Is Trade Ideas a Scam – Common Complaints and Personal Warnings:
Trade Ideas was founded in 2003 and is widely accepted as one of the best available market intelligence platforms.
Thousands of traders, investors, and market professionals across 65+ countries use Trade Ideas to pinpoint opportunities in the stock market. Even brokerages like E*Trade and Scottrade utilize Trade Ideas’ technology to power their own premium platforms.
But Trade Ideas’ longevity and reach doesn’t come without skepticism and resentment. There are some dissatisfied users who claim that the technology is “cumbersome”, “useless” and “expensive” – you just don’t hear this side of the story very often.
So do the Trade Ideas haters have a point – is the platform cumbersome and expensive? Should it be completely avoided because it’s a scam? Or are there far more positive reviews than negative ones because the platform is legitimately robust?
These are the critical questions concerning the Trade Ideas platform that I’ll be sharing my personal thoughts on below.
Warnings For Those Who Have Recently Come Across Trade Ideas – Especially Beginners:
The Trade Ideas platform is named perfectly because its main goal is to provide you with trade ideas based on your personal trading style.
One of the main functionalities of the platform is being able to choose specific channels – which are pre-configured workspaces designed for specific approaches. For example, there are channels created for Premarket/After Hours, Earnings, Blockchain/Crypto, Electronic Vehicles, Penny Stocks, Short Squeezes, and many more. There’s an attractive option for almost any type of trader.
But if you can’t find a channel or two that fit your specific needs, you can either partially customize an existing one or create your own from scratch. If, for example, you like to trade 52-week breakouts on stocks over $10 with short float over 25%, or whatever other parameters you choose, you can create a custom scan for it. Your scans can be as simple or complex as you want them to be.
In my experience, there are 3 main reasons why some beginners struggle with and complain about the Trade Ideas platform:
1. Beginners Get Overwhelmed By the Near-Endless Number of Trade Ideas
While the Trade Ideas platform provides the technology and customization to fit the needs of almost any type of trader, this immense power also poses a substantial risk for individuals lacking the proper level of self-discipline.
The never-ending flow of potential trade ideas can either be a blessing or a curse – depending entirely on how you manage it. The sheer volume of data provided can be filtered to fit your own individual style, or it can be used to overwhelm and debilitate you.
I think those who call Trade Ideas “cumbersome” are individuals who jump erratically from one strategy to the next in fear of missing out. It’s cumbersome only because they make it so. There’s a certain threshold where too much information becomes toxic.
Overall, you have to have the self-control to focus on just one or a small handful of strategies, while avoiding many distractions.
2. Beginners Think That Following the Artificial Intelligence Engine (Holly) is Foolproof
If you join Trade Ideas solely to follow trades generated by any of the 3 versions of Holly (Holly Grail, Holly 2.0, and Holly Neo), understand that they won’t be winners 100% of the time. With absolutely any system, there will always be losses.
As humans we love to think in certainties, but trading is a probabilistic game. At best, Holly produces a win rate around 60%, but that leaves 40%+ of her trades as losses. Don’t get me wrong – that’s a perfectly fine win rate. But you still need to manage your account appropriately. Don’t think that just because you have AI on your side that all risk/money management can go out the window.
The power of Holly can’t be denied – constantly running through enormous amounts of technical, fundamental, and social data at a rate no human could come anywhere close to matching. But even the most powerful artificial intelligence will never be able to completely eliminate risk from the market. There will always be unknown variables that it can’t possibly compute.
It’s my feeling that those who call Trade Ideas “useless” are individuals who go in with the expectation of guaranteed profits.
3. Beginners Subscribe Without Any Legitimate Trading Skills and Expect Immediate Success
This is an issue I see with almost every trading platform or tool. The harsh reality is that most people subscribe to these kinds of platforms with big dreams of fast riches, but aren’t willing to put in the time to build the necessary skills for durable market success.
They want a “magic pill” that will produce millions of dollars with little to no effort. And while the advertisements for many trading courses, programs, platforms, and tools will try to make you think this is possible in order to sell you their product or service, it’s just not the truth. It takes legitimate training in 4 main areas in order to become a self-sufficient, consistently profitable trader.
Sadly, the vast majority of people who try trading end up failing because they take ineffective shortcuts – mixed with random, impulsive, and irrational trades. Then when they lose a bunch of money, they turn around and claim that every trading platform and tool is a scam – and even the market itself. But it’s because they chose the gambling approach instead of the proper training path.
A robust tool like Trade Ideas can certainly take your trading to the next level, but it’s best to go in with a strong foundation in place.
Conclusion – Is Trade Ideas a Scam or Top Rated Stock Trading Software?
With all of this taken into consideration, my personal opinion is that Trade Ideas is nowhere close to a scam. Just because the technology offers AI-generated trades and auto-trading capabilities – no profits are guaranteed (especially on a trade-by-trade basis).
The real value offered by Trade Ideas for beginners is with the simulated trading capabilities in order to practice and build skills, and the value for experienced traders is with the dynamic scanners. Most other scanning tools available on the market for traders require you to manually run them in order to see the results, but Trade Ideas scans are dynamic – constantly updating in real-time.
|Sign Up For the Quarterly Test Drive For 2-Week Access to Trade Ideas Premium|
|Check Out My Full Trade Ideas Review For Feature Details, Pros and Cons, and More|
As a final note, I want to touch on the complaint that it’s “expensive”. This is always tough because it’s subjective and relative to individual wealth – what’s expensive for one person can be cheap for another. But in my opinion, Trade Ideas is simply worth it if it can help you make at least $10 more on average per trading day ($2,268/yr Premium subscription costs about $9 per trading day).
For anyone still skeptical or just interested in trying out the platform before you buy it, Trade Ideas offers a trial period every quarter. It’s not entirely free, but you can get 2 weeks of full Premium access for about $10 during the Quarterly Test Drive.
Please leave your thoughts, questions, or experiences on Trade Ideas and whether or not you think it’s a scam below.
Written by Matt Thomas (@MattThomasTP)
Related Pages:
- Tradacc – Profile Method With Aaron Korbs
- Best Day Trading Stock Scanners – 2 Top Rated Tools
- Trade Ideas Review – Top Rated Stock Trading Software or a Scam?
- Benzinga Pro Review – Is it the Best Live Stock Market Newsfeed?
- What is Good Stock Trading – Good vs. Bad Stock Trading
Yes, I agree that when people don’t obtain results they immediately blame platforms and services and say it’s a scam. But when joining a platform, there is always a learning curve before we see some form of success. I would also call attention to the way these platforms are marketed. Saying AI is the solution for not knowing how to trade just makes people frustrated when they don’t get those awesome results they expected.
Hi Paolo – thanks for sharing your thoughts!
As you stated, every platform has a learning curve associated with it – which usually doesn’t take people too long to get used to (maybe a week or two at the most). But the most critical thing to understand is that no platform or service can replace legitimate trading skills. They can help point you in the right direction, but there’s far more to trading success than simple indicators. Artificial Intelligence tends to be a buzzword many companies like to throw around just to garner attention. I’m not saying Trade Ideas is one of those companies who does that. I personally think the AI is useful, but it’s not some magical potion. The strongest feature of Trade Ideas, to me, is the ability to create custom scanners that update in real time. That’s truly where Trade Ideas stands out from other trading platforms.
This is a very informative article on TradeIdeas. If Holly can produce a 60% win rate and a 40% loss rate, that sounds like you end up with 20% winners left over. But more information is really needed, such as size of your profit vs the size of your loss, and don’t forget your transaction costs. How much money do you recommend an investor should have available to participate in this program?
I would honestly recommend that someone considering the Trade Ideas platform to start with $0. Trade Ideas has Simulation Mode available so you can test out how Holly works without risking any real money.
Every quarter (3 months), Trade Ideas also offers trial periods called Test Drives. It usually costs around $10 for 2 weeks of Trade Ideas Premium access. So those times provide the perfect opportunity for combining a low-cost trial with Simulation Mode and all the other powerful features Trade Ideas has to offer (assistance from artificial intelligence, backtesting capabilities, customized scanners, etc.). The Test Drive for Q3 2021 actually just started today and runs through 8/20 – which you can still sign up for, if interested. The next one will probably be in the November/December timeframe.
When it comes time to switching over to real money, the choice for how much to start with is completely up to you. Everybody’s trading style, availability during market hours, skill level, and preferences (among many other factors) is different – so I couldn’t ethically provide you with a recommendation on how much to start with. Ultimately, that decision is entirely up to you. Take care!
Most people jump into this sort of thing so that they can make some quick cash. They want to see results in a period of 24hours, and if they fail they will blame it on the platform/system. Most beginners want to chase every idea at once instead of just sticking to one or two approaches, and it usually backfires.
You’re completely right – most people are looking for the fastest path to riches. But the main reason I wrote this post about the Trade Ideas platform is so that users go into it with the proper expectations. It’s not a tool that guarantees success. But it’s certainly a tool that can boost your edge if you already have the appropriate technical, analytical, and mental skills. It can increase the efficiency of your approach with help from artificial intelligence and scanners, but it can’t make up for a nonexistent foundation/skillset. Overall, Trade Ideas can offer a vast number of opportunities, but you simply can’t chase them all – it’s impossible to do so. You have to have a certain degree of discipline in order to stay focused on your particular approach.
Upon reading this post, I was interested in reading more of your related posts throughout the website. As a beginner day trader, I was able to learn quite a few things here to avoid trading mistakes as a newbie. With the $10 almost free 2-week trial period, I would be able to test out how well the Trade Ideas software fits my needs of day trading.
Hi Judy – I appreciate your kind words!
The Trade Ideas Test Drive period is coming up in just a few days – starting on 8/9. So if you’re interested in checking out the Trade Ideas software, that’s the best place to start. These are the only trials they offer (roughly every 3 months). But keep in mind that if you’re a complete beginner, you might be better served starting with a strong learning program in order to build core buying/selling, risk/money management, analytical, and mental trading skills first. Robust tools like Trade Ideas and Benzinga Pro can be great for increasing efficiency or your edge, but they’re kind of pointless without core trading skills. It’d be like owning a powerful race car without knowing how to properly drive it. Take care!