HedgeyeReviews of hedgeye.com

Hedgeye can be helpful to some people, particulalry someone who doesnt have a clue about investing and wants to approach money management in a self directed way. For those who have been investing for years and have their own system giving them market beating returns (however small the beat is, from 100bp annual returns to more), Hedgeye strikes as an annoying and always self righteous propoaganda pushed by his founder/showman. Can be entertaining at times, but it won't make you better. Their average returns are in line with market (check their asset management ETF), and Hedgeye analyst's calls are a hit and miss, from laughable to predictable. Still remember when they pushed for Planet Fitness right before the stock collapse 70%, Beyond and many other retail stocks including positions in NIKE and others that immediately crashed 40-50% after the review. Same on the opposite side, with short calls on TESLA and semis before they went vertical with missed gains of 70-80% had one listened to their analysis. More importantly, what is the most annoying is how they flip narrative to portray themselves as "always winning", when in fact they are often just hiding their cards and promoting shamelessly their good trades. As long as you know all of that and don't fall for the shameless marketing, the service can be helpful as one of many investing tools everyone should have at their disposal to manage their portfolios.

I’m intrigued by the many people whose investment results have been improved with Hedgeye. I’ve been a Hedgeye user for ten years and have always been enthusiastic about their values, people, and process. The cold hard fact is that I have not been able to parlay their investment recommendations into investment success. There are glaring discrepancies between the presentation and the product. Hedgeye emphasizes not letting small losses turn into larger losses. But: 1) for 157 closed trades in Signal Strength from Feb-Sept 2024, 23% had losses from 10-33%; 2) for 142 closed trades in Top Stock Picks Mar-Sept, 22% had losses from 10-36%; 3) for 139 closed trades in Investing Ideas from 2020 to May 2024, 23% had losses from 10-94%; 4) even in ETF Pro, where beta is significantly less, 7.5% of 226 closed equity trades July, 2018-Sept 2024 had losses of 10-31%. Hedgeye’s risk management system is not a magic bullet that limits losses to a few percent. Keith is fond of asking, “Who gets you out?” after exiting a position that subsequently goes south. In ETF Pro, July 2018-Sept 2024, of 300+ closed trades, post-sale, 53% were actually higher 1 month later, 52% were higher 3 months later, and 51% were higher 6 months later. Whatever sophisticated process led to the sell decisions, you were as likely to avoid gains as you were to avoid losses. For all that Hedgeye talks about being data-driven, measuring and mapping everything – and their data presentation is indeed impressive – I am confident they don’t measure and map the results of their own products (except MacroPro, with a meaningless win/loss percentage). In trying to understand my sub-par investment results, largely informed by ETF Pro and Investing Ideas, I did some grinding and present the data here. For ETF Pro, the presentation: "This monthly macro strategy update is designed to select 10 to 20 essential ETF exposures within each of the seven major asset classes to keep you and your clients ahead of the next big market move." The data for long-only trades, July 2018 to early Sept 2024: • Equities: 225 closed trades, 30% had positive returns, -0.86% average return • Commodities: 56 closed trades, 32% positive returns, -0.48% average return • Bonds: 53 closed trades, 30% positive returns, 0.50% average return (-1.74% since 2020) • Currencies: 25 closed trades, 38% positive returns, 0.86% average return (-0.33% ex-gold) • Alts: 9 closed trades, 0% positive returns, -4.73% average return • Average hold time for all trades: 9.6 weeks; 46% were held 4 weeks or less. If the equity trades had been invested in SPY, 58% would have been positive with a 2.18% average return (ETF Pro equity trades underperformed SPY by 300 basis points, and almost 70% of them were losers!). In each of those cases, post-sale, SPY would have been higher 1 month later 65% of the time, higher 3 months later 79% of the time, and higher 6 months later 80% of the time. For Investing Ideas, the presentation: “. . . tailor-made for the thoughtful investor with a longer-term investment horizon seeking high-conviction opportunities they can keep in their portfolio for many months - in some instances, years to come. In a nutshell, Hedgeye CEO Keith McCullough handpicks the ‘best of the best’ long and short ideas delivered to him by our team of over 40 research analysts across multiple sectors.” The data for long-only trades from Jan 2020 to May 2024: • Of 148 closed trades, only 36% had a positive return and only 32% did better than SPY for the same holding period. If SPY had been traded rather than the recommended stock, 77% of those SPY trades would have had a positive return. • Of 148 closed trades, the average return was 8.87% vs. SPY at 5%. Trimmed for Gamestop (+906%) and Playboy (-94%), the average return of 146 trades was 3.43% underperforming SPY by 1.57%. • Only 25% of the closed trades were held longer than 92 days; only two were held longer than a year. Hedgeye prides itself on transparency, accountability, and developing a new approach that leaves the Old Wall and SPY Monkeys in the dust. Per the data, the above Hedgeye products look like sick puppies next to those SPY Monkeys, consistently underperforming by 160-300 basis points. The data is similar for Signal Strength and Top Stock Picks. My question to Keith, who coaches hockey and played at Yale: "If these were hockey players, would you put them in the game?" The key question for Hedgeye is whether they can provide non-institutional investors like me with products that live up to the promise and claims of a superior investment approach – so far, sadly, I must say they have failed. While I like everyone at Hedgeye (hence two stars, not one), after ten years, I'm abandoning them when it comes to the fundamental question of what to own and when.

Love listening to the call. Some winners, some losers. Might as well get an index fund. Also their Twitter site never mentions the losers of which some are big. aka BYON, SMCI, PLBY ADYEY all down 30% or more before plug pulled. They aren’t the best in class as advertised. Many more in 2024. They also short stocks which rise to new highs. Decent people. Not geniuses. But great marketers.

wasted my time and effort, i believe them til i couldnt, imagine Immunity corporation attends swift

After 3 years trying this system I'm down nearly 90K some good months, lots of bad. You need to follow everything they do with a mixed portfolio and take profits at 1% and micro manage. I'm in the UK and took far to many massive losses on the Dax, SPX and Nas, Kieth, day after day had us selling Europe, Dax in particular, but, you guessed it, it went up and up TO ATHs, until he eventually went bullish, by this time I was minus 50K on Dax and bailed. I'm a small investor ( 250,000 pot) with lots of experience in indices trading, but I could not make this work -- be very careful and committed to a full-time management of your funds if you fall for Kieths bravado investment sales pitch...You need to watch every penny and Hedge every position you make, as they are often very, very wrong for far too long, and have bear bias.. My conclusion is that its for the big boys really, but Kieth and team will take the us small guys cash as well, and, block you if you complain on his website. Just my experience over the last 3/4 years of course, I feel I did give it a good chance.

As a sole individual investor the information is overwhelming and many times confusing. There is no real strategy except a list of ETF/Stocks to follow and keep tracking upper and lower levels of. Initially it's impossible to know which package to use as there is pretty limited information about what you get. Many of "pick" that comes through fails and are being deleted from the list 1 week - 1 month later at a loss. The customer is blamed for not understanding the process while there is no information to follow when you sign up for the package. Further there is no real tracking of their own picks so they keep saying "we're long this and that and we're making profits" but what they don't mention is all the picks that they lost on and that was sent out to clients. As a individuall investor I would not go for this!

Hedgeye famously bases its portfolio construction around the "process" and market signals are derived from proprietary bayesian/ fractal signals developed by founder - Keith McCullough (Mucker). Been a subscriber for 3 years, wished to have been a subscirber for more, but the inconsistencies and cherry picking of the process have finally worn me out. This is not just my opinion, but also of members behind the pay wall, which (often to their own frustration) have to vent between themselves amid the sometimes overly marketed services and success of " the process". I too am guilty of such venting. Some of the deficiencies: - risk ranges: position entry bands, derived by Keith's proprietary math model, often get violated in current market environment and the calls for action to either sell/buy result in bad decision making. Example: based on bearish trends, anyone shorting major components this year would have been underwater (as it seems many have), but Keith will always point to faults of the users/ members and not the inconsistency of process...or that Wallstreet just wants its bubbles back. Ok, sure...but the tools should have pointed us in the right direction like 2021, where he famously "rode the bubbles" instead of having pick up pennies in front of steamroller all year. "It's the cycle, stupid" - up to this year the mantra was that economic gravity is dictated by economic cycles. Then, as the thesis started to change and Keith realizing that the game shifted beneath everyone's feet, it was "the flows, stupid". Perhaps their recent partnership with Tier1 Alpha will help in long run, but so far they dont have grip on how much macro forces can actually influence market behaviour at key points of the game. - Macroshow: apart from usual market commentary (top 3 things), rarely is anything other than Keith boasting and defending of the process. At times there are really useful and insightful shows, but after 3 years lost its effect. Repetitive, un-insightful and too much focused around Keith's constant need to vent against "them" (think of them as dark side of Wallstreet) -Real Time Alerts: generally perceived as more of a marketing tool for Keith to boast winning streaks on X to promote the product, but of little actual use becuase winning %s are meager and touted, while losses that (according to process) you should be adding to, are dismissed. The approach to sending signals around booking/covering "SOME" of position was launched with good intent, but it didn't meet expectation because useful insights are rare. Just gives Keith excuse to book winning trade VERY early and add to streak of meager winners. Only actual use is to help define Keith's market bias short term, i.e. are there more longs or shorts on board. -General market forecasting: while 2021 and 2022 on point, this year has been abysmall. Hedgeye might defend by saying "But we've said this and that about this and that"...bottom line is that Keith was drumming armageddon all year (particularly beginning of year) and this November also caught him off guard. The signal and ranges are of no use in this market environment of 0dtes and fund flows. I take responsibility for my performance and should have done better in 2021+2022, lessons learned. But 2023 has exposed flaws in the Hedgeye process that give stark contrast to Keith's constant criticism of simple technical charting, which would have yielded better results and less work. Overall I do believe that Hedgeye wants to do the right thing and provide honest and quality research to non-Wallstreet people that wish to participate in the markets. Investing summit is amazing and the fact that they make THAT content free for everyone is a gift to regular Joes. I have also learned a lot and Keith is an excellent coach/ motivator, I will take lessons beyond trading markets from him. However, overall the game has shifted under their feet and with Keith's constant self-promotion in light of wrong positioning for most of year now (yes you were wrong), I decided to not continue with the service because it didn't help me be successful (and I really really tried). They will eventually be right, but so is a broken clock...positioning and SPY monkies though do matter at particular parts of the game, as Keith would teach.

My last investment advisor was a Hedgeye disciple, and I learned a lot from the information provided from HEDGEYE and the advisor. They always seemed to be a bit ahead of what was coming. Unfortunately my account over several years was badly outperformed by the S&P. As many will testify, you can’t time the market, and if I had it to do over, I would buy the the S&P, save the fees and avoid the mental gymnastics of trying to hit the moves while avoiding the drops.