Gorilla Trades Review – A 20-Year Old Stock Picking Service

About Gorilla Trades

Gorilla Trades is a stock-picking service that uses a moderately aggressive strategy to identify profitable trades. While Gorilla Trades is light on the research presented to subscribers, the service does issue multiple entry points and stop loss levels for every stock pick. In addition, users have access to the full history of trades made on the platform and the current portfolio, so it’s possible to evaluate how different types of stock picks have performed in the past.

Is this stock picking service worth paying for? Keep reading our Gorilla Trades review to find out.

Gorilla Trades Pricing Options

Gorilla Trades offers a 30-day free trial. After that, a Gorilla Trades annual subscription costs $499.95. You can also buy a two-year subscription for $750.

Ken Berman – The Man Behind Gorilla Trades

Investment advice is only as credible as its source. If Warren Buffett tells you about a scorching hot investment opportunity, you listen. If some random guy at work tells you about a hot opportunity, you may want to do your own research.

So, who is providing the investment advice at Gorilla Trades?

Ken Berman founded Gorilla trades in 1999. Ken Berman had an interest in the stock market from a young age and found early success from investing in biotech stocks.

Ken Berman used to work as Vice President of Investments at two reputable firms where he had over $100 million under management. Eventually, Berman left those firms to trade on his own. He claims to have turned $250,000 into $5.5 million in just 18 months. He realized he had a system that worked and he decided to launch Gorilla Trades to share his trading strategy.

Ken Berman is also a contributor at a few different services, including Forbes and Kiplinger.

Trading Strategy

The Gorilla Trades system relies heavily on technical analysis to identify potential stock trades. In particular, the vast majority of the stocks picked by the platform’s analysts are exhibiting a bullish ascending triangle pattern. The stocks are “triggered” for buying when they break out above this pattern. This trigger price is used as the entry price and a buy alert is issued to members.

This is a notable difference in trading strategy from trading services like The Motley Fool and Stansberry Research, which rely significantly more on fundamental stock analysis and company research to identify stock picks.

Another important difference to Gorilla Trades’ strategy is that it relies heavily on confirmation of the breakout with a volume signal. In many cases, traders are advised to wait until a breakout is confirmed by above-average trading volume to begin buying a stock pick. Gorilla Trades also sets trailing stop losses for every recommended trade as a risk management technique. This prevents some of the greater than 10% losses incurred with the Action Alerts Plus strategy. The only form of scaling recommended by Gorilla Trades is scaling out – every stock is given two price targets. The platform recommends selling 75% of shares when the first target is achieved. To ensure that winning trades are able to reap big rewards, the second price target may occasionally be raised while a position is open.

Overall, trading stocks with this strategy appears to be quite successful. Most stocks with confirmed breakouts return gains of around 10% each. Importantly, losses are kept to within 7% for almost all trades thanks to the practice of trailing stop losses. The buy and sell parameters for each trade are crystal clear, and the daily emails provide consistent and reliable advice.

Gorilla Trades Features

Stock Picks

Gorilla Trades is a stock-picking service that offers daily updates on stock picks as the analysts behind the platform find potentially profitable trades. With every pick that Gorilla Trades publishes, the trading service issues one or more entry levels, one or more target prices, and a stop loss level. Gorilla Trades also issues each stock a risk rating on a scale of 1-5 depending on the volatility and risk-to-return expectancy of the stock.

This information gives investors everything they need to make trading decisions. Everyone has a different approach to stock trading and the picks are versatile enough to be applicable to a range of trading strategies. For example, short-term investors may choose to sell stocks (or options) at the first target price whereas long-term investors may hold out for the second target. Regardless of your trading style, you should adhere to the stop loss recommended. Here is an example pick from the service:

As a Gorilla Trades subscriber, you also have access to a few helpful resources. There’s an Excel or web-based table that is updated each day to reflect the current Gorilla Trades portfolio. In addition, a daily email includes everything you need to know about new stock picks and offers a rundown of picks from the previous 5 days. There’s also an Excel spreadsheet that shows every pick – winning and losing – going back as far as 2003.

During our review, we were happy to see that Gorilla Trades is transparent about the service’s track record. Subscribers can see all of the historical picks, and analyze the performance of the portfolio. Since the data goes back to 2003, you can see how Gorilla Trades covers a bear market.

Note that in addition to bullish stock picks, Gorilla Trades also issues short picks when applicable. However, these are relatively rare.

Gorilla Trades also issues so-called “picklets,” small-cap stock picks for tickers with stock prices less than $5. However, there are typically only a few of these per year (e.g. only five picks in 2018), so these picks may have limited use for most traders.

Emails

Gorilla Trades sends two emails each day. The first is a mid-day email, issued around 1pm Eastern, that describes how the overall stock market is doing during the day and highlights any stock picks that have triggered entry or exit points.

GorillaTrades’ nightly email goes into much greater depth and is the primary medium for presenting trade ideas. First, it summarizes the week’s activity and the current status of the Gorilla Trades portfolio. While the number of links back to the site can make this newsletter hard to follow, the information contained within it is quite useful. The newsletter will also identify any picks that have been stopped out over the course of the week.

Perhaps most important, the weekly email contains a detailed discussion of the stock market trends and news that are impacting the portfolio. For investors who are performing their own analyses on the Gorilla Trades stock picks, this analysis can be highly informative. The discussion also covers how current Gorilla Trades stock picks are faring compared to the market overall.

Annotated Charts

Gorilla Trades doesn’t have standard interactive stock charts, but rather annotated static charts that illustrate entry and exit points for new stock picks. The annotated charts are similar to IBD’s MarketSmith and Leaderboard services, but they’re limited to a select few stock picks.

While these charts can be accessed from the current portfolio, it is also possible to search individual stock tickers – although most stocks will not have annotations.

Options Picks

In addition to stock picking, the Gorilla Trades service also makes some options picks. However, whereas stock picks are issued on a daily basis, the service will generally offer only one option idea per week. The idea of the week is intended for investors who understand how options work. These option ideas are more aggressive than the stock trading picks in that they have higher risk and higher reward potential

Gorilla Trades Service Differentiators

At its heart, Gorilla Trades is a stock picking service – of which there are many available. What sets Gorilla Trades apart is that it focuses on bullish ascending triangle patterns to identify potential trades. In addition, the platform keeps a track record of its trades available for subscribers, which makes it possible to get an idea of how the service has performed in a particular sector or set up in the past. Overall, Gorilla Trades is a great service that performs relatively well compared to the broader market and limits its losses compared to stock picking platforms like Action Alerts Plus.

The other thing that sets Gorilla Trades apart is that it looks at a variety of picks. In addition to standard stock picks, Gorilla Trades issues “picklets” for small-cap stocks and weekly options picks. The end-of-week email gives a wealth of information about the overall state of the stock market and the current Gorilla Trades portfolio.

Check out some of our other stock newsletter reviews to see how Gorilla Trades compares:

• Motley Fool Review (Full Comparison: Gorilla Trades vs. Motley Fool)
• Oxford Club Review
• Forbes Investor Review
• Fidelity Investor Review
• Nate’s Notes Review
• Action Alerts Plus Review
• Stansberry Research Review

What Type of Trader is Gorilla Trades Best For?

By taking a technical-focused approach to trading stocks rather than trying to play corporate news, Gorilla Trades can appeal to a relatively wide variety of traders. Stocks in the portfolio are usually held for a period of several months, making it an ideal choice for active investors who are comfortable with incurring short-term gains.

While less experienced investors could blindly follow Gorilla Trades’ stock suggestions given the entry and exit points, new stock picks are often announced with relatively little explanation. Therefore, traders using Gorilla Trades should also be comfortable doing their own research to decide which stock picks to act on.

You should also be comfortable with technical trading if you want to manage the stock picks properly. Weekly options picks add even more value for traders who are familiar with options trading.

Given Gorilla Trades’ price tag and the fact that there are multiple stock picks per week, this service may not make sense if you have a very small trading account. Based on our Gorilla Trades review, we recommend having at least $5,000 to commit to this money management strategy to get the most out of it. You can take advantage of the 30-day free trial to test out whether this stock picking service is right for you.

Pros

• 15+ year track record
• Reliable stock picking service with well-demarcated entry and exit points
• Twice-daily emails with updates on stock picks
• Historical stock pick data back to 2003
• Option idea of the week issued for traders who like trading options
• Special situation picks for small caps set up for long-term growth
• 30-day free trial

Cons

• Expensive annual subscription
• Emails and site can be hard to navigate at first