Karloz's hyip blog

my new futures website

2007-12-27T10:26:00.000-08:00

hey folks,

I am currently working on a new project. It's all about futures trading. Check it out Futures Trading Guides

New home

2007-08-28T05:38:00.000-07:00

Due to a bigger interest in FX trading, Karloz's blog now has a new home. http://www.forexpm.com Check it out :-)

Joyfund

2007-03-14T06:43:00.000-07:00

Well, What can I say? January was terrible. I understand the figure to be -40%. This is disapointing but in all honesty not all that suprising. As I outlined in previous posts I knew trading options on margin this way was extremely risky and a big drawdown at some point was highly likely. I only exposed a small amount of money for this reason. I hope nobody had large amounts invested. I have decided to pull out and take the loss, I will probably put the funds into my own trading, which never gets such drawdowns.

Joyfund

2007-01-06T05:50:00.000-08:00

Well, Joyfund has had an interesting past few months. I considered Joyfund to be high risk from the start and expected big fluctuations in the monthly figures and haven't been suprised. It might be one of the best opportunities around at the moment but it is very high risk and certainly not for the faint hearted. The trading is risky and of course there is the fraud risk to consider. Unfortunately, I understand the December figure is negative, -2.55%. One of the problems I see with Joyfund is the mass of fees one has to endure. The trading itself is risky, but if you have to pay large fees on the profits, they have to be considerably more than the losses for your account to break even, let alone turn a profit, then consider egold fees etc, which clearly makes it even riskier. I feel going through a 3rd party that also takes large fees, such as feederfund makes the investments too risky to consider. It's probably wise to treat Joyfund as you would a typical "ponzi hyip", in terms of getting your principle spend out as soon as possible. The trading still has not really proved itself in the longer term, so if you like a gamble, it might be worth a go. I understand the minimum to go direct is now in excess of $5k, however there are pools around other than feederfund.

Joyfund

2006-10-08T04:18:00.000-07:00

A disapointing month for Joyfund. I understand they were -7.5% for September. This is no cause for concern at all in my opinion. They are engaging in high risk commodity trading so a negative month was very likely to occur at some point. Hopefully they will recover without any problems.

FX-Experts

2006-10-04T09:27:00.000-07:00

If you thought things were bad before.. they just got a whole lot worse. I understand Marcos claims the trader managed to lose 50% either in one single trade or a very short time, either way this is just ridiculous. -50% is just plain irresponsible. It seems to me that neither Marcos nor the trader has a clue what they are doing.

If we are frank here, FXE was destined to failure from day one. The program paid 14% per month and as I said previously, the trader needed paying and Marcos needed paying and of course there was the referral program so the trading had to earn at least 20%, probably nearer 30%, they attempted this with very high leverage which worked at first because the trading was going well, but all traders no matter how good they are have a very bad patch at some point and with the insane leverage FXE were using it was inevitably going to finish them. From reading the forums it seemed clear that people were upset that the program failed despite "good DD" being done on them. I personally never saw any good DD. I saw people claim to see their trading account and see a couple of months of good results using irresponsible amounts of leverage but I never saw any risk assessment done on the trading, I never saw anybody comment on the high level or leverage and risk they used.

Many people seemed to think "oh, cool, they are trading it must be worth putting money in" unaware that most traders lose money and most traders who use high leverage lose a lot of money. Simple "proof of trading" with no significant past history (at least 6 months preferably with one brokerage) is more or less worthless and add no real risk assessment then we have nothing, no real DD, nothing. FXE was a disaster waiting to happen from day one. If I was more knowledgable when I started I would never have invested in this "disaster waiting to happen" program. As soon as I learnt, I got my money out. I hope people learn from this. A real forex hyip paying 14% per month consistantly is a "distaster waiting to happen" program. If they could earn enough to sustain a 14% per month hyip, they sure would not want the hassle of dealing with $100 egold hyip investors! This is why there are no real forex based hyip programs that have paid in excess of 14% per month that have lasted in excess of two years.

My hope is that FXE refund peoples money. If Marcos wants to play irresonponsible games with large amounts of money, it seems highly unethical that it should be at other peoples expense.

NSFG September Result

2006-10-04T09:25:00.000-07:00

Another solid month for NSFG.. 5% gross. I understand they were up a little above the 5% but then later lost it to the market. Lets see how October goes.

NSFG Update

2006-09-20T14:18:00.000-07:00

Great news for NSFG. I understand they are now over 5% up so we have a guaranteed minimum of 5% for September, Great stuff guys.

MegaInvestForum update

2006-09-19T06:27:00.001-07:00

Well, I just logged onto the trading account and was disapointed to see things have gone from bad to worse. It was not long ago there was a major problem with the Expert Advisor which resulted in around a $20k loss on the fund. As I said in an earlier post the administator of the program added $15k of his own funds. The reserves covered the rest of the losses to make August a break even month. The present situation is they are around 30% down for the month. This really does outline that most traders and most strategies do not make money in forex and it is very important to see at least six months worth of LIVE results (preferably at one brokerage) prior to considering it as an investment. If this is not done, it is in effect more or less gambling, also it becomes a apparent that many months of back testing and demo account trading is of limited use. This is possibly the most important part when performing due diligence on an online forex opportunity. ID documents, proof of trading (with no history and risk assessment) etc are of minimal use when the trader loses your money. Marcos at FXExperts was full of praise for MegaInvestforum at the beginning but his future opinions should be treated with extreme cautious as the current state of both FXE and MIF is rather precarious. I am now very glad I did not join this opportunity and believe I was right to be suspicious. I hope the people who have joined don't end up losing too much money.

FX-Experts - Oh dear!

2006-09-01T09:57:00.000-07:00

Dear Members,

After reading this letter, I am sure all my clients are going to be upset, because they all trusted in our potential, but I also can say that a few people will be “happy” and they will say in the blogs and forums: “I said that it would happen”.

What I have to say today, is not that we are closing the company, but that we had a huge lost in the last days.

We will have to change some points so we can get back what we lost without worrying about the weekly profit. We are also changing the broker so we can give you a better service.

We are going to change those points:
- the daily profit is going to be zero;
- we will not accept withdraws;
- we will not accept deposits;

The company asks you to not worry about the situation, our website will be online and we are going to be here working, trying to help you in the best way.

I am sure that most of our clients rely on our service and will understand why we had to change those points. After everything is all right, we will update you, as we always did.

We hope to return to our normal activities in a few weeks.

We are doing everything to provide you a better service.

Thank you,

Marcos Matos.

Unfortunately I expected this to happen before the end of the year, I thought it might make it till november. When you consider they have averaged paying in excess of 13% since inception, you just need to think there is a trader to pay, there is marcos to pay there is the support overhead, there are the egold fees, there is the webhosting costs, site mantainence, the referral scheme etc etc. When you consider all these factors a much much greater return than 13% per month is required to sustain the program and pay those concerned, so a very risky trading strategy is/was probably employed. I have seen it over and over, the risk kills them in the end. It was for this reason I would never put serious money into the program. I really hope FXE recovers, it is one of the few real programs out there with no previous nonsense when it comes to paying. I did hear the trading was going badly a few weeks ago and pulled out for a 60% profit overall. Good luck FXE, I hope you guys can pull it off.

NSFG August Result

2006-08-29T06:48:00.000-07:00

Overall a solid month for NSFG. I understand they had a great first week of trading and were around 6-7% up, so they locked 5%. It seems the next week they traded went pretty well too and they were quite nicely up, but then last week didn't go so well and they lost everything after the 5% lock in, so 5% is the final figure for August. I am happy with this, I believe this is one of the very very few online investment programs where it would be wise to even considering thinking long term. Returns are going to be lower than they were last year as they are trading in a more conservative manner but this may make many people feel more comfortable about investing a larger sum of money or even opening a managed account. Just think if they averaged 5% for many years and you started with a tidy sum of money, you would be smiling at the end. Assuming 3.75% monthly average (5% minus the fees) if you started with $10,000 and left it in for six years it would be worth around $140,000. Also, you would hit the Managed Account target of $25k in around two years. Of course in reality you may not want to compound for so long, you may wish to invest in other ventures or diversify into other Managed Accounts or just go and spend it all but this just outlines the fact that you do not need unrealistic daily returns to get there and I feel a more conservative approach to online investing can be more profitable in the end. Maybe $10,000 is too high for you at the moment, you can always start smaller, it will take longer but you have a good chance of getting there. Most people who play ponzis lose most or all of their money, I think this is a better strategy, don't you?

Security

2006-08-14T04:35:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately I have read that many people have been getting their e-gold accounts hacked into lately, so I thought I would write an article with some security tips.

Regarding e-gold one of the first measures you can take to massively increase your e-gold security is to enable the Accsent security. If you have a static IP this will work perfectly, you can put your IP into accsent and then you will only be able to login to your e-gold account from your IP address. If a login is made from a different IP e-gold will send you an email to your registered address with a pin code you need to enter to gain access, so it is very important to use a secure email provider like safe-mail and use a very strong password. If you do not have a static IP address all is not lost as you can select part of an IP address, for example 213.293.40.*.

Always be careful with passwords, never use anything that relates to you in anyway like your date of birth. Make them long and as strong as possible. Software like roboform, keepass are very helpful as they save your passwords and remove the need to type them in.

A firewall is very important. A good hardware firewall is preferable but if this is not an option there are various software firewalls. I have heard good things about zonealarm. It is essential that no ports are visible for potential hackers and port scanners to exploit. I have a found a free service called shields up very helpful, it will scan all your ports and let you now if they are visible to others.

A good virus killer is a must, popular choices include Norton Anti-Virus, Avast and Mcafee. Running it as frequently as possible is a good idea, especially if you have been using the internet. Also, make you sure you keep it upto date.

Spyware and Adware also unwanted evils. Adaware is an excellent program that will scan your registry, hard disks and memory for malicious software. I run aware everyday and it always finds something new if I have been online! Be sure to update it regularly.

If use use Microsoft Windows always make sure you have downloaded and installed all the latest security updates. You can get windows to download these automatically by enabling “automatic updates”. You can find this under “Security Centre” in control panel if you are using Windows XP.

Do not use Internet Explorer, there are too many security vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit. A great alternative is Mozilla Firefox.

Do not leave fund in e-gold for longer than neccesary, outexchange them with an exchanger or put them into a program. At least this way if you did get hacked, there would be no gold to steal, saves on the storage fees too.

Many hackers try and setup “phishing websites”. These are sites that often look very genuine and ask you to enter your egold number and password. E-gold will never ask you for this information so if you are ever asked it is definitely a phishing attempt, close the website/email immediately.

Never run any .exe file unless you are certain it is not some kind of malicious software. It is also very useful to know exactly what .exe files are currently running on your system. Task manager is great for this. If you are unsure what any of the exe files are that are running on your system, this website has a searchable database that contains most of the legitimate exe files and tells you in detail what they are. If you are unable to find out what a particular file is that is running, it is likely to be something malicious and you should probably end it.

A little additional measure you can take is to use a little program called Sandboxie. This is a small program that allows you to run browser sessions that save all changes to a “virtual sandbox” so they do not affect your pc in anyway.

Another option is a live linux CD. There are several distrubutions of linux that have live CDs. This allows you to boot up into linux from CD and login to your egold account this way. The great thing with live CDs is the fact that CDs are of course read-only so no malicous software can ever be written to the CD. It is like a completely fresh install of an OS everytime it boots up. The Slax and Ubuntu distrubutions have live CDs and both have firefox included. Slax is ideal for people on a slower connection as the CD image is less than 200meg.

MegaInvestForum update

2006-08-10T15:24:00.000-07:00

Oh dear, I do have some bad news to report. On the 8th August a disastrous position was opened. 20 lots on the usd/chf pair. This was using approximately 40:1 leverage. The trade went 137 pips the wrong way. The result, horrendous drawdown, just less than 50% in one trade. In my opinion there is no excuse for this at all it is just irresponsible, especially considering they are managing tens of thousands of other peoples money. I understand the admin is going to cover some of the losses on this occasion. My concern is if the account grows bigger and we are faced with a similar issue. It would not be so easy to cover the losses from his own pocket. I have not joined this program as I employed “wait and see” strategy. There are too many bad traders out there for me to invest blindly, as I always say, it is believed that only 5% of forex traders make returns consistantly. Will MIF be one them? Only time will tell.

NSFG some good news

2006-08-09T02:52:00.001-07:00

Some great news for NSFG. I understand the account is 6-7% up at present so this will guarantee us at least 5% as they are now locking 5% as soon as they get there. Ken has reported that they are 300 pips up for the week, fantastic, and the account is only up 6-7%, this shows how they are more conservative in there trading nowadays. This is very understandable as it is believed they are managing millions of dollars now. Ken will now use the remaining 1-2% to pick trades that are most likely to be successful, with only 1-2% to play with he can afford to be very picky so hopefully we will make a little extra. Now they are trading with considerably less risk than they did in the early days we probably wont see the 20% a month again, but this does make me feel a lot more comfortable about putting a large sum of money into the program. For a forex venture I think the trading risk may prove to be relatively low, though we do need more time to see how the pool and managed accounts fair in the coming months. If we can keep up with steady gains with only the occasional losing month, I may consider a managed account with them in the future. Previously I decided against it because the risk was too high for me to risk such a large amount but now its more conservative I am thinking again, maybe in a years time when they have a longer track record. Normally I would comment on the benefits of a Managed Account in regards to the fraud risk by the program admins but I have always believed the fraud risk in the NSFG pool is negligible. Anyway good news for everybody :D

Ibiza Traders - addition

2006-08-08T01:29:00.001-07:00

As you can see I recieved a comment on my last update regarding Ibiza traders. The person informed me about some comments from Jude from nobshyip after he verified the Ibiza Traders trading account. The basic issue that hits me in the face is the fact that the trading account has been verified but there is little trading activity to verify. This offers very little when trying to assess the trading risk or even if indeed the program is going to be backed by forex trading. I could open an account with a forex broker, stick $50k into it then make a couple of trades, anybody could do it. It seems the proof of trading we have at the moment for Ibiza Traders is worthless. At this point in time there is little evidence to suggest that Ibiza Traders is anything other than just another fraudulent ponzi and I beleive it should be treated as such. If Clifton/nobs are allowed to audit the account at regular intervals to assess the quality of the trading and the level of risk the trading involves we could perhaps make a different analysis. I will probably contact the admin in the future and try and some my own DD on the trading, if it indeed there is anything to see. I just thought I should write this to warn others who may have got a good feeling from the article I wrote yesterday. We have nothing really to suggest it is anything more than a ponzi, yet. Thank you to the person who brought this to my attention, I won't mention who you are as you left the message anonymously.

Ibiza Traders

2006-08-07T04:52:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting opportunity I came accross a couple of weeks ago. They claim it is supported by forex trading. here is the FAQ:

Frequently Asked Questions

We have put together some FAQ's. We feel that every question you may have should be answered in here if not please contact us at customer support or in the forums.

Q. Do you currently have more then one trader?

A. Yes, we do have more than one trader. In the beginning we will be trading exclusively Foreign Exchange. At a later stage however, it is our ambition to diversify into other financial market products.

Q. What is your past performance record?

A. The combination of all trades combined has proven to be in excess of 20%.

Q. What is the maximum risk?

A. No more than 10% of the capital is ever at risk.

Q. Do you offer a referral bonus?

A. No. We do not offer any type of referral bonus.

Q. Do you allow compounding from account balance?

A. No. Once you receive your monthly profit, youll have to wait untill the next trading cycle if you would like to invest more funds.

Q. What is the minimum investment at Ibiza Traders?

A. $250.00 during the first 3 months as a promotion. After 3 months the minimum investment will be $ 1000.00. After the preliminary 3 month status. Any member that has made the minimum deposit in the first 3 months will be allowed to invest under the normal terms.

Q. What is the maximum investment amount?

A. At this time there is not a maximum amount set. Please feel free to invest as much as you like. For very large investments, please use the bank wire option.

Q. When do my funds start earning?

A. You must have funded your account on or before the 24th of each month in order to start earning the following calendar month. Returns will be published on the last day of each trading month. All bank wires should be received and approved by the 24th of each month to be credited as active principle.

Q. How do I deposit Funds?

A. You can deposit with Ibiza Traders by using E Gold, E Bullion or a Bank wire transfer. If you decide to do so you can always deposit through the aforementioned options.. All the funds received on or before the 24th of each month will be taken into trading as per the 1st of the following calendar month. Hence you wont see your deposit appearing in the my account section until the 1st of the following month i.e. when your deposit has been transferred internally to our trading account. All bank wires are to be done in USD. All bank wires should be recieved and approved by the 24th of each month to be credited as active principle.

Q. How do I withdraw funds?

A. Your profit will be sent to your back office automatically. Investment results will be paid out by the end of each calendar month. Due to internal transfers, (from our trading account to your payment processor) payments will take around 5 business days to process. Hence you will receive your monthly result around the 7th of each month. If you want to withdrawal your deposit please request so before or on the 24th in order to receive it with your profit. Hence your deposit plus investment result will be received as per the 7th of the following calendar month. All bank wires are subject to the bank wire fees depending on where they are to be wired.

Lets analyse what they are saying here. They are claiming past performance is in excess of 20% per month and no more than 10% of the fund is at risk. This sounds like quite risky trading to me. I am yet to see a forex venture online that has been able to generate 20% consistantly that hasn't failed at some point. The nearest program I can think of is FXIG which some beleive is real, though I don't think anyone really knows for sure other than perhaps Feederfund.

They do not offer a referral bonus, this is always a plus in my book, real investments don't need a big influx of new funds to keep them going.

Interestingly they do not allow compounding, clearly if they are managing 20% per month the fund would have the potential to grow very big in a short period of time. Maybe they do not wish the fund to get too big. Its understandable that they would not want to trade 10% of the account if the account size was in the millions, think of those potential drawdowns! However, it seems you can still compound if you add your profits back to your account the following month, so presumably they will be out of trade for that month.

$250 minimum, higher than many FXE and a few others, but not too high if it is a real investment. They take a bank wire, instead of just ecurrencies which is always good to see.

In their FAQ they do not mention anything about a principle lock-in time so I emailed them. They claim there is no principle lock-in whatsoever and there is no fee for withdrawing your principle either.

I understand Voyager/Clifton who runs hywd.info has been given access to the trading account, he has revealed what he saw what not what he expected. He has signed a NDA so he cannot really say anymore than this. We will have to draw our own conclusions here.

It looks like it Ibiza traders may be real, though we do not have anything conclusive yet. I am going to keep an eye on it over the coming weeks and make a decision about investing or not.

You need an invitation code to join, if you need one feel free to PM me on hyipD. Please note I am not referral hunting. There are no referral commisions.

Due Diligence Resources

2006-08-03T05:20:00.000-07:00

I thought it might be helpful to others if I add a few due due diligence tools I use to the links section.

whois.ws - Domain WHOIS

DNSTools - useful for reverse DNS lookups and other things

Fonefinder - Lookup phone numbers here, you can also do reverse lookups too

Google Maps - Excellent map service, you can zoom into street level for many countries

Alexa - Very useful for verifying traffic. For a rough guide I own a site that receives around 3000 unique visitors per day and the alexa rank is around 28,000. If you play ponzis it might be useful to compare returns and the alexa charts with long lasting ponzis like 12dp and see how they compare, it may give you some indication of how well the ponzi is sustaining itself. On the flip side, a long term investment program with a very poor alexa rating may be suggestive that the program would be unsustainable as a ponzi and therefore add legitamcy, but there are many many more factors to consider when making a decision like this. I mentioned some of them in the article I wrote on the 29th June 2006. All in all, I don't have the toolbar on my PC, as I don't like spyware, but I believe for DD purposes it does have its place.

Wayback Machine - This is a very helpful took that lets you see how a website looked at various points in time in the past. For example the recently failed fraudulent program solidinvestment.com claimed to have been online since 1998. A quick visit to the wayback machine reveals that this is clearly not the case.

GIG Mutual update

2006-08-03T05:14:00.000-07:00

The final result for July is 3.36%. Thats the first three months over and all over them profitable. Returns have grown every month, not a bad start considering the fact their high risk portfolio encountered many problems. I don't entirely agree with their portfolio, but I like the program and hope it will be successful in the long term. Don't be alarmed when you cannot login to the GIG website, I understand they forgot to renew the domain name, easy to do when you are concentrating on everything else, I am sure they will get it sorted out very soon. Good luck for the future GIG :)

I pulled out of FX-Experts

2006-08-02T02:49:00.000-07:00

I have chosen to withdraw my entire balance from FX-Experts. Whilst I still like the program, I understand the trading has not been going well recently. I remember my initial fear with FX-Experts was the fact that it may be just that bit too risky. They pay around 12% a month on average which is great, but when you consider the trading has to average at least this, 12% a month plus enough to pay Marcos, the trader, maintenance of the site and a reserve fund we get into very high risk trading. I admit I don't know a great deal about forex trading but I understand to generate the high returns neccesary to sustain FX-Experts it would have to be high risk trading. This is no problem of course when it is going well, but a few bad trades could leave the account well into the red.. I have heard that if the trading fails, Marcos will refund everyones account balance, but I have nothing to backup this claim, so I have chosen to withdraw. I made over 60% on the money I invested with them in a few months so I have no complaints and wish the program well for the future. I will leave the referal link up on my blog for the time being, but if you do decide to join under me like a few of you have, please be aware that I believe it would be very risky to enter the program now.

NSFG July Result

2006-08-02T02:45:00.000-07:00

The NSFG final result is in for July. 2.4% after fees. Not great but it seems many forex ventures did not fair well last month. I am still hoping they will acheive 80-100% per year. I would be happy with that.

Udachu Invest

2006-07-31T04:46:00.001-07:00

It appears I have misunderstood the deadline for Udachu Invest. It was on the 23rd July but people whose account got deleted may still able to invest upto 5th August. This was a mistake and my part and I apologise if I have mislead anybody.

Udachu Invest update

2006-07-30T02:10:00.000-07:00

It seems that Udachu Invest is closing to new members on the 5th August, so get in now if you want to. I am still undecided on Udachu Invest, I am just not convinced they are really trading and the spend I made with them reflects this. If it lasts a few months and they still do not allow new members, the risk of the program being a fraudulent ponzi scheme would be massively reduced. Also, I have spoken to several people who have been experiencing problems with their bluebanking cards, either not recieving them or having problems loading them with their UI profits. Personally, I am holding off putting any extra funds in this one and will try to obtain my initial spend back as soon as I can. I may look at the program again in a few months and assess things again then. I also understand the UdachuFund program is also closing to new members.

MegaInvestForum

2006-07-28T14:37:00.000-07:00

Some interesting news on megainvestforum, it appears Jose is now letting us logon to the live trading account for the foreseeable future. This for me sets a new level of transparency in a forex pool. My only concern would be any security issues that may arise from this, especially if the fund grows into a very large sum. Perhaps if this happens he will be more selective in who is allowed to view the account. Anyway it is fantastic to see, the trading for this month seems to be up overall, but there are still floating losses, but they have reduced. This program is definately worth a look.

MEGAINVESTFORUM

2006-07-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

Here we have another new transparent investment program. There seems to have been a few popping up just recently which is very good to see as I don't invest in ponzis. The program claims forex trading and unusual lengths to prove it. The admin has pubically offered login details for their live trading account at North Finance brokerage. I downloaded the NF software and logged on myself and saw a real account that had been traded since 24^th May 2006. In June the trader made 17 trades, most of them ending in profit and they were around 10% up at the end of the month. This month has a few floating trades currently in the red. Various trustworthy sources have managed to obtain and verify the administrators ID documents. The administrator, Jose Gomes appears to be friends with Marcos Matos, the administrator of FX-Experts. Marcos has given him a vote of confidence. This is very interesting to see. The program has a low minimum, only $100. Principle withdrawals are available at any time with a 20% fee in the first three months, then 10% thereafter.

CONCLUSION

It is great to see an administrator provide such an open level of transparency. While this is good to see, as of yet I have not been able to verify the level of experience the trader has. I will post again when I have this. It appears this program has great potential and is certainly worth a good look. As always though, even though the program is much more transparent than most HYIP type programs out there, there is still a significant trading risk to consider. It's going to be very interesting to see how this one develops. When I have verified the traders credentials I will hopefully put some money into this one.

wow!

2006-07-19T15:52:00.001-07:00

Hey guys, I just looked at hit counter for my blog, I must admit I was suprised so many of you have been reading and getting in contact with me. Its been really cool. In view of this I noticed most other blog sites have either RSS feeds and/or an email subscription that notifies when the blog is updated so I thought I'd stick them on mine. I have come accross a couple of new interesting programs over the past week or so, so I'll write my opinions on them over the coming days.

Joyfund added to FF

2006-07-18T02:13:00.000-07:00

I noticed that Joyfund has been added to the feederfund list of programs. I was considering going in directly but the minimum amount keeps increasing. However, there seems to be joyfund pools popping up everywhere I look as well as feederfund so still options join with a lower amount than the minimum. Lets hope this one does well and lasts the distance.

GIG Mutual

2006-07-14T05:52:00.000-07:00

I just joined gig with the minimum spend. This looks like a very interesting project setup by some of the members of the goldentalk forum. The basic concept is a HYIP mutual fund. I haven't seen their portfolio yet but I believe they spread the pool amongst high, medium and low risk investments. I suspect I may be in some of the low risk programs directly already, we will see. Despite a chunk of their high risk portfolio dying over the first couple of months they still managed to show a profit of around 2% for both months. There is only a $100 minimum spend so I thought it was worth a look.

solid investment

2006-07-13T09:03:00.000-07:00

As expected Solidinvestment has now died. Apparently there are claims that the admin is going to return and pay people.. oh look.. I just saw a flying pig. Thankfully I got my principle out and made a slight profit. People have even started talking about legal action against SI and Sosa, unfortunately I beleive people only have themselves to blame if they lost money in this program. We sent money to an anonymous individual in the promise of totally unrealistic, unsustainable daily compounded returns, I don't think its realistic to expect the law to be sympathetic with us. When I started out, I did lose a few bucks here and there to various ponzi scams, I wrote it off and learnt from it and now only invest in program that I beleive are real. One of thew few good things you can say about these scammy programs is the fact they provide a learning experience.

Joyfund

2006-07-10T04:04:00.000-07:00

I have been disapointed at the lack of transparent programs opening up lately, as I don't play ponzis it has not left too many choices, so when I saw the arrival of Joyfund it caught my attention. I understand this is a commodities fund. The past performance has been very volatile with monthly profits varying from 3% all the way upto a massive 71%. There has been no negative months to date. I don't know a great deal about commodities trading but I would imagine to generate returns such as these it would be high risk trading. Certain members of the HyipDiscussion forum have seen his live trading account and verified the returns he is claiming. The fund has a $1k minimum which for many may be a little on the high side for some but at the end of the day it would appear that this is a serious real high risk investment and not simply a ponzi scheme. The person doing the DD on the fund also obtained and verified the administrators personal ID documents and verified the traders background. I understand he has had four years trading experience, but only a few months experience trading commodities. This is definately the most transparent investment program I have seen for a few months. It is definately worth a look, but important to bare in mind that it is probably high risk trading and there is the potential of loss. On the plus side it is hopefully not some sort of ponzi scam that will run away with your money.

solid investment

2006-07-05T08:37:00.000-07:00

It seems everywhere I read at the moment, people are talking about the ponzi, "Solid Investment". I must confess, When I first started out six months ago, I did join this program, as it did look impressive, but within a few days of reading posts on hyipD and talking with more experienced investors, I soon learnt that it was very obviously a ponzi program. Fortunately for me, I managed to get my principle out plus a little extra before they forced me to join their "Special Plan". Basically as soon as they did this, I wrote the program off completely, as by then I was knowledgable enough to know that the returns this "special plan" was claiming were very unrealistic and it was just a ploy to not pay out current members, whilst still taking new members, this way the ponzi will last longer and probably be more profitable for the criminals. It saddens me to see the number of people still beleiveing this program is real and genuine. I guess some people never get over this naive "Its paying me, how can it possibly be a scam?" mentality. Be careful folks!

NSFG June final result in

2006-06-30T05:29:00.000-07:00

The move to their new broker has been completed and the pool has been traded this week. The final result for the week and month is 3.6%. Not bad for just 4 days trading. Maybe he got lucky, I am eager to see the bigger picture over the coming months. If its good i'll definately put some additional funds in this one.

2006-06-29T08:32:00.000-07:00

Life in the hyipworld is going quite well so far. I have been posting on HyipDiscussion quite a lot and feel I have learnt quite a bit. Hard to believe that i've been in this business for nearly six months. I think I can even apply for access to the veterans folder on hyipD next month. Overall since starting I am in profit, so I am delighted about that. Thanks to many people along the way who have helped me get started in this business. I wondered how I could give something back, so I thought I’d outline some key things I have learnt along the way that may be of benefit to people just starting out. Firstly I will say I am not a ponzi player, I only put my money in programs I believe to be real.

To be successful in this business I have learnt it is very important to try and create a balanced, diversified portfolio that has the highest possible return, with the lowest possible risk. With the large amounts of fraudulent activity in the business, this is certainly easier said than done. If it is possible, choosing programs that generate returns from different sectors is certainly preferable. For example programs that are backed by forex, sports arbitrage, venture capital, etc.

When choosing an opportunity, I see two risk major factors, Fraud risk and operational risk. For example for a forex based program the operational risk would obviously be the trading risk.

The first thing I try to analyse is the fraud risk. No matter how good the program is, if there is a significant chance the admin may run away with all your money, I don't personally believe it's worth the risk. Obtaining ID documents from the admin and verifying them would be a good start here. If the verification procedure is successful, often this would mean the admin is less likely to act fraudulently, as he would be easier to trace. Although, this is not cast iron by any means. If the admin lived not to far away, perhaps you could go and visit him/her at home. If he/she appears settled with a family, again this may make it more difficult for the him/her to act fraudulently. I could personally go and visit Paul at NSFG, if he was agreeable, as he doesn't live too far away from me. For many people, the money they invest in online opportunities has been hard earned, so don't give it to a scammer!

If after investigating the fraud risk you feel happy, the next big risk is operational risk. Let’s say we are investigating an online opportunity backed by foreign exchange trading. It could be beneficial to analyse the traders trading career and how successful s/he has been. The first thing to be aware of is the fact that it is believed that only 5% of forex traders make money consistently. I have seen many amateur traders out there offering managed accounts because they don't feel comfortable risking their own money, so clearly extremely caution is needed here. As an example if after investigating the trader you find s/he has been trading managed accounts for people for the last five years, with great results, you are inevitable going to be more confident about the trading than if you have a newbie trading handling your money.

As always these online opportunities always involve a great deal of risk, and it is very important that only risk capital is used. The potential for good results is there, but one certainly must be extremely diligent and careful.

OK, if you’ve read this far, you must be bored senseless, so good luck and thanks for reading :)

wow I haven't posted for toooooo long.. sorry everyone..

2006-06-29T07:41:00.000-07:00

Good news on NSFG.. Due to orders not being filled properly they decided to change brokers. I understand that they began trading again last monday. Lets hope the results over the coming months improve. Despite their recent poor performane, they are still my favourite investment program. I have the most confidence that are real, backed by real trading. Also, I feel they have the lowest fraud risk of any "hyip" type program. Of course, the risk is still fairly high, but no risk = 5% per year. Due to the low fraud risk, if things were very dispointing at the end of the year and were only break even, I won't have lost anything. Lets see how they go over the coming months :)

After reading the forums, I understand the trader FX-Experts has been having some negative results lately, I am hopeful he can turn things around but it might be an idea to wait a while before investing here.

Programs Under Consideration

2006-05-02T04:39:00.000-07:00

In the months I have been investing in HYIPs I have learnt the importance of investigating programs that are potentials for the future, incase I want to buy some gold to invest or invest money I have withdrawn from another program. I personally feel it is very important that you have programs that you have thoroughly investigated ready for when you have funds available to do so. This way you never need to invest without proper investigation. I don't think you can be as successful or indeed even unsucessful in your money making endevours if you invest in programs on a whim, or at least the outcome would be more related to luck than anything else. Given the fact that so many people who play the hyip game lose money, I think anything you can do to reduce the risks and dependancy on luck has to be a positive step. With this in mind I have decided to add a section to my blog showing the programs I am currently investigating. "Programs currently under investigation".

NSFG - update

2006-04-29T06:24:00.000-07:00

As I understand, NSFG were having a good month and were nearing double figures, then one bad day on wednesday, where all their stops were hit in one nasty swoop sent us back to break even. I understand this is the final figure for the month +0%. Oh, well, disapointing but that is the reality of trading. Lets hope for a better month in May.

MPDW - Oh Dear

2006-04-29T06:15:00.001-07:00

The MPDW situation has been contraversial recently to say the least. Last week it got a whole lot uglier, too. They claim to have had a terrible week of trading and lost all of their reserve fund. This will undoubtidly give plenty of fire power to the people who think they are a ponzi. They claim to have a plan to attempt to resolve the problem, personally I have written this program off completely. It was a bad choice on my part. I now know I should have got out when they broke their promise to provide proof of trading. I certainly have learn a valuable lesson here. Thankfully, I did plan to invest more gold into the program but I never did, due to all the controversy. I am very glad I didnt. They were only a small part of my portfolio, so it won't hurt too badly. Avoid this program AT ALL COSTS!

Forums

2006-04-18T06:48:00.000-07:00

I have found forums very helpful for learning about investments. Over the past three months or so, some of the veterans have assisted me quite a lot. I am now in a position where I have a little to offer to newbies. I like to try and help where I can, as other people helped me a great deal, give and take. I thought I would add a forum section to my blog to tell others which forums I like. My favourite is definately hyipdiscussion, I find the people there very friendly, helpful and knowledgable and it is mainly orientated towards real investments, mostly backed by forex trading rather than fraudulent ponzi schemes. This is certainly to my personal preference. Other forums I like are Gold-horizons and Goldentalk. The biggest investment forum I am aware of is Talkgold. They are very good if you like to put your money into fraudulent ponzi schemes, as much of the focus at talkgold is about ponzis. This is not to my tastes, but each to their own :-)

MPDW

2006-04-16T02:18:00.001-07:00

I recieved my MPDW withdrawl this time. Although their recent actions have been very unprofessional and annoying, they are hstill paying so that is something. I am hoping they last long enough for me to get my principle out at least. In this arena who knows, I'm sure there will be many more twists and turns with MPDW in the future. I requested a withdrawl for 3 units this time even though i have nearly 4 units in my returns balance. The reason I left some in is because if profits are 3% per week, that would be around 0.6 units profit, for the amount I have invested. In a month that would be about 2.4 units. The minimum withdrawl is now 3 units. So, hopefully with having a little surplus in my returns balance will allow me to meet the minimum withdrawl next time and maybe the time after that, by this time I should have most of my principle out, fingers crossed. When I started with hyips, MPDW seemed one of the most transparent, honest programs out there. Now they seem highly evasive and appear not to care about keeping the members happy. Programs like NSFG are infinately more transparent and honest. The returns for this week have just been anonouced, 3%. If they are actually trading, they must be making very good returns to be able to pay us such returns. I have added MPDW to my "other programs I have joined" list, but I have not put the referal link in, as I do not recommend anyone join them

Udachu Invest

2006-04-15T15:55:00.001-07:00

I have been looking into udachu and the various oportunities that they offer from a distance for the past few weeks. It seemed a little confusing at first, but I seem to have grapsed what they all about. They are a company based in Panama. They have an investment fund that I understand started towards the end of 2005, they claim to have a diverse portfolio with a variety of different risk investments. Returns are currently fixed at 8% per month with a quarterly bonus. In February they began a Managed accounts service. I found this very interesting as I have not been able to see any actual proof of how they generate their returns. From reading the forums, a few people claim to have been to their office in Panama and been presented with as much DD information as they wanted. This all sounded very encouraging. The minimum for a Managed account is $10k, quite low for an MA. The Udachu fund has a $1k minimum. I do not feel comfortable enough yet to put $1k into the fund. I was very interested to see Udachu have introduced a new program called "Udachu Invest". As I understand, this is a forex trading pool. The minimum investment for this pool is only $100. I had $100 in my egold account from FX-Experts payments so I decided to give Udachu Invest a try. I am going to watch it closely over the coming weeks and see how things go. If I am more comfortable I may put more into this one.

NSFG added to feederfund?

2006-04-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

Good news for anybody in Feederfund who missed out on the NSFG entry deadline. Paul from NSFG mentioned in his last email that Matthew Calder from feederfund could add NSFG to their list of investments. March returns should be imminent.

NSFG now closed to new members

2006-03-26T15:06:00.000-08:00

I hope everybody who wanted to join did so in time. MPDW returns for this week are 3.10%

Programs I have Joined and Why

2006-03-24T10:19:00.000-08:00

I am newbie to this business, only starting in late december 2005. I have learn a lot in this short time and thought I would share some of my experiences with those who are interested.

My Favorite Program is North Sea Forex Group (NSFG). This program is run by Paul Twyman and Ken Peippo. They claim it is backed by forex trading. They are certainly one of the most transparent programs I have come accross to date. The returns are very good too, Around 20% or so since they started in September. They take 25% commision for their efforts which I think is very fair. They have a private forum on gold-horizons.com, where they show comprehensive DD information (Passports photos, household bills etc). In February they started a managed Forex account service, Unfortunately the first month was didn't goto plan, I believe they were around 8% down for the month. I went to their private forum and to my suprise they state that they plan to refund losses to managed account holders from their personal funds. This is the first time I have ever heard of this before, undoubtidly a very commendable gesture, I hope it works out for everyone. I am going to watch the Managed accounts very closely and maybe in the future consider investing in one. The minimum is $25k. Compounding is automatic until you withdraw.

My next Favorite program at the moment is FX-Experts. A first glance it looks like another run of the mill ponzi, with daily payouts, but a more indepth glance reveals it is much more than that. I like this program because a popular member (Rabbit) of the hyipdiscussion forum did some excellent DD on the program. He obtained and verified the admins personal ID documents and gained access to the programs trading account and saw proof of their live trading. Another reason I like this program is the returns. They have averaged around 14% or so a month. Payouts are weekly, and you can choose the percentage of the returns you wish to compound.

I also joined MPDW, but if I am honest I wish I hadn't now. I origonally joined because they seemed fairly open, and the returns were good. Many investors encouraged them to get audited by a third party, but they refused. Many investors claim they were promised proof of how the returns were generated, but none of this information was recieved. At this point I considered leaving the program, but I decided to stay, as it was paying as promised and was still a lot more transparent than most hyips out there. To my disapointment last week, they made some big changes. The big one being that your principle investment is to be locked in for 26 weeks. Previously you could withdraw your principle at any time. I see this as dishonest, and wonder why a real program would feel the need to do this. Could it be a Ponzi? Possible. If there are traders, perhaps they need to keep the account sizes up. We don't know, but it certainly leaves a very bad taste in my mouth, and I am sure most MPDW investors feel the same way. Returns go into a seperate balance in your back office, "Returns balance". You can withdraw from this balance or compound.

Hello everybody!

2006-03-24T10:16:00.000-08:00

This is my first entry in my first blog :D