Best Stock Strategy with David Jaffee
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Honesty
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Quality
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Cost
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Support
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Verified Trades
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User Experience
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Summary
***Warning*** If you purchase this product, TradingSchools.Org will receive an affiliate commission of $7.60. Factor this into your decision-making process!
David Jaffee of Best Stock Strategy is a very successful stock options trader. TradingSchools.Org authenticated superb results spanning multiple years with actual brokerage statements.
He is also offering an options trading signal service, and an educational product. The pricing is expensive. But the product and accompanying interaction with Mr. Jaffee is priceless. He goes the extra mile to help newbies understand his method, and works extraordinarily hard at providing a top tier advisory.
TradingSchools.Org put Mr. Jaffee through a very difficult, one-year performance test, and Mr. Jaffee performed beyond our expectations.
Additionally, Mr. Jaffee has other intangible qualities, which include prior experience as an investment banker and economist at well known CIBC World Markets.
Yes, we recommend the product and the service. His investment approach is unique, battle-tested, and focuses on highly repeatable processes that most students should be able to synthesize within 6-months.
Pros
Honest
Fully Transparent
Patient and kind teacher
Solid approach to investing
Focuses only on high liquidity large-cap stock options
A highly entrepreneurial person with excellent adaptability
Cons
Do not expect to learn everything overnight
Expensive
Significant capital is required
A few personal “dings”
Thanks for reading today’s review of Best Stock Strategy.
What is Best Stock Strategy, and what are they selling? According to the BestStockStrategy.Com website, they are selling a stock options trading course titled “Best Education Available” for “only” $1,849 and “Real-Time Trade Alerts” for $349 per month.
The service does include a 7-day trial for $19.
Regardless, the annual cost for the alerts service would equate to $4,200 per year — therefore, if trading with a $10k account, you would need to earn a 42% return just to break even. Not very realistic.
TradingSchools.Org contacts David Jaffee of Best Stock Strategy
My initial contact with David Jaffee occurred sometime in late 2018. I sent out my usual “lion and lamb” email where the “lion” email is a very poignant and direct email from the official TradingSchools.Org website. In that (lion) email, we get straight to the point and notify the vendor that a review will be pending.
At about that same time, we sent out the “lamb” email, where we use an alias and act like a complete newbie — with money to waste and little understanding of trading.
Most vendors immediately take the bait and respond to the “lamb” email, while subsequently ignoring the “lion” email.
To my surprise, I received a very unique response. Mr Jaffee, who owns BestStockStrategy.Com, responded to the lamb email by stating, “my service is probably not for you.” And, “getting rich quick” is not realistic.
Concurrently, Mr. Jaffee was more than willing to engage with the official TradingSchools.Org email.
My opening emails are usually more of a jousting match where I am poking and prodding, searching for weaknesses, evidence of fraud, chicanery, or any clue that might point me in the direction of “what is most true.”
I started with Jaffee as very warm and friendly. But my questions always get hotter and hotter, to the point of being very uncomfortable. At this point, most people will bailout. But to my surprise, Jaffee kept coming and kept reciprocating the testy exchanges. I like that.
Essentially, my job is to expose the vendor as a fraud, or elevate the vendor as someone worthy of actually purchasing the product or service. There can be no middle ground.
As I explained to Jaffee, the only truth I am immediately concerned are actual verifiable account statements that can be matched with filed tax returns. Nobody is going to lie on their tax returns and claim they made “more” than their year-end profit and loss.
Jaffee agreed. And he cooperated.
Account Statement Revelations
Most vendors, selling these sorts of courses and signal services want nothing to do with showing TradingSchools.Org actual account statements over an extended period of time.
The simple truth is that 99.99% of these guys are frauds and phonies. They rely upon “hypothetical performance” or “simulated trades” as part of their sales scheme.
Equally disdainful are the phonies and frauds that might screen flash an actual account statement — with one or two outsize profitable trades.
The very worst are the vendors that proclaim, “If I show you my account statements, then I would be required to register as an investment advisor” or “my lawyer told me it’s illegal.” Or some other total bullshit excuse that seeks to only confuse, obfuscate, or divert.
With Jaffee, I told him plainly that I wanted to see everything. The good and the bad. He agreed.
Next, we reviewed actual performance for the years 2015 through 2018. And they are as follows…
2015 Performance: The year 2015 was the most painful year of David Jaffee’s trading career. At one point, during the month of August, he experienced an incredible $1,000,000 draw down over a 3-day period.
Overall, he lost $100k for the year. But as he explained, “I learned a tremendous amount from those trades.” And, “the losses tested me to the limit and yet I fought back and ended nearly positive for the year.”
2016 Performance: Overall, for the year, David Jaffee ended with a profit of roughly $250k.
2017 Performance: This was an interesting year. He finished with a profit of roughly $750k. Excellent performance, and I felt that the June 2017 account statement is most representative of a “typical” month of trading for David Jaffee.
I have included the entire June 2017 statement below. You can see the account gently swing, and it gives an overhead view of his style of trading and his frequency of trades.
June-2017-BestStockStrategy.com_As you can read, just the June 2017 account statement encompassed 35 pages.
2018 Performance: Another positive year with David Jaffee earning roughly $500k.
Going back through 4-years of these statements was very time-consuming. We are talking about nearly 1700 pages of account statements. It is not easy having to redact 1700 pages of the individual account number!
David Jaffee deserves much credit for the hard work.
Jaffee wanted a positive review. I said no.
At the end of this financial colonoscopy, poor David Jaffee must have thought that his super-premium five-star review would be published at any moment. He thought he was “calling the shots,” and a “slam dunk” for a five-star review.
But I told him “nope.”
As I explained to David, “Most of my readers have small accounts.” And, “My readers would never be able to replicate this sort of trading activity.”
Which is true, how many of you reading this have a cool million dollars just laying around? Probably not many. In order to replicate his style of trading, nearly none of my readers would be able to benefit. And so, I said “take a hike.”
Well, I didn’t say it quite that way. But as I told Jaffee, “Look, who cares if you can deliver a rocket ship? None of my readers will be able to fly it. Therefore, this is not a product I want to write about.”
Jaffee got really mad. He called me on the phone and screamed, “You are a fraud and phony!” and “I never would have cooperated if I had known you were going to be an asshole!” And then he hung up the phone.
I didn’t think I would ever hear from David Jaffee again.
David Jaffee comes back. The 2019 challenge.
The new year arrives. And with a new year comes a fresh perspective. But not from me. Anyway, Jaffee reaches back to me and wants me to write a positive review. Considering how 2018 ended with our bickering and fighting, I was pretty surprised that he wanted more disappointment.
So we talked it over. I told him again that nearly all of my readers would never be able to benefit from his style of options trading. That in order to execute his style of trading, you would need an outsized account. Of which, nearly none of my readers actually have.
And so, David Jaffee came up with a challenge to put my theory to the test. In his proposal, he would open another LIVE account with a starting balance of only $5k and trade it for the entire year. After a year, we would report exactly the results — regardless of the performance.
Truthfully, I thought he had nearly zero chance of success because he is primarily an options premium seller — which requires a very large balance. But David really wanted to shove it down my throat.
In order to prove the trades, David added TradingSchools.Org to the private WhatsApp feed, which is the method in which the trading alerts are communicated to the subscribing audience.
After having my WhatsApp connected, I immediately began to receive the trading recommendations. However, to be completely honest…I muted the live feed. Yes, it was nice that I received the live feed for free, and I appreciated the transparency, but I just don’t have time to follow each and every trading signal.
Regardless, we had the live account being tracked. And the performance of the live account would serve as the performance proxy.
Best Stock Strategy 2019 Performance Summary
For the entire year of 2019, David Jaffee traded with two live accounts. The first account was his large, primary trading account. This account is what he uses to earn his income and pay his bills.
The second account, the smaller account, would be the “official” account in which I would report the performance to my audience. I know that David was ultra motivated and really, really wanted to kick my ass. (His feelings were still hurt over not getting the original review)
And so, 2019 came and went pretty fast. As we got closer to the end of the year, I knew that David was having a really good year in his large primary account. He self-reported excellent profits — but I never verified this. Truthfully, I did not care. I only cared about the smaller account.
However, I was very aware of the performance of the smaller account, and I followed this closely.
On October 12, 2019, David Jaffee created a video and published it on YouTube. The title of the video was: Options Trading | 100%+ YTD Profit | 100% WIN RATE | NO LOSES | LIVE TRADING
I would consider this video the “Fuck You Emmett Moore” video…
If you watched it, this is a great video. David Jaffee knuckled down for the entire year, he really wanted to perform well.
Once again, on February 22, 2020, David Jaffee created the final, year end video. This video finalized all trades taken for the entire year. Included is extreme detail, where he logs into the brokerage account and pulls the account statements from the brokerage logs.
Its all there folks, have a look…(another fuck you Emmett Moore video)
If you watched this video, you can see that David Jaffee of Best Stock Strategy finished with an incredible performance of 117% return and a 100% WIN RATE.
Yes, you are reading that correctly. No losses. Not a single loss for the entire year. Truly incredible. Absolutely amazing performance.
With such an amazing performance in hand, how could I refuse David Jaffee a fair and honest review? So here we go…
Many of you reading this will probably stop right here. Probably not read a single word past this point. You have seen the performance, and that is good enough for you, right? Wrong!
In my opinion, we need to dig further. We need to understand as much about the trading vendor as possible. I want to know every aspect of their lives. The good stuff, the bad stuff, the embarrassing stuff, the painful experiences, the personal victories, and most importantly…the secrets, the demons, and the graveyard where we hide the secrets.
These things are the important things. These things are the things that shape the trader, that mold their thought process, that give us the real clues as to their success. The account statements are just the finished product. I want to know the “why.”
The personal history of David Jaffee
The next part of this review is going to take a deeper dive into the life of David Jaffee. All of the information you are about to read was gathered from multiple hours of telephone interviews, many back and forth emails, and verifying information through third parties. Let’s begin…
David Jaffee was born and raised in a town called Monticello. No, not the slave plantation that Thomas Jefferson was running down in Virginia. Rather, this Monticello is way up in the Catskills, with an average population of only 6k residents.
Monticello, New York is not a very special place. In fact, its main tourist attraction is an old jail that was featured on the TV show, Ghost Hunters. Apparently, the ghosts of murdered inmates still inhabit the cells and have finally figured out a way to open the cell doors at 3 AM.
David’s father was the town doctor. But as David explained, his father did not really like being a doctor. Instead, his father had always harbored dreams of being a Wall Street investment banker.
As David explained, “my father seemingly regretted not going into finance on Wall Street.” And, “he might have become bored as the doctor of a small town and encouraged me to become an investment banker.”
Essentially, the seeds of David’s path toward finance and speculation were planted by his father. David explained, “My dad pushed me in this direction. I just sort of accepted it, and then later I embraced it.”
David was an excellent student and applied at both Harvard and Cornell. Although David was not admitted to Harvard, he was admitted to Cornell’s Applied Economics and Management program.
Cornell is the quintessential Ivy League school. The Applied Economics and Management program is considered one of the top 10 economics programs in the United States.
In particular, the Economics and Management program was specifically tailored towards individuals that would eventually manage large public companies.
Economics is an arcane field of study. Many would argue that it’s an impractical “art” rather than a “science.” The Cornell program was specifically geared towards the practical application of economics within existing large companies.
As David explained, “We were taught how to thoroughly examine public companies from the ground up. We went way beyond accounting and forensic accounting. We figured out how to properly value what a public company is actually worth.”
David excelled at Cornell. Eventually he became the assistant of Pedro Perez, the head of the Economics department.
In 2004, David Jaffee graduated as an Applied Economist at Cornell. A lot of people like to claim they graduated at the top of their class (magna cum laude) but David actually did…the following degree proves it…
David Jaffee goes to Wall Street
As with most Ivy League economics graduates, they are heavily recruited by some of largest public companies. And since David graduated at the “top” of his class, he pretty much had the “pick of the litter” regarding which company he would work for.
This might sound crazy for most people. Most graduate from a University and hope like hell they can find a job. But Ivy League schools are heavily recruited and students essentially walk out of college into high paying jobs.
The Ivy League Finance graduates represent the “cream of the graduation crop.”
David sure thought he would have no problem landing his dream job at Blackstone, as an investment banker. In fact, he was so sure that it was the “Only place I would accept.” And, “I was expecting a huge salary and to walk in and be running the place in two weeks.”
Things didn’t go as expected.
David was conditionally offered a job at Blackstone (his dream job). But he still had to be interviewed. He thought this would be easy.
The Blackstone fiasco
Several weeks later, David drives to New York City with dreams of big money and beautiful women floating through his head. All he had to do was march into the place and start enjoying his “unlimited shrimp cocktail.”
His suit was crisp. His mind was on the razors edge. And his tongue was sharp. Too sharp.
The interview went horrible. He walked in cocky and ready to be the next Carl Icahn or Warren Buffet. He wondered if they would give him a billion or a trillion to start buying and selling companies.
Unfortunately, Blackstone withdrew the conditional offer immediately after the interview. He had completely crashed and burned on his interview. His sharp tongue and cocky attitude got him sent right back home.
As he explained, “I was devastated. Totally shocked. Embarrassed. I practically taught all courses for the professor and was the blue-chip recruit that everyone wanted.”
CIBC World Markets
With his tail between his legs, and after being thoroughly humbled, he called back to the recruiter at CIBC World Markets and told them he “was ready to accept their offer pending an interview.”
A couple of weeks later, he headed back to New York City for another interview. But this time, he figured he should probably be a little more humble.
The interview went great. He was immediately hired as an investment banker with a $10,000 signing bonus and starting salary of $60k (plus large, ~125%, discretionary bonus), yet he still felt regret about fucking up the much more prestigious position at Blackstone.
With job-in-hand, David Jaffee packed his bags and moved to New York City.
His father was so proud. His father was finally going to be living the life he always dreamed of. Or, as David explained, “My Dad was living vicariously through me. However, the more time I spent as an investment banker, the more I wondered if this was what I really wanted to be doing with my life.”
CIBC World Markets: The horror show begins
In February 2004, David Jaffee began his first “Big Shot Wall Street Investment Banking job.” He was assigned to the Industrial Growth and Services Group, headed by Mark Henkels.
His job was to focus on all of the US publicly traded Industrial Growth companies (mining, metals, steel production, etc) and figure out who was undervalued, and who was overvalued.
He remembers that during his very first week, his fellow investment banker in the same group, Richard Pistilli, told him, “Get out now. Run while you still can. Nobody survives this place. It’s hell.”
The next week, another fellow investment banker takes him to lunch and say’s, “This place will suck the life from you. They will ask for 100%. You will give 100%. They will ask for more. They will never stop asking for more.”
Yet another few weeks pass, and yet another fellow investment banker say’s “95% of people quit after a year. You will discover why. This place is hell on earth.”
Life as an investment banker at CIBC World Markets
As David Jaffee quickly discovered, the job was indeed “hell on earth.”
The “job” began at 9 AM. But the workday virtually never ended. As he explained, “Typically, I would work from 9am – 11pm on Monday – Thursday. On Friday, I would leave around 8pm and on Saturday and Sunday I would work about 9 hours each day. While the hours were bad, the stress and sleep deprivation were much worse. There were days when we’d be in the office until 3 am. When staffed on a difficult deal, it was common to have 3 – 4 consecutive days of high-stress with minimal sleep. This was the killer. Because not only was your body unable to replenish itself, but your brain begins to literally fear going into work, dealing with constant stress, and not knowing when you’re going to be able to catch up on sleep.”
Jaffee told me that there was one time where he was close to quitting. He was working on a deal with Apollo Management’s acquisition of Metals USA and he had already worked 3 days straight past 3 am. His body gave out and he told his Associate, Brian Kotter, that he felt sick and was going home.
Bankers usually perceive this type of behavior as desertion and Brian Kotter wrote a scathing email, at 5:05 am to their Director, Paul Parhar.
Jaffee actually saved the text from the email and it read as follows:
David asked to leave at 1:30 tonight and was unable to continue working due to fatigue. I told him he could leave as it was clear he could not productively work. This put me and Rich in a great bind as we were responsible for turning and proofing the ASC OM that was sent to the client a short time ago. In addition, the analysis that Apollo was expecting to be sent tonight also had to be completed. Rich helped me with this and both have been sent to the respective clients.
I told David that I would be requesting an analyst change on this deal and that is what I am doing now. I am not comfortable with his ability to meet Apollo’s extremely large requests for analysis in a timely manner.
Ironically, there were no consequences for the “desertion”. Jaffee said that barely anyone ever mentioned it and that the group chose to ignore it and act like it didn’t happen.
During the nights when Jaffee was able to go home before 11 pm, he lived in fear that he would be called back to the office. Like a mindless automaton, “I would crunch numbers day and night, never ceasing to end, always another spreadsheet, and they always asked for more bullshit. Because…. much of the work really was bullshit. A lot of pitch books where the Managing Director would want to get in front of a potential client just to maintain the relationship. The Analysts and Associates would practically kill themselves to put together a book that would barely even be looked at.”
As David explained, “After a year, I could never satisfy the beast.” And, “Yes, they sucked the life force from me, like some sort of a science fiction movie. They were killing me — literally”
What exactly was he doing?
Many of you are probably reading this and wondering — what exactly was David Jaffee doing at CIBC World Markets? Great question.
The basic function was to play the intermediary and provide financing (both debt and equity) to companies so that they could grow larger and more profitable.
Essentially, David’s job was to satisfy the endless demands of his Managing Directors who would oftentimes get random ideas to pitch to the CEOs of these large companies.
Interested in an acquisition? David would tell you who you should target, how much you should pay, and how your company will look once the acquisition is complete.
Interested in raising money? David would tell you whether you should issue debt or equity, at what price, and how your company’s balance sheet will be affected.
Essentially, David’s job was to figure out who was “overvalued” and who was “undervalued and to provide companies with access to the financial markets.”
When a company was overvalued, “I asked David if he could be more specific with any particular deal that he constructed and executed? David replied, “Yes, I worked on too many follow-on equity offerings to remember. If the stock market is overvaluing a stock, then the company can issue new shares to take advantage.”
The goal was to increase cash flow with little risk and unlocking value for shareholders.
But what if a company was undervalued? As David explained, “If we found undervalued companies with poorly managed assets, we would contact their competitors and attempt to take the company over.”
Can you imagine a job such as this? Most of us contemplate buying 100 shares of ABC stock and hoping to sell it a week later for $50 profit. But David’s job was flipping a hundred million on Monday and putting 500 people out of work by Friday. Talk about stressful.
I asked David if he could be more specific with any particular deal that he constructed and executed? David replied, “Yes, I worked on too many follow up equity offerings to remember.”
However, there was one deal in particular that David was noticeably proud. This deal had to do with a company named Metals USA.
As David explained, “I was deeply, deeply aware of a company named Metals USA, a maker of steel products. I spent hundreds of hours analyzing every aspect of this company. I knew how much the janitor was making. The management was terrible, they were sitting on a goldmine, and they had no idea what their company was really worth.”
David went on to explain that he reached out to notable financier Leon Black of Apollo Management and pitched a Metals USA takeover. Leon has a personal fortune of over $10 billion, and his specialty is buying cheap companies and extracting value. As Bloomberg News recently reported,
Leon Black built his company, Apollo Global Management Inc., by buying struggling businesses with huge piles of debt at bargain-basement prices, imposing austerity measures on the staff, and extracting huge dividend payments and management fees.
Caleb Melby and Heather Perlberg of Bloomberg News
Of course, many of you reading this are probably thinking, “this sounds incredible” and “might even be too incredible.” I thought the same. And so, to verify this, I asked David Jaffee if he could send me something that substantiates his claims of executing a corporate takeover.
Jaffee did not disappoint. What arrived next in the mail can only be described as a huge box full of spreadsheets and financial analysis of Metals USA. The following is just a tiny little snippet of the mishmash of financial documents that were sent over…
(Side note: many readers might think this is overkill. But there is no such thing as overkill when attempting to evaluate an investment educator.)
Why are these documents relevant?
The first, and most obvious reason is that too many of the characters that I write about like to make all sorts of wonderful claims of running hedge funds or managing trading firms, but nearly none are telling the truth. Or, they are inflating their resume to some grotesque caricature of the truth.
However, with David Jaffee, I was able to see the very documents that companies typically use to decide whether to launch a $500 million takeover. I found it very interesting.
The second, and most important reason to evaluate these sorts of documents is that it reveals that David Jaffee really does understand how to take a public company and break it down, piece by piece, and get to a place where he understands what a company is actually worth.
Perhaps this is the very reason why he is very successful at trading options? Perhaps he understands a company better than the typical idiot that is relying upon “technical analysis.”
For a good laugh, I asked David Jaffee what would of happened if he sent Leon Black a financial dossier that included things like MACD, or stochastics, and then declared, “Leon, as you can see, this stock is cheap because the stochastics is under 20!” David just roared with laughter.
As David replied, “I wouldn’t tell him that because he would think I’m crazy and never talk to me again. Technical analysis is a complete and total fraud.” And, “It’s nothing more than financial witchcraft.”
So, how did the Metals USA work out? As David explained, we convinced Leon Black to buy the company for $450 million.
For anyone interested, you can read about the acquisition through the following link:
Metals USA Purchased for $450 million
How much did CIBC World Markets earn for engineering the acquisition of Metals USA? According to David, “I believe we earned a fee of around $25 million.”
And how did things work out for Leon Black of Apollo Management? Not bad. In fact, he ended up selling the company a few years later for $766 million.
The beginning of the end
After working at CIBC World Markets for two years, and burning the candle at both ends in the Industrials unit — David Jaffee was burned out.
Just as his co-workers had warned, the place was a living hell. The job was about getting other people rich. Although he had achieved his professional goals of buying and selling companies, as David explained, “I remember waking up in the morning and just wanting to die.”
Additionally, the job was literally killing him. “My mental health went into a steep decline.” And, “If I did not leave, I don’t believe I would have kept my sanity.”
Eventually, another position opened in the Financial Restructuring Unit (headed by Joe Radecki), which was regarded as a much less stressful position. Basically, as David explained, “We figured out how to keep companies alive, that had recently suffered some sort of shock.”
One would think this would be more stressful than the original position, but it turned out to be the extreme opposite.
David now had too much time on his hands. And a lot of money to spend.
The devil’s playground
New York City is the “city that never sleeps.” And, it is considered the “nightclub capital of the world.” A place where beautiful, aggressive young women are quite literally…everywhere.
Let me ask you a question…what happens when you take a mid 20’s kid, (and probably a virgin) and give him a fat salary with little work?
On top of that, you also give him a company credit card with unlimited spending at any restaurant or nightclub in the city?
Oh, and let’s not forget…you also give him unlimited “black car service” where a shiny limousine carries this pampered princeling from point A to point B.
I call that a recipe for disaster. And the sort of national tragedy that most of us would love to endure.
Let’s just say that Mr. Jaffee quickly went from mindless financial automaton to nightclub aficionado faster than an Olympic sprinter desperate to win the gold medal.
David quickly went from one extreme to yet another extreme. He went from chasing money to chasing women.
Remarkably, David Jaffee was quite open and honest about what transpired during this period of time. However, these stories would best be published in the likes of Penthouse magazine.
I won’t go into the hedonistic details. But let’s just say that if Emperor Nero were to read these descriptions — he would blush.
My personal recommendation to Mr. Jaffee would be — don’t ever submit your DNA to 23andMe.com. It’s highly likely that a bunch of unclaimed Jaffee pups is currently wondering “who’s my daddy?”
Nightclub Jaffee
For the next couple of years, while working at CIBC World Markets, or rather…not really working very hard at CIBC World Markets…Jaffee decides that he wants to be a nightclub promoter.
This was the exact opposite of his collegiate and early career days. He went from shy, preppy Ivy League classic, to all-nighter party animal on an endless quest for “Yet more.” As in women.
As he describes, “I liked pretty women but didn’t want to spend $200+ on a date. Surprisingly, women aren’t overly attracted to investment bankers, but they are attracted to people who have elevated social status. And nightlife was perfect for that. Plus, the money in nightlife was as good as it was in finance. So why not do both?!”
Now, I wouldn’t describe David Jaffee as the most handsome sort. He barely registers a “6.” But what he lacks looks in looks, he more than makes up for with hustle, cunning, and devotion to the chase.
Regardless, David Jaffee applied the same sort of work ethic that he applied at Cornell and investment banking to his newfound, fledgling career as a nightclub promoter in New York City.
I won’t get into the specifics of nightclub promotion in New York City. (or any major city) However, according to David Jaffee, there are a few “golden keys” to unlocking success. And those include “beautiful women, hard work, staying away from drugs and alcohol, and being organized.”
As David explained, “It was all about how many outrageously beautiful women you could convince to arrive at your club and then booking tables for wealthy men who wanted access to these beautiful women.”
And according to various articles that TradingSchools.Org extracted from the web, we can definitely confirm that David Jaffee was very good at that game.
According to David, “within a couple of years, I was making way, way more promoting nightclubs than being a miserable investment banker.”
However, all of this came at a deep personal cost. After living two years on the red line of a hedonistic lifestyle and continuing to work as an investment banker…his mental health crashed once again.
At age 27, and in terrible physical and mental health, David Jaffee quit his investment banking job and walked away from being a nightclub promoter.
David explained, “I had made all the money I ever wanted. I had bedded more women than I can remember, and yet I felt completely empty inside. Nothing could fill that hole. Plus, the years of stress and anxiety was making me depressed and causing short-term memory loss and disabling OCD symptoms.”
Goodbye nightclub Jaffee. Goodbye investment banking. Time for a break.
Youth Hostel/Air Bnb Jaffee
For the next couple of years, “I just wanted to focus on getting healthy. I knew that I could always make more money as long as I was healthy.” And so, like many of us, David Jaffee decided to travel.
As he explained, “I just started traveling around the world and tried to live as carefree as possible.” Unhindered by financial stress and after living the life of a club promoter, Jaffee ends up spending time bouncing around youth hostels in South America.
“I loved the youth hostels. I was always meeting new people, making new friends, seeing new places, enjoying my life. Letting my hair grow out.” Jaffee said.
But you can only be a wandering traveler for so long. Eventually, David started to think, “what am I going to do with myself?”
At about that time, while youth hostels were popular, another “upscale type” youth hostel began to emerge — AirBnB. David visited Rio de Janeiro and stayed at an incredible hostel where everyone got along very well, and he thought this would be a great idea in New York City.
And so, with a renewed sense of purpose, David Jaffee moves back to New York City with the intent of not only opening youth hostels but also purchasing or renting prime location New York City apartments and converting them into AirBnB’s.
I asked David about the experience because, during this time, the idea of AirBnB’s was very controversial, and there were no rules and regulations concerning these properties in New York City.
David explained, “I tried a little of everything. I had low-end hostels with way too many beds, and I also had the exact opposite with upscale AirBnB’s that catered to the wealthy traveler.
Unfortunately, as David explained, “It was very profitable. But everyone started throwing together cheap hostels/AirBnb’s and packing in more and more people for greater profit.” The City of New York ended up cracking down on everyone, including David.
Similar to nightlife and investment banking, Jaffee brought things to the extreme. As he became healthier, he continued to add more responsibility and grow the operation. This eventually caught the attention of NYC’s Department of Buildings who broke up a few of David’s apartments and told him that it’s “Game over” and that he “needs to find something else to do.”
Although he was forced into closing the low-end properties, he kept the higher-end apartments that did not flout the rules.
But eventually, the building codes were changed yet again, and you could no longer operate multiple high-end Air Bnb’s without upsetting the local hotels and full-time residents. And so, David ended up selling his Manhattan apartments and decided to do something else.
“Don’t ever open a restaurant with a nightclub.”
Now, David Jaffee was officially out of the youth hostel and AirBnB business…what to do next? Open a restaurant with a nightclub!
It would be so easy — they said. It will make so much money — they said.
$1 million dollars later, and David Jaffee has opened his very first restaurant and nightclub. He was so proud. He thought the food was delicious. He would surely make a killing on the drinks. The most beautiful women would cat fight to get into this swanky location.
Except they didn’t. David wasn’t patient enough when opening the club and chose a bad, residential, location.
From day one, the place was like an endless money pit. A dark hole where you deposit your hopes and dreams and all that is returned is sleepless nights, stress, thieving employees, rude guests, unattractive women, and angry neighbors.
After about a year, and having poured his heart and soul into it…he made the worst possible decision, he decided to hire a manager to run the day to day operations. In speaking with David, he remarked, “After a year, “I realized that I didn’t enjoy it. I was rarely ever there. I helped book events, but the manager took over a lot of the operational responsibilities. With the endless stress of dealing with neighbor complaints, I had mentally checked out.
Finally, after a few too many loud parties and constant complaints from the neighbors, the club lost its liquor license.
A restaurant and nightclub in New York City with no liquor license is like a jetliner with no fuel. It’s guaranteed to crash and burn — which it did, shortly thereafter.
Goodbye New York. Hello Miami.
Fresh off the devastation of closing the New York City location, David Jaffee was once again at a crossroads. Go back into investment banking? Join the circus? Start a knitting group and make hats for bald people? Nope, he does what every irritated New Yorker does, he moves to Miami.
As David opined, “It was time to go. I had just gotten married. My wife got pregnant. And I wanted nothing to do with raising my child within the concrete jungle.”
And so, David moves into a Miami high-rise and wonders to himself — what should I do now? He thought about opening a restaurant. He thought about working at a local investment bank. He thought about alot of things.
Except, this entire time, David continued to invest his savings and for the prior several years — it was his only source of positive revenue.
The answer was right in front of his eyes.
Best Stock Strategy is born
If there was one thing David Jaffee was good at — it was figuring what public companies were actually worth.
He used this knowledge as an investment banker. His clients made money. He was successful.
Additionally, during the years he was running (and losing money with) the restaurant and nightclub, none of that would have been possible without his successful market speculation.
His market speculation was the very thing that kept everything going. It was a huge asset. But he simply never really thought of full-time speculation as being his final professional endeavor. It was just there. And he was good at it.
The idea behind “Best Stock Strategy” was never something that germane through his own imagination. Rather, it was his wife.
As David explained, “When we got to Miami, my wife was looking for something part-time and she made the fatal mistake of going onto the Google and searching, “how can I make money online?”
Hint: never Google “how to make money online.” What will next appear is akin to financial pornography. It’s like opening the door to hell. Once it’s opened a crack, then a swarm of zombie’s hands will wedge themselves within the crack.
What happened next was laughable. As David explained, “my wife would go onto YouTube and watch videos of people teaching other people how to make money trading stocks. I would casually, and disinterestedly watch these videos and just laugh.”
But David’s wife found it no laughing matter. She told him, “You should create something similar and teach people how to become an investment banker.” David replied, “Haha, you can’t teach this stuff. It takes years of devotion and hard work.”
David then explained to his wife, “Being an investment banker taught me nothing about short term speculation. Instead, being successful at short term speculation requires only a few basic tools, but plenty of nuance.”
We will define David’s investment approach as, “the secret sauce.”
In Part II of this article, we will take a deeper look into what this dude is actually doing to make outsized investment returns.
Additionally, in Part II, I will provide my overall opinion and recommendation (as if you really cared).
I have been working in the fund industry for many years as a trader, so I know a thing or two. I believe this is one of the paid reviews Emmett is known to give. First, Jaffee does not even have a good understanding of how the markets work. Second, he thinks technical analysis is useless. If you are trading anything, you need to use technical analysis. Third, his options strategy is pretty bad actually. Let’s see him post his entire record (brokerage statements) every year. He won’t. Let’s even see if Emmett publishes this review (I’ve saved it in case it wasn’t published).
Am I missing something?
Selling options strategies work until they don’t. You will collect money and lose it all in one unforeseeable event. He can roll-over losing positions but one day the market will tank and he will be left holding the bag.
As Nassim Taleb would say a Turkey fed by the butcher everyday will grow in confidence everyday thinking that the butcher is there to take care of him, until it’s thanksgiving of course.
I’ll leave it at that.
You mean Taleb the failed CBOE trader who blew up his account?
Also, are you proposing to go buy puts in hopes of a huge crash?
The probability of losing money by buying options is virtually 100%.
The magnitude of your small wins will not be enough to overcome the ~85% loss rate.
Also, how is selling puts any different than buying stocks? It’s not, in fact, selling an OTM put will always carry reduced risk to buying stocks.
I think what your comment meant to say is, “Options are risky because they’re leveraged derivatives. If you trade too large then you can lose money.”
And yes, I believe every experienced options trader knows that.
Please explain how it is posiible to work on Wall Street doing “hell on earth” job that never ends and simultaneously write graduate thesis.
Something doesn’t add up.
In February 2004, David Jaffee began his first “Big Shot Wall Street Investment Banking job.” but his Cornell diploma is dated May 30, 2004.
Hi Anton. This is David.
I officially graduated in May 2004, but I completed my Cornell coursework in December.
I was planning on working as a Teaching Assistant in Winter 2004 but CIBC World Markets gave me a large signing bonus to start work (I believe it was February 24, 2004).
I was technically 3 credits short and my advisor let me take those 3 credits while working full-time via an online college.
Here is my transcript:
https://imgur.com/kVYgbhd
I found this article to be an interesting read, and a 100% win rate definitely sounded too good to be true. I took the 2019 account statement that was shared somewhere in the comments below and began to analyze it. What I came up with can be seen in this Google Sheets document.
This was built using the last pages of the document, which show the entry and exit for each option leg. This can be seen on the Option Legs tab, which is sorted by date. The final column is a number that ties each leg to the trades identified in the second tab, the Trade Journal. In this tab, I coordinated not only the legs of a spread, but also cases where it is pretty obvious that he rolled out the trade to a later expiration or a different strike to collect a bit more delta to try and end up out of the money by expiration. I was able to identify 61 unique trades throughout the 11 months that are available in the PDF. Of those 61 trades, I identified 3 losers, so he’s actually at a 95% win rate by my calculations, which is still a great win rate.
Honestly, I did the analysis for my own purposes. I was close to signing up for the service, but I’m glad that I did it because it opened my eyes to quite a few different points:
Overall, it’s amazing that he’s right as often as he is, and there’s definitely something amazing about that. For me, though, I just wouldn’t be comfortable with his methods that have such a large max risk at any given point. If he happens to be wrong, you might be stuck holding the bag, especially if you are near capped on your margin, since you might not be able to effectively roll your way out of the losing position.
I hope that Emmett plans on doing his performance analysis, and if anyone sees anything wrong with the document that I put together, I would be more than happy to review it. It just looks way too risky for my taste and that’s a shame because I had high hopes for him 🙁
Great commentary. And a thorough analysis. Much appreciated.
I have to be completely honest with you…I had very real reservations considering 1) The Drawdowns, 2) Not a good product for small account holders, and 3) The cost is very exorbitant.
With that being said, he certainly does something unique and I believe the “magic” is how he nuances into and out of trades. The jury is still out on whether this type of knowledge is actually transferable.
Another thing is that Jaffee is such a unique personality. The “personality” is certainly that of a very talented individual, but a little odd. I like him, but he is a little odd. Lol. (like the time he made a youtube video claiming that shining some sort of light on his balls had a healthy benefit…LOL!)
The 2019 performance was done with a ~$5,000 account.
So how could someone not follow those trades when he made those trades with a $5,000 account?
Also, he rolled a bunch of trades over the year – which means that he rolled out of trouble.
I also found this video helpful regarding rolling challenged positions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3B6DPHe1wM
Am I missing something?
Selling options strategies work until they don’t. You will collect money and lose it all in one unforeseeable event. He can roll-over losing positions but one day the market will tank and he will be left holding the bag.
As Nassim Taleb would say a Turkey fed by the butcher everyday will grow in confidence everyday thinking that the butcher is there to take care of him, until it’s thanksgiving of course.
I’ll leave it at that.
The Nissim Taleb quote is so true.
On the other hand, selling options premium seems more akin to running a casino and being the banker, than being a speculator.
You mean Taleb the failed CBOE trader who blew up his account?
Also, are you proposing to go buy puts in hopes of a huge crash?
The probability of losing money by buying options is virtually 100%.
The magnitude of your small wins will not be enough to overcome the ~85% loss rate.
Also, how is selling puts any different than buying stocks? It’s not, in fact, selling an OTM put will always carry reduced risk to buying stocks.
I think what your comment meant to say is, “Options are risky because they’re leveraged derivatives. If you trade too large then you can lose money.”
And yes, I believe every experienced options trader knows that.
Touche’
Correct! Taleb did blow up his account! And he burned through millions of dollars of his clients’ monies betting on that the proverbial “black swan” could be captured. It could not.
Anyone concerned that Mr.Jaffee has been sued by three trading gurus? I mean granted the guy has a point. Most if not all trading gurus are frauds.
I believe he knows what he’s doing. Those who have sued him have ultimately all regretted it and have been indicted / are being investigated by Government agencies, so, if anything, he’s doing the community a huge favor. So if anything, I look at it as an enormous positive.
Actually, to be sued by these scammers is a badge of honor.
He got sued by Raging Bull and Jaffee was ultimately vindicated.
He got sued by Warrior Trading and I believe that Jaffee will also be vindicated…eventually.
As far a the latest, I really dont much about Options Alpha…other than Options Alpha got caught changing their “official track record” of “real trades.” As a matter of fact, over 2000 trades supposedly went missing from the track record. So maybe Jaffee is also correct on Options Alpha? Only time will tell.
But one thing I know for sure, the days of bullying Jaffee around in the courts are OVER. The dude has turned into the quite the savvy litigator and is now aggressively fighting back.
I will repeat. Being sued by these scammy operators is a badge of honor.
I read OA also falsified testimonials too. Though he seemed to be more honest than others. Props to Mr. Jaffee to taking a stand. I wouldn’t want to be in his position.
Options Alpha is definitely not a scam. And neither is Jaffee. That’s what makes this whole thing so perplexing.
I cannot find any information regarding the course. Could anyone who took it provide some information about how it is structured? Maybe could Emmet say something about the course himself? Thanks a lot in advance.
First, let me say that I personally like David Jaffee a lot. That’s the nice part. Yes, I recommend him. But let me give you the part that I don’t like…
1) The real value is in the signals. But they are vastly overpriced and hardly makes sense for anyone with a small account.
2) The course could be better. In particular, I feel that he should move the course onto an LMS or Learning Management System that offers some type of interactivity amongst the students.
Since the course relies upon more individual interactivity with David, this does not foster a combined learning environment where all the students can interact and “polish” the most common questions.
In general, if you read my blog with any frequency…you will see that I really dont recommend any products or services. Instead, the goal is to push the audience into forming their own ideas and becoming more self-reliant.
It’s no secret that I don’t like trading courses.
Thank you very much for your in depth reply to my question Emmett. This helps me a lot with my further investigations. Your site is really great and outstanding. Thank you for your work and have a great 2021.
“It’s no secret that I don’t like trading courses.”
The only trading courses I like are the ones for free. 😀
There’s always a reason why something is free…
The course is sent by email. You should probably take the 7 day trial and see if it’s your cup of tea. Or, email David and ask him. I emailed him and he told me NOT to take the course since I have a small account (I was a bit shocked at him telling me to not buy his product).
A vendor telling a potential consumer to NOT purchase a product? Shocking.
Jaffee is definitely an interesting character.
that seemed interesting to me. From his side it makes sense. If you need a bigger account after so many hours and practices, you will end up leaving it because you earn little. That if the more they tell me, I don’t buy it. The more I want to buy it.
Internet is funny (new)world ..where scammers going around calling other scammers out…this jaffee guy calling out other scammers on YouTube…lol
:))
I’m surprised you didn’t download and read David’s 2019 Tastyworks brokerage statement but merely accepted his claim that he had 100% successful trades for that year. If you had, you would have seen that either he is deluded or a liar. I was so enraged by his effrontery that I devoted a chapter to him in my book “An Investor’s Guide to Stock Market Scams and Strategies,” available on Amazon. I was sure he would remove the link to the statement, so I quoted it in full in the book. Here is some of the dialog following the video:
Sam: Much credit to you for posting this account. The net short term capital gain for 2019 is $6,030.08. I haven’t done an exact count but estimate the win rate at 60%. I think you should publish your large account in order to prove that it really exists. You don’t generate much respect or credibility with this account alone.
David: The win rate is 100%. My large account has over $6 million. I’m not here to impress you. Your “respect” means nothing to me as you have likely accomplished nothing in your life. You’re welcome to go follow fake gurus and lose all your money.
Sam: I have done an exact count and have found 66 successful trades out of 108, for a win rate of 61%. This is nothing to be ashamed of. Most successful traders have about this rate, but their wins are bigger than their losses. I have also downloaded your statement so that it will be available in case you remove the link.
David: Your work on the success rate is wrong. Every trade was successful, which is what the data shows. But whatever, you’re welcome to believe whatever you want and continue to follow your fraudulent fake gurus and lose money have a good day.
At 9:30 in the video he puts his 1099 before the camera and you can see row upon row of losing trades, all the time David declaring emphatically “I had no losing trades all year.”
You don’t have to get my book. Just replay the video now that you know what to look for.
I hate to think of David chuckling knowing that he has scammed one of the Internet’s greatest scam busters.
The video is at
https://youtu.be/FUTCAqtsMP4?t=608
Not sure how you came to the conclusion that David is not legit. Everything that I witnessed is contrary. And he shows every trade from his brokerage statements? What else is there?
Sure, he does roll some losing positions and book a profit later, but selling options premium is how this is done.
Look, I want to believe…so convince me! If I got it wrong, I will be the first to admit I fucked up.
It looks like some of your complaints appear to be regarding semantics and David’s sometimes coarse nature and rigid opinions. Which, if you know David, then you know he is definitely a dude with opinions and is not afraid to express his opinions.
At the end of the day, its about measurable performance.
Drop a link to your book, would love to read it. In fact, I am starting a book review section so yours can be one of the first. And dont worry, my book reviews are all going to be very gentle — as opposed to my vendor reviews.
Thanks for commenting. You spent a good deal of time writing this, and I appreciate your opinion.
Wow, nice writeup on how the litigation went between Jaffee and Ross , and how Jaffee actually won in a protracted lawsuit case from Ross with your help and advice! Really, Emmett, you ought to write books on this subject on how to fight these scams legally, with details such as your legal cases involvement as well as the feds. As for Ross having a shred of decency and “honor” like a “lannister”. Sorry, he can afford to look legally decent by using his long siphoned duped sales of worthless “warrior-pro courses” , pumped and dumped member student’s funds. As we recall, the initial review said he was a very clever individual effective at keeping his shamshow out of legal trouble , as typical of many of the more intelligent shamshow operators do. I still have disgust and no respect of how he outrageously dupes members in his room with fake actors as well as actored video ads such as Crystal, then used the duped funds to pay for his site improvements and bribes to pay off corrupted and compromised “review” sites such as Trustpilot and ripoffreport, all the selective IP posting viewability, fake testimonial comments on said sites, not to mention the deceptive pump and dumping, and leaving members bag-holding on depressed penny stocks.
Sam, good exposure of Jaffee’s sociopathic denial of losing positions not matching up to his 1099 record. Yes, selling options can give some illusion of overall profitability in the end because by their very nature they can be long term variable periodic outcome positions, setup imo with high risk and over-leverage for comparatively little gain compared to other types of regular and more reasonable risk-managed trading. Such as when Karen the “supertrader” deferred her fund’s massive losses by reporting only the positive side legs of her strangles trades as she continued to roll over the bad losing position sides. Also, imo, David Jafee kind of skirts a bit to the demeanor of the crazed David Kuvelas of Oil Trading Academy, particularly when he keeps blasting out he has 100% winners and that his high-risk way of trading with “no indicators or tech analysis (for losers in his words)” is the “only” way to trade profitably. lolol.
It’s the scams that I do not write about that are most interesting. The following is a perfect example…
Back in 2017, I discovered a guy in Philadelphia that was advertising on many of the well-known job sites like Indeed, Job Monster, Craigslist, and he was offering “Prop Trading” jobs for Forex for a company named Black Diamond Forex. The whole thing smelled of a scam.
I kept digging and by using various aliases, I eventually discovered that the operation was being run by a guy named Michael Salerno. And this guy was a total shit show of prior fraud. So, I get this big article written and I am about to publish. Of course, the goal is to expose and destroy the fraud. But in this case, I decided to run it by the FBI (before publishing) to see if they wanted to investigate before I blew it up.
About a week later, the FBI contacts me and said, “this is good.” Now, the FBI never shows their hand, and they never confirm or deny an investigation. When they said, “this is good” this was tantamount to saying “this dude is fucked.” I did not publish the article.
Additionally, I decided to hold off on filing a whistleblower complaint with the CFTC. I didn’t want to muddy the water with CFTC investigators stepping into the potential covert investigation by the FBI. I wanted it nice and clean. It paid off.
On September 25, 2020 the US Attorney came down on Michael Salerno like a brick house. He was indicted on 30 counts of fraud, is facing 580 years in prison (yes you are reading this correctly), and restitution of $7.2 million. You can read the press release here:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edpa/pr/mount-laurel-nj-man-arrested-and-charged-almost-30-counts-fraud-connection-two-business
This was a great case. And it got a great outcome. However, if I would have published an article before taking it to the FBI, it’s likely that Salerno would have disappeared or altered the scheme to limit his criminal liability.
Additionally, I have a few more stories just like this one. Really fun.
I saw this reply post late, but thanks as always Emmett, and for sharing this behind the scenes story and case. Wow, that scammer facing that much penalty and 30 counts. Harsh possible sentencing even a small portion of, that I think could be better served on some of the more egregious scammers tradingchools had reported on including Amico, GTR, SchoolOfTrade, Bond and OTA instead of the usual slap on the wrist fines before they go back into the whack-a-mole holes to later pop up again after the “farts in the wind” had passed “long enough”. You’d long mentioned you get hundreds, maybe up to thousands of emails from victims related to or tipping off these scams. It’s absolutely the case because of tradingschools, raging bull is finally starting to be served justice and scrutiny by the regulatory authorities, as well as other recent legacy scams such as Seiden’s OTA, sooner rather than later or never at all. All those people you encouraged and helped to write and file their cases, such as the 60+ mentioned for sure was a major if not the main impetus to get the FTC investigation and charges going. It’s sad to see tradingschools get literally no credit or recognition on even some of the old trading forums. And the authorities hardly ever respectfully acknowledge tradingschools. They could say “Emmett” is a reformed ex-felon running the tradingschools site which has been a substantially effective whistleblower and scambusting leading movement. But no, Jordan Belfont is still put on a better light historically with a Caprio movie and bestseller book.
Even though it’s impossible for common privacy reasons, it could be interesting imagining seeing all those emails by victims contacting you and your correspondence as well as all those court cases , involvement by the feds, and other aspects of your tradingschools work behind the scenes. I would assume that’s where much of the real meat and exciting stuff is that keeps this blog site and the tradingschools related scammed victim advocacy going.
I just write stupid articles.
The real person that deserves all the credit is my wife, Susy. She is a lawyer. She is the real nutcracker of this operation. If folks only knew the shit she stirs up behind the scenes…they would laugh.
Actually, I also get a lot of help from Mindy and Jake at Procopio. I never mention these two but without their pro bono help, especially in the appellate courts, I would have been toast long ago.
Jake Poorman is a former prosecutor in the Los Angeles DA’s office, and he HATES financial scammers almost as much me.
Please, do tell.
A great deal of my conversation with Emmett has disappeared, possibly because of our disagreement about Florida law and who won Warrior vs. Jaffee in the Florida district court, but I don’t want to leave the impression that I don’t think David is legit. I think he gives a lot of good advice and from what I have recently learned about options I think he is using the best options strategy for a bull market: selling puts.
If asked advice about whether to subscribe to his alerts, I would say “Go ahead, at least buy the 1 week trial subscription, although you might get only one or two alerts in a week.”
I think that David’s providing a link to his 2019 account statement was a clever scheme that backfired because somebody got too nosey. He counted on everyone thinking “He wouldn’t dare lie about his statement if he provided a download link.”
They would just take him at his word and nobody would download it.
As far as I can tell, nobody else did.
Hey Sam,
I am moving that conversation to a new thread where we can debate all sorts of legal stuff regarding online posting. This is a great topic as I recently fought in the appellate court regarding another review that I wrote and won/settled the case. In that review, and subsequent lawsuit, the review was particularly nasty and the language was extremely inflammatory. But once you read the appellate brief, you will understand why inflammatory language (such as David Jaffee’s) is constitutionally protected.
Truthfully, I don’t really dig too much into David’s day to day business operations and how he interacts with customers. Once I write a review, I move onto the next review and quickly forget about the content.
Recently, I got a phone call from someone that got a bad review nearly five years ago. Boy did he have a mouthful and could practically recite the review backward and forwards. I am sure he probably read and reread it 500 times. Wow, he was harboring a grudge for all these years and I really got under his skin. So we start talking and I was really embarrassed and felt bad because I had no idea who this character was, or what I had written. And this made him even more upset — that I didn’t remember. He had such a personal grievance that was really incomprehensible. I just let him scream at me over the telephone for what seemed like an eternity.
Unbeknownst to him, while he was screaming on the phone, I calmly logged into my computer and quickly deleted the review. And then I said, “oh, I am sorry to offend you for something I wrote five years ago, I deleted the article so hopefully this will soothe your anger.” He quickly checked to confirm and then a long pause over the telephone ensued. He then replied, “why did I wait so long?”
We all remember the bully from our childhood. That slight we carry with us for our entire lifetime. How they wronged us in a moment in time, that embeds itself into our memory and haunts us forever, and causes us to carry anger for an eternity. But the truth is that the bully never remembers their actions, they don’t even care. They don’t carry grievances like water through a scorching desert. Confronting someone that aggrieved us over a slight, is usually a fruitless quest.
I am sure that Jaffee and yourself certainly had a disagreement. But trust me when I tell you…Jaffee has already forgotten about it. And he probably doesn’t even care. Further, Jaffee is actually a really nice person. Yes, his personality can be course and salty, but he truly is a kind and decent person.
David and I didn’t have a disagreement. I remarked that his tax form didn’t appear to show what he claimed and he responded by hurling insults at me and removing access to the form. I regard that as confirmation.
I would be glad to discuss defamation law with you if it would help you not to be sued so frequently. It’s not my specialty, but that Minclaw group is really good. They specialize in defamation and have argued cases in a number of states and three foreign countries.
Defamation law varies from state to state. In some states making a false accusation about someone to the police is regarded as privileged and not actionable. In Florida it is considered actionable. You would be governed by the law of the state where you are located. Interestingly, Florida has a number of defamatory statements that are defined as crimes in their criminal code. Florida is especially protective of the defamed and that is why I warn David to watch his step. You may be in a state with more liberal policies and that is why you get off and he didn’t.
In my Amazon books listing I was surprised to find a book published by Gale Supreme Court Reports with myself as author. I had nothing to do with it other than to unwittingly provide most of the material. I contacted Gale and they informed me that it was selected for inclusion in a series devoted to outstanding legal scholarship and is used in law schools all over the country. I can’t collect royalties but it might earn me some respect.
P.S. David holds a grudge. I tried to sign up for his “$400 worth of free training” and he rejected me because I once had unsubscribed from his channel.
Good work in getting those exhibits. I especially like his “ivy league” college diploma. I have one but I prefer his because it’s in English. Mine is in Latin (Harvard) and hardly anyone can read it.
David describes his large diet of psychoactive drugs in his book The Fastest Way to Permanently Cure Depression, Anxiety & Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, available on Amazon.
On his web site beststockstrategy.com David places great emphasis on a 100% win rate for 2019. After my comment he removed the link to his brokerage statement but the document is still there. You can access it at
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t1o-S9dBm4UoRYoQf32xvzABFt-oKXgK/view
If anyone cares to download and analyze it, we would be grateful. It looks like a big job. If it has disappeared I can e-mail it. I would be glad to add a PDF version of my printed book to such a person as a reward for their service.
It is possible for there to be losing trades that are part of a winning spread, but David says he didn’t start using spreads until the latter part of 2019, so any losses in early 2019 would be from single option trades. Unfortunately the entries are not in date order. If the PDF could be converted to Excel it might be possible to sort them into early 2019 and late 2019.
Sam,
You nearly had me rolling out of my chair referencing your Harvard diploma. So true. But you know, I had to include (David’s) it because it’s a good point to highlight.
Further, you are really dogged! Love your writing style. And so, CONGRATULATIONS because you have no been drafted (without your consent) to start writing articles for TradingSchools.Org.
You will love the pay (nearly nothing) and you will love the lawsuits even better. Heck, you might even find yourself back in the appellate court arguing…to save your own ass! Wouldnt that be fun/funny?
So get that blue pen warmed up. Get those fingers limbered up. And get to work! All ad revenue from your pages and promotions are yours to keep. Hopefully, I can hand this stupid blog over to you, and you can be the “chief editor” and some other fancy title. Really, you would be doing me a favor. I have lost count of the times where I swore to myself “this is the final article.”
Thank you for the appreciation, but I am content to provide you with useful information. My investment account has been slipping the last few weeks and I am struggling to save what is left.
I have just done an audacious thing, restored the link to David’s Tastworks account on his 2019 year-end video. Here is what I wrote:
In his first comment David originally had a link to his Tastyworks Form 1099 for 2019 so that anyone could access it, read it, and see that what he was saying was true — that he had no losing trades in that account all year. Well, I did so, counted the trades, and got a surprise: 40% of the trades were losers. When I reported this, David got mad, removed the link, and started calling me names. You should find that below.
In the interest of truth and honesty I have restored the link and encourage everyone to do as I did, download the statement and count the trades. Has there been some mistake? Surely David wouldn’t lie to us. It is possible for a trade to be a loser and still be a part of a winning spread. See if you can find any losing trades that are not part of a winning spread.
The link is to my Google drive, not his. It will be interesting to see if he leaves it up.
He won 100% of his trades.
Download the statement and also look at the screen recording.
It’s strange that you’d write a book yet then be so ignorant to not understand that the ‘losing trades’ you’re referring to are the long options of the spreads.
Meaning that if he sold a spread, then the long option will expire, or be bought back, for a loss, yet the transaction was structured in a way where the spread was profitable.
He probably used the long options for capital efficiency purposes or to reduce tail risk.
I don’t understand why you would write a self-published book and then be so ignorant where you failed to realize this.
Maybe David Jaffe tried to explain this to you if you emailed him, or maybe he could just tell that you’re an idiot (as I could easily tell you’re an idiot simply by glancing at your message and seeing that your logic is faulty yet you tried to push it as fact).
I hope that calling me an idiot doesn’t mean that you’re an idiot because I need intelligent people to work on this. We will need to do much more work before we can come to the conclusion that he won 100% of his trades. The job is made more difficult by the fact that the trades are not in date order. I have never seen that before in a financial statement.
David has stated that he did not start using spreads until the latter part of 2019. If the trades were in date order we could just note the losing trades in the first few months of 2019.. With things as they are, here is what I propose:
1 Start with the first losing trade and number it 1a.
2 Proceed down the list looking for a partner. It should be for the same stock, have the same trade date and expiration date, close to the other strike price and show a profit. Label it 1b. If no partner is found, label the first 1ax.
3 Go back to 1a+ and repeat until done.
4 If there are no trades with an x, check all spreads to see if they were profitable.
5 If all spreads were profitable and there are no trades with an x, then all trades were profitable.
Does this sound good to you? Can I welcome you to the team? You can communicate with me privately at moptail@gmail.com.
As for my books, it is mentioned earlier that one of them is used in class in law schools all over the country. So there!
No offense, but why would I, or anyone else, want to work with you?
You defame an Ivy League graduate with Wall Street experience who worked hard to receive a positive review from Emmett.
Then, you self-publish something that’s completely inaccurate.
Finally, when presented with evidence that you made an error, you fail to acknowledge your mistake and instead you double-down.
You really should look in the mirror because it seems like your actions are the epitome of ignorance.
I literally spent 10 seconds skimming your message and immediately saw the error in your logic, yet you’re an expert and were unable to see your error after months?
Did you ever contact Tastyworks? You have his entire statement.
Why didn’t you contact Tastyworks via chat and ask them to explain the statement to you if you’re unable to understand it?
With all due respect, you seem extremely ignorant.
I would never want to waste time communicating or working with someone like yourself.
You make obvious mistakes yet espouse those mistakes as fact and then refuse to acknowledge it even when presented with concrete evidence.
I’ve been trading options only for 4 months and I could easily see your mistake.
Also, if you are eager to go after someone, then I saw a new YouTuber Matt Giannino that seems like he’s not legitimate (buying options and forcing everyone into a chat) and I’m pretty surprised that you claim to be an expert yet failed to catch your own mistake that most people would see after a few minutes.
And then you also failed to contact Tastyworks when they have chat support that would answer all your questions.
You seem extremely intellectually lazy and ignorant (at least in this case).
You say “no offense” and then become extremely offensive.
If you worship ivy league graduates you should worship me. A Harvard diploma trumps one from Cornell.
At least you are interested in the subject, so stay tuned and perhaps you may benefit. I conjecture from your arrogance and misconceptions that you are a juvenile.
I have a special responsibility to David because I devote a chapter to him in my book. My count of his wins and losses is accurate. I am now processing his statement for spreads, a strategy he did not start using until recently.
If you have certain facts and there are things about David’s statement that are obvious to you, please share them with me. It could save me hours of work.
A brokerage house considers customers’ records as confidential and will not discuss them with anyone.
Kind of hard to beat a Harvard diploma. Of course, my Federal Prison issued GED is probably the easiest to beat. A true public education. The Bureau of Prisons — such an esteemed institution.
My major was dishwashing. My minor was laundry.
Ha! I *taught* GED courses in Lompoc, Petersburg and, ahem, Butner, where I shared library time with one Bernard Madoff.
The education received during my ten year sojourn with the Fed is my most valued treasure — the truly irreplaceable gift of authentic self-knowledge, something that I never would have gained without my enforced “time out.”
Good old Lompoc. What a place. The inmates were truly running the asylum. How many laps did I walk? Countless. Got in the best shape of my life.
And the volleyball and softball tournaments? The stuff of legend.
But every camp is different. Example: after being transferred to Sheridan, I quickly realized that the guards often had problems worse than the inmates. One time in particular, I am sitting by the commissary and this bedraggled drunk woman comes stumbling into the camp. Of course, seeing a woman is a rarity, but seeing a stumbling drunk woman was like seeing a UFO land in your backyard. My jaw dropped at what happened next…
She comes onto the hallowed grounds of the camp, stumbling and mad dog drunk, hair in a total mess. She starts screaming the name of one of the guards. I dont remember his name. But I do remember he was really shy and young. She then holds a signed check up into the air, like it was a gold medal in the Olympic games and starts screaming…”That son of a bitch wrote me a bad check for services performed in good faith!”
And what were those “services performed in good faith?” She was the town prostitute.
Hi Emmett,
I just got back around to checking this thread. Funny story. I calculated that just in my last 4 years I did over 5,000 miles in track time. My (unwritten) memoir is title Walking Home in Circles!
I also have a nice scar from my nose to my lip from when I tripped over a rock on the Lompoc track and fell. You can imagine what a time I had convincing the popo that I really fell, and no one belted me!
(“I can see that you fell. I’m wondering who *helped* you fall, the Lt. said!)
FYI, I work with one of the more reputable firms in the trader advisory game (everything being relative, of course). I don’t particularly enjoy selling high-end signal services, and my commitment to honesty and the best interests of the client probably limits my effectiveness, but that’s how I roll lol.
As an entrepreneur, however, I’m working on a “trader support system” to encompass trading plan design, psychological training, and strategy development. This is something I *am* excited about. With your permission, I’ll keep you posted.
Best regards,
Chris
I remember those huge birds at Lompoc…those huge cranes. They would stand over squirrel holes all day and just wait…until a squirrel would peek its head, and then WHAM the squirrel would be gobbled up. And those damn ugly vultures. Ugliest damn birds I have ever seen.
Oh I know all about walking the Lompoc circle. I went from 225 to 170 in about a year. Just walking.
That is the one good thing about that damn camp…you come out in great health without a stress in the world.
There’s that light humour again instead of dealing with real talking points. What’s the use of this? Squirm until you get away. Scam…
I have completed my analysis of David’s small account trades for 2019 and find that none of the 43 losing trades are part of a spread and thus stand on their own as losing trades. The analysis took four hours.
My method was to take the losing trades one by one and search the entire statement for a corresponding trade for the same stock and with the same purchase and sale dates in reverse order. This would have identified both vertical and diagonal spreads. No matches were found in any of the 43 cases.
For both your benefit and Emmet’s I have put my working files into a package you can access from the link below. I’ll leave it to Emmett to take it up with David.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bK6s_Qm_bkc7srjqqX2rgIn62poQ0M3v/view?usp=sharing
Hi, Sam,
David Jaffee also sometimes does even more creative “rolls” than diagonals. He will end up with a mishmash of buying back and then selling new calls and puts of varying expiration dates in order to always come out positive it seems on every single roll attempt, even if only a $1 gain. That could well show up as multiple “loss” trades on a transaction print out but the rolls themselves (and the trade on an underlying start to finish) is almost always a gain overall … from what I’ve seen. See how he handles SNOW 12/2020 in this video and you’ll see what I mean. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3B6DPHe1wM&t=200s
It’s sometimes a lot of trades to avoid red, but he keeps at it and seems to nearly always pull it off in the end. Dude is legendary.
Welcome to the internet, Sam. Where everyone gets an opinion. And some of them even come with a little extra frosting.
“Welcome to the internet, Sam. Where everyone gets an opinion. “
This is rather a disturbing statement considering Sam is providing documented evidence that Jaffee is a liar. The evidence Sam has provided would be pretty easy for anyone else to have done, especially if they were writing a review.
If the documentation Sam is providing is accurate, then Jaffee is a liar and certainly does not deserve a 5 stars for honesty.
Emmett, this puts your whole creditability on the line. Someone is lying; either Sam or David. I am pretty sure I know which one it is. I doubt anyone telling people how they can consistently make money by selling naked puts is very honest. Selling naked trades has got to be one of the highest risk trades out there and all it takes is one crash and you have lost everything.
So Emmett who is lying??
Emmett is working on it. He wrote me that access to my files was restricted. I think I have fixed that. The principal file is David’s Tastyworks Form 1099 for 2019 converted to Word format. The original PDF had been scanned and was essentially a large image.and impossible to do anything with. Adobe Acrobat was able to convert it to a more useful form.
The trades are not in date order, so the first thing I did was to number them, W1, W2… for winners and L1, L2,… for losers. The next thing was to pair up trades that appeared to be components of a spread. With most spreads one leg is a winner and the other leg is a loser. If the winner wins more than the loser loses, then the spread is a winner.
With a credit spread, however, it is possible for the spread to be a winner when both legs are losers. The trader gets paid when he creates the spread and if both legs expire worthless he doesn’t have to pay any of it back.
If it can be shown that a losing trade is one leg of a spread, then it ceases to be a loser and becomes part of whatever the spread is. If all of the losing trades are legs of winning spreads, then David is right — all trades are winners.
A matching leg must meet the following requirements: It must be for the same stock and of the same type (put, call), and the bought and sold dates must be the same in reverse order. When one puts on a spread he buys one option and shorts another with a slightly different strike price and when he takes it off or it expires the reverse happens.
I opened two copies of the form in Word. From the first copy I started with L1, copied a date, and used it as a search term in the second copy, next L2 and so on down to L43. I found many matches but none on a trade that would qualify as the other leg. Wrong stock, wrong other date, or in some other cases a day trade. No qualifying other leg means no spreads and my count remains unchanged: 43 losing trades. David was so convincing in declaring no losing trades that no one thought to check.
It is possible that David actually believes that there were no losing trades. He has spoken of his problems with depression and OCD, perhaps his troubles run even deeper. Psychiatric nurses tell us it is not good to try to talk patients out of their delusions; it merely upsets them. The trouble is, David is committing fraud in a big way. What can we do to help him?
One thing is to do your own spread screening. Can you think of a better way? Can you write a program to do it. Most of us like David and want to see him walk the straight and narrow.
This is becoming funny. Sam, you are the epitome of ignorance. You’re not here to learn, or to improve, but instead you’re a slave to your own ignorance.
Okay, let’s look at Jaffe’s video:
https://youtu.be/FUTCAqtsMP4?t=35
If you pause that screen, there are 2 spreads immediately identifiable.
DG Call sold 3 January 25 120 / 125 SPREAD
MCD Put Jan 18s 175/ 152.5 SPREAD
The examples are all over…
Again…. any idiot with half a brain can see that you’re ignorant.
Do you know anything about trading?
Clearly not.
Let’s keep going (since it’s so easy to prove you wrong)
https://youtu.be/FUTCAqtsMP4?t=116
RTN Puts Spread $155 / 148.
You can easily do this and see the spreads, and the contact Tastyworks to walk through his statement.
You seem like someone who enjoys wasting time so you’re welcome to scroll through all the video and identify the 100+ spreads that he shows.
I’m also attaching what looks like closing transactions for 3 SPREADS.
Again, you’re welcome to waste your time and go through the hundreds of transactions (remember that each spread will create 4 separate transactions).
Yes, Jaffe spoke about being an investment banker and OCD / depression.
What have you accomplished?
Self-publishing an inaccurate book and making false claims that any idiot can disprove?
Great accomplishment!
This is becoming funny. Sam, you are the epitome of ignorance. You’re not here to learn, or to improve, but instead you’re a slave to your own ignorance.
Okay, let’s look at Jaffe’s video:
https://youtu.be/FUTCAqtsMP4?t=35
If you pause that screen, there are 2 spreads immediately identifiable.
DG Call sold 3 January 25 120 / 125 SPREAD
MCD Put Jan 18s 175/ 152.5 SPREAD
The examples are all over…
Again…. any idiot with half a brain can see that you’re ignorant.
Do you know anything about trading?
Clearly not.
Let’s keep going (since it’s so easy to prove you wrong)
https://youtu.be/FUTCAqtsMP4?t=116
RTN Puts Spread $155 / 148.
You can easily do this and see the spreads, and the contact Tastyworks to walk through his statement.
You seem like someone who enjoys wasting time so you’re welcome to scroll through all the video and identify the 100+ spreads that he shows.
You can also see 3 other SPREADS here: https://snipboard.io/peTMGU.jpg
Again, you’re welcome to waste your time and go through the hundreds of transactions (remember that each spread will create 4 separate transactions).
Yes, Jaffe spoke about being an investment banker and OCD / depression.
What have you accomplished?
Self-publishing an inaccurate book and making false claims that any idiot can disprove?
Great accomplishment!
Your tone would get you kicked out of many places but you are welcome here because you are entertaining. Also, you do good work.
I have looked up the first of your “spreads” in the annotated Form 1099 and found the following:
L4 CALL DG 01/25/19 [3] 125
W08 CALL DG 1/25/19 [3] 120
These look like they might be legs of a spread but the dates are wrong. They are
01/07/2019 01/16/2019 and
01/16/2019 01/16/2019
Since the legs of a spread are put on and taken off at the same time, dates would have to match. The first was on for nine days and the second was a day trade.
Let’s discuss burden of proof. David claims that all trades were profitable. To prove him wrong all I have to do is to establish that one was unprofitable. I have established prima facie that 43 trades were unprofitable. To rebut this you must prove that all 43 are legs of a spread. Not just any spread, but a profitable one.
Do you think you can do that?
My inaccurate book could make you a millionaire. I study options but I don’t trade them because I have been successful with stocks. David is one of three people I know of who got into options because he failed with stocks. The others are Kirk du Plessis and someone who calls himself OptionGenius. You can build a nest egg with stocks. Options expire.
I am looking up your third “spread,” which you identify as
RTN Puts Spread $155 / 148.
which I interpret as two RTN puts, one bought and one sold with strike prices 155 and 148, expiration date not given.
A search of the 1099 produces:
L29 PUT RTN 02/22/19 148 1.00 01/31/2019 02/07/2019
W45 PUT RTN 02122/19 155 1.00 02/07/2019 02/07/2019
01/31/ 19 PUT RTN 02/22/19 148 RAYTHEON CO PURCHASE
02/07/19 PUT RTN 02/22/19 148 RAYTHEON CO SELL
01/31/19 PUT RTN 02/22/19 155 RAYTHEON CO SELL
02/07/19 PUT RTN 02/22/19 155 RAYTHEON CO PURCHASE
Here we have inconsistent dates. Lines 3-6 do indicate a spread but the dates on W45 are wrong. One of them should be 1/31/19, so the reason I missed it is that the 1099 is screwed up. It is impossible to draw valid conclusions from a screwed up form. I shall report this to Tastyworks. I’m glad you stepped in.
The reason I missed this on my first scan is that after finding L29 I stopped when I found W45 and noticed inconsistent dates. The other listings are from the bottom of the form, are in a different format, and show one trade instead of two. If I see the same thing described in more than one way and inconsistently my policy is to disregard both descriptions.
Dani says he’s not going to waste any more time on this, yet he keeps coming back with little to contribute. I won’t respond to him after 11/8. I do want to get the problem solved because I don’t want to call David a liar if he’s really not, but just acts like one on certain occasions.
Dani Boy:
I am trying to see what you see on the screen and correlate what you see there with what is shown on David’s 1099. I cannot search the screen so I must rely on your power of observation. If the screen display were available as a document I would be able to search it.
Spread options must be for the same stock, be of the same type, and must be put on on the same date and taken off on the same date. I was able to find many spread candidates on the 1099 but couldn’t pair them because the dates don’t match.
Your screenshot at 3:39 of the video is excellent! It shows three spread transaction pairs
but they aren’t related. What I need is two transaction pairs for the same spread, one for put-on and one for take-off WITH THE DATES! If the same spread is not on the 1099 there is an error and reporting this to Tastyworks might get them to fix it. With the present 1099 it is not possible to demonstrate any spreads, only that there are no spreads. This is undoubtedly wrong but must stand until corrections are made.
You also realize that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to trade underlyings like AMZN and GOOGL as naked options on a $5,000 to $10,000 account without using spreads, right?
The buying power reduction would be multiples of the account value.
I’m an intermediate trader. Not too much experience, but these are things that I knew even as a novice.
Have you ever even traded? You clearly know very little about options trading.
Harvard Grad? Is there a Harvard Community College that you flunked out of?
Send me your transcript as it seems that you enjoy making things up.
You are doing good work! I was right in seeing talent in you and wanting you as an associate.
I have trouble reading David’s cellphone screen. If you have not done so already, could you please download David’s 1099 on which I have numbered the trades and identify by number the trade pairs that you say form a spread? Valid spread pairs must have certain things in common.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bK6s_Qm_bkc7srjqqX2rgIn62poQ0M3v/view?usp=sharing
Why would I spend more time on this?
You are intellectually lazy and are not here to learn or improve.
Instead, you’re here to make false claims about the only educator who has actually made me money.
Any trader with experience can can easily tell that you have no clue what you’re talking about after reading your initial message.
Not only is there solid evidence of 100+ spreads in plain sight at the very beginning of his video, but trading only naked options on an account with <$10,000 is impossible.
The evidence is right in front of you yet you still refuse to acknowledge your mistake.
His trading statement has been out in the public since early 2020 yet you never felt the need to contact Tastyworks despite it taking ~5 minutes?
You are the definition of a lazy fool and have already wasted too much of my time.
You’re absolutely correct Sam. David is just the same as all the “option gurus” that couldn’t hack it with regular stock or futures direction trading. It reminds me of the similarity of “Karen the supertrader” statement on Tasty channel with chef cap wearing Snotoff way back then when she said directional trading was too difficult and not worth bothering with when she could do spreads , as in her dangerous risky strangles no less. Where Jaffee says something similar about technical analysis (basically being directional) being worthless. The same “delta-neutral” scam perpetuated by option vendor scams of past years, such as Fontanills, Tom Gentile, “pirate” Preston James, Dan Sheridan, etc. and plenty more.
As for this options guru being Cornell business grad. I personally know of a few who went to Cornell. It has an easier admission than the top tier ivy also due to part of it’s dept. schools funded and partially owned by the state of NY, so basically half a state college. So sure, students who studied their butts off and managed to be in the top 2% of their class with a good work/study ethic have a good chance to get accepted there. But the class culture there knows very well Cornell was their second tier choice out of the top tier and ivy of Harvard, MIT, Stanford,Yale, Princeton, cal-tech, etc requiring the highest SAT scores and highschool GPAs in the country. Also known in the culture is that if a student in Cornell can’t hack it in the science, engineering or pre-law or pre-med majors, they fall back to some easier to pass arts degree(like “architect” Ross) or business to get by and graduate at least with a degree there. I would take more stock in lying pill-pushing plastic mutilator Dr. Sach’s “Wharton grad degree” if it wasn’t faked, lol.
I mean sheez, David’s demeanor looks like a sweaty demeanor knowing he’s covering up a shamshow of risky options trading. Reminds me Guy or even David Kuvelas. I’m sure Jaffee worked his butt off trying to make it work, but he’s still a wayward self-misinformed arrogant beginner in my estimation eschewing tech analysis and direction trading. So he’s desperate to make his shamshow look legit typical to a young guy afraid of failure and not succeeding in a venture. There was a young mid 20’s guy , also a business grad some years back on the big mike’s forum “indextrader91” or something I think his member name was , and he was such an arrogant twat, refused to listen and even started his own fund , and rented an office in a tall building. All he was doing was scalping on small tick frame charts which was really no chart at all much less orderflow, and he promptly lost 15% of all his fooled local investors, before his college buddy called them up in panic and told them all to pull out quick from the fund before it got worse, probably saved them from legal penalty and repercussions in the end like an out of control losing fund featured on American Greed.
Dani, what a shill you are. Are you a secretary of Jafee’s?, like those secretaries of other shams who upon receiving a phone call and questions, always say “I’m still learning” about options from our guru, year after year after year of newbs being ripped off. Buying just one options contract on AAPL, more difficult on Goog is doable on a 10k account, of course at high risk.
https://i.imgur.com/jcCsjAP.jpg
But of course 1 contract isn’t enough for Jaffee where he needs to put high risk size just to help shore up a misleading profit sham display of “100%” wins enough to “make a living”. Of course, beware of any vendor who claims “100%”, already a given on tradingschools for a long time. I’ve ditched options years ago as being scammy, and if you’re an “intermediate” trader, Jaffee sure is a newb who still doesn’t know what he’s doing eschewing the fundamental risk management required for trading. I don’t like Emmett partnering with this shamshow to get more funding for tradingschool’s maintenance; I know he can’t get more fundraising while he’s under FBI restitution watch. But I think it’s obligated for longtime tradingschool readers such as myself who’ve long been helped wise up about the shamshow industry thanks to ts, to sometimes offer constructive critical viewpoints in tradingschools discussions on such an egregious and risky shamshow to newbs such as this “best stock strategy” joke. Options spread trading is a long time sham started from CBOE pit traders who lost out and couldn’t manipulate anymore, or disgraced accountants like Fontanills(his buddy Tom Gentile took over). It’s dangerous for newb retailers, and I know Emmett has mentioned the “hard knocks” of futures trading, but that’s what newbs need to get their experience in, the hard-knocks of directional trial and learning and struggle whether in futures or swing trading stocks with small size, not some dream of delta-neutral greeks finagling with options. Buffett didn’t make it big on options spreads, nor do most hedge funds where a single option is used as it was originally intended on invention, to help hedge stock positions. So keep it up Sam and good work exposing the losing trades of this joker. We longtime readers applaud you. Sheez, where’s RobB?, at least Sam is now taking over with some sensible trading realism around here in the face of these shamshows.
Clearly you’re comment is fake for you to be supporting an idiot who knows nothing about options trading and who any trader with any experience at all would recognize make numerous errors.
Nice try Sam posting a fake comment.
I’ll continue to make money with Jaffe.
It seems that you’re just a jealous hater who is disappointed that someone else is successful where you’ve failed.
Also, please explain to me, Sam, why you claim he doesn’t trade spreads and yet in his video there are HUNDREDS of spreads that he shows.
Also, how can you possibly make a claim without even understanding how option buying power works?
You haters are idiots, which is why you’re poor.
Evidence is shaping up that David may be right in having no losing trades in 2019 and that the misunderstanding is due to date errors in his 1099. David makes more with options than I do with stocks, which leads me to consider them.
One of the options gurus I study is Chuck Hughes, who has no admission of failure and claims to have been successful right from the start. He buys puts and calls and seems to be successful because he has found that you can minimize time decay by buying them deep in the money.
I was able to find free feeds of his alerts and set up an account to test them. It’s called Optioneering-W and you can find it at StockHoot.com.
Here in his own words is David’s account of his early failures:
“Prior to trading options, I tried pretty-much every product.
Penny stocks, regular stocks, forex, day trading, etc.
Many would label me a “sophisticated” investor since I graduated from an Ivy League University and worked as an Investment Banker on Wall Street. I still lost ~500,000 before learning how to trade options. My problem wasn’t that I lacked knowledge.
My problem was that I was trading the wrong strategy.
Prior to selling options, I would hope that something went up or down. I’d look at charts, but…. those “indicators” were complicated and unreliable.
The fact is:
There is a ton of competing information out there. My job is to add value and ensure that you’re successful. Don’t be disappointed with yourself if you’ve tried other things and haven’t been profitable.
If you’re reading this, then you have an opportunity to finally learn a simple strategy that will allow you to be consistently profitable.
David “I’ve Made A Lot of Mistakes” Jaffee”
You have been doing an excellent job of representing David in this forum. A lawyer does not abandon his client without permission of the court.
David is now contacting Tastyworks to authorize their discussing his trading record with me.
Why would Jaffe waste his time with you?
Even amateur traders can see that you’re an idiot who is unable to see blatant evidence right in front of you.
The first 7 minutes of the video shows his trades and there are over 100 spreads.
You claim there are zero spreads yet that’s impossible based upon reg T buying power requirements.
I’ve wasted too much time on your idiocy.
You’re clearly an unsuccessful and jealous hater who is not here to learn or improve.
You’re claiming that Jaffe is going to contact Tastyworks?
Let me email him.
If he knows of you at all, he probably thinks you’re an ignorant loser.
David and I recently had a very pleasant correspondence and he offered me a free subscription to his alerts. I think he really believes that all his 2019 trades were profitable and that it may be due to the medication he takes to fight depression.
I don’t claim that there are zero spreads, merely that I was unable to find any involving a losing trade. My failure to do so could be due to carelessness or a faulty algorithm.
My chief concern at this point is to keep David from being slapped with a fine and cease-and-desist order by the SEC, as recently happened to options guru Wendy Kirkland. Emmett will be reporting on that shortly.
Elsewhere you will find that I admit that you have found one spread in David’s trading record. That’s one down and 42 to go, however we also found that there are heaven knows how many date errors in his 1099 and thus it is difficult to draw conclusions from it unless these errors are corrected. I may work on this. Remember, I need find only one losing trade.
I have been working on this because of his reaction to my reporting 43 losing trades appearing on his 1099. He insulted me and removed the link to the form. If he had given an explanation as you have done, I would have accepted it.
You question my competency with respect to options, so let me bring you up to date.
I am not trading options because I have large amounts to invest and their markets are thin, however I am using advanced mathematical tools to investigate them. I have been preparing a book on them. I sent a draft to my broker at Schwab and much to my surprise he distributed it to his clients.
One thing I discovered is that with deep in the money European puts, theta reverses and their value increases with time. These are theoretical values and are confirmed by two pricing models, Black-Scholes and binary tree.
I have restarted my search of David’s 1099 with special attention to incorrect dates. Here is what I have found:
L1 and W02 can be paired if date 11/25/2019 on W02 is changed to 11/05/2019
L2 can be paired with W30 if 4/05/19 is changed to 3/21/2019 on W30
L19 can be paired with W62 if 10/25/2019 is changed to 10/09/2019 on W62
L35 can be paired with W20 if 10/04/2019 is changed to 9/19/2019 on W20
What they do is put the closing date on the closing trade twice instead of the opening date and the closing date. That makes it look like a day trade.
If all losing trades can be paired with another trade to form a winning spread then all trades are profitable and David is right.
If at least one losing trade cannot be paired with another trade or can be paired with another trade to form a losing spread, then David is wrong.
It is possible for two losing trades to be paired to form a winning credit spread.
What has been done so far is not conclusive as to whether David is right or wrong.
I’d like to add some legal points here, and it would be nice if a lawyer would chime in to confirm them. These are things a law student learns in his course on evidence.
When there is not enough evidence to decide a thing one way or another the court falls back on a presumption. What is the appropriate presumption here?
Law: A party asserting a fact has the burden of proving it.
David claims that all trades were profitable. This has been challenged, so David has the burden of proving it.
A court wants “best evidence” and would not accept numbers scrolling by on a cellphone screen when an official IRS document having the needed information is available.
I have spent hours determining that it is not possible to show spreads using the information in the 1099. If I were to write this up it would be forty pages. Dani has given cellphone evidence that spreads exist, and this led me to search again on the 1099.
I found that some of the trades could be legs of spreads if certain dates were changed on the 1099. We couldn’t do that ourselves; it would have to be official.
David’s best bet would be to tell Tastyworks that there are errors on his 1099 and request a corrected one. My guess is that Tastyworks wouldn’t take this seriously and would stand by the present 1099.
In that case he judge would fall back on the presumption that since David failed to prove his assertion there might be unprofitable trades in his account. Next case!
Addendum: As things now stand, a lawyer for the SEC could prove that there are unprofitable trades in David’s account, even though it might not be so. Protecting a customer would be a motive for getting a corrected 1099 from Tastyworks.
I tried looking up the second of your spread trades, which you describe as
MCD Put Jan 18s 175/ 152.5
which I interpret as two MCD puts expiring Jan 18, one bought and one sold, with strike prices 175 and 152.5. This is unusually wide. Here is what I found:
W07 PUT MCD 01/18/19 175 3.00 01/15/2019 1/15/2019
L20 PUT MCD 01/18/19 172.5 3.00 01/09/2019 1/15/2019
Again, these look like the legs of a spread but the dates don’t match. The first was a day trade and the second was on for six days. What is going on here? What was David doing? Is there any way these could be the legs of a spread and not have the dates match?
I’m not spending time on this. You’re the epitome of an idiot who, when faced with definite proof, still hold onto your false beliefs.
There are 7 minutes of spreads in the video.
If you have an issue with the tax document, then contact Tatsyworks.
My guess, is that, just like everyone else, you will be ignored because 1) you’re wrong and 2) you’re crazy
You’re going to waste your life over a crazy obsession while others profit from his genius.
Final thing. Initial ignorant message from Sam said, “No qualifying other leg means no spreads and my count remains unchanged: 43 losing trades”.
Then… a few days later, “I don’t claim that there are zero spreads,”
I think I also said somewhere that you’d found a valid spread but I forget where or the circumstances. You’re supposed to be supporting David, not harassing me. Get to work!
I’ve written both to David and to Tastyworks explaining my theory about date errors in the 1099. Right now we’re both working for David.
Please get back to work on the video and find me opening and closing trades, with dates, of valid spreads so I can compare them with what’s on the tax form. I need to revise my review of David in case he’s right.
A most interesting message from Tastyworks. I have informed David of this. This does not prove that what we have is fake; he might have another account with them in which he did not trade, but in view of this and the date errors in the 1099 that kept me from finding spread pairs, I don’t consider it worthwhile to continue the investigation.
Don’t rely too heavily on David’s genius. Selling naked puts is a good strategy but you can lose more that 100% of your investment if the stock goes the wrong way. Remember Emmett’s report of David’s $1M drawdown?
David would never approve of this, but buying calls can be a good strategy if you buy deep enough in the money to minimize time decay. Chuck Hughes makes frequent use of this. To follow Chuck for free you can visit my Chuck Hughes account at StockHoot.com: Optioneering-W.
If you want to know how to make $1M a year without using options, read my book.
tastyworks | SupportNov 9, 2020, 5:16 PM (13 hours ago)
Hi Sam,
Thanks for the lead. We do see that an account lists with the email you shared, however, the account associated did NOT have a 1099 issued for the 2019 tax year. To move forward we will need to have David reach out to us directly.
Best,
Jason
Wait, so you made documented bogus claims that Jaffe lost 43 trades and that he didn’t trade spreads.
Then, you were presented with solid evidence of 7 minutes of spreads yet refused to acknowledge your error.
Then you were informed that it’s also impossible to sell naked options with a $5,000 account on high-priced stocks.
Then, your friend posted a screenshot about buying power reduction that shows a transaction of BUYING options (which is completely irrelevant and, like you, wrong).
Then, you encourage us to buy options which is virtually guaranteed to lose money and has a low probability of profit.
Then, you plug your book which, based upon what I’ve read in your previous messages is probably filled with errors (which you’ll likely refuse to correct).
You are not here to learn or improve.
Instead, you are here to present false information.
Even so, I wish you all the best and hope that you find happiness.
I will continue to be a member of his trade alerts.
According to Tastyworks the 1099 doesn’t even exist, so there’s no point in discussing it.
The Chuck Hughes strategy actually works! The best configuration for the put sale is short term at or slightly out of the money and for the call purchase long term and in the money. In my StockHoot: Rotherhilde account, which you are welcome to visit, I put on puts and calls for the same stock and in the short term they show the same profit or loss. In the long term if the stock moved the call would have greater potential because of its longer term and unlimited gains. For the put, the gain is limited to the amount you receive for it. If the stock didn’t move the put would win, but you buy a call only if you expect the stock to move.
I shall be glad to send you a review copy of my book if I know where. Did my two political books help Biden win the election? Of course they did!
See above reply to Sam
Why do think that selling a naked put is any more dangerous than buying 100 shares of a stock? I agree that selling a naked call is potentially more dangerous, but selling a naked put, especially without leverage, seems to me to be as safe or even safer than buying 100 shared of stock.
I hope that this thread ends here. Let me summarize.
In 2018 Emmett contacted David Jaffee for the purpose of getting information for a review. Emmett is very thorough and will even attend classes in his search for information. David provided Emmett with a stack of brokerage statements going back to 2015 showing a history of very profitable trading, mostly selling naked puts. Emmett complained that David’s account was too large for his readers to relate to, so David opened a $5K account with Tastyworks for the purpose of demonstrating his trading skill. Early in 2020 David published a video claiming “up 117%, no losing trades, referring to this account. In a pinned opening comment in the comments section he provided a link to his Tastyworks Form 1099 for 2019. I downloaded the form and counted 65 winning trades and 43 losing ones for a total of 108. When I commented on this David replied by insisting that all trades were profitable, hurling insults at me, and removing the link. I interpreted this as meaning that David had something to hide and began to analyze the form 1099.
I realized that the losing trades could be one leg of a winning spread, so I tried to find matching legs for each of the losing trades. In each case I found a candidate but could not call it a match because its dates were wrong. Since both legs of a vertical spread are put on and taken off at the same time, their dates must match, either in forward or reverse order depending on how one interprets the date columns. In the lower part of the form there is a “details” section where transactions are listed one per line with date, price, and whether it was a purchase or a sale. I searched this area and found four cases where if the dates of the transactions in the lower half were substituted for those in the upper half, a profitable spread would be indicated and I believe that if this were carried out for all 43 cases it might be possible to show that all trades were profitable. Some time elapsed from my first search and conclusion that there were no matches and my second and conclusion that matches were possible. In order to be official these corrections would have to made by Tastyworks and without them all that it is possible to prove from the 1099 is that there were 65 winning trades and 43 losing ones.
On November 9, 2020 I contacted Tastyworks and was informed that although David has an account there, they did not issue him a form 1099 for 2019. The chance of getting a correction appear slim.
Based on the documents provided to him, I think that Emmett is justified in giving David a positive review. The hostility expressed by thread contributor Dani is not shared by David. Currently he and I are on excellent terms.
Good job with the analysis and summary. But I would not be so quick to give Jaffee a benefit of the doubt. That the 1099 did not report matching dates and 43 trades were losing just reeks of suspected shenanigans to me and shamshow tricks. Such as unofficial listing of winners not tied to the 1099. And hard to tell, but it could very well be a shenanigan similar to “Karen the Supertrader”, where the losing legs of trades were closed at a later date. And then tastworks responding that not all the trades on his shamshow sim screen were on the 1099, where just that fact alone reeks of tricks. And Jaffee’s presentation, migosh, I just can’t help but be reminded of David Kuvelas’ of “Oil Trading Academy”‘s crazed delusion mode. In any case, I don’t trust option plays myself, and wouldn’t recommend newbs to do monthly spreads either or even options for that matter. John Carter, a legacy shamshow options guru had done similar with a mix of dummy live and fake accounts caught on the Thinkorswim platform displayed in his videos and chat rooms. And the ridiculous response by Dani to my prior post , that I’m a “fake post” by Sam??. Um, not like I’ve had a long history on tradingschools since early 2016 or so.. where I saw Ross Cameron’s old scammy webpage with all the people holding hands skydiving, and his fake unpolished tables of “profits”, and his lying blurb about how he was an architect before he started daytrading, haha. And yes, I saw Bob Amico’s under-the sewers basement video with his red baseball cap gesticulating in response to the GTR review, where he bs’d his comments then started his first of two subsequent new shamshow trading websites, now the scam “Veritas Futures Trading”.
You clowns have way too much free time on your hands. Dates, strike prices, and even the flavor of option (call or put) don’t have to match on a spread, as has been falsely claimed; only the ticker symbol. We have many different flavors of spreads in complex options trading where you might see this occur, such as calendar spreads, diagonals, ratio spreads, etc. I kindly recommend you take your paltry 5-10% annualized gains from “directional stock trading” using “technical analysis”, the financial equivalent of tea leaf or horoscope reading, and go purchase a prostitute, rather than expending what appears to be ample energy writing ignorant dissertations on this website. You’d be much better served, as would all of us scrolling through the comments. Cheers!
Emmett doesn’t even comment on Sam’s talking points but just diverts the conversation in light humour which he has a habit of doing. That says everything. This is a fake review site that makes money off of unsuspecting viewers. Emmett is so critical of everyone else, but when he tells a lie it’s ok… Scam website. Stay clear and listen to what Sam is trying to tell us. There are other damning information on reddit re: dave jaffee the scammer.
Hi Dave,
Actually, if you follow all of Sam’s comments, then you will find that he further investigated David and eventually came to the conclusion that the evidence was correct. The Jaffee is the real deal.
We should all be seeking the truth. However, you are correct — sometimes I do get it wrong. In fact, I make mistakes all the time. The real delineator is that when I get it wrong…I always admit it, and then I correct course.
It’s OK if you believe my reviews are “fake.” However, if you can please direct this audience to a better review site, then I am all ears.
Merry Christmas, Dave. I look forward to reading more of your comments in the future.
Hi Dave. I don’t think Jaffe has put out any videos in like 6+months that are critical of others. He may have changed his video style entirely.
Sounds like TastyTrade. 2 others to check out doing similar option trading:
1) Trading Dominion by Ron Bertino and
2) Real P&L with Karl Domm https://www.tradingschools.org/best-stock-strategy-review-part-1/
wrong link
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk4Zj_gtKlNBAsLeaoisMUA
Read the whole review with great interest, thanks. Been researching trading for about a year now.Still yet to trade at all. Seriously considering taking David Jaffee’s course. My question is can anyone recommend a good broker for trading David Jaffee’s strategy(s) for someone like me, who is based in the United Kingdom? Again i’m totally new to this but i believe the brokers DJ uses are only available to people in the USA. I need a broker here in the UK with whom i can apply DJ’s technique and wont cost me a bomb in fees etc. Any advice/ tips greatly appreciated. Cheers!
Interactive broker but spend a lot of time with the free trial paper account and work up your flow. And find your layout.
Naked options? Really? Oh common we all know result https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI395YShGRQ
Commodities/futures options are a completely different animal, and like comparing apples to oranges, as the saying goes. Nice try, maybe you’ll win those coveted brownie points for cleverness next time!
For anyone seriously reading this and thinking of taking part in David Jaffee’s course. Be very CAREFUL and do some research about him online. I have not seen anything positive about the man or his trading skills apart from what Emmett has written which you should take DOUBTFULLY as he has a financial interest in this. Be wary of Emmett’s reviews and never trust them blindly since he has in the past reviewed many frauds like Steven Dux well whilst providing no hard evidence
No hard evidence, you say?
The Jaffee reviewed included actual account statements. I went back 20 years on Jaffee. I verified his college transcripts, prior employment, I even included the negative information in which you are implying. Did I miss something? That review was over 6000 words in length and every rock was flipped, every assertion and statement was verified. Yes, it’s true, I earn a small advertising revenue from Jaffee, but its fully disclosed.
The Dux review included actual account statements, and it included an independent verification with the Director and Founder of TradeZero. I literally got on the phone with the owner of TradeZero and we went over each and every document. Additionally, I spoke with corporate counsel for TradeZero, who is the former attorney for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. No, I have no advertising revenue from Dux, never have and I never asked for it. He got a great review on the merits.
You rubbed me raw with your comment, Daniel. But that’s OK. You are entitled to your opinion.
Hi Emmett sorry for rubbing you raw but allow me to explain.
In the Dux review for example, the evidence you site for speaking with the Director and Founder of TradeZero is literally in the form of a paragraph written by you. Why not offer screenshots of the email conversation between you two or also provide more of Dux’s account statements with his private info censored?
In this review, I must correct myself in saying that you did indeed give evidence of his account statements but it was only in the form of 1 month. Although, I can understand the ordeal of censoring many pages of these trades may not be desirable to do, it would lend more credibility to your claims as readers would then be able to see for themselves what you see. I’m not saying list every page of every month’s trades he took but why not just share a snapshot of every month’s statement so readers can look in chronological order and see for themselves?
As of now, many of these reviews are readers just taking your word for it and trusting you did the research.
I don’t want to demean your work Emmett but understand from a reader’s perspective how some doubt will always remain for the audience because of this.
Also Emmett I just noticed you said the Dux article included actual account statements but on https://www.tradingschools.org/reviews/steven-duxi/ I do not see any? Am I missing something here because I don’t think I overlooked the “actual account statements” you mentioned.
I think dave in the comments had a good idea for how including something like tax returns can introduce more credibility Emmett.
The inherent problem in all the posts I’ve seen is that the evidence is not presented to the reader in a way that they can follow your steps and arrive at the same conclusion.
Maybe the fault lies in the way I look at these reviews, but because my background is one of scientific research I cannot look past the glaring lack of data/evidence in all the posts I’ve seen. This is like someone trying to publish an investigative study whilst including a fraction of the data and summarizing the rest of what they supposedly found to the audience. If this is because of the website’s physical constraints you could also include an external link to your data but as far as I’m concerned there is by no means enough reason to believe your claims compared to the clickbait storytelling of the vendors you’re supposed to be protecting consumers from.
All in all, the problem with these reviews is after I read them I think “ok now how do I know what Emmett told me is true?”
The answer is I will never know and that there is why you need to provide evidence people can see and hold you accountable for if it’s discovered to be forged.
Hi Daniel,
I agree with you. No offense taken. On every review, I start with the assumption that everything is false. My job is to collect as much evidence, beyond anecdotal, within a period of time. Usually two or three weeks.
I try and build the review without the subject knowing they are being written about. I want to observe them in their natural state. Watching a lion in the wild is far more revealing than watching a lion in the zoo.
After collecting evidence, this gives me an idea of how to approach my subject. The approach is important as I don’t want them to feel fear or pressure, else a negative review will be written. I always start gently and in a friendly manner.
Only after getting past this stage do I start to push for personal information. Sometimes getting multiple years of tax returns is pushing too far. So I try and get the subject to reveal as much information that they feel comfortable revealing. Some will give me everything, while others will only give me so much. After collecting as much quality information as possible, then I start to piece together the review. What is good, bad, shady, worrisome, etc.
Then I usually produce a rough draft, where the first draft will not be very complimentary and is borderline a negative review. The vendor will usually respond with, “I wasnt expecting that.” And then, I will ask for more information that I can use to improve the review. So, it’s a give and take. You cannot apply a mathematical formula to every review.
Journalist Carl Bernstein summed it correctly when he said, “I strive for the best obtainable version of the truth.”
With Jaffee, I believe there is ample evidence and several hundred pages of account statements should suffice as “proof.” If you are viewing the review on a phone, you cannot see the embed of account statements, but on a desktop computer — you can see them.
Sure, some will say…”Oh I don’t believe those account statements, I want tax returns.” And then, after producing the tax returns, they will say, “Oh how do I know those tax returns are not faked or fraudulently produced?” And so, sometimes people simply cannot be convinced by any form of proof. All I can do is put out the best obtainable version of the truth.
And let me be very clear…sometimes I get it wrong. Sometimes I write a negative review and I flat out missed the target. And then I have to go back and fix things. Alternatively, sometimes I write a positive review and I later discovered that the evidence was manufactured, or did not tell the complete story.
At the end of the day, you must decide if the threshold of “proof” has been met.
Thanks for responding Emmett,
In regards to the part you mentioned where you said “With Jaffee, I believe there is ample evidence and several hundred pages of account statements should suffice as “proof.” If you are viewing the review on a phone, you cannot see the embed of account statements, but on a desktop computer — you can see them.” where exactly are these?
On a desktop there are only 35 pages which are all part of one month’s trades so the readers can only see activity from one month. This is by no ways ample evidence nor several hundred pages worth of proof. I would suggest that more than this is warranted for people to feel comfortable believing your review but that’s just my two cents.
what BS, can;t believe you will do anything for a affiliate deal and commission. This guy is a fraud
Gee, a whopping 8 dollars per referral. Thats not much.
If David wants to add a couple of zeroes onto the end of that…I would be more than willing to accept it! Lol.
While I think its great David has provided proof of his results, charging $349/month is outrageous and something I would never pay. Especially for a totally discretionary system. Just pure greed in my opinion.
There is a Youtube channel called Real P&L where an options trader (who shows his accounts every month) buys these courses and evaluates them. He evaluated David Jaffee and said it was only 1 of two courses he’s taken that actually delivered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IHCyBWtrDA
Beststockstrategy.com is forshure running this website
You have no idea what your talking about. Emmet lives right down the street from me.
Lol, this is clearly run by David Jaffee
thanks for the review, will have to do some due diligence now
4.8? Really!!??
On naked puts and calls and never has losing trades 🙂
Emmett I thought you were sharper that this! OR the old habit kicked in?
Put the pipe back down brother…..
Well, we can’t argue with the results. Whether you like Jaffee’s methods or not, the results speak for themself.
Sure, Jaffee’s opinions can rub you the wrong way…but it’s the results the matter most.
Thanks for the comments regarding the “crack pipe.” I will try and keep the crack pipe down. Lol.
What results? his crap from youtube?
Did you do a form 4506 from IRS on him?
Don’t tell me MR wolf of wall st was dooped? 🙂
Post form 4506 on his returns..Than I believe results
https://www.reddit.com/r/options/comments/chx2a4/is_david_jaffee_or_beststockstrategy_legit/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_body
Wow! VERY, VERY interesting indeed! Great stuff Emmett!
Thank you for a long positive review but I found a short negative review from a course buyer and he told at the end “sometimes you lose on a option trade and sometimes you lose learning about options”
INSANE review (length)! Compelling long-form journalistic read imho. Really gets into the head of a very intelligent guy who has come full circle. Best review yet on this site.
Crazy long article, right? I really enjoy deep-diving into their lives. It’s uncomfortable, for sure. And plenty of embarrassing material often bubbles to the surface. But the embarrassing and painful stuff is what really shapes a person.
Some folks might complain that David is not “humble” enough, or too rigid in his beliefs. But that is the very thing that sets the stage for success. David doesn’t allow anyone to pollute his opinion, and it creates an iron resolve to stick it out. I remember when he sold Tesla calls just before it jumped 50% higher — I was stressed out, by simply observing, and with no money on the line.
But somehow, he managed to pull a profit from the Tesla trade. The huge volatility gave him a wide path to traverse a clever escape. And that is exactly what he did, the walls were crashing in, and the sky was falling onto his head…but he cleverly navigated the exit, and pulled his subs through the terrifying situation. It was a “Cpt Sully” moment.
People who ask you do more..do they realise the efforts that go in doing this for free…atleast they should look at your past track record .
David is obviously legit. What I don’t like is his blatant arrogance. He thinks (very incorrectly) that he has the only great trading method. He is simply not experienced enough in the market to understand other successful styles.
Yes, he is correct that 99% are frauds. And I believe he has an excellent, very worthwhile course. And it is something that his students can easily DUPLICATE without wild emotions that may lead to blowups. That I absolutely commend.
But there are a few very good options traders (much better than David) with different styles. Take for example, David Blair, who goes long only options (3 mo+ dated to avoid the theta decay that Dave Jaffee thrives on). This was DB’s first year with any significant drawdown in many years. He is typically making 400-500% per year with very minimal drawdown both swinging options and trading options intraday on big movers.
Or, take for example SmashTheBid, another extremely consistent and profitable long options only trader.
Then, there are the master equity scalpers like Stelios and Madaz consistently making money every week and are each on pace for $5M + this year.
And these only a tiny list among some very impressive options and equity traders out there.
All that said, I think he needs to tone down the “this is the only way to make $”. And revise that to “I am the 1% of legit traders/services, and my approach is a really great, low-stress, long-term viable solution for a lot of aspiring traders”.
All that said, awesome review and looks like a stellar service. And than you David Jaffee for exposing the slimy frauds !!!!
I would like to add to this comment that there are trade-offs to every style. With some of the traders I mentioned, it is not necessarily easy to replicate their strategies. And to the degree that it is, it is a fully time job and can be stressful! So what I think is absolutely fabulous about DF’s style is that it is possible to duplicate his success with a very high degree of probability! He is offering really great value to the trading community and putting the edge clearly on the traders side. I imagine his students can be successful and still carry out full time jobs very easily. Again, excellent value to his approach.
Great comment.
David is definitely passionate about his approach. He is very confident. A lot of it has to do with his experience, in that, he has survived and thrived during various market regimes.
This cannot be said about many of the equity scalpers we often see on YouTube and social media. Time will tell whether they can survive the next Bear.
Another problem I see with the short term scalper approach is that the educational component is not easily transferrable from mentor to student.
Regarding David Blair, he might be on my radar. But I don’t want anyone to know if they are on my radar because a major part of my review process is remaining stealthy.
One final note about Jaffee, its a solid approach. And most importantly, it can be replicated with time. A good, solid, long term approach.
Lol. Ask SmashTheBid for some sort of proof for success. You won’t get it! He also works together with jtrader.co which is obv a big scam.
Listen Joe, everyone you have mentioned has failed to produce the redacted audited financial broker statements to give PROOF of making a living off trading profits. David Jaffee is the only one I have seen do it. Just ask your favorite guru that you mentioned to produce the audited financials statements proving they are making money from stock trades not sub money and I bet you will get all manner of excuses or cricket sounds.. GL
How do you know if David Blair is making 400-500% profit? The only thing he posts is his equity curve which currently states he is up 300k. What is his starting equity? If you don’t know that then you can’t know he is up 400 or 500%. Is he starting with a 100k account? 1m account? 10m account? How do you know?
No live trades, no brokerage paperwork, no proof. He might actually be trading or he might not but it doesn’t matter. How can you trust a person you don’t know irl and shows absolutely no proof? (an equity curve is simply a line on a chart, it is meaningless).
Why am I not surprised by this? First I will call others a scammer and then I will join them..