I stumbled across the CoPilot by TradeSmith system through a presentation called “The Friday Royalties Summit” featuring Racheal Pierce and Keith Kaplan.
During the presentation, Keith says it’s possible to “accelerate your retirement by 10, 20, even 30 years” thanks to a “relatively new financial instrument” that’s overlooked by most investors.
He says you could take 28 years worth of stock market gains, and cut them down to just one Friday, every week. Without investing in regular options, penny stocks, or crypto.
Sounds good, but what is it exactly?
Friday Royalties is a term Keith Kaplan uses to describe the trade opportunities that members of his service, CoPilot by TradeSmith, can benefit from every Friday at 4pm.
The service costs $1,500 to join, and provides members with weekly trade ideas, as well as a tool for identifying potentially profitable options trades based on Keith’s algorithms.
Is it legit?
To help answer that, let’s take a closer look at what “Friday Royalties” are, how the CoPilot by TradeSmith system works, and who Keith Kaplan is.
What Are Friday Royalties?
I first heard the term “Friday Royalties” through The Friday Royalties Summit, which is essentially a video presentation (AKA sales pitch) featuring Racheal Pierce and Keith Kaplan.
The general gist of the presentation was that you could start collecting fairly significant payments, every Friday afternoon, just by plugging in to Keith’s system.
Here’s a snippet taken from the presentation page:
Welcome to The “Friday Royalties” Summit, where we’ll reveal the ONE SECRET you could use to take 28 years of stock market gains and cut them down to just ONE Friday… And do so EVERY single week!
I have to admit, I was quite curious to know what the heck a “Friday Royalty” even was.
So I sat through what felt like an eternity, watching a presentation where Rachael and Keith went round and round… and round in circles talking about it – without really clarifying anything.
Eventually though, Keith sheds some light on what Friday Royalties are.
The term Friday Royalty is used to describe the options trade opportunities Keith Kaplan provides to members of his service, CoPilot by TradeSmith.
It’s actually quite common for gurus in the trading and investing space to come up with all kinds of unusual names to describe what they’re offering. Probably because it adds an element of curiosity and makes what they’re offering sound more unique.
To be fair, Keith’s system does appear to be somewhat unique.
It’s based on an automated software he developed that helps users spot multi-day options trade opportunities that, according to Keith, could help you make considerable profits within days.
Keith says the idea is to place the trade on Monday and collect the “Friday Royalties” (AKA profits) at the end of the week, at 4pm on Friday.
That’s the general idea anyway, there is more to it than that. So let’s take a closer look at how it works, so you have a better idea of what to expect if you do decide to join.
How Does CoPilot by TradeSmith Work?
Keith Kaplan’s CoPilot system is all about trading options.
And basically, stock options give you the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a given stock on or before a specific date.
So, unlike traditional stocks where you can buy and hold actual shares of a company, stock options give you a way to speculate on the price movements of a given stock (up or down), without actually owning any of the shares yourself.
This article on Investopedia explains options trading in more detail, so I recommend checking that out if you want to learn more.
In any case, the good thing about options is that they allow you to bet on the price of a stock going up or down, and you can use leverage to maximize your returns.
The downside is that it’s very complicated compared to buying regular stocks, and it can be very risky, especially if you’re using any type of leverage.
Keith does say that his strategy doesn’t involve “risky regular options” in the presentation. Which may be true to some extent, given Keith’s CoPilot system seems to operate in a fairly unique manner. But it still involves trading options, and all types of options trading is risky.
How does the CoPilot system work?
According to Keith, there are three main steps involved with how he identifies and shares his options trades with members of the CoPilot system.
- The first step involves Time Series Momentum
- The second step is all about risk asymmetry
- And the third step is about the Potential of Profit
The first step has to do with something called Time Series Momentum.
Which, according to this article, is “an asset-pricing anomaly in financial markets that was only recently documented by academia” that “tends to generate strong risk-adjusted returns.”
This may explain the part in the Friday Royalties pitch where Keith says his strategy revolves around a “relatively new financial instrument.”
In any case, Keith says he starts with a group of 586 stocks, and uses Time Series Momentum to determine which stocks are moving in the right direction (up or down) and for how long they’ve been trending in a given direction.
Next, Keith says he looks for opportunities with asymmetric risk. Meaning options trading opportunities with the lowest potential risk, and the highest potential reward.
Lastly, he looks at the probability of the trade actually being profitable, and refers to this as the Probability of Profit (or POP).
According to Keith, all of this is automated with the help of his software, and he shares the information with members of the system in a user friendly environment.
That way, you can decide for yourself which trades you want to place based on the information the system provides you with on a weekly basis.
Recommended: Go here to see my #1 rated stock advisory of 2024
What Do You Get If You Join?
The main benefit of joining CoPilot by TradeSmith is getting access to 12 months of trade ideas, that are based on Keith Kaplan’s trading algorithm.
Each trade opportunity shows you the ticker symbol, Probability of Profit and the potential ROI, along with other metrics you can use to help decide if you want to place the trade or not.
On top of this, members get a weekly email every Sunday that provides you with a market overview and the top 10 options plays that the system recommends for the coming week.
There are also some bonuses included to help you get the most out of the membership.
The first bonus is The “Friday Royalties” Blueprint which walks you through Keith’s strategy in more detail. The second is a 3-part video master class to show you how to actually place trades. And the third is real-time push notification alerts you can use to help automate your trading.
How much does it cost to join?
According to the website, the cost of joining CoPilot by TradeSmith is normally $5,000 but as of writing this, the price has been set at $1,500 per year.
If what Keith says about his service is true, then that might be a justifiable price. Keep in mind, however, that there are no refunds. They only offer a 90 day guarantee that if you’re not happy with the service, you can switch to using another service run by TradeSmith.
Who’s Keith Kaplan and What’s TradeSmith?
Keith Kaplan is the man behind the Friday Royalties Summit, CoPilot by TradeSmith service, and the CEO of TradeSmith.
According to the website, TradeSmith is a company that provides a “powerful suite of risk-management and portfolio analysis tools” for individual, self-directed investors.
Here’s a snippet taken from the company website:
First and foremost, TradeSmith raises the rallying call to individual, self-directed investors. We want you to know that you have a tremendous edge in the markets. TradeSmith began as a simple way to track portfolios using trailing stops, and has evolved to become a powerful suite of risk-management and portfolio analysis tools.
Source: https://tradesmith.com/tradesmith-mission
CoPilot by TradeSmith appears to be one of the newer services the company provides.
Other services listed on the site include TradeStops by TradeSmith, Ideas by TradeSmith, Crypto by TradeSmith and TradeSmith Decoder. The site also provides education and resources aimed at helping people become successful traders.
Is Keith Kaplan a real trading guru?
Keith doesn’t exactly describe himself as a trading expert, nor does he have a particularly noteworthy history of successful trading. At least, not from what I can see.
According to Keith, his main speciality is in developing software. Specifically, software that helps businesses and trading professionals automate their processes.
After obtaining a degree in Computer Information Systems, Keith says he spent 20 years as a software architect and built enterprise software for some of the biggest tech firms in the world including GE, Walmart and Pepsi.
And according to the Friday Royalties presentation, he says he struck a deal with some notable investing gurus who wanted him to create software for them.
The deal was, according to Keith, that he would build their systems and help automate their trading, if they would share their trading and investing knowledge with him.
So that’s what he did. And it seems to have paid off because, according to Keith, he has helped over 37,000 people trade more successfully since getting into the space.
Bottom Line: Should You Join Keith’s System?
On one hand, The Friday Royalties Summit presentation makes the CoPilot system sound like an easy way to make money every Friday. Keith more or less says you can just place the recommended trade on Monday, and collect the “Friday Royalties” each Friday.
I personally doubt it’s going to be THAT simple.
But TradeSmith does look like a legitimate company, and the service does seem to offer users a lot of value, so it could be worth checking out.
On the other hand, by joining something like this, you’re really putting a lot of faith in the system Keith has created, that it will help you profit in the way he suggests.
And given it’s still a fairly new service, there aren’t a lot of third party reviews and testimonials out there to prove that it actually will generate consistent profits.
Most, if not all, of the profit examples Keith provides in the presentation are the result of back testing the system. Which basically means running the system through old market data to see how it would have performed in the market in previous days, weeks, months and years.
So I do wonder what sort of results real users are seeing in real time.
This, coupled with the fact that trading options can be extremely risky, and it’s not possible to get a cash refund if you’re unhappy with the system, makes me a little cautious.
To be clear, I don’t think it’s a scam. And it could prove to be a great trading system. Or at the very least, a great tool to help you with your existing trading system.
I just wouldn’t join and expect to start “collecting” payments every Friday. Or without understanding that it’s very easy to lose money when you’re speculating on stock price movements, especially over relatively short periods of time.
Either way, I hope you found this helpful, and if you’d like to share your experience with with Keith Kaplan’s system, feel free to drop a comment below.
I paid up for C0-Pilot last January. You are too polite in your comments.
To make serious money with the recommendations in Co-Pilot you need a substantial cash bank before you start , especially if you sell the put options. This should be made crystal clear but is not in the slick marketing video. without a large cash bank, you can’t safely use the system even if it works well.
Worse still, I reluctantly accepted credit ($2000) on my Tradesmith account but now find that I can’t use it for another product. They are either incompetent or crooked, or both. By the way, I rate Insider Weekly.
Yeah, I’ve never been a fan of the marketing behind these types of programs because it always makes it sound better than it is. Thanks for sharing.
thanks for the info. I was about to buy. I am a member of oxford club where they have been promoting it heavily. From my understanding of selling puts, would you not sell a put at a price below the BUY recommendation of the club advice and thus make money. Because if they are sure the stock will go up, and you say I am happy to buy it at a lower price (which most people would), then you get paid because you are selling at a higher price today than what you would buy it at in future. Worst case if it goes down, you are buying it as a a good deal. Please correct me.