Jacqueline is right in calling Optionetics on their fraudulent actions. Whether or not she was right in her math is a moot point; I did the required number of trades, many of which were even the trades that their "experts" recommended in their overpriced and essentially useless publications, and still was denied the refund that they'd promised.
Here's their scam in brief: they guarantee to refund your $2995 if you don't make at least $9,000 in the first six months, provided you've made at least an average of 6 trades per month. This guarantee is made not only verbally by the presenter at the free introductory seminar; they even give you an embossed certificate stating it, AND it's right there on their website.
BUT then have you sign a statement (when you pay for the seminar) that includes a version of the "Refund Guarantee" that is trickily worded so that it's virtually impossible to claim; AND, you also are signing a statement that you agree that these, and only these words constitute the guarantee.
They leave themselves several outs. As Jacqueline experienced, there's no definition of "trades." But that's nothing. Even if you do all the trades they require, and EVEN if you ONLY do trades THEY THEMSELVES have recommended, there are still two dirty tricks they use.
The first is that the fake guarantee's wording makes it sound like you're supposed to send them your trading records AFTER seven months have passed. But the real, small-print guarantee that you sign says you have to claim the guarantee BEFORE the end of the 7th month. Even if you manage to figure this out, it's extememly difficult to beat them at their own game; given the amount of time it takes, at the beginning when you start trading, to open a brokerage account, attend the paid seminar, buy software and/or publications, and decide on a trade to place, there ends up being a TINY window, IF ANY, between the end of your first six months of trading and the end of the seventh month after you signed the small-print, ripoff "guarantee."
Now, suppose you were able to do all that. Their last line of deceitful defense is that the wording of the ripoff guarantee doesn't say, like the fake guarantee, that you have to have used their recommended strategies. It says you have to PROVE that THEIR STRATEGIES CAN'T be used to make $9K in six months. Well, OF COURSE you can't prove that; they can point to any number of their people who trade in huge volumes and may have grossed (not even netted) $9K within a six month period.
Bottom line, they PURPOSELY MISLEAD their customers. They have no intention whatsoever of making good on their guarantee.
Oh, and there's another clause; they say you can get your money back if you decide not to take the class; all you have to do is return the materials before noon on the first day of your seminar. Well, the seminars are all set up so that the lunch break doesn't happen till around 1 pm. I have not heard of this happening, but now that I know what the people of Optionetics are really like, I fully expect them to say "Sorry! It's past noon!"
Now. Let's say you've gotten involved in Optionetics, gotten fired up with enthusiasm (they're EXPERTS in encouraging that), believed that the people are as nice as they act (the lower-level employees probably actually are, but they're not the ones who are responsible for the scams), and therefore give them a break about the fake guarantee. [Believe it or not, MANY optionetics customers do that. They just cannot make themselves see that the emperor is stark naked, and even decry people who complain about the scam — see the optionetics discussion boards for examples.]
There's still a big problem. What they do is teach you the ropes of options trading in just enough detail that you TOTALLY believe "it OUGHT to work!" I was one of those people — I had an answer for every skeptical question asked by my concerned friends and family. What I didn't have was enough experience with the stock market to know that NOBODY, but NOBODY, has anything that even approaches a sure-fire method.
I studied options trading and related subjects intensively, at least 8 or 9 hours every day, for at least 10 months. I am NOT a beginner (one thing they say is, you don't have to be smart to profit — "we know of a 13-year old who's making GREAT money for his parents using our system!"). But trust me, dumb or smart, beginner or not, it is NOT as straightforward as they continually imply. Options pricing is so complex, in fact, that the people who developed the system won a Nobel prize for it! There are so many complex details that contribute, you're lucky to profit even if a trade DOES go the way you hope it will.
Not to mention the MANY trades that don't go your way — and, when they don't, you really lose big-time, because the "exit strategies" Optionetics recommends are simplistic to the point of idiocy.
One thing Optionetics does is peddle a number of publications that supposedly have fool-proof trades recommended by their experts. Most cost around $1,000 a year (one per week). I purchased five of them as part of a package. At first, they'd publish their results: "9% overall profit over the last X months" or whatever. Then they started doing so badly that they were posting losses, even the one put out by the famous head of optionetics, George Fontanills (famed for his successful Hedge Fund, which I understand he's ALSO given up — anyone can make a profit when the market's going sharply up or down, it's like hitting the side of a barn — but those conditions haven't existed for several years now). So anyway, now they just neglect to publish their "expert" results. But still are selling the quack medicine at outrageous prices.
Oh, and if you mention that most of your LOSING trades are ones you got from their publications, their response is, "well, did you place ALL the trades we recommend, or cherry-pick through them?" Which is pure b.S., because first of all, even on average, you wouldn't have profited in many cases by placing all their trades; second, nowhere is it recommended that you do so; third, there's no way most people even have the capital to have so many trades on at once; and fourth, even George (whom they disgustingly refer to as "guru") recommends not placing more than about five trades at a time! Oh, those people — they just keep shovelling the cr*p your way.
If you're determined to try options trading, then at least do your study using free or reasonably-priced resources (like books.) Please don't support these charlatans. If you do, and you have positive results, you will be a member of a tiny majority of people who just happen to have lucked out.
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