hype up a product or service.  All that hype is FALSE however but it can appear convincing and end up fooling some people.  Again, look for phone numbers. Try to find someone who can verify the hype to be true. It people are making tons of money trading a system or service there has to be a brokerage firm involved as well. Find the broker or brokerage firm and ask them about the service or product (but make sure the broker or brokerage firm is not in bed with the service or product) too! Its tough I know, but you got to do your homework!

Another "WARNING SIGN" is if the cost of a trading service or product keeps going down.  This is almost always a BAD sign! Buyer beware! One of the most important things to look at is the cost of the service over time. The internet often retains a good record of this via old forms and old website pages. All good services tend to increase in cost and value over time (good things increase in value)! In other words, the membership fees tend to get more expensive not less expensive as demand increases. That's the nature of any valuable thing! If its good, people will pay more for it, and a good service also usually improves as well!  In fact, that's exactly how our service has progressed. When I started the service the membership fees were $29.95 in 1997. They went to $39.95 in 1998, and $59.95 in 2000.  In 2001 the monthly membership rates went up to $65.00. Today the monthly cost for membership to our service is $89.00. Folks it keeps going up, not down. I don't have to tell you why. If the service was bad and I just wanted to sell something, I'd have to lower my prices, not raise them.  But the service I provide is very good and the products continue to improve as does the technology (today we have multiple servers, well over 1000 unique studies and indicators, our own discussion board where I post regularly to members only, back up websites and servers to maintain 100% up time (on the west and east coast) and much more!

One of the strategies used by individual advisory businesses that simply want to sell you something is that they start off with high prices for their service or products and then lower them to increase sales. They use this strategy because they are most interested in just selling you their product or service and they want to sell it at the highest possible price. They don't care about providing any value, they just want your money. But most often they also don't know for sure how much people will pay for their junk. Many times that's because they don't really know the industry itself, rather they simply know people will pay for this kind of stuff (like trading recommendations for example). Thus they start off asking a real high amount (they might as well start off high as they can lower their prices later). When you do your homework, if you find a product or service used to be real expensive and now its real cheap, this is a very strong indication they are simply wanting to sell something and don't really have a passion for the markets or what they do. Most likely you should not buy in this case. For example, I know one CTA that created a real nice site in 1998. And he had a very big futures trading educator behind him (one of the biggest ones). He also said he was in the military or had been in the service or something and had a big flag on his site.  This brings up one other issue.  Beware of any website or person who exploits religion or patriotism, using it as a marketing ploy to make a sale or better him or herself.  It just isn't right and is almost always a warning flag.  I am careful when I mention my religious position in a report and while I do discuss politics and am very patriotic, I do not use my beliefs to make myself appear more honorable or honest or whatever. I am who I am and anyone who becomes a client of my service and reads my reports soon finds out that I am a pretty honorably guy anyway.  

Bottom line - I started my service because this is what I like to do. I like all aspects of the markets. I like trading the markets and I like teaching people how to trade and speculate in the markets too. I track, trade and monitor the markets just about every day the markets are open (in the U.S.). I sleep, eat, and breath the markets! This is simply what I do, not unlike a doctor who treats patients constantly (day in and day out). This is a way of life for me (what I have chosen to do).  There's nothing else I'd rather be doing.  And I don't like doing nothing.  Even if I had all the money in the world I'd still want to be doing something!   While money motivates me quite a bit, its a necessary component of life,  but its certainly not the single only motivator in my life.  There are other reasons to work besides money.  I am also motivated by other influences (as most people are).  For example I also enjoy a good days work. Its like a work out.  I feel best while relaxing with my wife after a tough day at the office!  Thus I don't have any plans to retire as I could not imagine sitting around and simply having nothing to do.  I like being busy and having a job, and for me,  providing assistance to other traders and investors is part of my job. Its part of what I am good at!   I also like the feeling I get after a long day of work!   I get the best sleep after a long days work!   Some people get thrills from jumping out of airplanes, I like studying the markets.  I like investing in equities and futures and I like helping other people achieve success in this area as well.  I'd probably be doing this even if I had all the money in the world.  Until the riddle of the markets are solved (or an equation for randomness is discovered) I am going to continue plugging away at what I love and enjoy! 

Remember also that you get what you pay for as the old saying goes.  Where many services just sell you their opinions and trading recommendations via email, I go the extra mile to provide the data and the indicators I use and created myself,  so members can see how I arrive at my trading decisions.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope this has helped you!

Floyd Upperman