Low Stress TradingReviews of lowstresstrading.com

Tightly controlled message boards / community. All post go through initial screening. At least, that was my experience. However, one time something slipped and got through the initial defenses. One of the "big dogs" who was all-in on this program posted about how they had made $400k in premiums. They then transitioned into an explanation of how they lost more than $400k following the framework for a NET LOSS. As others have noted in the comments, the LSO tracker does not show you how the real value of your account (liquidation value) is being eaten away by the value of the underlying securities when they go down. I was looking forward to learning more about what happened and seeing how the owners would respond. When I logged back in to check up on the message post / board -- it had been erased -- as if it had never happened.

Disappointing, Manipulative & Cult-like as many reviewers have already mentioned via their experience.

I’m reviewing anonymously because leadership has shown itself to be bullies. If identified, it's wouldn’t be unusual for the owner to blast this review on a live call and probably kick me out of the program, which means forfeiting my prepaid participation. I originally intended to finish my term quietly, but today’s incident disgusted me so much that I feel compelled to say something about that, and my impression of the overall program – there are parallels. Less than a year ago, I knew nothing about options. LST taught me the basics of The Wheel Strategy (selling cash-secured puts and covered calls for premiums). It initially felt like printing money, but that honeymoon phase was short-lived. My positions soon went "in the money" (stock prices dropped below target strikes). Despite diversifying across tech, financials, energy, and consumer discretionary, the majority of my capital has been locked up for nine months. To collect any premium, we have to roll contracts months out for as little as $0.02/share, becoming a bag-holder. Needing that cash in an emergency means paying thousands to buy out contracts, wiping out gains and forcing massive losses. If you decide to join: • Never trade money you need. • Forget the "1% a week" promise. It forces dangerous trades. • Proceed cautiously with leadership trades. Students find themselves trapped in positions after following the Owner’s trades —especially in volatile plays like crypto stocks or 2x leveraged ETFs (e.g., TSLL). We're warned not to copy-trade, but so many do because of the gap in experience and expertise. Regarding culture, live calls are frequently hijacked by leadership tirades reprimanding members for asking valid questions. Over time, the manipulation and artificial urgency around the endless stream of upsells become exhausting, making it clear members are revenue targets, not students to educate. After naively buying several add-ons, I found equally helpful material free on YouTube or Charles Schwab. For instance, LST's Perfecting the Entry covers technical basics (candle patterns, support/resistance) that should be in the core curriculum—especially since leadership constantly chastises our entries - but we have to pay extra for it. Troystradamous was a complete waste of time and an owner vanity project. And take his market predictions with a grain of salt; I started logging them, and he is frequently wrong. What leaves me most disgusted is what happened during today’s call. The owner opened by telling us that right before the call he was hungry, grabbed lunchmeat, and when his dog snatched it, he "smacked the dog 15 feet across the floor" (his words). He laughed while sharing this with us, and others on Zoom laughed too. How is animal abuse funny? He constantly brings up his "Low Stress Beagle." No beagle is low stress—they are active, hyper, fun, and VOCAL—this one is still in the puppy stage. He shared on Monday's call that he uses a shock collar: basically doing all he can to suppress its voice and nature. Every story he shares about the dog continually proves he is terrible to it. You can see this same nature in his nasty, accusatory replies to critical reviews. How he treats his dog is a direct metaphor for how he treats students: shut up, stop thinking for yourself, follow orders, and take the smackdown/blame when it’s his program that fails you. LST may teach you some of the mechanics of trading options, but it is far from the "1% a week" goldmine they promise. More often than not, you’re going to be left with trapped capital, subjected to endless upsells, and learning within an environment built on intimidation. Enter with your eyes wide open—or better yet, take your money and learn from people who are respectful to all creatures great and small.

This trading course and framework seemed great at first. And if you get in at the right time, I can absolutely see how someone could make money with it. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of taking it much further than that. I put essentially all of my available investment funds into the system, including my 401(k) and IRA. At first, things went very well and I was making good money. Eventually, though, you start collecting losers. That’s where I found the biggest problem with the strategy. When a stock drops significantly, the framework suggests ways to continue managing or rolling the position. But in my experience, there are situations where you simply can’t do that effectively. You can end up owning a stock that is thousands of dollars underwater while having made only a few hundred dollars in premium along the way. Following John’s stock picks has been particularly painful for me. I’m currently down over 200k across several I entered based on his picks. I would've been 1000 times better off just putting my money in an ETF and leaving it alone. At its core, what they are teaching is essentially the wheel strategy. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with the wheel strategy. The problem is what happens when you repeatedly accumulate losing positions. You can make a few hundred dollars here and there, but eventually one or two large losses can wipe out a lot of those gains. And if the overall market experiences a significant downturn, you can become heavily concentrated in stocks that are underwater, with very little flexibility. That’s the problem I have with presenting a strategy as though it solves the underlying risk. It doesn’t eliminate risk. It can simply move the risk around. Then there’s the program itself. The upselling is relentless. It seems like every week there is another product, course, or program being offered. After spending what I already spent, I found the constant selling extremely frustrating. There is also a weekly call where students can ask questions. My experience, however, was that when I asked questions, Troy often seemed irritated and would essentially tell people to go back through the course rather than actually addressing the question. The calls also frequently seemed to drift into discussions about his Tesla, his house, or other personal topics rather than focusing on helping students become better traders. Teaching requires patience, especially when people have significant amounts of their own money at risk. I personally did not feel that patience was there. Another major issue for me is the software and the performance tracker. The tracker appears to emphasize gains without giving an accurate picture of the losses and overall account performance. That can create a very misleading impression of how well the strategy is actually performing. The number I care about is the actual net liquidation value of my brokerage account. That tells me what I really have. Not an isolated performance number inside someone else’s software. I’m writing this because I wish I had seen a review like this before putting so much money into the system. The strategy can make money. I did make money with it initially. But making money during a favorable period is very different from having a strategy that protects you when things go against you. For me, the combination of accumulating losing positions, the amount of capital tied up, the aggressive upselling, my experience with the coaching, and the way performance is presented has ultimately made this an extremely expensive lesson. Do your own due diligence. And most importantly, understand exactly what happens when the market goes against you before putting serious money into any options strategy.

I joined LSO back in early 2025 and remained a member for about over a year. LSO is basically the well-known wheel strategy with a few added bells to be able to call it "unique" and highly palatable to newbies. However, what does really make this program unique is the thickest layer of unabashed marketing wrapped in some of the most psychologically aggressive world-building I've ever seen. It is truly masterful from a marketing perspective. The program is targeted towards people with little to no knowledge regarding options trading. You join the program after a hefty entry fee, need to pay an additional monthly fee to have continuous access to the program and classes (you really never own the material you purchased, you just rent it out for a monthly fee), and are constantly bombarded with upsells and additional programs. Canceling is also a process in itself. Once you're in the LSO ecosystem you will be squeezed relentlessly, and leaving will be perceived so painful (you'll be dependent on their platform and LOSE access to all the training you paid for), that it's just easier to stay. The strategy itself is nothing special (basically selling weekly puts on high beta stocks) and can actually be quite dangerous for inexperienced traders. But the strategy's framing is definitely something to be studied. First, the live recruiting/info calls are staged to perfection. You see 'real accounts', past performance (even in supposed bear markets), live testimonials, and even the implied possibilities of covering your operational business expenses with all the juicy premiums you'll make with this always-winning strategy. All portrayed within the confines of an informal and homey setup. Truly masterful. Second, you don't ever even consider unrealized gains/losses, as they're UNreal. Doesn't matter if your position swinged -50% in a week (which does happen with the type of stocks you need to select to get a 1% return per week), therefore you never lose money. Ever. Forget the ignored time and opportunity costs. Third, getting assigned is taught as being part of the framework, so it's psychologically primed. You will inevitably be assigned due to the nature of stocks required within the framework, and you will be stuck in these positions for weeks/months. You can risk it an sell covered calls, but remember that you're playing with volatile stocks and you'll end up getting called away at lower prices or be perpetually stuck managing illiquid positions if you stick to the 1% standard. Finally, if anything goes wrong it's probably because you didn't follow the framework, even though it's most likely you did. The sold strategy easily folds under any kind of bearish pressure or market correction. That's why "getting assigned" is part of the process. They'll also have some type of upsell to remedy any situation or concern that comes up in the group often enough. There's also a timely upsell always available whenever a trending topic arises in the macro. The program does do a formidable job in explaining basic options trading in a practical manner, but it is limited to what is applicable within their framework, leaving out about 80-90% of the underlying mechanics regarding options trading (including the risks associated with trading 1% ROR weeklies on beta stocks). There's a reason why the founders downplay the role of greeks. If you decide to trade this framework, you should become very familiar with gamma risk. If you really want to dip your toes into the world of options, there are countless better sources out there which don't hit you with thousands of dollars out of the gate for some baseline knowledge and then keep you hostage with perpetual monthly fees to just not lose access to your original purchase. Also, trading weeklies is risky; if you trade them/continue to trade them, you will eventually learn why. At the end of the day LSO is just a mediocre product packaged within a highly sophisticated and relentless marketing system ran by some of the most skilled marketers (not traders) in the OG direct-response and copywriting fields.

I was in LSO for over a year. There are vitally important points in the other low-star reviews. I’m not going to restate them. I strongly suggest reading them before you decide. LSO regularly solicits reviews from new members. Those first few months are when new people are adding sizable amounts of money to their accounts — which generates fresh premium from new contracts — and still feel like they’re on top of the world. They haven’t had time yet to experience the negatives, which can take months or years to show up. A few months after I joined, the owner had open-heart surgery. While he was in the hospital, I was called and asked to submit a review so that when he was in recovery he could see the new 5-star reviews. It was a well-timed pull on customers’ heartstrings. I, like a lot of other new members, left a glowing review. Many months later, after my account values tanked and I understood what was going on, I deleted that review. Because there is so much backlash toward anyone criticizing the program, I expect most people never will. Multiple reviewers have mentioned the pushy upsells. Frequency aside, one stands out. Right when I and other members were finding our accounts almost completely locked up, LSO came out with a course called Fuggups. The marketing said: “You’ve followed the Core Framework religiously and still found yourself in a hole you’d like to get out of faster.” For around $500 they would sell you a course to help you get out of trades the framework can leave you stuck in. In the video ad, the owner said it was only for people with large accounts, because he had to add tens of thousands of dollars to get out of one position. To me it felt like: get you stuck, sell the solution, leave smaller accounts without that option. In a reply to another low-star review, the owner said LSO only focuses on realized gains, not unrealized losses. Then what is the unrealized value their software shows? Members are pushed to use that tracker. It calculates and displays total account value as if every stock will return to its original strike. Frequently, that recovery has not happened, and with the volatile, risky names selected, it often never will. Members are discouraged from even looking at the broker site — the one that shows actual value. That is how an account can lose thousands of real dollars while the LSO tracker says it is growing. Go to the broker and try to withdraw that money. It isn’t there.

I'll add my own $0.02 to some of the other critical reviews. I'll start by saying some good folks are in the program and there are a few "influencers" I like who recommend it. I don't think they know the risks. 1) As others have said, you often have to buy risky stocks (AI, crypto, rare earth, energy, etc.) to get the 1% weekly premiums. They don't recommend ETFs, which I think is a mistake. At least you have a basket of stocks, even if it's in a risky, volatile sector. "Single stock risk" is a real thing. You never know when a company's CEO will get arrested or when bad news will make its stock tank. Also, it's very difficult for anyone (especially new investors) to predict which stocks will perform well. Only a handful of mutual fund/ETF managers have beaten the S&P 500 in the long term. 2) "1% weekly returns" is misleading. If price drops, you could be rolling your put for up to 6 weeks. Then you may be forced to buy shares far above the stock's market value if you're assigned. After that, it's a cat-and-mouse game selling calls on your shares (usually much less profitable than puts) without getting assigned. It may take months or years to get your cost basis to match the stock's price. During that time, that capital is tied up and can't make money elsewhere. 3) Instead of using industry standards like annual returns, max drawdowns and net liquidating values, they make up their own metrics that ignore unrealized losses. They recommend constantly adding money to your account which makes it very hard to know how it's performing. I'd like to see the net liquidating value of one of their portfolios vs. the QQQ, which has returned over 18% annually since 2014--with the same amount of money periodically added to both accounts. 4) This service hasn't been through a bear market. Their site says it was founded in 2022, but the first snapshot on the Wayback Machine is in October 2023. They either started at the bottom of the 2022 bear market or after it recovered. The 1 or 2 month corrections we had in the springs of 2025 and 2026 aren't bear markets. I'm talking about a multi-year downturn. The deep in-the-money trades could get MUCH worse. Another "tech wreck" like 2000-2003 would be really ugly. It took years to recover and a number of tech startups went bankrupt. You can't "wheel" you're way out of a stock that goes to $0. Some option strategies are market neutral, but his one needs a bull market. Even flat markets aren't ideal, since this needs high-beta, risky stocks for premiums. Those stocks often tank in non-moving markets, while investors pile into consumer staples, value stocks, etc. 5) Others have addressed the upsells for basic material (stock selection, how to handle tanking stocks) that probably should be part of a $2,500 course. 6) A recent positive review that said "If you do not know nor want to learn the difference between asset appreciation/depreciation and income generation, you may want to just pay an advisor and earn about 1/6 of what I earn." This is a typical example of only considering premiums and not your entire account value. Of course you're "earning" more than someone buying and holding. But what if an emergency happened and you have to liquidate your account? That's the bottom line. If you rent a house and make nice income but the house value is plummeting, it may be a rotten investment in the long run. Same principle

Never have I seen such delusions of grandeur in my life. To say this is a cult is an understatement. Weekly stock advice comes from the owners children (one of whom is 12 years old) but remember folks, it's "not financial advice". This review was prompted, just like all the others ones below as the entire community received an email the other day to counteract the viral thread about unrealized losses when all of a sudden members started realizing they weren't making any money.... "I was wondering if you could help me surprise my Dad with a cool gift... an honest, simple review on TrustPilot.com". This progam is an utter joke. ...and although I have yet to buy a single add-on course, Mike below me is correct, the marketing push is in fact relentless!