Our Tim Sykes review of his trading strategy looks at how it helps you trade penny stocks and if it’s worth the cost. You may follow him on Instagram and Twitter or subscribe to his YouTube channel. But have you taken the plunge into subscribing to his trading service? Penny stocks are a hot commodity among traders. Especially because they’re cheap. But being cheap doesn’t mean being good.
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Tim Sykes Review Introduction
Who is Tim Sykes? File his name under the phrase, if you know you know. If you don’t know, then you’ll appreciate our Tim Sykes review. Tim Sykes is one of the more polarizing figures in the financial community. He quickly gained fame when he famously turned his $12,415 Bar Mitzvah money into over $1.65 million while attending college at Tulane University.
Sykes was known to often skip class to day trade penny stocks; which is how he claims to have made much of the early part of his fortune. In his senior year in 2003, Sykes actually started his own hedge fund called Cilantro Fund Management.
This focused on shorting companies. His first brush with controversy came when Sykes was named to Trader Monthly’s ‘30 under 30′ list of investors that were breaking onto the financial scene. Sykes made the claim that Cilantro Fund Management was the “the number one long-short microstock hedge fund in the country. According to Barclays”, only it ended up being the Fairfield, Iowa based Barclay Group of investment researchers, and not the Barclays Bank from the United Kingdom.
Sykes went on to write a book in 2007 called An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund. The self-published book outlines his methods and tells the story of how he began day trading at Tulane; as well as how he became a hedge fund manager after college. These days Sykes has dedicated himself to educating new investors with his own personal method of day trading. As well as being a generous philanthropist for a variety of charities and foundations.
His Trading Method
You’re probably not going to like hearing this if you were hoping to hear the secret strategy to becoming a millionaire in this Tim Sykes review. He made his millions by relying on technical analysis and news making catalysts for the company. But wait, isn’t that what most of us do? Why aren’t we all millionaires?
Sykes goes a little deeper than that though and this is where his background as a short-bias hedge fund manager comes into play. Sykes learned early on that a good percentage of Over the Counter stocks, more commonly known as penny stocks, are manipulated through various methods; including paid promotions by the company for a public figure to pump the stock.
There’s some irony in this as there have been many so-called penny stock gurus that build up enough of a following. Then commit their own pump and dump schemes. But Sykes has actually advocated against pump and dump schemes and has used his platform to call out several high profile figures for being involved. So what does Sykes do differently?
Rather than getting caught up in the frenzy of the chase up as the stock price rises, Sykes waits until he believes the stock has hit its peak. Then he proceeds to short it all the way down. Most penny stocks follow a fairly predictable trajectory. In fact, there’s a reason why so few of them ever graduate up to the NASDAQ or any other major index. If you know a stock will inevitably fall back down, sometimes even faster than it went up, all you really need to do is figure out the timing. And this is something Sykes has made an art out of.
Is Timothy Sykes Worth the Money?
You didn’t think Sykes would give you all of the information for free did you? If you want to become a millionaire trading penny stocks it’s going to cost you! Of course, this is another common complaint amongst the investing community. If you made millions already, why do you need to charge a few hundred dollars to teach others?
Sykes probably doesn’t need to charge for his courses, or rather he probably doesn’t really need the money. But in this day and age, information is power. And if people are willing to pay for the price, why wouldn’t he charge them for it? When a company is willing to teach and educate traders the process of good investing, then that information is invaluable. If it’s just a service where the site sends you a bunch of stock tickers to buy blindly, that’s when you should be skeptical.
Sykes’ courses are thorough to say the least. He has released a long list of trading lessons including:
- PennyStocking
- PennyStocking Part Deux
- TimFundamentals
- TimTactics
- ShortStocking
- How to Make Millions
- And many more!
He also includes a weekly video lesson for subscribers at an additional cost that he archives in a library of work that has nearly 5,000 videos to learn from. Sykes also runs a chatroom on one of his sites Profit.ly. Here several traders that were trained using his methods, host a daily room with subscribers with live trading and market analysis.
The Millionaire Challenge
Let’s take a look at the millionaire challenge in this Tim Sykes review. Above you see the price points for his regular services. But this doesn’t include the heavily advertised Millionaire’s Challenge, which will run you up to $5,000. That is a hefty rate. But hey, if it helps you become a millionaire how can you complain about $5,000?
The problem is that a quick scan of customer reviews will leave you hesitant to sign up for such a costly service. While a majority of experiences seem to be positive, even if they didn’t become instant millionaires, there’s no shortage of complaints and negative allegations that follow Sykes around the internet.
In terms of his regular services, the pricing seems consistent for the industry. In fact, there are certainly more expensive subscriptions out there. If you want to break the two pricing tiers down, it’s basically an extra $75.00 for access to his full library of videos as well as getting the weekly video lesson from Sykes himself!
Haters Gonna Hate!
About those negative reviews, don’t let them dissuade you from signing up for his services. Let’s just say Sykes has a fairly unique way of advertising his services as well as his lifestyle. Other investors offer subscription services present you with their investing history and some stocks they hit big on. Sykes likes to flaunt his wealth by showing you fancy cars and exotic vacation destinations. He openly posts on social media that he’s trading from a beach in Thailand. And claims that he uses it as motivation for his students.
So, it’s pretty easy to see why Sykes may rub people the wrong way. He also has a checkered past with his claims about Cilantro Fund Management. Which actually led to the Editor of Trader Monthly to later lament that Sykes was the worst pick the publication had made for the list.
If you dive deeper, you can find complaints about the screening process for the millionaire’s challenge. Our Tim Sykes review learned that it includes a personal interview by phone which includes questions about your current financial situation. There are also allegations of Sykes photoshopping pictures and it certainly doesn’t help things when most Google searches of his name brings up the title: is Tim Sykes legit or a scam?
Look, we don’t know what to tell you if you believe everything you read on the internet. Is Sykes a flamboyant personality that is great at marketing his brand? Absolutely. But is that enough to call him a scam artist? We don’t believe so.
Tim Sykes’ Charity Work
We would be remiss if we didn’t show you both sides of the coin in our Tim Sykes review. Sure, Sykes is a controversial figure. But he’s done plenty of good in this world too. Sykes founded the Tim Sykes Foundation which works closely with both the Boys and Girls Club of America and the Make A Wish Foundation.
Sykes also donated $1 million to Pencils of Promise. This went towards constructing 20 schools in Guatemala, Laos, and Ghana. He is also a founder of Karmagawa.
That’s an environmental foundation that helps animals and natural resources. In fact, he even did some work bringing awareness to saving the coral reef.
Sykes also focuses on educating people, even if he charges for it. There’s no denying how much effort he puts into his videos and various other services. He shows a genuine desire to help people succeed at trading.
And if you know anything about the Bullish Bears, then you know we appreciate the desire to help people.
Tim Sykes Review Final Thoughts
Tim Sykes will always be a polarizing figure in the investing world. And there will always be a divide between those who believe he’s a legitimate trader and those who believe he’s just a marketing expert that scams his subscribers. We tend to lean to the former in our Tim Sykes review. Sykes has proven that his system works. He provides way more educational materials and information than a regular paid investing service.
