We have reached the end of our trial of the Naked Trader, but rather than doing our normal numbers table summarising the results, we thought it would be more useful to sketch out our final conclusions on what we have found by following Robbie’s service.

So here are our findings:-

                    1. There is no point following Robbie’s trades

As we suspected, there is absolutely no point in copying Robbie’s trades based on the results of our trial.

After more than four months of trying to copy his trades, whilst Robbie has made over 200% profit, we have in fact made over 100% loss!

Yes I will repeat that again just in case you missed it – whilst he made a whopping profit, we made a substantial loss. Ouch.

You can view full results here.

Basically the problem is that by the time you have found out about a trade that Robbie has made – which is usually a week or two after he has bought or sold the share, the price will invariably have moved against you.

Now you may be wondering why this is. Surely, all else being equal, at least a portion of the shares would stay roughly the same price, or on a few you would expect the share to fall after Robbie has bought it, or rise after he has sold it.

Well sadly not.

This may be because Robbie is so damn good at picking shares, he knows when to buy (just as a share is about to go up) and when to sell (just when a share is about to go down).

Or the cynical among you may think that there is the possibility of what is often called “aftertiming” – i.e. picking shares after they have gone up and then saying you had bought them earlier.

Who knows? We don’t think that is the case as frankly we don’t think Robbie could have maintained his reputation and made as much money as he apparently has if he wasn’t actually very good at picking shares but was just aftertiming. Plus he seems like a standup guy from what we know of him.

Either way, the bottom line is you shouldn’t try copying his trades because in all likelihood you will lose money based on the results of our trial.

It would be great if Robbie offered a share picks service where he sent out e-mails or texts right after he has bought or sold a share, like many services we know do, but alas he seems reluctant to do so.

Hopefully at some point in the future he will consider doing so…

               2. Robbie has big bucks to trade with

When you look at Robbie’s results, it is tempting to think you can make similar amounts to him by following his process.

Beware though that Robbie has huge amounts of money to invest. At any one time, he may have well over £100,000 invested in shares and sometimes closer to £200,000.

For most people, investing those amounts is not feasible. You may look at his results and see that he has made say £80,000 profit in a year and think you can make similar amount.

But that would only be realistic if you had the huge sums that Robbie does to invest, often buying £10,000 worth of  shares in a company.

In one of his books, Robbie says that realistically, if you are really disciplined, follow his advice and do all the things a good trader does, you could make around 15-20% profit per year.

If you have £10,000 to invest, that would £1,500 to £2,000 profit per year. Think about that and whether it is worth the time needed and the risk to make that kind of money.

For some people it will be and they enjoy doing the research and the enjoyment of owning shares, but for others it may be better off looking to an investment trust or index fund.

But either way you are unlikely to become a millionaire trading shares unless you have a large amount to invest in the first place and are prepared to wait a number of years.

       3. A few big winners make all the difference

Looking at Robbie’s trading history and reading his books, the thing that jumps out is how significant some of his trades have been.

Just the top 30 trades he has done have made over £230,000 in themselves and the top 10 have made over £118,000.

And that doesn’t include those shares that he still holds, some of which go back many years.

Some of these have gone up hugely, by 10 or even 15 times, so those will be worth many tens of thousands of pounds now as well.

So it really does emphasise the point Robbie makes in his books about riding the winners and shedding the losers.

If you can turn a few into 10 or 20-baggers, you can put up with quite a lot of shares that don’t do very much or make a small loss.

      4. His books are very good

We have read a lot of books over the years about buying shares and making money in general and we have to say that Robbie’s are among the best.

They are amazingly easy to understand and very clearly written. So much of the jargon of share dealing is demystified and things explained in plain English. There is a lot people not just in the financial sector but anyone writing a how-to guide or self-help book could learn.

The other thing that is so good about the Naked Trader is that it gives you a step-by-step guide to picking shares that is very specific. So many books like this talk in theory and generalities which sounds good but then you think “what am I actually meant to do to implement the ideas?” 

You won’t have that here – everything is set out for you so will know exactly what to do.

So there you have it, hopefully that has given you a bit of a sense of how best to follow the Naked Trader and what to expect if you do. Ultimately it is not a get-rich-quick-scheme but rather a useful guide to buying and selling shares and that is what you should take it for.

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The Naked Trader – Results Update

10th October 2016

There has been a reasonable amount of activity from the Naked Trader (aka Robbie Burns) since our last update at the end of August.

From following his trades, of those that are closed, we are currently 4.5% in profit, versus Robbie’s profit of 93.7%.

You can view full results here.

So a huge difference there and it underlines the difficulty of making any money from following his trades. 

Of those trades that are still open, we are generally also buying at much higher prices than Robbie, so it looks like this is not really an avenue to profit.

Of our own trades, MXCP has fallen slightly to 2.92 and Opti has stayed steady at 70.45, whilst Purplebricks has risen to 134.50. 

Back soon with more updates. 

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The Naked Trader – Results Update

29th August 2016

Not much to report for the Naked Trader, as Robbie is on holiday until 8th September so new trades or closed trades from him since our last update.

In terms of my own trades following the advice in Robbie’s books, both are going well.

MXCP, which I bought at 2.9p is now up to 3.19p at the time of writing and Purplebricks, which I shorted at 145p, is now trading at 129.2p.

I have also invested in Optibiotix Health (OPTI) at 71p.

This is a very interesting little biotech company that works in the field of the microbiome.

If you don’t know what the microbiome is, don’t worry, neither did I. It is basically all the billions of microbes that live in your gut and around your body. 

It is a relatively new area of science but they are discovering that by tinkering with these microbes they can have a huge impact on human health. It’s kind of like those yoghurts with “good bacteria” in them, except with much more potential.

Anyway, OPTI are making great strides in this field and have over 40 patents already secured. They are focusing on the foods markets for things like cholestorel, weight loss and diabetes, which are much quicker to market than going down the drug trials route, which can take 10-15 years. 

They already have deals signed with some big multinational players and have a number of other deals pending.

If any of their patented strains really hit the mark then this could be huge, but even if they don’t they should be generating steady revenues soon and there is room for solid growth. One to tuck away in a draw for a while and see how big it can become. 

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The Naked Trader – Results Update

2nd August 2016

At the time of our last update on the Naked Trader, we said we would be focusing more on the overall package offered rather than just following the trades blindly.

So we are going to take a look at a couple of things in this update – firstly our own share trades based on the advice in Robbie’s books.

Secondly, we have recently purchased and read his book “Trade like a Shark,” so will give our initial thoughts on that.

Robbie’s Trades

But before that, a quick word on how Robbie’s own trades have been going.

Well to be honest, the main takeaway we have so far is that it seems fairly pointless, in that by the time they are posted on his website or in his fortnightly e-mail, the prices have changed completely.

You can view full results here.

This is akin to the popular tipsters like Pricewise and Hugh Taylor, who once they have given out a selection, the price crashes and all the value is gone.

Well here we have a situation where pretty much all the shares Robbie has bought have gone up considerably in price by the time you hear about them.

So not ideal by any means.

Own Share Trades

Right, moving on to our own share trades, we have made two so far.

MXC Capital (MXCP)

First up I have bought into a company called MXC Capital. They are a merchant bank that specialises in the technology and IT sector. 

They have a great business model, in that they basically advise companies in the tech sector on takeovers and mergers etc. In doing this, they advise on and execute the transaction, secure the funding and then add the operational management experience to drive the strategy of a particular company.

So they get big fat fees for advising on the transaction, get shares in said company at a considerable discount, then use their expertise to drive it forward and make the shares that they hold worth more! Clever stuff.

So far they have done this with spectacular success, with all seven investments they have made growing considerably. Their investments of £31m are now worth £73m in a short space of time. 

Plus they posted £12m in post-tax profits this year from what they have been making on the deals. 

They have a policy of returning some of the returns to shareholders, which was done this year by way of a share buy-back, thus increasing the attractiveness of the holding. 

I really can’t understand how they are only valued at a market cap of just over £100m with investments worth £73m plus posting £12m a year in profits.

So MXCP seems to fulfill all of Robbie’s criteria set out in the Naked Trader – all of its statement are very positive and produce plentiful green under his traffic light system. Its profits are well over 10x its market cap, it is a good size company (over £100m) and has a clear, effective business model with experienced and skilled management.

So I bought in at 2.9p and expect to hold this for a good time if it grows as anticipated. I have put in a stop loss at 15% below my buy price.

Purplebricks (PURP)

At the other end of the spectrum in terms of value is the online estate agent Purplebricks. 

This is a classic example to me of a company that is overhyped and is valued almost entirely on PR rather than actual numbers.

If you break it down, they are valued at over £350m and yet they only generated £18.6m in revenue and made a £10.5m loss last year. 

They have a target of 3,500 new instructions pcm to maintain their own growth forecasts, but at the moment are barely managing 2,800. 

They have the difficulties of a slowing housing market following Brexit and a rapidly decreasing number of sales, plus new rivals to contend with like Yopa. 

In their results a lot of this is glossed over by mention of “£2.8 billion of house sales,” which is actually irrelevant when you consider they charge a fixed fee and that any company involved in housing can make figures look good by quoting aggregate house price sales in today’s market.

So on the basis of all this, I think they are one of the most overvalued companies in the history of the market and have put in a big SHORT of them on the spreads at 145p.

Trade Like a Shark

Finally, as I mentioned, Robbie has released a new book called Trade Like a Shark which we will be reviewing separately, but a quick heads up that it is very good guide to trading psychology and could be applied to all forms of investing, not just share trading. 

Back soon with more updates.

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The Naked Trader – New Review

24th June 2016

We just wanted to do a quick update on our review of the Naked Trader (aka Robbie Burns).

It is not that we have any results yet, but rather than we received an e-mail from Robbie pointing out the dangers of copying his trades.

We did mention this when kicking off the review below, but did want to stress again that Robbie does not advised copying his trades. 

Robbie has emphasised that those “copying” him would be buying a share blindly that might already have risen a lot and he might be considering selling.  

If you “copied” a trade there is a danger that there could be a profits warning. Robbie would be out
and take his loss. However someone who “copied” may not know. A share he bought
recently issued a surprise profits warning. He got out fast but still lost £1,000. Anyone still
holding it a day later would have lost more than half their money. 

To be honest, we would have to agree with Robbie’s sentiments and strongly advise against copying his trades. 

Notwithstanding the advice that we always give about only risking what you can afford to lose, being responsible for your own positions and never following a system until we have at the very least completed our own three month trial and given a clear recommendation, we can see the downsides of trading on a “delayed” basis as you would be here.

We will be paper trading the shares for the review – as much for an academic exercise but also to see how the advice on Robbie’s books and e-mails translates into actual trades and what we can learn from them.

We will also be seeing if we can choose our own shares based on what we have learned and whether we can make a profit ourselves.

So please don’t risk any of your earned cash on copying the trades – keep it in your pocket, or if you do want to spend something, buy one of Robbie’s books and get a good introduction to buying and selling shares. 

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The Naked Trader – New Review

2nd June 2016

When I started out investing in the stockmarket I began by reading Robbie Burns’ book the Naked Trader, which is an excellent guide for those new to buying shares.

It is one of those how-to guides that really takes you through the process step and step and tells you how to make money from shares.

Robbie himself claims to have made over £1 million from trading shares, which is a sizeable sum indeed.

So after reading his book and seeing how successful he had been, I took to the internet to see if there was more I could find out about him.

And so I came across the Naked Trader website, on which Robbie helpfully records all his trades.

At the time of writing, Robbie is over £1,256,000 in profit from all his share trades, plus his spread bets and Big Brother bets.

The thought occurred to me – and I accept I am certainly not the first person who has thought this – what if I just copied all Robbie’s trades?

Could I, too, become a millionaire? 

How nice it would be, just wake up, check the stocks, then off to play golf and spend the afternoon down the pub.

Well sadly as seems to always be the case with these things, it was not quite as easy as it at first appeared. 

Robbie only updates the trades every couple of weeks, so often the price of a stock will have changed quite a bit between when Robbie bought or sold it and when it is posted on the website.

But just how much does it change? Can you still make a nice profit?

Having looked at the history on the site, there are some shares that Robbie holds for many months or even years that double or treble in price, so you should not be losing out much by missing a couple of ticks here or there.

However, to be sure about how much money you could actually make following Robbie’s trades, I thought the only fair way would be to run a live trial.

So here is what I will do – I will sign up to Robbie’s e-mails and then buy the exact same shares Robbie does as soon as I receive the emails. 

Then I will record the results here on the website and see how much money I make.

We will probably need to run the trial for longer than the normal three months, so six months is probably more reasonable to get an accurate picture of what kind of money you can make.

Now just to say that Robbie doesn’t actually advise following his trades – but then who is he to stop us!

Anyway, it should be a fun trial and it will be interesting to see if we can learn anything from a master. Robbie is primarily a fundamentals man and looks at a company’s performance and likely direction rather than studying charts and using complex software. 

In fact his approach is refreshingly simple and is quite unusual in this day and age when everyone seems to want to make everything more and more complicated.

Let’s see how Mr Burns does under the spotlight and hopefully he can make us a few bob.

In the meantime you can check out the Naked Trader website here.

It is now nearly 18 months since we started our review of the Etoro Trade Copier so we thought about time we wrapped up our review.

Just a reminder that this is a stock and crypto service where you can follow other people’s trades automatically. It saves a lot of time because you don’t have to do anything yourself other than choose who you want to follow and for how much. 

After following eight people for an extended period of time, we made a small profit of $276 from $8,000 invested. 

Whilst that wasn’t too bad, to be honest we would have done better just following an index fund of the stock market as a whole. For example the S&P 500 has gone up around 10% over the course of our review and so if we had taken the $8,000 and invested it in an S&P 500 index tracker we would have done considerably better than following the traders we did on Etoro.

It seems like the traders do well when the market is going up and badly when it is going down, but we aren’t sure if any of them have developed strategies to make a profit regardless of the overall market conditions, or “alpha,” which is the returns someone generates over and above the market average.

We also weren’t entirely sure about the Etoro platform setup. Whilst it looks very nice, it is difficult to view a trader’s full trading history if you want to copy them, which is kind of essential in our view.

In summary then we award this a NEUTRAL rating – it made a small profit which is good, but really the returns were very minimal overall and we could have done significantly better investing funds elsewhere, even in entities such as index funds.

The idea of “social trading” is nice in theory but we are yet to see evidence that it is better – or even as good as – investing with dedicated financial professionals in the traditional manner. 

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Etoro Trade Copier – Results Update

18th July 2018

The positive momentum has continued for our Etoro Trade Copying account, with $307 profit made since our last update.

That means we are now $276 up for the trial overall.

You can view full results here.

Just a reminder that this is a stock and crypto service where you can follow other people’s trades automatically. It saves a lot of time because you don’t have to do anything yourself other than choose who you want to follow and for how much. 

With the improvement recently it is now working rather well and is proving a good way to make some passive income for us. 

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Etoro Trade Copier – Results Update

21st May 2018

There has been a big uptick in our Etoro Trade Copying Portfolio recently, with $282 growth in our portfolio value since our last update . 

But unfortunately after the very tough month we had previously, we are still $31 down overall.

You can view full results here.

Just a reminder that this is a stock and crypto service where you can follow other people’s trades automatically. It saves a lot of time because you don’t have to do anything yourself other than choose who you want to follow and for how much. 

If it works it would be an ideal form of passive income, but at the moment as we are down overall the jury is still out on this one for the time being. 

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Etoro Trade Copier – Results Update

16th April 2018

It’s been a rough ride for our Etoro Trade Copying portfolio since our last update a month ago, with $428 lost in that time. 

That means we are now $313 down for the trial overall, which is a little disappointing.

You can view full results here.

To be fair it has been something of a bear market over the last month so it is perhaps not surprising that the traders we are following are all showing a loss.

However, we are concerned that they all seem to be long on their positions, with very shorts being taken. How much of their success is just down to the fact we have been in a bull market for the last few years rather than their skills as traders is unclear. A really good trader will make profit in both bull and bear markets as they have an underlying strategy that works. 

Anyway, let’s not get too disheartened, hopefully our traders will turn things around shortly. 

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Etoro Trade Copier – Results Update

16th March 2018

Things have finally started moving forward in our trial of the Etoro Trade Copying service after we had some initial problems getting things set up properly.

So far in the trial we are $115 up, which isn’t bad considering that you don’t have to do anything other than click “copy” on the people whose trades you want to follow.

You can view full results here.

At the moment we are following eight different people, which gives a good amount of diversification.

Hopefully now things are working properly and moving in the right direction we will continue to see those profits being built. 

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Etoro Trade Copier – Results Update

15th February 2018

It has still been a little quiet for my Etoro trade copying portfolio, with not a lot of action over the last couple of months.

However, what action there has been has generated positive returns, and I am now 11 points up overall.

You can view full results here.

Only two of the five traders I have been following have been active, so today I have added three more traders to my portfolio to hopefully see some more movement.

Still, despite things being quiet, it is good to be in profit considering the correction in the stock market recently.

Back soon with more updates. 

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Etoro Trade Copier – Results Update

12th January 2018

It’s been a bit of a false start to our trial of the Etoro’s Trade Copier so far unfortunately. One thing they don’t make very clear is that to follow some of the traders, you need to invest a minimum amount to be able to copy their trades.

We are following five different traders and so far after more than a month, we have only copied the trades of two of them.

It is a shame this isn’t made a little clearer and although visually it is a very nice platform and most of it is intuitive, a little more guidance from them would improve the user experience considerably.

Anyway, for what it’s worth we are 0.17 points up so far for the traders we have been able to copy.

You can view full results here.

We have upped our investment in all the traders now to $1000 each, so that should be enough to copy all of their trades.

Hopefully by the time of the next update we will have a more complete picture to give you regarding how things are going.

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Etoro Trade Copier – New Review

30th November 2017

Today we are starting a trial of something a little bit different here at Honest Betting Reviews.

As regular followers will know, we like to try out a variety of means of making some additional income and not just restrict ourselves to betting systems. We try out trading systems, forex strategies and have even gotten into cryptocurrencies lately.

So today we are going to test something new – a “social trading network”  called Etoro.

What is unique and great about Etoro is that you can copy the trades of expert traders on there with just the click of a button. Hence the “social trading” idea.

It’s a fun and interactive way to get involved in trading without needing to be an expert yourself or spend a fortune on expensive software or trading courses.

Amazingly, according to the Etoro website, a massive 78% of copied trades closed on the platform have been profitable (as at 17.08.2017). That’s a huge edge as normally you’d expect it to be around 50%.  

That’s the “wisdom of the crowds” at its finest really.

There are hundreds of traders on Etoro platform and their full records are there for you to view, so you can see:

• – How much they have won and lost overall
• – Their monthly profit and loss
• – What things they like to trade
• – Their open positions
• – Their max drawdown
• – How many trades they have made in total
• – What percentage of their trades are profitable (strike rate)
• – How many people are copying their trades

It really gives you all the information you need to decide who to follow. 

There are some very successful traders on there, people who have a very high percentage of winning months, low drawdowns and returns in excess of 80% and even 90%. 

That beats the hell out of most Wall Street hedge fund managers and any kind of index fund – and certainly massively beats bank interest rates at the moment!

Etoro is also a really nice platform visually and user-friendly too. 

The great thing about is that you don’t need to be an expert on the markets or spend hours studying charts and lines and bollinger bands and all that complicated stuff.

You can just sign up, deposit some funds, choose who you want to copy and then sit back and (hopefully) let them make you some money!

So it’s potentially a nice source of passive income.

There are also other options on the Etoro platform like you can trade yourself (and if you do well people can copy you, thus making you some additional income) and there are “copyfunds” so you can copy large investment funds like their special cryptocurrency fund or a stock market fund.

However, for this review we are going to concentrate on copying other traders as that’s the easiest one to do and is something anyone can do. 

So we are going to have a portfolio of different people we follow to balance the risk and not leave ourselves exposed if one person has an unfortunate run.

We will detail who we have chosen in our next update, so you could even copy us copying other traders if you like 🙂

Anyway, we will kick the review off now and will report back here soon on how it’s going.

In the meantime you can check out Etoro here.