Hedgeye Opiniones 159

Starting with the positives, I learned a lot from their view on the markets and macro investing in general. It's a higher level of discussion than mainstream financial network offers and they frequently have some high level guests with a lot of experience and a different perspective in some aspect of finance. Most of that content can be had for free by following them on YouTube (as long as you're careful not to be tricked into their paid content)

But what matters in the service they offer is being right and in a way that leads to successful investments. In this regard they usually fail miserably. For example...

I first encountered what they offered (after occasionally noticing Keith on twitter for some time) in Dec'15, just after Yellen's ill fated rate hike. At that time Keith correctly called that the economy was slowing and the hike would exacerbate that slowdown. For about the next two months they were right, BUT then they proceeded to remain bearish not only early in the bounce, but the entire ride up. Being boldly short and wrong, costing their mostly novice subscribers immense sums of capital. Not until late Nov'16 did they turn bullish. Keith eventually on his Macro Show figured most people forgot or they churned through a new generation of subscribers and he started bragging that they nailed the ride up. Their lying about past performance to me is worse than being incorrect about market direction.

Then looking at the past year, Hedgeye turned bearish in early 2019 after teasing it for some time. For that whole duration every dip Keith would pound his chest and declare how right they were on his show and on twitter, even though the indexes just kept climbing back every time. By the end of the year Hedgeye still insisted they were right because they bought fixed income, which had a good run, ignoring that they missed a 30.4% year in the S&P (hopefully none of their subs were short...)

'But hey, they were totally right. Stocks eventually crashed' one might say, which Hedgeye did, loudly. They circulated articles and marketing materials all over twitter that they were "The Firm That Called, The Crash of 2020". Problem is they didn't. Right into the crash they were still buying Oil, Energy and SPLV. They didn't call the crash because they didn't have a single timestamp showing that they were positioned for it, actually the opposite. They were bearish for long enough that a Black Swan that they didn't even recognize crashed the economy. Nothing to do with their macro predictions.

And then as many reviews have pointed out, they stayed bearish at the bottom. Now actually short the bounce, all the way until June when they've start to turn bullish again. I expect in a year once their subscriber based has churned again Keith will be telling them how great their timing was.

Lastly I'll just direct anyone reading to just search Hedgeye + Scam in their browser, it's still pretty easy to find the story from 2014 of them suing a trader and blogger who bothered to crunch the numbers of their Real Time Alerts. Which is something Hedgeye doesn't seem to want you to know. They'll post their win/loss record for those trades on the website, but anyone who's spent any time following those signals, knows it's a plethora of minuscule gains if you're even lucky enough to break even

Keith McCullough was bearish on the S&P 500 from March 23rd to June 5th, a 43% rally. Then, he went bullish.

Keith McCullough was saying "Fine! Go ahead. Buy the highs!" sarcastically the whole way up, and "What could POSSIBLY go wrong?" as if the S&P 500 would crash every day of the week.

Keith McCullough just went bullish on the S&P 500 Friday June 5th, AFTER the 43% rally!!

Keith McCullough said the range for WTI was $10-$18. He said short it. It went to $35, a total disaster if you did what he said.

Keith McCullough's style of power selling sounds like he's recruiting direct marketers for Amway. He sounds like he's selling Herbalife products in a hotel conference room.

Keith McCullough is very arrogant. He makes it sound like he's right about everything, and anyone with a different opinion is wrong, incompetent, stupid, or lying to you. That is BS. The truth is that Keith McCullough gets it wrong most of the time. His presentation is entertaining, convincing, and manipulative.

Keith is loud and rude (but sometimes funny). That's his entertainment brand. Please remember he makes all of his money from subscription revenue and not from trading/investing. He has an imaginary portfolio at all-time highs every month. Of course, his net worth is not transparent to subs. His sidekick, Jonesy, acts like a moron (it might not be an act) to add entertainment to the Macro Show. His rival is a massive African American ex-college football player from Yale. Darius often drinks too much wine on the weekend and tweets contradicting and condescending tweets about Keith mixed in with random pictures of murders or other violence on his twitter feed. How bizarre.

In summary, the guys at Hedgeye remind me of the characters from Tiger King. Keith is Joe Exotic, and Darius and Jonesy are Keith's husbands. If you want a laugh, tune in for free on youtube, if you're a real investor or protecting your money is critical, run and don't look back. Only a fool would trust Keith (Joe Exotic) with their financial future. If Keith is locked up and put in jail, he'll be telling his cellmate how his portfolio is at new all-time highs and how he called the latest rally or crash.

5 Reasons I Would Stay Away

(1) They sound bright and authoritative, cherry picking their calls versus the worst performing sectors so it makes them look good. It's an intellectually dishonest game they play.

(2) They have a bearish confirmation bias that keeps getting fed by dismissing other points of view and actually mocking other professional traders. Not professional and not classy. This bearish confirmation bias has caused them to miss out on huge opportunities because "the end is always near."

(3) They feed this false narrative that their way is the only way, that all others are stupid sheep, that everyone lost 35% in the crash. They tend to be so cautious that they cause investors to be overly fearful and miss huge runs in 2019, at the beginning of 2020, and from late March onward. It seems like their followers are fearful people satisfied with "just not losing money in the next big crash..."

(4) They block anyone and everyone (even paying subscribers) who has a different perspective or who challenges them. They mock you, block you, and keep other opinions far away from their subscribers. This is a huge warning sign. They then make excuses for some terrible advice that has caused people to lose a lot of money--blaming it on everyone but themselves.

(5) The arrogance and refusal to listen to others--people who were pleading with them to reconsider their perspective for weeks and months--leads to a myopic view and defensive nature.

The incessant focus on trading each day, throughout the day, trying to get little gains while racking up 28% capital gains on any wins, is counterproductive.

They will not show you their total portfolio gains, including capital gains taxes and losing positions in RTAs, because they prefer to show their "win percentage" on individual stock calls.

The truth is you're better off investing in high quality, well-capitalized companies like AMZN, MSFT, etc. that can weather storms and even come out stronger over the long-term. But they mock this "Old Wall" approach to their detriment.

Don't let them suck you in with the slick charts and big personalities. They are bright people, but petty and simply wrong on so many counts.

Very untrustworthy people. KM is arrogant. Analysts know KM is wrong but do nothing about it. Cost subs lots of money. Very poor service. It's an F

First, the valuable aspects of Hedgeye. Keith's "process" sounds reasonable, and I found it very appealing to have a rules based system to guide my investments. I learned a lot while trying to master the process, and I suspect I will incorporate much of it into my investment practice going forward. I measure and map a variety of macro indicators now to try to better understand the various markets, just as Keith suggests. But I'm not making any money. I've been a subscriber since 2018. Lost a lot of money then, but I always thought it must be me. Quit the service for a while and then returned to try again. I figured I just needed to try harder. This year has been an even bigger loser. I feel I know markets better than I ever have but am losing more money than ever as well. How's that for a dystopian disconnect?
Reading through some of the other negative reviews on this site I must confess that it all sounds too familiar. The alerts arriving in my inbox too late to capitalize on the trades, many of which, at least in the Real Time Alerts product, will close out for small gains. One to two percent over a few days might sound great, but if you miss 0.5% to 1.0% opening the trade, and ditto when you close it, you're taking a lot of risk for not much gain. Happens so often you have to wonder if it's intentional.
Also, Keith has taken to insulting subscribers lately. He'll take a perfectly reasonable question, politely asked about a failure in the process and immediately characterize it as whining. I'm sure he gets a lot of whining from some less sophisticated subscribers, but his reactions are way too volatile. The questions I hear sound reasonable, and are often questions that have occured to me as well. Keith will mimic a whining voice and literally admonish the questioner for being a crybaby. All the while, not answering the question. Even when he is on an even keel and remaining polite, he rarely addresses the question that is asked but will go off on a tangent with what the legal dramas call a nonresponsive answer.
As others here have said, he constantly oversells his accuracy. He seems to have been drinking his own Kool-Aid. Always insisting he got it right, but you executed wrong or never mind that loss, look what you could have made if you'd been invested in this other recomendation that he may have suggested in the past but had subsequently issued a signal to close. If a subscriber balks, he says well I never meant for you to sell all of it. You should have known to trade around the position.
Look, no one expects a perfect trading strategy, but it seems that Keith feels compelled to overstate his ability to make good calls as a means of keeping subscribers on board. If you pose an honest question about why the process failed in a particular circumstance, you get ridiculed. Is he trying to intimidate subscribers with honest concerns to keep their mouth shut?
Today was the final straw for me. I posed a question on the Twitter thread of one of the other Hedgeye principals. He had posted something which looked to be grossly out of line with previous Hedgeye advice. My engagement was polite, but I got blocked after being asked how I could possibly have lost money if I was following their plan. I now wonder if the plan isn't to tout their excellence above all else. If subscribers make money and praise the enterprise, all well and good. If they complain about performance, they get blocked. It's not hard to see why the Twittersphere looks so positive for them. In reality, I think the emperor may have no clothes.
Finally, consider the tone and tenor of the negative reviews on this site. They seem well written and focused on substance. None of them sound vindictive or arbitrary. No jealous malcontents. Just honest well earned criticism. If you're considering subscribing, be wary. The education value is worthwhile. The stock picks and the coaching methods, not so much.

Their RTA is "smart" product that makes it seem they are doing well. I have seen the stocks move once they announced a purchase and then they sell it for 1% to 3% profit. Unless you are a High-frequency trader, you are going to miss the moves unless it is for stocks that have deep liquidity and their alert doesn't trigger a spike.

Also their RTA product is made for scalping and many don't have time for that.

Also where is the risk management when there are positions like PSP down more than 10%?

They also make fun of those that buying stock in sectors they are bearsih and post misleading charts on their feed to push their narrative.

Like comparing IWM, SPY with Gold and TLT but they didn't include tech like QQQ. Include all the sectors so everyone can see what is going on and improve.

Getting it wrong isn't a big deal but not being modest makes it worse

you better off with technical analysis than with these guys, dishonest, loses money every quarter, 1% win and they take the profit, but they let the losers run <-20% drawdown, Keith will block you if you start confronting his mistakes (which he makes a ton), money losing machine to be honest, that's all they got

I'm a reasonably sophisticated retail investor - i.e. I know my stuff about macro and have invested for a while. I tried a subscription to the macro show this month. Overall I'm not very happy with it, but that's primarily due to Keith's conduct.

What I've noticed is that Keith presents a very selective view of the success of his calls on twitter, and rarely posts the ones that go wrong. If you post anything dissenting on twitter (even if phrased as a question, and written politely - e.g. I asked if there could be more analysis of calls that go wrong on the macro show), you just get blocked. This happened to me. So if you want to know why his twitter feed is full of re-tweets of people saying he's the man, that's probably why.

My biggest problem is that Keith seems to turn the show into a very combative arena, where it is more about him explaining why he is right and others are wrong, whatever has happened. I am totally comfortable with his calls being wrong, but I'd really value some open and honest analysis of why that's the case. E.g. it's well known Keith has been wrong about the S&P bounce, which is fine (many others have too!). But what's been totally lacking is any analysis of why he's been wrong and why the bounce is occurring. When users try to post questions asking about this, he often gets pissed off. At one point he even walked off camera and basically called his own subscribers stupid because the Qs were all from newbies. If you're going to run a retail product, what do you expect!?

I really just want a product like the macro show, which is all about explaining why calls go well *and* why they go wrong. I'm not using his service to run my account - I take my responsibility for my calls. But I really, really want to learn from my mistakes, and Keith's approach hasn't allowed for that to happen (at least not while I've subscribed).

I'm done with it for now. There is a good product in here to be had, but Keith's inability to openly discuss mistakes is a major flaw in this service and prevents retail traders from learning. If he changed his approach, I would re-subscribe. The frustrating thing is that he can coach really well when he tries, but there's too much time spent justifying why he is right and others aren't for it to be worthwhile waiting for those moments.

Everything stated previously is true. I use their services and I am very displeased, especially how Keith conducts himself.
He also often shares how he learned a lot when he was fired from investment company for being too bearish. It appears he did not learn much. He tends to stay bearish for too long and misses large moves.

I have paid for several of the services Hedgeye offers: market edges, macro show, etf pro, the call, and risk ranges. I spent $2500 on a discounted offer. I started in December of 2018 to last week May 2020. Keith And Darius are the lead gurus for the macro and strategy advice supported by several analysts. I purchased the service after a few months of watching Their YouTube Videos. I think it’s important to note that I am a financial advisor of 20 years and have a reasonably good handle on the information discussed. I was looking for Macro economic guidance and how it might assist me in guiding my clients through a late cycle market environment. They do provide a significant amount of macro advice, however they were extremely bearish of the S&P for all of 2019. They excuse this away by focusing you on their “amazing” shorts of the Russell 2000 and 20 yr treasury purchases TLT. What they don’t seem to care about is the majority of the world is invested in mutual funds or large-cap stocks and they guided people away from that all through 2019 thus missing a 30% upside. They will be quick to tell you if you took their advice you would not have lost any money in the March 2020 drop. However, they will not tell you they stayed bearish to this day through the 35% rebound. This service is primarily for traders who move extremely large volumes of money in and out of the market 50 times a day. Keith McCollough regularly let you in on some of his personal account trades the day after just to make you feel bad about the money you lost the day before. I’m sure there’s a way to digest the enormous amount of information they provide and make some money, however, my clients and I were reasonably conservative throughout 2019 missing much of the upside and yes, we did not suffer the huge drawdown of March, but we didn’t participate in the huge bounce due to the unreasonable negativity of Hedgeye’s leadership. If you use their service I suggest you tread lightly. Buy a couple of their subscriptions such as market edges and risk ranges. The macro show is the most expensive and likely the least valuable. Good luck.

I found that data they present often lacks notes or legend that make it helpful. The daily commentary is a smoke show that I did not find helpful. I have asked questions of clarification with no response. They often made comments about others like Dalio that were clearly uniformed. Presentations on important books showed that they did not understand the content. They thoroughly missed the dynamics of current market.

The real-time alert system is a total mess. Don't believe the performance values on the real-time alert page. There is no way to buy/sell stock at their speed so their service is not profitable at all for the customers especially the stocks perform between %1-3.

I would never advise you to buy this service.
They front run the customers. You can never make money on their alerts.
you need a huge amount of cash to place the sort of trades they place and you will always be front ran by them.
I am reluctant to call them a scam, but they are not far from it.
I tried to contact them but they never replied.

Asset allocation

Dead right since I joined up in Q3 2018. Sharp ratio and performance have been excellent.