Browsing Category: "City Beaters"
Bad money making news comes in three’s?…
You’ve probably heard the saying that bad news comes in three’s, well I’m in for two so I’ve still got one to go by the look of it. Firstly Colon End Parenthesis has been taken down by the SEC. As one of my readers, Martin Thompson put it “It makes pretty grim reading…” when he highlighted a post in the MMG forum.
Personally I like to wait a few days until the initial wave of disbelief and controversy have died down before finding out any more. This way I think much of the emotion is taken out of the situation and those who take the time to find out more have been able to provide some much needed level headed assessment. True to my word I waited and it does seem that CEP and it’s associated sites have now all been taken down and the likelihood of anyone seeing any refunds is as probable as me winning an Olympic gold medal at marbles.
There were many people who believed strongly in the program admin to the extent that they had invested large amounts of money with them and were relying on the returns to pay their way. Even if that wasn’t the case many people had invested significant amounts which now look to be gone in a stroke of a pen.
Yet another reinforcement of the lesson not to invest too much in any one investment no matter how stable the whole thing looks. Allied with this is the need to diversify any funds you have to spread the risk.
Secondly the admin at Market Excellence has been forced to suspend the investor pools that had been set up to take advantage of the FOREX advisories from Steve Hoven. This time it was the FSA in the UK that stepped in to ‘protect’ investors. It seems that a previous understanding of the pools as managed within BetonMarkets was incorrect and the FSA have now ruled that as pool investors had no direct control over their money that the arrangement contravened their rules. Luckily the news isn’t all bad as those investors who invest directly based on Steve Hoven’s recommendations are not affected.
Whilst I consider my options I have liquidated my funds from the pool and am using the advisories from City Beaters to do Fixed Odds Trading at BetonMarkets.
So, where do you think the third piece of bad online investing news is going to come from? Suggestions please…
Am I making Money Part II…
Well it’s half way through the year so time to step back and see how things have progressed over the last three months. The first quarter report can be found here and as you’ve probably realised by now I’m increasing the use of video to provide information so if you don’t want to read this post in full then you can hear my thoughts on this video.
As I recently posted I’ve decided not to continue with any more recommendations from Matt Shaw’s Fixed Odds Trading advisory service at Betonmarkets as the results have shown greater losses than gains. I’ve given this service a fair run for it’s money but I just don’t see it being consistent enough in it’s predictions. I know the markets have behaved somewhat awry over the last few months but for me Matt hasn’t been accurate enough in his forecasts. In somewhat of a similar fashion I’m not trading using recommendations from Martin Cornish of Market Excellence as whilst his advisories have been more reliable than Matt’s the returns on each trade has been small and consequently you are risking quite a high stake for a small return. I’m in the Steve Hoven FOREX trading pool at Market Excellence and will let this run on auto pilot.
The one bright light in the Fixed Odds trading arena is with City Beaters as I’m currently part way through my 28 day free trial period and already have 3 successful trades under my belt. The recommendations are made on FOREX pairs with returns of around 12% to 15% over a 7 day period. Also, the Nash brothers who run it provide useful updates on trades in-running and monthly advisories on currency trading in general. Well worth checking out in my opinion.
The most recent hiatus for me has been the problems associated with Colon End Parenthesis and GHPI which I reported on. It’s extremely frustrating to see what have been reliable paying opportunities suddenly stumble. The ensuing hue and cry and ill advised speculation creates a highly unstable atmosphere which in turn becomes a deepening crisis. In the case of Colon End Parenthesis the company is being informally investigated by the SEC and there is no clear indication of when a resolution will be reached. Rather more encouragingly GHPI seems to be slowly getting back on track mainly due to the efforts of the admin who seems to go the extra mile for his clients. That’s not to say that I think he handled everything in a wholly professional manner when things first started to go wrong but reading between the lines he does seem to have been reacting to negative elements from some members.
On a more positive note my recent post about CEP Coast does show that there is still opportunity to earn whilst some of these issues are being resolved.
Still waiting for the first bonus cheque from Shop Right (first promised for October 2006).
Still very much medium to long term both Sharndor and Divinius Opulentis are moving forward slowly.
On the gold front I was encouraged to see a recent press report from Goldman Sachs that predicted the price of gold rising to $1,000 an ounce (currently sits around $615 an ounce). So my regular contributions to Bullion Vault may well prove a sound move. All the reports I see about precious metals are bullish so it’s probably a good idea to hold a small portion on funds invested here.
Another program that is taking some time to re-establish itself is Fantastic Pay as they transition to Pot of Gold Real estate. Reading the forums you again get a mix of optimism and pessimism and whilst I can understand people’s needs to hear news both good (preferably) or bad there’s little that can be done until the admin decides otherwise. Another one where patience is very much a virtue.
In the last review I noticed that Global Pension Plan was approaching 50,000 out of its 100,000 target for membership. So, in the last three months over 20,000 members have joined, encouraging news to say the least. One small personal disappointment for me was that when I ran a competition with a prize of a full Global Pension Plan membership I didn’t receive any entries so I still have two memberships available (hint, hint). Recently I wrote a post about Imperia Invest which is a Traded Endowment Policy (TEP). For an investment of $50 you have the potential to earn $134,000. Thanks to Don Mills for spotting this one.
Overall I think you could say that my results have been relatively disappointing and I am now waiting for others to resolve various issues before I can see any real positive movement. However I should repeat that I am in this for the long term so onward and upward!
It’s clear from the above that relying on others to provide a steady passive income has its drawbacks and whilst I’ve always known this to be a risk I had never found a business that I wanted to get involved with so that I could have some influence over my own destiny.
Recently that has changed with my joining the MyVideoTalk business as I truly believe that there is a huge market potential for their products. Starting at just $5.95 a month you can send full colour video emails to family, friends, business associates, clients and prospects. Couple this with user friendly web based video conferencing starting at $69.95 per month for 5 users and you really have a strong stable of products. More exciting developments are in the pipeline so the future is really bright. I’m looking for a select number of people to join the business as my associate. If this sounds of interest please send an email to me here
Making Money with Fixed Odds…or not
It’s been some time since I’ve mentioned how things are going with the various advisory services I’ve been using with my BetonMarkets account and I’m afraid the news is not that encouraging although I’m hoping for things to improve.
The first advisory service I started to use was from Matt Shaw and the performance has been very patchy. I reported at the end of last year that his recommendations were continually failing and whilst he acknowledged this he hoped that things would improve in 2007. And, for a time things did seem to get better but lately the successes have been few and far between. This is doubly frustrating as I’d decided to be more conservative on each of his recommendations anyway so where he might recommend a trade giving a potential 30% profit say I would actually use a more conservative level of 15% perhaps and even this strategy has not been that successful. So, for the time being I’ve decided not to trade any more of Matt’s recommendations.
The next service I went for was from Market Excellence and I chose the advisories by Martin Cornish. Now Martin plays a very conservative strategy with the vast majority of recommendations providing in the region of a 3% profit if successful. Whilst this can provide some comfort it does mean that if the trade fails you are likely to use quite a big chunk of money as you have to risk a relatively high amount as your stake, so for example if you were looking to achieve £100 then with a 3% profit margin you would be risking around £97 so if this fails it can be significant.
Unfortunately for Martin he has had trades move against him and this seems to have triggered an even more conservative approach (not that I’m saying that’s wrong) to the extent that recommendations are now few and far between. As the markets settle down (if they ever do) then I’m sure Martin will feel more confident about trading more actively but for the moment this is a fairly quiet area.
As well as Martin’s advisories I’ve also subscribed to those from Steve Hoven at Market Excellence although I don’t trade personally as I use the pool trading that is available. Steve trades specific currency pairs on the FOREX market and advises his recommendations on Monday through Wednesday. As luck would have it immediately after I joined there were a string of poor results that meant my account took something of a nosedive (is it me?). Since then there has been something of a revival although June is proving quite a challenge. I’m happy to stick with this for the time being as it may well turn out okay in the longer term.
Finally I should mention CityBeaters as they recently re-started their FOREX advisory service and I’ve just started the 28 day free trial. So far there have been two recommendations which are for 7 days each and which seem to be behaving as expected for the moment. Hopefully this service will be the light at the end of my Fixed Odds tunnel, we shall just have to wait and see.
Citybeaters aim to make money on FOREX….
In the first couple of months of this year I mentioned an additional advisory service, Citybeaters that I was trialling with my BetonMarkets account. The service is run by two brothers who trade the FOREX element at BetonMarkets and have produced some good results. Just after starting the trial I received an email to say that the service was being suspended as both men were very busy on other ventures.
Today I received an email to say that Citybeaters is now resuming service. This is good news as I didn’t get enough time previously to fully evaluate how profitable it might be. Previously the service was offered on a free 21 day trial basis which turned out to be somewhat short for a proper assessment as advisories were not made that often and if you hit the wrong time in the trial period you may not have been able to fully validate the recommendations.
This shortcoming has now been acknowledged and the trial has been extended for a further week to a full 28 days. There is also a change of responsibility going forward as the two brothers are effectively swapping roles. Previously Graeme was the main trader for the service, now his brother Chris will take the day to day responsibility for advising of trades with Graeme acting as a consultant. Prior to the re-launch Chris has successfully predicted 21 trades so hopefully this service will continue to prosper.
For those readers who are unfamiliar with BetonMarkets they offer a fixed odds betting service where individuals can trade on movements in the major stock indices and the FOREX markets. This form of trading can be attractive as you always know what your potential profit will be assuming the trade expires successfully. This also means of course that you know what any potential loss might be and it can never be forgotten that losses do happen, hence the need to only trade with funds that you can afford to lose.
Fixed odds flips…
Regular visitors will know that I am a fan of Fixed Odds Trading at BetonMarkets which is the prime mover in this market. As an individual investor you can place trades on various Market Indices and the Foreign Exchange (FOREX) markets. Now, you can learn to identify potential trades yourself or use someone else to do the hard work for you.
Recently I joined Citybeaters as they were offering a good service on FOREX. Having joined I received two trade recommendations which were successful. Unfortunately the two people running the service have decided to suspend their offering as they are both very busy in other areas. This is a shame as it did appear that their approach would yield some good profits.
Rather than leave things I decided to see what other services are on offer. On the BetonMarkets website they have a webring service where you can advertise a service for site visitors. One that I found was Market Excellence which is run by David Evans. Having had a good look at the site I’ve joined the Martin Corkish advisory service that costs just £99 for 12 months. Martin’s strategy is to select trades on both the European and US markets. The aim is to recommend some 10 trades per month that give returns in the region of 5% of your investment. By using sensible compounding you will be able to build up a sizeable bank in the medium to long term.
The Market Excellence site is well laid out and easy to navigate. There are resources available for the newcomer and you can also purchase a ebook that will guide you into the world of fixed odds trading. You will need a starting bank, the recommendation is £2000 or equivalent (you could use less it would just take longer to build up your bank).
If you don’t want to do any trading yourself you can join their investor pool (you have to subscribe to one of the main services as a pre-requisite).
