investools ® review- Trade stock? Is it for me?

New Reviews 2007-2008:

I had heard about the Investools ® package a couple of times in the past,
and had attended 2 different sessions of their overview seminar, which I
believe was a 2-hour session. I attended one at the Hyatt Regency ® in
Knoxville probably 8-9 years ago, and another in Chattanooga about 4 years
ago. It always looked great, but I never had the $5-6K (supposedly 50%
off the $10K package) that was offered at the end.
However, I did check it out online somewhat, and found a lot of negative
comments, sprinkled with a few positive ones.

Then, a couple of weeks ago I attended a SUCCESS ® Magazine "Get Motivated"
Seminar in Knoxville, TN, where a lot of name-brand folks talked on
motivation, success tactics, etc. I had already picked up Phil Town's
book "Rule #1 Investing" a couple of months before, and had read it with
interest, and was somewhat delightfully surprised that he was on the
agenda.

I agree with Phil's investing ideas, but was dismayed to see part of his
talk turn into a commercial for the Investools ® toolbox. Even though I was
disappointed, I felt like the name-brand folks on the same stage would not
have been associated with Investools ® if it was a scam. Also, it was
being offered for $1495, something I could afford. Made me wonder if
there ever was a standard price, or if it was whatever the traffic would
bear at the time.. So, I signed up for the two-day class to be taught in
Knoxville on 5/9-10/2007, knowing that would give me a few days to check
it out beforehand. Additionally, they offered a full-access login to the
software on a trial basis. So, I could fiddle with the software and have
time to research comments before the 2-day session, knowing I had to make
a decision before the end of the first day.

They reiterated time and time again, that even though they were requiring
a credit card to be on file during the trial, that they wouldn't process
the card until the end of the first day, when the decision had to be made.

I did my research online, and found hundreds of negative messages about
Investools ® tactics, bait and switch requiring much more costly training,
etc. etc. But I did find a few (very few!) positive comments. And, when
looking at timestamps, I discovered a lot of the negatives were in late
2006, early 2007 timeframe. Unfortunately, this signaled that they might
still be up to their old tricks.

I also discovered that there have been over 200,000 people take this class
and use these tools. My usage during the trial only showed up about 20-30
stocks (out of 14,000 that you can scan) that met the criteria for Rule #1
investing with the parameters they said were "safe". I wondered if all
200,000 people were fighting over these 20-30 stocks - not a good
scenario..

So, I took some precautions before I went to the 2-day class -
transferring most of the funds from my debit card account (the number I
gave them) into a savings account. I purposely got it way down below the
$1495 figure, and also called my bank, so that if they tried something, it
would be rejected. I have the ability to transfer funds over the phone
and figured if it was legit, I would call, transfer some money into the
account, and let them swipe the transaction for $1495 at the end of the
first day.

I arrived at the seminar right at the start, and was told by the nametag
person that there was something wrong with my account (must have
transposed a digit or something) and that I would have to see the guy
outside the door and clear that up before I would be allowed in!
After all the guarantees they wouldn't touch the account until the end of
the first day, here these guys were trying to run it before I even walked
in the door. How shameless can you be?

After the guy told me there was something wrong with my account, I
reiterated that it wasn't supposed to be touched until the end of the
first day. He had a dead-pan look. I asked if the he cared one way or
the other. He still had a dead-pan look, and finally answered "No".
I decided right there to turn in my materials and leave.

Thanks!

Steve O

With all of the very negative blogs about high pressure sales tactics, I was
VERY apprehensive about attending their 2-day workshop. Even staff with whom
I had contact acknowledged the over exuberance of some sales people. I can
honestly report, no one EVER "pressured" me at all. The advanced classes were
described, and their benefits were detailed, all in a calm, academic manner.
This occurred 2-3 times, but they were not offensive at all during the
February workshop in Charleston!

The instructor was energetic because he passionately enjoyed what he was
teaching. When I conveyed to him during a break that I could not buy any
further
training right now, he made no negative comments, showed no negative
reaction, and indeed, continued interacting with me throughout the rest
of the
workshop as warmly as he did during the first day. The sales "heat"
evidently
depends on the staff managing the workshop.

My experience was entirely positive. The genuineness of the instructor
enthusiasm, my being able to see how this program can help my investing,
and the
quiet respect with which we were ALL treated form the best commercial
Investools ® could have made. I am entirely satisfied.

The negative blogs were a very helpful preparation; the should be read. My
experience, however, was entirely positive.

Mike from Myrtle Beach

Thank you so much for taking the time to post these reviews about
Investools ®!!!!! Me and my boyfriend are just starting out and was about to
spend what little egg nest we have saved up for our future on Investools ®
UNTIL I decided to read into it a little more...I began to search the web
and I saw your site posted and had to read !!!! Not only was it our
little egg nest but I am disabled and my boyfriend had to give up his job
to take care of me and my little SSI check was barely enough to get us
through the month...we struggled so hard to get that money saved up and
you have saved us from making a big mistake..I feel so bad for the
students and other people who have wasted all their money on this bogus BS
!!!! Anyway thank you sooo much again for the reviews you posted and you
have no clue how great full me and my fiance are...I only hope your
reviews you posted helps someone else getting ready to take that leap with
Investools ® and that some day Investools ® will be known every where as a
huge scam and rip off!!!! Thanks ,Nicole and Sidney in Mesa,AZ

I had heard about the Investools ® package a couple of times in the past,
and had attended 2 different sessions of their overview seminar, which I
believe was a 2-hour session. I attended one at the Hyatt Regency in
Knoxville probably 8-9 years ago, and another in Chattanooga about 4 years
ago. It always looked great, but I never had the $5-6K (supposedly 50%
off the $10K package) that was offered at the end.
However, I did check it out online somewhat, and found a lot of negative
comments, sprinkled with a few positive ones.

Then, a couple of weeks ago I attended a SUCCESS Magazine "Get Motivated"
Seminar in Knoxville, TN, where a lot of name-brand folks talked on
motivation, success tactics, etc. I had already picked up Phil Town's
book "Rule #1 Investing" a couple of months before, and had read it with
interest, and was somewhat delightfully surprised that he was on the
agenda.

Thanks!

Steve O, Knoxville, TN

My wife and I have spent more than $15,000 with Investools ®. It does not
work for me. I do not recommend Investools Ameritrade provides me with
all the tools and information. Any investor must research before investing.
Investools® implies their system will do your research. Not True. Spend your
money and time studying the market. There are some very good books: How To
Make Money In Stocks, William O’Neil, The Intelligent Investor, Benjamin
Graham, and others.

Bruce J.

Atlanta, GA

Investools® is an education, a two-year education. In reading some of
these reviews it seems some people thought they were purchasing magic
beans. You can't go to medical school and expect to become a doctor
without being very disciplined and studying, hard. I am very satisfied
with the education I have invested in. I have devoted thousands of hours
to studying and treat this with all the seriousness of any other career.
I am making more money than I ever thought possible. I'm a housewife with
young children. If I can do it, anyone can.

As far as Investools ® versus other companies all I can say is this: I've
never had ANY other company initiate calls if I haven't called them in a
while. Customer service is over the top. In the beginning I was on the
hotline talking with coaches every day, sometimes more several times. I
have even been on the phone more than an hour talking with a coach a few
times. I really feel like they want their students to succeed so they
will recommend them to others. They have my recommendation.

DANI T.

Hello, I figured out too late the Investools ® motto, which is sell course
material, not teach you how to make money. I went to the two hour seminar,
went home and came back the next day to sign up for the stocks course. The
course was to teach you how to make money using their system but it turned
into a sales pitch of how to trade options and how much safer and
profitable it will be. The stocks course witch is $2,000. is a lot because
they really just show what is possible and their is no support. I f you
want support you pay additional $ 4,999.00 for basic options, or $
11,999.00 for advanced technicals, or get this I actually thought this was
a joke until I looked at the brochure. $ 23,999.00 for the PHD program
that takes place in Utah. Travel expenses are additional. I will use this
course to the best I can and when my 6 months expires I will move on. Take
care.

Chris B. Cary, N.C.

Read this review 8-23-05

First of all, thanks for giving us a forum to let our story be told. I went to a free seminar for Investools ® and was amazed at how technically advanced they were in how they suggested people invest. And right from the beginning I was taken. Smitten with the idea that I could make tons of money quickly, I bought into their program. But it was downhill from there. First of all, you could invest with Investools® and do well for yourself, that is for sure. But you have to purchase so much from them that you could be in the hole $10,000 before you even finish your first year just on Investools® costs. It is true that you can make good money investing, trading stock and options. Yet I would caution you that Investools ® is probably not the best way to do it.

For example, I have stopped my addiction to Investools ® and have decided to look at Forex Trading instead. There are lots of services, one that I know you have reviewed, PremiereTrade that is another way to get started. However, I am going it on my own. I have found good success and it is clearly a type of stock trading that suits me.

I hope that people really read this review. If you publish it, fine. I hope that Investools® doesn't get upset that I don't want to trade stock with them anymore, but there is money to be made, and I can do it on my own.

I attended an investools ® seminar and was impressed with thier software.
They have this hard sell- special deal today only and although I verifed
( I thought ) that the cost for the next level of training included the
seminar - to my dismay ( when I received the Visa Bill) the cost was
2000.00 more that I understood. Not a bargain by any means. I have not
opened any of the course material or done any online coaching so I
called and explained my misunderstanding. I requested a return address to
return the training manuals. Explained that due to a serious family
illness I did not wish to participate in the options level training at
this time. I have not even had a chance to practice and work with what I
learned at the seminar and paid for. I said I would probably be
interested in that addtional training at a later date, but would never
have signed up at that level if I had understood the cost. It took over
31/2 weeks to finally talk to someone in returns and then several more
days for a call back. Final word- no return - no refund.
Now I find that there are offers for $995.00 callng direct and not
attending Sucess mag seminar.

I have a very bad taste in my mouth about this now. I truly misunderstood
the cost and they believed that I did. This is not good business as i see
it . Read the fine print-

My wife and I attended the Learning Annex in Chicago in October 2006. We
put money down money to attend the two day Investools seminar the next
weekend. I do agree with other postings that each seminar was a build up
to buy into the next level of education. They provided info on basic
stock trading for the people not interested in moving any further and then
moved on to show the potential income of options trading to encourage you
to move up. There were approximately 80 people in attendance at the
Investools seminar and approximately half signed up for the next level
which ranged in price between $6,000 - $24,000, depending on which of 4
programs you wanted. We signed up for the Master program with the PHD
level being the only one higher. The training my wife and I have received
to this point has been good and very understandable. My wife has never
invested in the stock market and she could not be happier with the
purchase. I have read many stock market books and have traded in my spare
time. Most of my training through Investools to this point has been
repetitive but worth the while. The first trainer we spoke with by phone
encouraged us to complete each training module in the format they had set
up before trading live. Even though I have previous trading experience,
they continued to encourage me to complete the training modules first, and
paper trade along the way. From what we have learned to this point, we
are confident that we will succeed in accomplishing our goals. My wife
and I are signed up under one username and password and have had no
technical issues to this point. We have been able to separate the stocks
we are watching and we figured out a way to paper trade individually
within the system provided. It is not ideal, but it works for us. I
admit we have put down a significant amount of money at this point to
learn the process. My warning to anyone considering this program is that
it is intensive, time consuming and not as easy as was first projected at
the Learning Annex. If you are a person that does not follow through on
your commitments, DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY! My wife and I are taking this very seriously and have committed to this program. I will be more than
happy to update our progress with any positive or negative feedback over
the next few months.

I took some classes from Investools ® and had mixed results. One area that
kept burning me was not taking profits. With Investools ® (IT) they tell
you to stay in a trade until you receive 3 red arrows, if going long.
Reverse for shorts. It was mentioned in one class that in order to become
a better trader find a mentor and learn from them. IT wants $36k to
finish the complete course and get what they call a PhD. I've met some of
these PhD's and they still are not consistent and worse, not making the
type of money they expected.

Therefore, I went out on my own, and found a mentor. Within a year of
weekly classes at first, and then bi-weekly, to finish with 1 month calls
I was making a steady profit. Moreover, at that end of that year I only
paid $6600.00. In addition, I only use Tradestation ® with custom written
indicators and LIVE trading signals. With IT's nothing is live, second
and more important, their web site costs major bucks when a year runs out.
Sorry, haven't been with them in over a year so don't have figures.

What I have found to be an excellent site for picks is Investors Business
Daily. A one year subscription is somewhere in the neighborhood of
$300.00. What's even better is the daily lessons on cup & handles, cups
with no handles, double tops etc.... In addition, they have a top 100
list which comes in excel, and can be cut and pasted into Tradestation ® for
very fast scans. To make it easier they even highlight stock picks! This
list alone has paid me 1000 times over the cost. It's also updated every
Friday night. One last point, if you chose to pick the online PDF file,
it comes out at 8 PM EST. This way your ahead of the game before the
market open the following day. Other option is receiving a hard copy
paper. With this your at the mercy of the paper boy to deliver it before
the market opens the following day. BTW: No connection with IBD at all.

As far as solid algorithm for trading I would suggest studying fibonacci
price extensions and retracements. A good book for this is Tom O'Brien's
Timing The trade. This tool alone will work in any market, any time
frame. I use to trade stocks, now mostly indexes, gold, oil, Dow, nas,
s&p. What I really like is futures, they pay better and I'm done trading
in 90 mins.

Bottom line, IT is very expensive with no end in site on additional costs.
Find a mentor who trades like you want to trade and learn from them. I'm
on my second teaching me futures.

Steve G
went to 1 day basic course of Investools ®.com and I was disappointed. It
seemed that the whole thing was about instructors trying to sell you their
educational workshops (from 5K to $24,000) and to get you to use their
software. Instead I was hoping to get education on how to become a good
investor. :(

was an Investools ® student. My name is Dianne M N. and I live in
Honolulu, Hawaii. As of today 6-11-07, after only 9 months of trading
within my IRA I am up 38%. I use the Investools ® proprietary website along
with another proprietary site (VectorVest ®). They compliment each other. I
work approximately 1-2 hours each morning researching and trading. I have
used library books and have bought books. I have read and used many free
websites as well. When I first attended the free seminar for Investools ®
here in Honolulu, I didn't even know what the term "paper trading" meant,
let alone all the other terms that the instructor was using! But, I
learned by taking the course and also working with an Investools ® coach.
Yes, I think I could've found a lot of this information for free but,
frankly I think I would still be at the library. With Investools ® I paid to
get educated very quickly. Investools ® is only a starting point but I am
grateful to them. If you are willing to put in at least an hour a day
EVERY day--if you are willing to push through the frightening days when
you are feeling overwhelmed and lost--if you are willing to purchase a
decent computer and pay for hi-speed internet and if you are willing to
examine how you really feel about money then it will work for you. Phil
Town, author of "Rule #1" got started with Investools ® and they have a Rule
#1 stock search. Watch Jim Cramer on CNBC. Read books about prosperity
consciousness. It was hard study and work to begin with but it's smooth
sailing now and worth it when I got up this morning and I had made over 4K
in "CROX", while I was sleeping. (the stock market is open 3:30AM to 10AM
Honolulu time). I gotta say though that I am retired phone company and I
don't know if I could've kept up with investing while I was holding down a
really demanding full time job. It's up to each individual, but for me
it's the perfect retirement p-t job. I work alone at home for 1 or 2 hours
and then I leave and go to the beach. Thank you, Investools ® and thank you
Sheldon (my coach). Aloha.

I just returned from the free two-hour seminar and have a feeling that I
just avoided making a huge mistake. The conductor of my Albuquerque
course was Phil Cowley who can be seen in the commercials that run
regularly on CNBC.

I am an intermediate investor with past experience (12 years) involving
stocks, mutual funds, options, covered calls, spreads, and puts. I was
looking for was a course that could teach me technical and fundamental
analysis, and I knew going into the seminar that it would be a sales
pitch.

There were several things about the course that struck odd or
bothersome. First Phil told us that you could not access the online
content of the sight until you pay for the entire course ($1000.)
Instead of teaching fundamental analyses (PE Rations, PEG, income
statements) it seems that Investools ® is geared to making it user
friendly and giving you their picks based off 2-3 different fundamental
tools.

The course then became geared toward selling you on the idea of paying
today for a 2-day course the next week. The sales pitch was hard and
Phil told us space was limited but he personally would not come to speak
to us unless he was told that they would hold enough space for the
people in my class. (My class was the second in two days). Later he
told us that if you paid today you could bring a guest for free. If
space is so valuable then why can you bring someone for free???

He also slid into options training. With about a year experience I was
shocked at the examples he gave. He said you could take a stock that
was trading at $13.00 and sell a covered call for $1.50. If you have a
option that is paying that high it is because the stock is very
volatile, but he sold the crowd that this could be done on a monthly
basis with ease to add extra income.

The course ended with associates swarming the crowd handing out
applications to join Investools ® today. I had a sense that I was being
cowed and that there was something amiss. I took a form and while
waiting to ask a few questions I went to the bathroom. In there was a
man supposedly from the class trying to convince a few other people in
the bathroom that they should join the class. His argument was that the
class was great and had helped him make money. I wanted to scream at
him, "then why are you here again taking the free introductory class -
for the free bag!?!" I believe he was a plant to coerce people trying
to up their minds.

I returned to the lecture hall and waited behind all of the people
happily giving up $1000 and their credit cards to guys in suits and
nametags. I asked the associate a simple question. "I know you want me
to sign up today for the class but if I go on the website how much does
it cost?" I was staggered when he said "I have no idea, I am not
exposed to that information." I asked if there was anyone in the group
of ten associates that could answer that question, and his answer was a
firm "no." He suggested calling the number listed on the form. This
number is the one hawked as your opportunity to call and receive a
refund if you change your mind in the next week. I tried to call the
number and after ringing about 6 times it went straight to an answering
machine.

While I don't argue the class is a scam in the classic sense, it is
definitely a marketing tool that takes advantage of people who are
inexperienced or have lost a lot of money in the stock market. They
take tools that are available on the internet for free and package them
for users. My biggest complaint is that they give you lots of examples
of people that are successful with their program and make it seem that
it is east.