Thinkorswim

[Mister Agenda]

Thinkorswim/Investools is an online brokerage/investor education company. Superficially they seem okay, their product seems useful, and I haven't seen any major complaints on the intertubes, but they're a little aggressive in trying to get me to sign-up for their services. For $99.00 I attended a two-day seminar and have access to Investools for three months, the up-sell is a $2,700.00 package that involves coaching and observation of trades in their 'trading rooms'.

My question is: Does anyone know anything about these guys having shady practices, beyond trying to get me to buy the tricked-out package I can't afford?

 

[quixotecoyote]

Not beyond the general advice that if anyone had a legitimate system for beating the market for sale, they would not need to have a legitimate system for beating the market for sale.

 

[drkitten]

Thinkorswim/Investools is an online brokerage/investor education company. Superficially they seem okay, their product seems useful, and I haven't seen any major complaints on the intertubes, but they're a little aggressive in trying to get me to sign-up for their services. For $99.00 I attended a two-day seminar and have access to Investools for three months, the up-sell is a $2,700.00 package that involves coaching and observation of trades in their 'trading rooms'.

My question is: Does anyone know anything about these guys having shady practices, beyond trying to get me to buy the tricked-out package I can't afford?

What services do they offer?

If they're offering broker services -- well, I can buy a hell of a lot of $7 trades through Scottrade for $2700, or even for $99. I could certainly see a legitimate broker business that had a very nice web interface to their research library wanting to educate you in how to do that, the same way there are thousands of companies that would love to educate me in how to make a spreadsheet in Excel. But I wouldn't pay for it.

If they're going to teach you the fundamentals of market investing,.... again, that's a legitimate service that I would pay for. Barnes and Noble will let me read Stock Market Investing for Dummies for free, and I don't even need to buy a coffee if I don't want.

If they claim to have something more sophisticated than what Stock Market Investing for Dummies offers, then they're a scam, pure and simple. As the coyote pointed out.

(And the coyote ought to know. I grew up on his cartoons, after all....)

 

[drkitten]

Thinkorswim/Investools is an online brokerage/investor education company. Superficially they seem okay, their product seems useful, and I haven't seen any major complaints on the intertubes, but they're a little aggressive in trying to get me to sign-up for their services.

Further to above -- it looks (and smells) like a scam to me. Here's a very detailed analysis:

The education business is not a scam and that is not the thesis. Investor education is a perfectly legitimate business if conducted ethically and we can actually thank Investools for this. Under the leadership of many who are now long gone, Investools took a penny stock company from a shady seminar business to a legitimate education company with many fine instructors and coaches. There are thousands of internet postings pertaining to the “Investools scam” and they can all be summed up by the words of successful Investools users; like any other educational offering, you get out of it what you put into it. There is a whole community of Investools die-hards, both on and off the payroll who are committed to helping each other become educated investors. But the company does not produce these educated investors at a healthy enough rate that will sustain those appealing metrics you so diligently outlined.

The problem is that once Think or Swim account openings, not student success, became the focal point of the operation at the top level of the business, this legitimacy of education or concern with student success fell quickly by the wayside, not at the hands of the educators but at the hands of an amateur management division overseen by a very greedy C-level staff wearing rose-colored glasses when it came to their own business. [...]

 

[roger]

If you want an education in investing and finance, you can get it for free. Various universities put their classes online - look at Professor Damadoran in particular. He has written canonical texts in the field, and his lectures are online for free. The thinking of the best minds in the business - Buffett, Graham, Markiel, Browne, Greenblatt, Fisher, etc., are all available for the price of a library card.

Or, you can pay 3 grand to be "taught" to day trade by someone with not much more qualifications and training than you, in a game where you are competing against supercomputers programmed by Russian math PhDs that live, breathe, and sleep day trading. Good luck with that.

edit: here's another way to look at it - if you can't read what is really some pretty basic information from a book and put it into practice yourself, and need it force feed to you in an expensive classroom, does it make a lot of sense that you'll have the intellectual acumen to successfully operate in a field with much less well defined information? The answer to that may not be clear - but the idea here is that the principles of investing are pretty darn straightforward, but being successful means processing data from a fire hose and filtering out what is irrelevant. The learning is easy, the execution hard.

 

[Mister Agenda]

Thanks guys, you definitely put your finger at what was bothering me. The online investment tools seem handy, but the company's focus seems to be on getting me to sign up for expensive training and coaching, which shouldn't be THAT expensive considering it is fairly readily available. drkitten's find seems to explain the good product/shady sales vibe. I think I'll go with more reading and maybe the recommended online university course. As far as coaching goes, I'm sure I could find or start a Meetup or listserv to help me connect with experienced investors who would be happy to answer simple questions for beer.

In the meantime, I got a pretty good value for the $99 I've already put in, and have another month or two to play with their virtual trading application.

 

[quixotecoyote]

I just wandered over and skimmed the usenet investing groups. There's a few articles that are interesting amidst the spam. It might be worth a peek.

 

[drkitten]

I'm sure I could find or start a Meetup or listserv to help me connect with experienced investors who would be happy to answer simple questions for beer.

Heck, there's an econ forum right here, where some pretty sharp cookies hang out -- as well as some mouth-breathing nutcases who are pretty good entertainment once you realize that absolutely nothing they say has any relationship to reality.

And both groups are pretty educational. Learn from the masters, and learn what the nutcases think so that you'll be prepared to fend off any scam artists.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Thinkorswim/Investools is an online brokerage/investor education company. Superficially they seem okay, their product seems useful, and I haven't seen any major complaints on the intertubes, but they're a little aggressive in trying to get me to sign-up for their services. For $99.00 I attended a two-day seminar and have access to Investools for three months, the up-sell is a $2,700.00 package that involves coaching and observation of trades in their 'trading rooms'.

My question is: Does anyone know anything about these guys having shady practices, beyond trying to get me to buy the tricked-out package I can't afford?

Don't do it.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

The answer to that may not be clear - but the idea here is that the principles of investing are pretty darn straightforward, but being successful means processing data from a fire hose and filtering out what is irrelevant. The learning is easy, the execution hard.

As Mr Buffett always says (and said again this year), "Investing is simple, but not easy".

 

[Mister Agenda]

Heck, there's an econ forum right here, where some pretty sharp cookies hang out -- as well as some mouth-breathing nutcases who are pretty good entertainment once you realize that absolutely nothing they say has any relationship to reality.

And both groups are pretty educational. Learn from the masters, and learn what the nutcases think so that you'll be prepared to fend off any scam artists.

True enough, I've learned a lot on this forum, mostly just from lurking.

 

[Mister Agenda]

Don't do it.

I won't! The $2,700 was never going to happen, I may not be savvy but I know what I can afford. I save my credit card for emergencies.

From what I'm hearing they I just don't trust them enough to continue doing business with them, once the current access to their site is over I won't be renewing.

There's always Scottrade.

 

[Neally]

I've used them for trading. I never got any solicitations for their seminars. Base your decision on their trading platform and commissions.

 

[Mister Agenda]

I've used them for trading. I never got any solicitations for their seminars. Base your decision on their trading platform and commissions.

They charge a fee (quarterly, I think) of around $120.00 for use of their investment tools. Is that typical?

 

[drkitten]

They charge a fee (quarterly, I think) of around $120.00 for use of their investment tools. Is that typical?

Depends on the tools. Scottrade charges me nothing but has additional screening tools and whatnot that they will charge me for if I need them.

$120/quarter is about $500 a year. If you have $10,000 to invest, that's a 5% annual fee straight up. That's way too expensive to charge individual investors. Again, sounds scam-like to me.

 

[Almo]

$120/quarter is about $500 a year. If you have $10,000 to invest, that's a 5% annual fee straight up. That's way too expensive to charge individual investors. Again, sounds scam-like to me.

If I've learned one thing running a virtual business in EVE-Online, it's "always watch the percentages." 5% is stiff. If those tools don't increase your yield by 5% annually, you're throwing away money.

Edit: Before you laugh, remember that CCP has hired a real economist to montor the economy in that game.

 

[drkitten]

If I've learned one thing running a virtual business in EVE-Online, it's "always watch the percentages." 5% is stiff. If those tools don't increase your yield by 5% annually, you're throwing away money.

And the followup observation is that nothing can reliably improve your yield by 5% over what you can get by simply buying and holding an index fund.

And if I had such a magical tool, I for damn sure wouldn't give it away for $500 a year.

 

[Almo]

And the followup observation is that nothing can reliably improve your yield by 5% over what you can get by simply buying and holding an index fund.

And if I had such a magical tool, I for damn sure wouldn't give it away for $500 a year.

All hail the index fund. That is so true.

 

[Mister Agenda]

If there's one thing I can thank the Thinkorswim seminar for, it's motivating me to cut loose Financial Engines on my 401K and invest in index funds. I was able to lose money just as fast on my own without Financial Engines, and I didn't charge myself a fee for it.

 

[Hound01]

Thinkorswim/Investools is an online brokerage/investor education company. Superficially they seem okay, their product seems useful, and I haven't seen any major complaints on the intertubes, but they're a little aggressive in trying to get me to sign-up for their services. For $99.00 I attended a two-day seminar and have access to Investools for three months, the up-sell is a $2,700.00 package that involves coaching and observation of trades in their 'trading rooms'.

My question is: Does anyone know anything about these guys having shady practices, beyond trying to get me to buy the tricked-out package I can't afford?

I have a friend who is a trainer for a very similar competing organisation to the one you mention. Two comments:

1. The chief measure by which his success is measured is the dollar amount of further courses he sells (not whether his students learn anything useful)
2. He says that less than 5% of his students ever make money trading (but he blames them for that)

So, the odds are very strong that you will be poorer not richer if you take the course.