A reader asked: “Have you evaluated the newsletter at KeyTurningDates.com by Stephen Campbell?”
The offeror is Stephen Carpenter, not Stephen Campbell. There is not much information on the site:
The home page claims that the “KeyTurningDates Tutorial” provides “discoveries for timing any market, any individual stock, in any timeframe, with amazing accuracy!” The site disclaimer states: “The information on this website and in the KeyTurningDates.com monthly letters, the interim reports, or in any other correspondence, either written or oral…carries no warranty, either express or implied.” In other words, the offeror claims but does not warrant “amazing accuracy.” Confirmation bias and monetary incentive suggest that one should not rely solely on an offeror’s claims of past accuracy or an offeror’s presentation of favorable testimonials as proof of value.
Since the “Past Forecasts” page provides no past forecasts or links to any past forecasts, it is not possible to evaluate the “forecasts.”
The “Samples” page does not provide enough information for reliable inference.
There is not enough information on the “‘Old Reliable’ Cycle” page to determine whether the dates were predicted out of sample or extracted retrospectively. If predicted, there is not enough information to tell what signals the service gave at the time. There is not enough information to tell whether the cycle methodology generated spurious signals.
Evidence that would be useful in evaluating the offeror’s claims includes:
- Posting for free review a complete set of obsolete newsletters on the site. Complete information on expired signals would likely support analysis of the statistical strength and economic value of those signals.
- Posting for free review the offeror’s investment performance based on the signals given in the newsletter. Since the offeror’s methods enable timing “in any timeframe, with amazing accuracy,” his investment performance should be amazingly good and amazingly consistent.
It is reasonable to question why someone who should be amazingly wealthy (if his claims are accurate) would bother with the effort of writing and administering retail sales of reports and newsletters.
