We personally watched a new market timing service, who's owner asked us for advice (and who's service will not be named here), post years of incredible gains, all achieved by back-testing. Gains averaging 60% to 80% a year every year!

They started their new service and by the year's end had achieved a loss. Real time trading is completely different than back-testing. Anyone can back-test and achieve wonderful results, but real-time pits you against the real world.

Every time we are told of a new service that has achieved spectacular results, we check how long they have been in business. Usually it is less than a year. But they are posting trades going back many, many years. Is this not a bit suspicious?

Getting back to that new website, at the start of the new year, those losses disappeared.
I looked. They are nowhere to be found. All I could find were beautiful charts showing how much you would have made, had you followed their strategy for the last ten years.

It is so easy to make your results look better than they are.

Please do not fall for such scams.

Making money in the stock market is not easy. It takes hard work and patience. Anyone who says they have the key to easy money is lying. We received an email recently from a service advertising 288 winning trades with only 3 losing ones. Sure... There are people still buying the Brooklyn Bridge too. At FibTimer we tell all our subscribers that losses are inevitable in trading. The trick is to keep them as small as possible.

We also post every trade, and keep those trades posted on the website for years. Every strategy has a link to a "Trading History" page with complete trade history and details for that strategy.

If achieving profits in the stock market were no more difficult than going shopping at your local supermarket, everyone would be a billionaire.

FibTimer offers solid results by trading "all" trends, for subscribers who "stay" with our strategies and do not exit at the first small loss or inconvenient news event.

The Grass Is "Usually" Greener During Drawdowns

Typically, market timers experiencing a drawdown are most tempted to change methodologies. If the grass is always greener, it makes sense that it appears vivid green when your strategy is experiencing a loss.

But changing methodologies mid trade is almost always a losing proposition.

Traders who change strategies during a drawdown are attempting to "forecast" what the market will do next. There is no way to do this consistently, so the odds are, the change is a mistake. ALL strategies have periods when the markets move against them. If traders think otherwise, they are headed for losses.

You can always find an indicator that worked perfectly over the prior weeks or months. It is easy to find an accurate forecaster "after" the fact. It is an entirely different matter being accurate in real time and then doing it consistently.

Emotions are the primary reason for changing a good strategy mid trade. We have written so many commentaries about emotions, this may be repetitive to many of our subscribers, but it is extremely important.

Emotional decisions are almost always losing decisions.

Trends are where the money is made. They last longer than anyone expects, and usually no one believes them when they start. They last months, or a year or more. Take a look at a long term chart of the markets. One that covers ten or more years. See any trends in there?

Don't Be Misled By False Promises

Because no one can accurately forecast the future, some trends will fail. But at FibTimer we exit those failed trends quickly.

As long as "every" trend is traded, trend followers will "always" be fully invested in every real trend. They will "never" miss a trend!

Those who stayed the course with Fibtimer during the 2008-2009 bear market realized solid gains. And over following years those gains have multiplied to become huge gains.

We did the same during the 2001-2003 bear market.

In fact we have been market timing since 1982, and online since 1996.

Trend trading is the sure path to consistent long term profits. Strategies based on any of the many, many indicators are subject to periods of time when those indicators fail. Do not be misled by anyone who promises he or she has found the perfect indicator. It does not exist.

Use common sense and stay with the trends to ensure you are "never" left behind in any rally, and are always protected during a bear market or prolonged decline (or profiting in a bearish position).