Zed Monopoly is a day trader and motivational speaker from Dublin, Ireland. Nicknamed the ‘Irish Wolf of Wall Street’, the trader was interviewed by thesun.co.uk in June 2019 where he shared his trading journey. In the interview he claimed to have turned £9,000 into £220,000 in just 9 months by trading penny stocks. To my knowledge the Sun newspaper didn’t ask for proof to verify trading profits but you never know, his story could be true.

The Dubliner graduated from university with a degree in Business Computing and quickly became disillusioned with the normal 9-to-5 grind. The 26 year old ditched his job at Google to become a full-time trader and mentor. The decision appears to have worked out well as his YouTube channel has really taken off over the past few years, quickly building up an army of 70,000 subscribers. Despite initial success with penny stocks, Zed turned to day trading less volatile stocks such as Nike and Apple.

Strategies

Based on watching some of Zed’s videos, his main strategy of trading earnings reports is simple. Every day before the market opens, Zed reads earnings reports and analysts predictions to judge the potential movement of a stock. Once the market opens, he rides the momentum of a stock for quick profits with trades lasting 5-10 minutes. The psychology behind the strategy is the market typically overreacts to news so Zed can quickly enter and exit trades before the market corrects itself. In theory this sounds easy but it’s difficult to be consistently profitable because you don’t have an edge unless you have insider news on these companies. As well as that, you need a good broker with excellent executions to stand a chance.

Net Worth

Zed Monopoly has an estimated net worth of $400,000. He makes extra income alongside trading from selling courses, affiliate marketing and YouTube ad revenue. Typically stock trading channels on YouTube have the potential to earn decent money because it’s very advertiser friendly. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s making $5 per 1000 views.

What Broker Does Zed Use?

This has to be one of the most common things he gets asked on a daily basis. To answer your question, here is a list of brokers Zed recommends for day trading:

• Interactive Brokers
• Etrade
• TD Ameritrade
• Tradestation
• Tradezero
• Cityindex (UK only)

3 In 1 Stock Course – Platinum

Currently Zed sells an online course covering penny stocks, blue chips, swing trading as well as access to his discord chatroom. The price is €295 via Paypal with no refunds available. The only way to buy the course is by emailing him directly.

Reviews Online

Overall reviews online highlight the fact there’s a mixed opinion about Mr Monopoly. Everyone on his comments section on YouTube think he’s a legend, others believe he’s a fake trader. On a subreddit about Zed Monopoly, users posted messages questioning his legitimacy as a day trader and that he doesn’t appear to be trustworthy.

Review from a Student

Lewis Crocker uploaded a video to give an honest review of his experience working under Zed as a student. Some people might find it useful but for me it’s very vague and offers limited insight for those looking to invest hundreds of euros into a course. Would be useful if Lewis could provide a more detailed review a few months down the line.

Let us know in the comment section what you think about Zed Monopoly and his stock trading course.

Timothy Sykes is a well-known penny stock trader with a net worth of $20 million. The brash self-made millionaire isn’t afraid to make bold claims and promote himself on social media. His marketing tactics tends to attract haters who enjoy spreading negative energy but Tim doesn’t care, he only wants to inspire and educate the world about trading. Hopefully in this review, I can help you decide if signing up for his service is worth the time and money.

Background

Before I start the review, it’s useful to learn about his background and how he got started with penny stocks.

Born in Orange, Connecticut, in 1981, Tim began trading at a young age when his parents gave him full control of his bar mitzvah gift money! His parents, thinking he would lose it all, wanted to teach him a lesson about money. Little did they know, they created a monster! Tim would later turn that sum of $12,415 into $1.65 million trading 100’s of penny stocks during the dot-com bubble.

Due to his success, family and friends wanted him to invest money on their behalves. This led to Tim starting a hedge fund (the Cilantro Fund) during his last year of study at Tulane University. At its peak, the fund only had $3 million under management because short selling penny stocks isn’t a scalable strategy. It’s possible to make $1 to $3 million per year shorting penny stocks but not tens of millions. He was listed in Trader Monthly’s ”30 under 30” as of the top traders to watch on Wall Street. As you would imagine his unique story got a lot of media attention and featured in season 1 of Wall Street Warriors, a popular reality TV show.

When the series aired, he received hundreds of emails from people wanting to learn about his penny stock strategy. This inspired him to write a book titled “An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund”. (PDF version of the book was released for free online).

After Wall Street Warriors, Sykes continued day trading and later launched his blog timothysykes.com. Due to strong demand, he created multiple newsletters to cater to every trader from beginner to advanced. As of now, Sykes has three newsletters – Tim Alerts, Pennystocking Silver and the Millionaire Challenge.

Click Here to Sign Up For Plans! 

Tim Alerts

Tim Alerts is the most basic plan. For $74.95 per month Sykes offers access to the chatroom, daily watchlist of 5-10 stocks and real-time alerts via SMS and email. The only problem is the 4,400+ video lesson library isn’t included with this subscription. If you’re new to stock trading, the training videos are a big loss. Most people also join thinking they can just copy alerts and bank easy profits. This won’t work because penny stocks move too fast. Don’t copy his trades as some gullible followers have done before. The alerts are there for guidance to help people become independent traders and thinkers. Learn by yourself how to do technical analysis, scan for stocks and build watchlists.

Pennystocking Silver

For new penny stock traders, Pennystocking Silver is the most suitable plan. It includes features from Tim Alerts plus access to a massive library of 4,400+ video lessons and new weekly video lessons. While it would be time-consuming to watch all of the lessons, the lessons are full of wisdom. This is why Tim recommends studying the past to profit from the future! The patterns he teaches can be predictable and tend to repeat themselves a lot.

Millionaire Challenge: Is it Worth the Price?

The millionaire challenge is Tim’s premium course, designed to provide more advanced training to students serious about investing in their education. Be warned though the challenge is pricey and costs a whopping $6,000. Before joining, you will need to apply for an interview to asses if you’re a fit for the program.

For $6,000 you receive:

• Millionaire Challenge DVDs: access to all of Tim Sykes DVD’s, (14 last time I counted) and a copy of Trading Tickers, a highly rated DVD created by Tim Grittani.
• Weekly private webinars from millionaire students such as Mark Croock, Tim Grittani, Tim Lento and Michael Goode. The webinars and chatroom help minimize the learning curve, as opposed to going it alone.
• One year membership to Pennystocking Silver which contains 4,400 video lessons, his daily trade alerts and watchlists.
• Private chatroom just for challenge students which isn’t full of beginners asking simple questions.
• Lifetime discounts on any other product purchases and conferences.

I recommend signing up for Pennystocking Silver first because it’s more cost-effective for new traders starting off. It doesn’t make to sense to spend $6,000 without even knowing the basics of penny stocks.

Timothy Sykes DVDs

Tim has made $5.14 million from day trading alone but now earns the majority of his income from running a trading education business. The DVDs are expensive but mandatory if you want to learn his strategies. Check out his store for promotional codes and it might be worth searching eBay to find old students selling DVDs. In the past, DVDs could be downloaded for free on torrent sites but are no longer available. Below is the latest list of DVD’s to purchase from the Profit.ly store.

• Pennystocking
• Pennystocking Part Deux (in my opinion his best DVD)
• Shortstocking
• Tim Raw
• Tim Fundamentals
• Tim Fundamentals Part Deux
• Tim Tactics
• Read SEC Filings
• New Rules of Pennystocking
• Learn Level II
• How to Make Millions
• Spikeability

What is Tim’s Strategy?

Sykes main strategy involves short selling over hyped penny stocks to profit when they fall in price. A strategy that can be risky unless you know what you’re doing because these stocks are volatile. Tim uses technical analysis to identify chart patterns that improve your odds of success in the market. An example of a chart pattern he likes is called the first red day pattern. If a stock has been green for several days and then closes the day red, many investors will soon sell causing the stock to fall. If you short on the first red day, it has potential of multiple red days meaning more profits. The key here is waiting for momentum to shift before you make your move. Sykes also likes to profit from buying breakouts, he runs a special newsletter ‘Supernova Alerts’ to focus on this lucrative strategy. Overall his techniques are more suited for smaller accounts, not those with millions of dollars to invest.

Is Timothy Sykes a Scam?

As you would expect there are a lot of traders skeptical about his story. Over the years Tim hasn’t had any trouble attracting hater because of the way he advertises to get new students. His Instagram account advertises his extravagant lifestyle, pictures of flashy cars, stacks of money and exotic vacations. A lifestyle, everybody wants to live. People often wonder if Tim is legit? Are his stock trading profits fake? Does he only make money selling products? I personally don’t think Timothy Sykes is a scam. Just because he makes more money teaching instead of trading, it does not make him a fraud. He has helped create multiple millionaires through his teachings, while he’s not solely responsible for their success, he played a big part in getting them started.

Examples of successful students:

• Michael Goode – started off as Tim;s first hater publicly criticising him online but then later became his first millionaire student.
• Tim Grittani – Grittani is a day trading superstar who has turned $1500 in $6 million in 8 years.
• Steven Dux – Dux is a very intelligent trader with an analytical mindset that has been crushing it for the past four years. Dux has turned $27,000 into $5 million in 4 years, this guy is a machine!
• Mark Croock – Croock has gone from student to teacher and is now apart of the Millionaire challenge as a mentor.
• Tim Bohen – the lovable rogue was an early case study in how trade successfully as a side hustle. Bohen is now the lead trainer at StocksToTrade.
• Roland Wolf – Roland came out of nowhere back in 2017 when he turned $4,000 into $170,000. Another awesome story, that inspires you to study harder.
• Kyle Williams – one of his latest success stories to pass the six-figure milestone, Kyle has been on fire lately and will surely reach one million dollars within the next two years.

Timothy Sykes is the real deal, he’s been interviewed by the likes of Larry King and Steve Harvey. His trading profits are real and have been verified on Profit.ly. He can have $1,000 days, but the real question is can he teach you to make the same kind of money? Your overall success depends on how determined you will be learn his strategies inside out. Many members join with such high expectations of becoming his next millionaire student, but the reality is they won’t come close. I don’t like being critical of Tim mainly because he’s a cool guy, works his butt off and brings transparency to the corrupt world of penny stocks. To appear less gimmicky he should tone down his advertising and be less flashy with material objects.

How Much Money Will You Need to Start?

It’s advised to start of with least $2,000 because broker fees will kills your profits. To avoid the dreaded pattern day trader rule you need to deposit $25,000. To get around this rule most people open up multiple brokerage accounts to place more trades. Splitting $10,000 into five different accounts and you can make 20 trades in five business days. Avoid using offshore brokerages they’re not reliable. Etrade and Interactive Brokers are the top two broker Sykes tends to recommend to students. Ultimately it doesn’t matter what broker you pick as long as you get solid trade executions and cheap commissions.

Conclusion

Love him or hate him; Timothy Sykes is here to stay. While you may not like his personality, he brings transparency and entertainment to finance. While his courses are expensive, this is the price you have to pay to learn from the best traders. Join for the education and not to get rich quick. Surround yourself with experienced traders and you will become a better trader yourself.

William Karaman is a 22-year-old day trader, entrepreneur and owner of Traders Society, a day trading chatroom and educational program teaching beginners how to trade penny stocks and options. Will got involved with the stock market at 12 years old and has spent the last ten years to learning his craft.

Will is smart and realises it’s easier to make money teaching instead of trading full-time, let’s not forget selling education is a lucrative business. With all that recurring monthly income, you could easily do over three figures per year in revenue without having to risk capital. Nowadays, Twitter is littered with these “day trading mentors” selling expensive courses despite possessing a limited track record.

Caught Paper Trading?

I first came across young William on Twitter, he had a few thousand followers and was posting some impressive profits. What really caught my attention was when he live-streamed his $50,000 profit shorting AWX. AWX was a stock that was hard to borrow but Centerpoint did have shares to short during pre-market hours. The problem is Will forgot to change his route from ‘MARKET’ to a route that was available. Centrepoint later tweeted out they didn’t offer a route called ‘MARKET’, meaning that it was a paper trade on a demo account. Centrepoint, also tweeted out they were in communication with a lawyer regarding Karaman spreading misleading information about their brokerage.

Old StockTwits Profile

On June 2018, he tweeted out when he makes his first million he will be buying a certain watch in all silver. This contradicts an old account on Stocktwits from 2016, claiming that he turned $4,000 into $1.4 million in under 3 years. Taking the shady approach of using false claims to build a business.

Poor Customer Service

Below is a screenshot from Will’s discord chatroom. Apparently, he got annoyed by a member repeatedly asking to show proof of his track record. Can’t believe this is how Will treated a paying customer who spent $1700 to join his service. I’m more shocked at how someone could waste $1700 when there are so many free resources online!

TV Appearance

Armstrong Williams invited Will, his family and Bjorn Brooks (successful student) onto his TV show By “invited” I mean he probably had to pay to get interviewed, TV shows don’t normally invite people on for free to promote their businesses. At first, he was giving very short generic answers to questions from the host but towards the end couldn’t stop talking! Mainly they discussed how his strategies work and what it takes to become a successful trader. His sister and Dad talked for about a minute and Bjorn (who looked like he was held hostage) chimed in with some words of wisdom. (Take a drink every time the phrase “history tends to repeat itself” is repeated).

Ending Thoughts

I don’t have anything against Will personally but he does open himself to criticism by aggressively promoting his service online. The kid does have an army of haters monitoring his every move, eager to highlight any of his mistakes. To stop all the hate, Will should simply share brokerage statements to verify his track record. This is the only way he will be taken seriously, screenshots are not sufficient.

What has happened to Will?

In recent times Will became homeless because of large losses from trading options and built up significant credit card debt. He was evicted from his apartment and at one point was sleeping in his car to save money. Will deleted most of his social media channels but recently reopened an Instagram account. Based on watching Instagram stories, the state of his mental health is worrying. On the 30th of June, Will checked in a behavioural hospital/drug rehab clinic for a few days. Let’s hope he hasn’t burnt bridges with family and gets the professional help to get his life back on track.

Investors Underground is an educational business selling day trading courses and access to a premium chat room with a community of experienced traders, dedicated to helping others learn how to trade. Nathan Michaud is the founder and one of the most highly regarded penny stock traders with a remarkable 10 year track record. He’s proven himself to be a profitable trader for the last decade but the real question is, can he really teach his strategies to others? With 100’s of self-proclaimed stock market guru’s selling courses online, you’re right to be skeptical. 100’s of positive reviews from past students claim that he is the ideal mentor while others think he’s a scam artist!

Who is Nathan Michaud

Nate started trading part time back in 2003 and made the switch to full time when he graduated from college in 2007. Within the space of 6 months, he started to become consistently profitable and his trading profits helped pay for university. Believe it or not, 6 months is a short time-frame to make consistent profits, it took day trader Ross Cameron 18 months to achieve this feat. He spotted a gap in the market and decided to launch Investor Underground Chat as a way to supplement his income. His chat room rapidly started to gain traction, so he merged his chat room and blog into one. Nate continued to attract a large following from his blog InvestorsLive.com, where he shared his watch-list for the day and trading plan. Even the great Timothy Sykes used to visit his blog for a second opinion often and see what tickers he was following. Later this led them to form a business relationship with Nate routinely speaking at some Tim Sykes’ conferences and joined the Profit.ly team for a short period.

Investors Underground was formed in 2008 with the aim of cutting through all the bullshit on Wall Street and create the best day trading service. In total Nate has 13 years of experience to back up his service, so luckily for you, he’s made every mistake in the book so you won’t repeat the same mistakes that led to him losing $20,000 in one day. Investors Underground has both a chat room and an educational service built-in with two plans available for subscribers, IU Standard starts at $197 per month and IU Elite is a hefty $297 per month. His service is extremely pricey, so before signing up it’s best to avail of the free one week trial offered to new members and if you think Nate is a good teacher use the latest promo code to save money. Despite Nate’s service having a good reputation most new penny stock traders have small accounts so they can’t afford to spend hundreds of dollars per month just on education as they have other expenses to consider such as software, broker fee’s and level 2 feeds. There are dozens of positive reviews and testimonials from current members on his site. Any of the complaints from previous subscribers are those who didn’t study hard enough. They expected to blindly copy trade alerts and bank easy profits without any hard work.

Inside the Members Area

Once you sign up as a paid member, this is exactly what the member’s area looks like. It’s a simple, organized layout, easy for users to navigate.

Live Day Trading Chat-rooms

Investors Underground has three different chat-rooms to suit everyone’s trading style:

• Swing Trading chat room – Run by Michelle Koenig from Tradeonthefly.
• Momentum chat room – This is the most active but has strict rules, every post has to add value or the moderators will mute you, this pisses people off, but I think it’s beneficial as the chat is less cluttered with questions Google could answer.
• OTC chat room – Almost no activity in the OTC room, not popular with subscribers.

On average during markets hours 500-1000 people are active, about 20% of the chat room are newbies who have no clue what they are doing and are looking for real-time alerts from the top moderators. Members have the opportunity to learn from many well-seasoned traders such as Cam B, Oddstocktader, Offshorehunter, AT09_Trader, Derrick J Leon, Tim Grittani, Emil, Splendores, OzarkTrades, Eric Wood, Will Wagner and Brandon Garretson. Be warned that it will be intimidating at first because it’s full of experienced traders sharing their own lingo that will confuse you; it’s advised to watch both Textbook Trading and Tandem Trader before joining to provide a reliable framework. The DVDs are expensive, but IU does specials once every while where they bundle the DVDs with membership to make them more affordable. 

Is Investors Underground a Scam?

When it comes to any trading service, it has to be one of the most asked questions. Why would someone supposedly making six figures per year want to sell me a trading course revealing their strategy? It’s difficult to trust anyone online as there are many fake traders selling courses with over-hyped sales pages, claiming how you can make $10,000 per month following their simple strategies. Nate’s service isn’t perfect but is definitely one of better communities to join, Investors Underground does have negative reviews but that’s expected when you’ve thousands of students. Past subscribers complain because they signed up with the expectation of making easy profits by shadowing someone else’s trades but that won’t work since penny stocks move too fast. Instead, IU wants to create real traders NOT followers. Rather than being a sheep, it’s better to become a profitable independent trader on your own, alerts and lessons are there for guidance only. 

Busted by the SEC

Surprisingly Nate had to settle with the SEC for his involvement in a penny stock pump and dump scheme that took place in 2006 & 2007. Nate was charged civilly not criminally, for manipulating the price of Asia Global Holdings using illegal techniques such as wash sales & matched trading and distributed press releases touting the company as a strong investment. 10 others were apart of the scheme and he ended up paying a fine of approximately $94,000 to the SEC, Nate commented on the ruling highlighting he was not involved with dumping 54,000 million shares of improperly registered stock. Despite Nate being one of the smaller fish in the case, what he did was incredibly stupid and no doubt massively regrets getting involved with such a shady group of individuals.

Video Lessons 

Nate has put together an impressive library of video content to help answer your questions or help deal with any issues you experience. So members have two ways to learn, real-time alerts in chat (don’t shadow his trades) and video lessons you can watch at any time. Trade recaps are provided at least three times per week, so you can review the trades he made during the week and explains his reasoning behind them, normally 5-10 minutes long. He’s constantly updating his library, so he does have an overwhelming amount of lessons that tend to overlap a lot.

Monthly Webinars

Every month there are about four webinars for members only, discussing recent trades (gains and losses), trade setups and how to prepare for the week ahead. The best thing about these webinars is subscribers can submit questions live and the material is covered in more detail, in comparison to the video lessons which can be too basic at times. Free webinars are given quite frequently to attract new members into his community but are very promotional. In total there are four years worth of educational material including power-points, seminars and most recent webinars.

Textbook Trading DVD

Textbook Trading is 8 hours of pure content discussing everything you need to know to start trading. I advise you to have a pen and paper ready to take down notes as you watch, each time you re-watch his DVD’s you learn something new that you missed beforehand. Nate goes through everything he has learned from day one, detailing his success and mistakes along the way. Each topic is accompanied by real trade examples and visuals to give clear advice, so you better understand his strategy. He covers his favorite setups, high-probability chart patterns and how to use level 2. The course alone with shorten your learning curve by ten fold and is highly recommended by Tim Grittani. It’s one of the top rated products on Investimonials with 144 5 star reviews which looks unnatural and probably gave members an incentive to leave a positive rating. I’d prefer if the DVD was shipped manually instead of streaming it online and Nate does promote his chat room within the training.

Tandem Trader DVD

Tandem Trader is a more in-depth continuation of Textbook Trading so you’re kind of forced to buy both DVDs. This training contains over 13 hours of live trading examples instead of the usual analyzing charts in hindsight which annoys me. Similar material is covered in his first DVD but in greater detail – how to read level 2, recurring chart patterns and setups that work in any market environment. Other aspects mentioned is the importance of sticking to your plan and controlling your emotions in stressful situations. As a bonus, he interviews other successful veteran stock traders who have made millions following their own unique strategies. If you follow Nathan on Twitter (@investorslive) he often holds competitions giving away free trials and coupons for a select few lucky followers.

6 Reasons Why New Investor Underground Students Will Fail

1. Lack of Preparation

Day trading is not gambling, don’t expect to strike it rich out of pure luck. The first step of preparation is education, to help you with this it’s recommended to start off with Nate’s DVDs. This will help add some structure to your trading, so you come to the market prepared every day, you still might lose money but at least your odds of success are a lot greater. “Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.”

2. Lack of Proper Tools

This refers to using the best brokers, software and charting tools to maximize your chances of success. For international students, finding brokers for penny stocks can be a nuisance and some end up with free brokers such as Robinhood. Using Robinhood is the same thing as showing up to a gunfight with a floppy dildo in your hand.

3. Risk Management

Unless you develop strong risk management skills, you will consistently lose over the long term. Protecting your downside risk is the name of the game, new traders at the beginning focus too much on the potential rewards while they should be doing the complete opposite. For example, if you only ever trade with 10% of your capital you can never blow up your account. Even if you have a 90% win ratio, you still stand a chance to blow up by going in too big on a play.

4. Blatantly Following Alerts

The most prominent issue with penny stock alert services is they attract people just looking to copy trades from the best traders. As mentioned before Nate wants you to become an independent trader that can think for himself and create their trading plan. The alerts are there for guidance so you can learn how a professional trades.

5. Averaging Down

Averaging down is a bad habit new traders use that can magnify losses. When you’re in a losing position it’s best to cut your losses short and move onto a new play; no one likes losing but it’s apart of the game. This, in theory, sounds simple to follow but under stressful situations and down $200 you easily can dig the hole a lot deeper. Remember hope is not a strategy, exit your trade when momentum is going against you.

6. Revenge Trading

Revenge trading is another account destroyer and is a classic problem for gamblers. “I’m down $1,000 but I can easily make it back on my next trade”. If you feel overwhelmed, it’s best to step back and take a break until your emotions have subsided.

Conclusion

After reading my review of Investors Underground, it is clear that if you surround yourself with a group of successful traders, you will become a better trader! Don’t join with the mindset of wanting to make money quick, as you’re guaranteed to fail. Focus on learning for at least the first 6 months not the profits. Investors Underground doesn’t sell a magic formula but they will help shorten your learning curve and give you a platform to improve your odds of success. Start off paper trading and after at least three months then trade live with real money. Paying $297 per month may seem ludicrous at first but if you master his strategy, you could make back 100 times what you paid. Ultimately your willingness to learn, the ability to bounce back from failure and discipline will determine if you will be successful.