like Rearden Metal said, the dancing stick figure i posted is found on the shortboy site. i didn't modify any images at all...
Quote from TonyOz:
I I don't want to beat a dead horse, but there is a website claiming a hefty returns for 2001, but in reality, they actually lost on a percentage basis for 2001. How do you find this to be better than a free trial to a service? In other words, what prevents anyone from posting a bogus record on their website. Now, I'm not accusing the website you are endorsing of wrong doing, but how does a newbie know if the returns a real or not?
Check this out:
[img ]="http://www.tonyoz.com/shortb/z-shortboy1.gif[/img]
the claim made that an account was started with 100K on 1/2/01 on which returns of 30.8% were achieved. Sounds good, doesn't it?
<img src="http://www.tonyoz.com/shortb/f-shortboy1.gif">
the above trade record shows transactions in 5 stocks on 4/5/01 for a total dollar amount of $318,875 quite a bit over 100K isn't it. But there is more.
<img src="http://www.tonyoz.com/shortb/z-shortboy2.gif">
On Friday, September 7th 2001. A subscriber to the service confirms that xxxx is going to reduce his account size to 100K. This means that up to this point there was more money than 100K. Interesting, isn't it?
<img src="http://www.tonyoz.com/shortb/f-shortboy4.gif">
The above screen shot shows the profit as of 9/17 at $42,920. Since we all know that the market was closed from 9/11-9/17 and given the sizeable gains in the trades we can conclude that these trades were entered prior to the account size being reduced to 100K. So 42,920 divided by 500K which was the account size is equal 8.6% or if you annualize it since it was achieved in 257 days it will be 12.21%. Beautiful
<img src="http://www.tonyoz.com/shortb/f-shortboy5.gif">
The above screen shot shows the profit for the year. Please note that the profit is down from 42,920 to 30,790. In other words, the account was down 12,130. No a big deal right? WRONG! Since we all know that shortboy reduced his account size to 100K after 9/17, the loss of 12,130 represents a 12.13% loss in 108 days. Now, if you annualize it, you will get 40.1% loss.
There isn't anyway that you will weigh these two return numbers together that will not yield in a loss. Yet his website claims 30.8% GAIN.
Now why did I go through the trouble to point this out? I did so simply because I strongly believe that unless a trading record represents ALL ACTUAL EXECUTED TRADES (straight out of the brokerage statements) by whomever is behind that website then those returns are nothing more than fiction. After all, they are not real are they?
Sincerely,
Tony
