Author/Editor
David Eifrig
Publisher
Stansberry Research
Description
Active trading newsletter, tends to focus on income and options trades.
Overall Rating
Rating: 4.1/5. From 24 votes.
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4.2
Rating from 105 votes
If you’ve subscribed to Retirement Trader, please click the stars below to indicate your rating for this newsletter, and please share any other feedback about your experience using the comment box below.
Investment Performance
Rating from 28 votes
Rating: 4.3/5. From 28 votes.
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- 5 Stars 17 Votes
- 4 Stars 6 Votes
- 3 Stars 3 Votes
- 2 Stars 1 Votes
- 1 Stars 1 Votes
Quality Of Writing/Analysis
Rating from 25 votes
Rating: 4.4/5. From 25 votes.
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- 5 Stars 18 Votes
- 4 Stars 3 Votes
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- 2 Stars 1 Votes
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Value For Price
Rating from 28 votes
Rating: 3.8/5. From 28 votes.
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- 5 Stars 10 Votes
- 4 Stars 9 Votes
- 3 Stars 4 Votes
- 2 Stars 3 Votes
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Customer Service
Rating from 24 votes
Rating: 4.1/5. From 24 votes.
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- 5 Stars 14 Votes
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This is a great news letter, except for the price!
Sure it’s Naked Put and Covered Calls, But the picks are virtually gauanteed not to fail. Well almost. You might roll it over, etc. but by the time you have closed the position you’ve made some money. At least so far.
And it’s for Retirees. Who want something easy and not take alot of time.
And yes, I am now going for one month more often than two. But I have a very low transaction fee. If I were still trading Options with Schwab, and with my position sizes, 2 months might be the way to go so tha the fees don’t eat up so much of the gains.
Over all I don’t know how many stars. Price would be 1 or zero, the rest would be 5 stars- what does that add up to?
David Eifrig’s Retirement Trader sells put options, and, when assigned, eventually sells covered calls.
D.E. himself measures the performance against margin requirements, whereas I try here to assess the mark to market performance of only his currently open positions, using data given in his Feb 12th 2016 report:
13 open stock positions, the earliest from 3/20/15, plus 16 open option positions.
The stock positions, assuming 100 shrs each, were acquired for $96076, and are worth $80271, an unrealized loss of $15805 or 16.5% (not considering any dividend gains).
The 16 sold options show an unrealized gain of $ 1531.
This of course is only a moments snapshot (subject to errors on my side) and says nothing about the long term performance of the service which may actually be good, if you follow the “annual report card” issued by Stansberry and Associates.
any update on the performance
This was my introduction to trading options. Though pretty much limited to selling covered calls and naked puts, Dr. Eifrig’s picks are almost guaranteed. The contortions he goes through to recover from stock price drops have educated me on how to exit trades successfully, which is the most difficult trick to learn. Now, with the help of the Blue Collar Investor, and using the techniques learned by following Retirement Trader for a few years, I am able to chose my own trades successfully. The lifetime subscription seems like a bargain, now that I have recovered that cost.
Are you still with Retirement Trader & have you made $ in the past year?
.How difficult is it to follow & execute his covered calls?
Thanks–
I still get the newsletter, but I have moved from covered calls to naked puts and to bull put spreads, all of which are variations – sort -of. Generally you cant do naked puts and Bull put spreads in an IRA so I usually get my ideas from others, But I have made a few trades from doc over the past years, and genealy they have been profitable.
My IRA is with Interactive Brokers, and I place naked puts and bull put spreads in the IRA account.
Since buying retirement trader, I’ve received only one recommendation in two months. Sad.
Dean, can you give us an update–did you stay with the service? How did the other trades go over the past year of 2019? How many winners/losers? Did you make money?
How much difficulty & trouble did you encounter?
Gratefully, George
I have subscribed to this since 2019 and find the service reliable and educational. I had little understanding of covered calls (or puts) but this service gives you the information you need to make trades on your own. In addition, they provide monthly recommendations that have proved to me to be over 80% successful. I have easily got my money back for what I paid and have since added Retirement Millionaire and Income Intelligence. I recommend trying this if you are interested in making covered call trades and are also looking for some stocks to buy and hold. The writing and logic behind the recommendations is well done.
The first thing about this service that I do not like is the lack of text message alerts indicating that a new trade is posted. I expect text messages from a service like Retirement Trader.
Secondly, Retirement Trader generates trades on the second and fourth Fridays of each month. I consider that as a negative. I have written feedback to Dr. David Eifrig about this and have to wonder if he thinks there aren’t enough trades that meets his criteria to warrant a trade per week or is he getting less motivated as he collects his fee. I paid for a lifetime subscription and the annual fee is $149 or so.
And as an aside about other Stansberry products and their lifetime subscriptions. I had purchased a lifetime subscription to True Wealth – Commodities and Steve Sjuggerud decides to cancel this service and offers me a lifetime subscription to a service of his that I did not want. And Stansberry didn’t give me a dime of the money I paid for a lifetime subscription, not even in credit to use to pay for their annual fees!
Lastly, where in the world is Porter Stansberry?
All these newsletters are rip offs except for a few . I think we should bring a class action suit against them as a group for deceptive information and practices. About five newsletters became a a corporation in the Delray, Fort Lauderdale, and north to Baltimore area. They share the same info and people. They announce a seminar, and when it begins, they must have to give the date of the stated seminar. Heck, some are two to three years old, and have been shown a half-a-dozen times. recently I’ve seen James Altucher’s webinar at least five times with his man holding the envelope of nine cryptos. After an hour from the marble city (that crypto built) he announces his free supper pick “UMA”. Thanks James.
Do you have a pro bono attorney?
One should be careful with any Stansberry Research newsletter but this one is one of their better ones.
I have subscribed to Retirement Trader for a couple years. The trades are easy and can be done in an IRA account. Buying a covered call is as easy as buying 100 shares then selling a call against it. Selling a put is just selling a put.
They give instructions on each trade as well as detail on why they are recommending the trade.
David Eifrig is one of the better Stansberry Research figure heads. Currently (Nov 2022) his newsletter is showing 140 winning trade streak. This is accurate but understand this does not mean every trade is a winner. It means they continue to roll the calls until they can show a net profit (even at $0.01 it’s considered a winning trade). Take one of their recent recommendations as an example. The stock was recommended at a $176 so it will take $17,600 to buy 100 shares. Then sell a call for ~$8(ish). It takes the total down by $800. The stock is trading at $104 today. The strategy will have to continue to sell calls for a LONG time to bring the net cost to even. The trade doesn’t count as a loss until he stops rolling the call and gives up on the stock.
So while the 140 trade winning streak isn’t wrong, it is misleading. The $17,600 is tied up for a long time making no money in the account. If the subscriber follows both sides of the strategy, covered calls and puts, then double the amount of money tied up in the account.
Best case scenario the stock price is higher than the strike price of the call at expiration. This will call away the shares and leave the max profit. But subscribers should understand the math. Most trades make 1%-2% if called away on first trade. Trades are typically around 2 months. This would be 6% – 12% annually …IF…the subscriber flipped into another trade immediately and stayed 100% invested the whole year with 100% winners all getting called away on the first trade. This is not the reality.
But the newsletter is decent and it does have a 140 trade win streak. I consider it A strategy for my IRA but not THE strategy for my IRA.
I just read his “If you’d been DEAD RIGHT 193 times…” mailing / offer that expires on March 15, 2024. With no knowledge of this trading scenario and reading your comments above this sounds like a high maintenance fly solo trip. His members are quoted as averaging $2,000 to $6,000 each month. But Doc tells us that his trades usually take 2-3 months. How much are the trades costing to get into? The above example references $17,600. So to make the $2000 – $6000 each month his members mention I need some idea how much front money is needed to fund this? And if step by step help is needed beyond his videos, I’m out of luck unless he forgot to tell us that a help line is available. One comment above mentioned that there are no text alerts either.
As a retired teacher who has written many lessons I can tell you that there are many missing pieces to this pitch.
If this were done, for example as an investment club, where discussion and feedback were available, I could see investing the time and money.
I’m more of an investor wannabe, than a seasoned investor. I like the idea of covered call investing.
I checked the Retirement Trader web page. It states the suggested amount of capital to invest is 50K. With the cost of the newsletter being 5k a 50K investment would need to make 10% just to break even, not counting broker fees or taxes.