All,

Adverts for tipsheets abound, all making their own various claims of success, some of which are somewhat dubious, to say the least.

In particular, I am thinking of the tipster that advertises his gains by using mid prices, which grossly distorts the true figure, if you were to utilise the bid-offer spreads that existed at the time.

I see adverts for Trendwatch, Red Hot Penny Shares, Growth Company Investor, Fleet Street Letter, to name but a few.

The question is, is there a GOOD tipshheet/tipster out there?

Is there a tipster/tipsheet that gives only occasional tips, rather than the "3 tips every week" type?

If so, please name them, and give your reasons for the nomination.
An idea of subscription price may be helpful as well, in case anyone was thinking of purchasing.

looking forward to some interesting replies!

TIA

I was looking at the Growth Company Investor advert

https://secure.growthcompany.co.uk/Campaign.aspx?id=54

But i have some reservations.

NINETY recommendations per month!!!!

How on earth are you supposed to work out which are the best???

This of course is an example of their ensuring they have some winners, which will be the ones you hear about in their future ads.

I too would prefer the occassional strong tip, as and when a situation may arise, as opposed to multiple tips that you couldn't possibly afford to buy each one, and when you select, you invariably select the wrong ones, and thereofre your gains are less, or even losses.

Dos anyone already subscribe to Growth Company investor, and if so, have you any comments please?

It certainly looks more than a tipping site, just put off by the multitide of tips.

Never mind the tipsheets---study Goldfingers threads. All interesting and worth considering even if you can't afford them all!

moneyplus,

You've strayed a little off topic here, as it was tipsheets I wanted to investigate, to see if, despite my sceptiscism, there's a worthwhile one, or indeed maybe one I haven't heard of, that existing sbscribers would personally recommend.

Whilst tipshets may not always tip the correct stocks, they can be a starting place for research about a company, and for putting said company on your watchlist for later in their development.

As an example, RHPS recommended OXUS around 20p, a few months back, so they certainly researched that one well!!! (78p now)


With the greatest of respect to "Goldfinger", do you always believe what you read on internet BB's?

He has only recently started his stockpicking thread here, so hardly a track record to go by!

If Goldfinger posts IDENTIFIABLE trades (ie 5005 shares instead of 5000) BEFORE they take place., for a period of time, we could monitor his track record, and be in a position to assess his ability, or lack of it, after some time.

Don't forget 2003 has been a good year for many stocks, and easier than the previous couple to pick a few winners and show a profit, even I did well!

Andy.

Andy spot on, would never wish anyone to just take my word for it on a stock pick, and always the reason I give a detailed account on a share unless it is one of the Momentum plays that I always identify before recommending them to anyone. Please note I have only picked an handful and they have been picked at the height of the Bull market( sometimes with this kind of a share it has gotten away by the time you bring it to the attention of the board if your not Quick). I always ask investors do there own research and also point out it is there responsibility for the timing and selling of shares, I can do no more than that.

As for my track record yes your spot on again not much history to go on, here on this board but on another site SC you will see that I picked the number two and number three biggest risers on the FTSE for the year and also got in at the very bottom, Amstrad and Photo-Me respectively. Both going on for near 500% rises. I have also had a very good year on AIM and the many risers I have achieved there compare with the two above.

Now as for tip sheets this site may help you as you can try them all out free and theres also free software packages again you can try out. Certainly andy worth having a trial. Personaly when I used tip sheets I always found TechInvest to be the best, but then again its the most expensive. You also find that on the first day its just not worth buying the shares as the MMs mark them up first thing and also widen the spread. I dont rule them out though as I think you should get as much info on stocks as you can from any source.

Heres the freebies site...........





Anywhttp://books.global-investor.com/pages/offers.htm?ginPtrCode=00000

cheers GF.

goldfinger,

Thanks for an honest reply, I wasn't doubting your sincerity when I replied to Moneyplus, I just wanted to put BB banter in perspective.

A friend of mine mentioned Techinvest, very favourably, strangely enough.

Many thanks for the freebie site, I'll check it out.

Best regards,

Andy.

Hello Goldfinger.....

Very interesting comments here, can I ask what the free software is you mention above?

Thanks

Brian Barwick

Has anyone ever subscribed to 'The Momentum Investor' ?

If so, any comments appreciated.

Their offering regularly falls out of Shares magazine, and they make some pretty tall claims, which I'm interested in hearing about, as they seem to dabble more in AIM shares, which is my area of interest.

I thought they were published by the same people as SCSW..

Hi Andy,

This is an interesting topic and somewhat difficult to know and trust that tipster/tipsheets have some reliability in their predictions and forecasts. IMHO unless these tipsters / tipsheeets are close to the sources of news for a company then the tips are generally no better than those in Shares or Investor Chronicle Magazines and in any event it still requires some of the DYOR.

All to often unknowledgeble investors do just this only to find that the share price drops rapidly as other investors sell and take profits. This in turn triggers savy investors stop-loss limits that result in further heavy selling which in turn drives the share price down and for the investor buying on the tip to then curse the tipster / tipsheet for the losses they are nursing for buying-in way to high above the previous trough. Sods Law! I have learnt this from experience in my days as a novice investor and before owning technical analysis and charting software - Reuters/Equis Metastock.

Critically, it is important that if any tipster/tipsheet recommendations are of interest to an investor following their own DYOR, he/she should not necessarily rush out and BUY the share immediately on the tip but to also check out its chart and the position of a few analysis indicators first. I use Metastock with a combination of analysis indicators and these help me to decide with a fair degree of accuracy of when to buy and sell investments tipped or from my own research.

One of the tools available in Metastock is called the Explorer where investors can use either Equis's built-in professional investment analysts or user defined custom trading rules to run daily searches for shares matching the required BUY or SELL signals. The Explorer rejects on average say 95%+ of tradable shares leaving a short list of shares that do fit the criteria. If the tipster / tipsheet recommendations are on the Metastock Explorer's shortlist for that day then you are far more certain that you are buying or selling with confidence. Therefore, by using this tool in conjunction with tipsters / tipsheets and DYOR into news & fundamentals etc. you are more likely to make profitable trading decisions.

Hi Brian B, please click on this link and have a good look around the site for free software. You dont get the whole package from what I remember but enough for you to make some kind of evaluation. Please click on freestuff heading aswell as the december specials.

Momentum Investor I used to get and would agree with a lot of what has been said already. Tends to take a long term view on tips and charts sometimes go back 5 years or more.

I personally like to have a gander at the Shares Mag, but still prefered it in its old style.

Brian heres the link to click on.





http://books.global-investor.com/pages/offers.htm?ginPtrCode=00000

cheers GF.

GF / legins / All,

Thanks for your replies, and at least the topic has stimulated some discussion on what has been a quiet BB this Xmas.

It is a bit disappointing that out of all the tipsheets mentioned here so far, no one tipsheet has really been recommended by anyone as being a good source of tips, or information.

Techinvest seems to be the only one that someone will recommend, and I may send away for a trial edition, just to get the feel. One of my co workers told me today he received their free trial, and was pleased with the tips, althought that was a couple of years ago, and he no longer actively trades.

With regard to Goldfinger's Share Magazine comment, I fully agree, it is indeed a good method of finding interesting companies, for further research and investigation. I too preferred the old format, but will have to accept the new one.

One example of a stock I found in Shares was Cardpoint, and my shareclub is already well in profit here. Looking at the most recent edition of Shares, Lawrence (AIM : LAC) looks interesting, and that's certainly a company I'd never heard of before.

Please keep the replies coming,

Andy.

Regarding my previous post.

For anyone who would like to find out more about Reuters Equis Metastock visit this website.

http://www.paritech.co.uk/default-uk.asp

I have no interest other than as a user of this software but very happy to recommend it and the customer/user support services and training that Paritech provides.

Andy

RHPS
i know its a well known tip sheet, but since TW left, it has improved enormously. whereas tom would hang on to his favoutites til the death ( sometimes literally ) recent editors are not afraid to admit mistakes early on and sell, saving investors a great deal of pain. i subscribe but only buy about one in 15 recs. generally doing very well with them.

supperod,

Ok thanks for that, I must admit I stopped RHPS after Bruce MCwilliams joined, simply because they weren't prepared to send out email alerts if one of their tips turned sour.

I spoke to Bruce about it, and he said it "wouldn't be fair" on those without email.

I would have thought that there are very few people without email access these days, and really what he was saying is that the many have to suffer (financially) to be "fair" to the few!

I know they picked Oxus a few months ago,and my Shareclub want to subscribe to a tipsheet, hence my starting this thread.

One person on another BB proposed a group of people all subscribing to different tipsheets, and pooling the info. Not sure if that ever got started, but it seemed a novel idea at the time.

There have been a couple of replies in The Trader's Room, which I am copying here.

================================================


Seymour Clearly - 28 Dec'03 - 23:43 - 1 of 3


Andy, Interesting topic. I subscribe to Hemscott Analyst. It's an e-mail based sheet, all the tips are at the mid price, I have questioned them about this dubious practice and they would like to do it otherwise but the "industry standard" is mid price so they want their tips to be seen in the same light as everyone else. I tend to watch them but rarely buy them. Some small caps stocks can show huge price increases on the day but this is rarely sustained. I am very wary about buying small caps on their tips as the lack of liquidity makes huge swings inevitable. They do at least do a warts and all analysis on all their tips and hold their hands up when it goes wrong. imho it's one of the better ones around, and comes with t.a. attached to fundamental analysis.



mbbcat - 29 Dec'03 - 07:40 - 2 of 3


for uk mkt & stocks gni offer a variety of research some of it apears to be quite good
for forex see saxobank's daily report (free) also seems to get more right than wrong

imho nag dyor etc

Andy
pooling resources of different tip sheets may sound a good idea, but in my view is a non starter. most unfair on those paying a sub, plus the general idea of paying for a tip is to be ( hopefully ) a step ahead of other investors. i know bruce took a very dim view of any subscriber posting RHPS tips, and rightly so. i mailed him about "bulletin board thieves" and the next edition of RHPS carried that very phrase in the editorial. i didnt get recognition, so gracefully put it down to co-incidence. however i dont see anything wrong in anyone posting tips after a few days

For long-term investments Analyst is probably almost unbeatable - they do an enormous amount of research including visiting the companies and talking to the staff. They do not give tips, but cover about 40 companies, and each month they state whether the price is attractive (and they give the price they are talking about), or to hold, or to take profits. They cover the same companies every month, with about 10 in-depth features each month. Occasionally they bring in a new one or drop one which they consider does not reach their requirements. They are mainly run-of-the-mill companies which they say they understand well - eg Ultraframe, Next, DFS, Provident Financial, Speedy Hire, Rentokil, Wetherspoon, Hornby, Carpetright, Capita etc. No biotechs or pure tech companies.

Their website is: analystinvestor.com

They also have an investing service - I've only ever had the monthly magazine, which is 159 a year - expensive by some standards. I also understand that Techinvest is highly regarded - this focuses on tech companies.

supperrod,

I agree, but the idea (not mine BTW) was for a private email group, nothing was to be posted on the BB.

The idea was for each member to suscribe to a different tipsheet, and share the information within the group.

I agree with you about "BB thieves", but the MM's always know the tips in advance, and conveniently mark up the prices accordingly!

Click here for SCSW and Momentum Investor

Andy
i got lucky recently with the postal strike. i received a tip sheet a day early :0}}}}}}}