In a presentation filmed to introduce us to Banyan Hill’s newest newsletter, Flashpoint Fortunes, Ted Bauman and Clint Lee promised to introduce us to a system that “could” have consistently earned us positive returns.
In the video, they make their case for the system on which the advisory service will be based and I sat through it to find out what it is all about.
If you came across the presentation but couldn’t get through it, you’ll find this piece helpful because I have summarized the main takeaways.
What is Flashpoint Fortunes?
Flashpoint Fortunes is a new investment research service that is published by Banyan Hill Publishing. The chief editor is Clint Lee.
Clint’s strategy is to trade according to how quant funds are likely to trade. The reasoning behind this is that those machines are market drivers because they handle massive volumes; some analysts estimate that they account for 50-60% of all market trades.
Jeff Clark shared this sentiment when he did his presentation about Pre-Programmed Stocks.
How Flashpoint Fortunes works (The Trading Strategy)
In the presentation, Ted Bauman interviewed Clint Lee, and, as a result, we learn how the advisory service works.
We learn that it is based on a powerful system that has performed quite well theoretically (back-testing) as this excerpt from the transcript suggests:
“A system so powerful, it could have pinpointed seven opportunities to make triple-digit gains in the first four months of 2020 when markets tanked…
A system so profitable, its average trade in 2020 could have closed out for a 447% profit…
A system so fast, it could have averaged just 36 days in each trade…
And a system so solid, all the results you’ll see today have been back tested against five years of data from more than 3,000 individual stocks.”
This proprietary trading system was designed by Clint, who is a quantitative analyst (also known as a quant).
After conducting a five-year backtest, he discovered that every trade it had identified closed out for a 99% return in 36 days on average.
To achieve this, it identified “flashpoints.” Flashpoints are moments before a massive amount of computer-driven money goes into or out of a stock.
Clint says that he didn’t care about fundamentals. Instead, he relied wholly on technical analysis because his system sought to take advantage of the moves made by quant funds on Wall Street. Here is an excerpt of him explaining this:
“These quants need to break the stock market down into rules their algorithms can understand.
The rules they use are called factors.
And these factors are designed to predict — with varying degrees of success — when a stock is about to explode in value.
They include things like momentum, analyst revisions, credit risk, and quality.
There are hundreds of factors, and they all go in and out of style with different quant funds at different times.
Now under the hood of Flashpoint Fortunes, I put a lot of work into calculating which factors are moving in and out of fashion.
Because when enough of these “in fashion” factors align in a single stock … that’s when you’ll see a flashpoint ignite.
Suddenly that stock becomes irresistible to the algorithms … and that $2 trillion tsunami of quant money…”
So his system tried to predict which stock would have the determining factors aligned and thus ready for a big movement made by the quant funds. Since they move large sums of money with each transaction, their moves are big enough to cause a surge (in either direction). The big risk here was that the big money may fail to move as predicted.
Option Trading
When the system identifies a flashpoint, whether it indicates that the stock is likely to go up or down, Clint recommends an option play to monetize it.
His options trading strategy is pretty simple:
“When the flashpoint indicates a stock is about to go up, we’ll recommend buying a call option. And when the flashpoint indicates it’s about to go down, we’ll recommend buying a put option.”
Who is Clint Lee?
Clint Lee is an investment guru who works for Banyan Hill Publishing. He is the analyst for the Profit Switch and The Bauman Letter and contributes to Bauman Daily.
He has been actively involved in the finance industry for the past 15 years and has been providing investment research for some of the largest institutions in the world. He has managed assets worth more than $2 billion for his clients.
In 2019, he led a fund that was ranked as the number 1 fund in its category by US News and World Report.
Clint has an MBA from Case Western University and has earned the Chartered Market Technician and Chartered Financial Analyst designations.
What you get when you join Flashpoint Fortunes
When you sign up for it, you receive:
- Flashpoint Fortunes trade alerts. Clint sends you an email when he identifies a new flashpoint in the market and determines that it could offer a sizeable return. He even explains why he is recommending the trade.
- Weekly email and video updates. You receive updates about all of Clint’s positions as well as the key events happening in the markets. Clint sends you a short video giving his analysis of all his trades and the opportunities he is considering.
- The Flashpoint Fortunes trading manual. This is an in-depth trading manual that teaches you how to trade if you are new to trading. They also show you how to get the most out of your Flashpoint Fortunes membership.
- 24/7 access to Clint’s private website.
- Customer support services.
How much do you pay to join Flashpoint Fortunes?
The annual subscription fee is $1,495
Does Flashpoint Fortunes have a Refund Policy?
No, the subscription fee is non-refundable.
If you cancel your membership, you can switch to other services offered by Banyan Hill:
Closing Remarks on Flashpoint Fortunes
Clint Lee’s Flashpoint Fortunes is based on a trading strategy that relies on quantitative analysis. To be precise, it preempts the moves likely to be made by the machines on Wall Street and recommends option trades based on those predictions.
Before we conclude this, there is a statement that Ted made during the presentation that caught my attention. He was talking about the Flashpoint Fortunes trading system that they so aggressively advocate for. In a rare moment of brutal honesty, he said:
“Now I want to note for our viewers that we haven’t used your brand-new system to find profits in real time just yet, so we do have the benefit of hindsight working with us here.”
He was clarifying that all the numbers they quoted in the video, including the winning trade percentages were not from actual trading. These numbers were all from the backtest.
I singled this statement out because backtesting, while a useful tool for testing a trading strategy, has its shortcomings. For one, it is not an accurate way to gauge the effectiveness of a trading system because it relies on past performance, which is not a good indicator of future results.
Be sure to paper trade the system if you sign up for Flashpoint Fortunes before you start investing real money into Clint’s recommendations (if you have no problem ponying up $1,495 for the membership (non-refundable)).