Stock Market Strategies Q&A   View Select Entries from Our Mailbag. Also See Our Q&A Page.

Q: Hi, I just finished touring your web site and it looks interesting. Unfortunately there are a lot of sites/services out there and a person could go broke subscribing to them all. I think it would be a good idea to offer a 2 week trial as long as people entered their credit card info and were serious shoppers. But that's just me. Question: can you provide any referrals of people using your service now; I'm considering a 1 year subscription. I'm not the kind of person who'd ask for a refund but I would like an independent opinion vs. testimonials. On your web site I think it's a little misleading to list 6 month highs because that's ssuming perfect/lucky sell points. Also I know you don't give specific sell recommendations and date/prices but if after 8 weeks the stock was up 25%, your advice is to sell. Then if in the next 4 months it goes way up your record is distorted because you exited. What happens if your proprietary stop loss line gets hit? I assume you use it or you wouldn't of developed and publish it. This too would make the 6 month high record artificially high. Since you manage your own money, I'd like to see: here's where "we" recommended and bought the stock and here is where we sold it. Not trying to be nosy but if your buying your top stock picks as you say you are, half of the record is already out there. If you'd like, I can be reached by phone...9-5. Thx.

P.S. Did I say I'm from Missouri!

A: Thanks for all the good questions. Hope we can answer them:

1. We've debated offering a free period several times, but we also don't want to waste time with people who will abuse our services. Therefore, we offer a 1-month trial subscription. To sign-up, go to http://www.growthstockanalytics.com/subscrix.html.
2. We would like to send you referrals of people using our service now, but we've never done this is the past, and our privacy policy doesn't allow us to share their personal information. We have several subscribers who have stayed with us for multiple years. Since you can try our service for a short period, you will see the value for yourself.
3. If you ever want a refund, we will process it without any questions asked, for the UNUSED portion of your subscription.
4. On the performance table, we state very clearly in the paragraphs above that yes, nobody can sell exactly at the top. The table should be used as an indicator of the potential of our stock picks. Often, our sell signals - new highs on low volume, exhaustion gaps, etc, may get us out pretty close to the top. But you are correct, no one can time the top perfectly.
5. If the stock is up 25% in 8 weeks, our sell rule is to take profits at 30-35%. If the stock is up a lot (say 40% or so) in 8 weeks, then we want to hold for a longer period. In reality, this is an art, and cannot be easily boiled down to firm rules.
6. We use our proprietary sell rules to exit when we have a substantial profit. For new purchases, we exit at approx 10% loss.
7. Often on good "Top Stock Picks" we may try to trade in and out, trying to gain a point here and there. Often buy and hold maybe better. It would be time-consuming for us to try and post all our trades on the web-site. One comment, is that we've always bought our "Top Stock Picks" after posting on the site.
8. This is a tough market, but good stocks are out there.