Low Stress TradingReviews of lowstresstrading.com

Positive and helpful aspects of the Low Stress Trading courses: 1. Good beginner guide to trading and getting started with a brokerage platform such as Schwab. Excellent beginner explanation of options, puts, calls, rolling, etc. And good teachings on the "Wheel" strategy (which is the basis but not the extent of the LST framework). You could feasibly get all of the above through YouTube videos, but the LST training DOES provide step-by-step courses which you may prefer. 2. There is good support if you have questions. And weekly support to help you get started and make your trades. Problems/criticisms: 1. You have to pay extra for material (and this is my personal opinion) which SHOULD be included in the core training. This would include the fundamentals of stock analysis and perfecting the best time to enter into a position. Now granted there ARE some supplementary or add-on programs which I have no objection (again my own personal opinion) to charging extra for. 2. They'll say you can make money whether the market is going up, down, or sideways. It has been my experience while using this framework that it is very easy to make premiums while the market is generally going up. Fair to midland when sideways. And very difficult when going down. It would clearly not be suited for any sort of prolonged bear market. 3. One of the main points which attracted me to this program was that you hardly ever buy stocks. Sounded great! I wouldn't have to be "stuck" in any undesirable position if it went bad. Most of the time you just sell puts. But in my experience, just the opposite has been true. Selling a put means setting that money aside for a contracted period of time. So, I'm not able to use that money for anything else. If the underlying stock goes not in my favor I can be stuck in it for several weeks, months, or years, or be assigned the stock anyway. Whereas if I buy a stock outright and it starts to go against me, I can sell the stock and quickly get out of it. (Probably using a stop-loss to minimize damage done.) 4. The "value" of your portfolio is misleading and potentially quite harmful. After getting started, new students will soon notice a discrepancy between the total value showing in their brokerage account Vs. the value shown in the LST tracking and reporting. The LST $$ being larger and more comforting. Your brokerage factors in unrealized gains and losses. LST does not. After dealing with positions where I may be stuck in a put, or after having been assigned a stock and trying to manage, I have come to consider my broker's "total value" to be a more useful metric. Imagine if you want to determine how much your house is worth. Your real estate agent examines the house and comparable houses and determines the house is worth about $500,000. More or less, that is how much you could sell it for. But you say you refuse to take less than $800,000 for it! Can you now say its "value" is $800,000? I don't think so. Sure, the market could change and the house could eventually be worth that much. But you would be fooling yourself to believe you own a house worth $800K. Or could expect that amount of capital in any reliable timeframe. Likewise, unfortunately and perhaps riskily, many of us in the LST program have been fooling ourselves about the value of our accounts. Lastly, and this is just a cultural observation. As others have said, the whole Low Stress Trading group is rather cult-like. That is my growing observation. Take it for what it's worth. I have noticed you are not allowed to question authority. You get chastised for going against the rules, though the leader often breaks them. And anyone who dares leave will be ridiculed and scorned as I am sure I will be for this review. But I do write it in order to share my personal experiences and hope that others can benefit.

Low Stress Trading teaches how to sell puts and, if assigned, covered calls. It’s not a new concept, but if you’re brand new to options, this program lays out a conservative way to approach the strategy. The program is $1,000 to join, which includes your first month, and then it’s $100/month to stay in the community and attend the support calls. I’m glad I learned the core framework in one place without having to piece it together myself — but once you understand the basics, the value drops off quickly. Staying longer means sitting through a lot of noise that doesn’t actually help you improve. For me, the downsides eventually outweighed the benefits. Here’s what I ran into: TIME WASTERS 1. The weekly calls don’t deliver much useful instruction. The calls are dominated by personal stories that don’t advance the lesson and long critiques of member behavior instead of useful instruction. They run long, repeat the same points, and are delivered in a tone that talks down to adults who came to learn. 2. There’s regular political commentary. Politics is injected into nearly every call and presented as the “correct” worldview rather than a neutral discussion on how policy affects the market. These soapbox moments waste the time we’re paying to learn. QUESTIONABLE STANDARDS 1. The upsells are constant and manipulative. Every call includes a pitch for additional paid courses. They’re presented as optional, but implied to be necessary for better results. Which means this isn’t a one-time educational program - it’s an ongoing monetization model. 2. Owner constantly refers to himself as “military” and a “nuclear engineer” to establish authority. The Owner references both roles often to establish authority. However, based on his published timeline, it’s unclear how either role fit in a substantial way, which suggests both were brief. For those of us with military backgrounds, the repeated emphasis is disingenuous — and raised, for me, questions about credibility. EXPECTATIONS 1. The community dynamic is peculiar. There’s a clear expectation to affirm the owner. One moment that stood-out was when he publicly called out a member for not wishing him well before his (owner’s) heart surgery — meaning the owner reviewed messages and compared them against 2,000+ members to see who didn’t respond. This is just one example, but it makes clear that participation in the community isn’t just about learning — you’re expected to affirm and elevate the owner as part of being there. Bottom Line The trading framework is solid and can be learned quickly. Once you understand it, you don’t need to stay. The ongoing environment adds more distraction than value.