InTheMoneyStocks.com review: Deceptive investment performance

Perspectives on In the Money Stocks based upon Multiple Years of Trading

In the Money Stocks is a highly deceptive service in terms of how gains and losses are tracked. On the surface, the performance of their flagship service -- Verified Investing Alerts -- makes it appear that 70-80% of their trades are winners and that the returns each year are very high. However, the realities in terms of risk and performance are very different.

1. Gareth Soloway doesn't show the weightings of the trades (i.e., the actual amounts invested or % of total portfolio) in his performance statistics -- some of the winners have 1-2% of your portfolio in them only. The losers may have 10% of your portfolio in them. Let's take an example. You win 8 trades at 2% of your portfolio at 8% return (say $20,000 per position) and you have a winnings of $12,000. You then have 2 losing trades with 10% of your portfolio each at 20% loss and then you have a loss of $40,000 on the losing trades. Hence, your return is not up 24% on 10 trades (a great return!) which would seem to be the case (i.e., the non-weighted return shown on the site) -- if you just added up Gareth's winners and losses simplistically -- but in fact a loss of -$28,000 assuming you had a portfolio of $1 million and the trading amounts discussed above for this analysis or a - 2.8% return overall. Why doesn't Gareth show the weightings in his performance record? This is why. The performance would look likely much worse than he leads the public to believe.

In short, if the track record is so good -- Why doesn't he show the true weighted performance of a sample portfolio and compared to indexes like the S&P 500? [answer: because it is not so good].

2. In terms of stock picking prowess, while Gareth gets many trades right -- he has multiple disasters. This year (2023), he started shorting NVDA in January, MSFT, SMH, Apple, QID in early 2023 as well. These have turned out be huge disasters as of November of this year. However, a month or so ago, Gareth claimed our portfolio is up 15% for their year. That is mathematically possible but extremely deceptive -- as the calculation is based upon "Closed Trades Only". He didn't factor in the open positions like Apple, MSFT, others. If you include those, the portfolio maybe up a few percent for the year so far at best -- where the S&P and Nasdaq are up over 10%. In short, he significantly underperforms the market quantitatively -- while using marketing spin to deceive investors.

The live trading room is different but shows the same similarities in terms of deceptive practices. While there are lots of winning trades -- the few losers may be held as swing trades for long periods of time and get worse and worse. An example is UPST (Upstart). He bought that in the Summer at a cost basis of $37.10 (approximately). The day trade went bad. The price as of November 10,2023 is about $20.30 (a loss of 45%). Keep in mind that in Day Trades you can put up a lot of money to earn a small scalping fee. As illustration, let's say Gareth had $500,000 in the trade initially (a 6/6 position). The loss thus far is then $225,000. Gareth is up about $1 million on day trading this year. So if he loses $225,000, he still has a good return. However, this is not day trading -- where you close positions generally at the end of the day, and this is very high risk trading. For example, many I-banks think UPST is really worth $14.00 or less a share. In terms of individual investors using this service -- you would have to generally have $1 million+ in many of Gareth's day trades to get even close to the $1 million he shows this year (that can be illustrated with further examples). Do you really want to take that risk? Otherwise, your returns will be substantially less. And do you want to really take a chance on getting into a UPST trade? That stock did not have good fundamental value even when he first bought it. I mention UPST above. In the reviews of In the Money Stocks, there are clusters of these examples.

In sum, there is too much deception associated with this company. Gareth appears to underperform the indices based upon a full analysis of his portfolio and investment weightings in the Verified Investing Alerts Services. His live trading service doesn't not explicitly show the amounts invested in the trades (e.g., > $1 million invested for a few hundred dollar return) and the potential horrid losses on the occasional disastrous trade. If In the Money stocks is doing much better than this -- then they show should show their full portfolio and investment levels in each position (or performance for that of an illustrative subscriber). Otherwise, this firm is using deceptive and apparently dangerous and risky trading practices. In short, you want to put your money with someone who is completely honest. These guys are not.