True Market Insiders Review: Legit Company or Scam?

Are you wondering if True Market Insiders is a scam? And do you want to know more about the company to figure out if it’s worth getting involved with?

If so, you’ve come to the right place.

I’ve reviewed several True Market Insiders services and presentations on this blog, and I’ve looked into the company itself to find out if it’s legit. And in this post, I’ll show you everything I’ve uncovered to help you decide if it’s worthwhile or not.

I’ll start by giving you an overview of the company and who’s behind it. Then, I’ll show you what it’s selling and share my opinion on whether or not I think it’s a scam.

What Is True Market Insiders?

True Market Insiders LLC is a Florida-based financial publishing company founded by Chris Rowe. It’s unclear when the company started, but the whois website shows that the truemarketinsiders.com domain was registered in August 2016.

The company sells a range of investment research services and trading tools, which are each run by different “gurus” and cover different strategies. However, the common goal among all of them is helping self-directed investors make better investment decisions.

And according to the company website, their “secret sauce” is helping subscribers see what’s “really happening” in the “True Stock Market” by going beyond broad market indexes like the S&P 500 and delving into the individual market sectors.

True Market Insiders isn’t a registered investment advisor. Instead, the company shares research (free and paid) and investment ideas that you can choose to follow using your brokerage account. In this way, it’s similar to most other financial publishers I’ve written about, including Banyan Hill, Angel Publishing, and InvestorPlace.

How Does True Market Insiders Work?

The general idea is to visit the company website, choose a research service or trading tool you like, sign up, and use what you learn to (hopefully) make money in the market. Of course, there’s no guarantee you’ll make money, but that’s the goal.

True Market Insiders has also put together a “four-part program” that is essentially a “recommended path” you can take when getting started with the company.

Here’s how the four-part program works:

• The first part of the program is to subscribe to the free True Market Insider e-Letter. This provides commentary, market analysis, and investment education via email. The newsletter is sent out every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
• The second step involves joining Sector Focus, True Market Insider’s flagship investment advisory service, where Chris Rowe shows you the market sectors he’s tracking and which investments he’s interested in. This service costs between $49 and $129 per year.
• The third step in the program involves joining Sector Prophets for $997, which is a suite of trading tools designed to help you find strong sectors in the market. And according to the company website, you get access to the “same leverage-creating devices large money managers use” but easier to use and designed specifically for the strategies you learn as a subscriber of TMI research services, including Sector Focus.
• The fourth and final part of the True Market Insiders program is joining a course called Technical Analysis Millionaire (TAM). According to Chris Rowe, this is a 24-lesson course that teaches you all the elements of his investing methodology. The website doesn’t disclose how much this costs, but I’m willing to bet it’s not cheap.

That pretty much covers what True Market Insiders is about and how it works. In the next section, I’ll give you the heads up about Chris Rowe, the person behind TMI.

Who Is Chris Rowe?

Chris Rowe is the founder and owner of True Market Insiders LLC.

According to his True Market Insiders profile, Chris Rowe began his career in 1995 serving high-net-worth individuals for Wall Street money management firms and investment banks.

During his time on Wall Street, the site says Chris Rowe mostly managed equities, bonds, and options. However, between 1999 to the first half of 2000, Chris Rowe’s profile states that he worked for a New York firm specializing in short-selling. And during that time, helped underwrite Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) and private placements.

So, based on that, Rowe has a broad range of experience in trading stocks and options. He’s also been involved with helping startups raise money and get publicly listed.

From there, Chris Rowe started publishing his financial analysis and insights in 2003, which led to him co-founding Tycoon Publishing in 2004.

The site doesn’t mention who he founded the company with. However, I recently wrote about a presentation from Dylan Jovine of Behind The Markets, and while researching that, I learned that Jovine was the other founder of Tycoon Publishing.

In any case, Tycoon Publishing was very similar to True Market Insiders; the company sold investment-related research and tools aimed at helping self-directed investors. And it was acquired by Agora in 2011, a company that owns many individual publishing sites.

Today, Chris Rowe runs True Market Insiders, heads up several of the company’s services, and contributes to the TMI blog. He also works with other finance gurus, including Bill Spencer and Costas Bocelli, who run different TMI services.

Aside from True Market Insiders, Chris Rowe is the owner and CIO of a registered investment advisory firm called Rowe Wealth Management LLC.

Like TMI, this company is located in Florida, and it appears to embrace a similar investment philosophy to what subscribers of True Market Insiders services are shown. However, these are two completely separate companies; a point Chris Rowe emphasizes on the site.

The main difference is that Rowe Wealth Management is a registered investment advisory, whereas TMI is a publishing company that shares research and ideas.

In other words, unlike TMI, Rowe Wealth Management manages client funds. And according to investor.com, the firm currently has almost $48 million in assets under management.

So, to sum it up, Chris Rowe has almost three decades of experience as a wealth manager and educator in the investment research space. And my research hasn’t uncovered anything to suggest that his story is fake.

What stocks has he recommended?

As I explain in this post about Chris Rowe’s predictions and stock picks, Chris Rowe claims to have recommended numerous triple-digit and quadruple-digit stocks over the past couple of decades, including Amazon, Qualcomm, Tasr, and GLW Corning.

From what I’ve seen, many of his stock picks center around technology companies. However, as I’ll explain in the next section, Chris Rowe’s investment philosophy isn’t tied to any one sector. Instead, it centers around identifying the strongest sector at any given time.

What Is Sector Focus?

Sector Focus is True Market Insider’s flagship investment research service, where Chris Rowe shares ongoing market analysis and investment recommendations.

As the name suggests, the service focuses on finding the best potential sectors to invest in, which makes it different from most services I’ve come across that are tied to one specific “theme” like technology stocks or commodities.

Why does Chris Rowe focus on specific sectors? I’ve put together a complete review of Sector Focus, so I recommend checking that out if you want all the details.

However, in short, Chris Rowe analyzes the major sectors to find those with the greatest relative strength to the overall market. In other words, he looks for the broad market sectors he believes are performing best. And within these, he looks for the strongest sub-sectors, the best industry groups, and the highest-potential ETFs and stocks.

So, put differently, he uses a top-down approach to find investments before sharing his picks with subscribers.

I can’t speak for Chris Rowe, but my understanding of why he takes this approach relates to both the upside potential and limiting downside risk.

On the one hand, you could theoretically see more upside potential by choosing a stock or ETF in a strong, relatively small sector versus betting on a larger index like the Dow or S&P 500. And on the other hand, you could potentially see less downside than picking a stock in a “weak” sector. That’s my take on it, anyway.

And, of course, there are no guarantees when it comes to investing, so you could just as easily be wrong and end up losing money. Not to mention, this strategy involves more effort and active trading than betting on the S&P 500, and it’s potentially riskier.

So, like anything, there are pros and cons to consider. But that’s the general idea of what Sector Focus is about – helping subscribers find investments within strong sectors.

As a Sector Focus subscriber, you get access to an average of ten trade ideas each month, weekly sector analysis updates, and a video at the start of the month featuring a sector Chris Rowe believes has the best potential in the month ahead.

How much does it cost?

The cost to join Sector focus is either $49, $79, or $129, depending on which page you join through and which membership option you choose. The main difference between each option is the bonus research reports TMI offers, which are often changing.

What Other Services Does TMI Sell?

True Market Insiders sells at least a dozen individual investment subscriptions and tools that I know of. The main service is Sector Focus, which is also the lowest cost service, but there are other advisories and tools that cater to different investors.

Here’s a summary of TMI’s services and tools:

• Sector Focus ($49 to $129): Service run by Chris Rowe that seeks to identify a strong, broad market sector before “niching down” to an individual stock or ETF.
• Founder’s Forecast ($49): Advisory service run by Bill Spencer and Tim Fortier that focuses on tech-related investments.
• Monthly Trend Trader ($49): Trading service run by Costas Bocelli that claims to show you “how to front-run wall street institutions and hedge funds.” See my review of Monthly Trend Trader to learn more.
• Sector Prophets ($997): Package of tools and guides aimed at helping you find strong sectors and trade more successfully.
• Checkpoint Trader ($2,497): Trading service run by Chris Rowe that claims to help subscribers “save you hours of time and boatloads of stress” when managing a portfolio while also helping you multiply profits.
• Dark Money Indicator (price unknown): According to the TMI website, this is a “patent-pending market indicator” developed by Costas Boccelli.
• Deep Market Trader ($1,995): Chris Rowe trading service that claims to help you “position yourself on the Deep Market side” of trades made by “Deep Market players.”
• Options Soup (price unknown): Options trading service headed up by Chris Rowe and Costas Bocelli designed to “make options a snap to use and understand.”
• Profit Skimmer ($1,995): Costas Bocelli service that, according to the TMI website, is all about “Skimming the Market” to improve your chances of seeing a winning trade.
• Precision Profits ($1,997): Bill Spencer trading service that claims to help subscribers “detect when deep-pocket insiders are up to their old tricks” and “piggyback on their moves to potentially oversized returns.”
• Technical Analysis Millionaire (TAM): This is a 4-part, 24 lesson course that shows you all the elements of Chris Rowe’s investing methodology.
• True Sovereign Profits ($1,497): Crypto trading service run by Marco Wutzer that, from what I can gather, is focused on helping subscribers trade altcoins.

There’s also a free True Market Insider e-Letter that shares market analysis and commentary and is sent to subscribers every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Is True Market Insiders a Scam?

I don’t believe True Market Insiders is a scam, but some of the marketing is a bit overhyped, in my opinion. And I did find mixed reviews about the company online.

Let’s start with why I think it’s legit…

Firstly, based on my research, Chris Rowe appears to be a genuine investment expert. I don’t know him personally, but his story seems to check out. And if it were a lie, it’d be an unusually elaborate one. So I think he is who he claims to be.

Second, the True Market Insiders website has been around for at least six years now, assuming the site launched when the domain was registered in 2016. And I’d expect to see a lot more complaints than I found if this was a scam. Not to mention, if it were a scam, I bet the FTC would’ve shut TMI down long ago given how much attention the site gets, especially since Rowe runs a separate (and registered) wealth management firm.

Third, the company offers a 30 or 60-day refund policy with the services I mentioned earlier. So even if you join and don’t like it, you should be able to request a refund based on what the company website states. Although I recommend checking this before signing up.

Lastly, there are lots of reviews online about the different services the company runs, and I haven’t found anything that suggests TMI is outright scamming people.

So, it looks legit. However, I did find some of the marketing overly “flashy” and hyped at times. And True Market Insiders does pitch additional products to subscribers after joining, which has led to complaints that the company “just keeps pushing product” by some.

That doesn’t surprise me, though. Because the four-part program I discussed earlier essentially “funnels” you from being a free subscriber to paying for progressively higher-priced services, which is a very common approach in the stock advisory space.

Of course, selling more products doesn’t make something illegitimate, but sometimes the marketing behind sites like TMI can be off-putting.

What are other people saying? I went through lots of reviews to see what people were saying, and it’s a mix of positive and negative. However, overall, I found that the reviews tend to lean towards TMI’s services being legitimate and worthwhile.

For example, I came across some complaints on the True Market Insiders Facebook page that suggest it’s a scam, and the common thread was customer service not returning calls when a refund was requested.

That’s a pretty easy one to check, though. The company’s U.S. phone number is 855.822.0269. So you could always call to “test” the customer service before joining.

On the flip side, there are dozens of in-depth reviews on stockgumshoe.com from people who claim to have joined different TMI services, and most of them seem either neutral or positive. So you might find those helpful, too.

Bottom Line

True Market Insiders is one of the more well-known financial education companies in the space, and they offer a variety of services for traders and investors alike.

Based on my research, I do think it’s a genuine company. However, it might pay to take some of the marketing with a grain of salt and keep in mind that, as with any company, there’s no guarantee their products or services will help you make money.

If you are considering joining a TMI service, my suggestion would be to start with the free e-letter or Sector Focus. That way, you can get a feel for what the company offers without risking money on the higher-priced services upfront.

Anyway, that’s my take.

What about you? Have you joined a True Market Insiders service? And if so, what has been your experience? Let me know in the comments section below.