Website : 8am Trader Website
Publisher : Alan Milton
Cost : £247 with Agora 30 day guarantee
Review Date : October 2010

WHAT IT SAYS ON THE WEBSITE

The latest make money whilst eating your breakfast system to hit the market is 8am Trader. It promises that "come the end of the week you could be £120, £310 or even £660 better off", just for tapping a few keys each weekday morning before work. 30 minutes is the maximum time investment each morning, and typically it's just 15 minutes.

The "regular tax free profits are generated by placing one simple 'trade' on the FTSE each morning and another on Wall Street. And it works perfectly". The signal the system looks for is the one "influenced by the real money makers".

Alan mentions that "there are a lot of people out there who claim that you can make easy money for just '30 minutes work' ... I'll be honest, they really get my goat ... I won't get too strong but it really does. Because you and I both know it's an absolute load of bull". "But the truth is, I do this myself every morning ... I generate regular profits and it takes me about 30 minutes on average".

Based on trading £10 a point (that's £100 risk per trade) the system has shown a profit of £70 to £660 over an 11 week period between May and August 2010, with not a losing week at all.

This system comes with Agora's cast iron 30 day money back guarantee.

THE MATERIAL

Alan Milton's 8am Trader manual is 74 pages in length. The introduction mentions that the system "has an average gain of 64 points (or pips as it's technically known) per week". We found this a little strange, PIP stands for Price In Percentage (or Percentage In Point) and refers to the smallest change of movement in Forex trading, it has nothing to do with Index trading at all.

There is a "Powered by Capital Spreads" logo on the front page and pages 7 - 13 cover opening an account and setting up your instruments and charts. A very simple process even for those that don't already have a Capital Spreads account. Capital Spreads is the platform of choice (but not necessary) as it offers "a much tighter spread and it compliments my system very well".

Step Three on page 17 and we get into the system. The system is compared to fishing in a lake, laying two nets in each direction and winning whichever way the fish (markets) decide to move. In this instance, opposing trades on the FTSE and the DOW. You can place orders to Buy the FTSE, Sell the DOW or vice versa, it doesn't matter.

The system is explained very well in terms of Entry and Stop. When and where to place Entries is clear and Stops are fixed, as mentioned on the website, at 10 points (referred to as pips in the manual).

There is even a "Breakfast Trading Assistant" to calculate actual entries but only those without very basic maths skills will need it.

Now on to the Exit strategy, where there is a little (lot) more ambiguity. "Judgement call" and advice such as "to take what you are happy with" or "rely on your gut instinct" being mentioned. When you see 3 candles in the opposing direction to your trade (on the 1 minute time-frame) is also suggested.

It is recommended to be ready to trade at 07:45 and then to place the FTSE and DOW orders as close to 08:00 as possible. All this is well documented and explained.

Of worthy note is the mention in the manual that Alan took "two weeks to build my bank from £250 up to £1,000 (by staking 1.5%)". As many of you know by now, we love these statements and as usual we did a little bit of maths. We assumed there was 10 trading days, 1.5% risk per trade, a Fixed stop of 10 points and we also applied compounding. To achieve this return (300%+) in 2 weeks Alan would have had to make a straight 100 points profit every single day without a single losing trade!

THE SYSTEM

Set up is very well explained and is straight forward, especially if using the recommended Capital Spreads platform upon which the documentation is based.

Entry is mechanical as are Stops, our preference being the 10 point fixed Stop.

Exit, we really struggled with.

CAN IT WORK

An unusual circumstance for us, but it does happen, it has happened before and we are almost certain it will happen again.

We chose not to trade this system and we have our reasons rightly or wrongly.

- We are surprised that a manual can refer to a price movement in an index as a pip.
- If two instruments are so closely correlated why place a Long order on one and a Short order on the other. It even mentions in the manual that it does not matter which one you go Long or Short on. Using just one of them would eliminate the possibility of both being unnecessarily filled (when they do not correlate).
- The Exit strategy is just far too ambiguous for us to not only trade the system but also to publish any form of measurable results.
- It recommend to place orders on Capital Spreads as close to 8am as possible. We did observe the system and it's set up on a number of occasions. On all occasions the spread for the FTSE was 5 points at the recommended trading time. To place orders so close to each other at that time of day was pointless. All one really has to do to trade the system is to observe Price action at the open and just trade at market according to the rules, using one instrument only when the spread is just 1 point, in our opinion.

So, all in all, a lack of confidence in the manual, the Exit strategy and the sheer logic of the system.

SUPPORT

We did not contact support so cannot comment.

CONCLUSION

PRO's
• May be of vague interest to "Pairs" traders.
CON's
• See Can It Work.

Do remember, your comments are important, if you decide to purchase this system, please support us by using our link and by reporting back your findings, both are valuable to us and the service.

Bought it returned it. knew I should have waited for your review which is what I will do in the future. Couldn't make it work at all, prob for all the reasons listed in the review.

Thanks for taking the bullet on this one guys - I was sorely tempted. Also thanks for explaining 'pip' - I was under the same misunderstanding (or received knowledge) as the author of the manual :-)

Hi Z,

You are welcome on both counts.

Once again Reviewteam has saved me time and money. Thanks guys!