Active Growth Investor Review – Caruso Insights Scam?

Active Growth Investor is a new trading course from Matt Caruso.. You can find it on the Caruso Insights website.

Before dropping serious money on this course you probably want to make sure it's not a scam.

This review will help you answer this question.

You'll get answers to additional questions as well including:

• If Matt is legit or not
• How much the course costs
• All background information

And more.

You'll know if Active Growth Investor is worth it by the time you're done reading.

Let's get into it!

3 Things To Know About Active Growth Investor

Before we get into what Active Growth Investor offers, let's take a look at some important information about Active Growth Investor, Caruso Insights and the creator Matt Caruso.

Here's what I think is the most important thing to know:

1) Matt Caruso Has A Lot Of Experience

Matt Caruso is the creator of Active Growth Investor and Caruso Insights.

The good news is Matt has a lot of experience in trading and investing.

This is pretty refreshing to see because a lot of people selling trading products online are just starting out.

Piece of advice: never buy a trading product from a person in their twenties.

Matt was a equity trader for National Bank Financial.

National Bank Financial is the 6th largest bank in Canada and manages over $200 billion in assets.

He worked there for 5 years.

After that he became a professor at Concordia University and taught the first finance course in Canada that focused on technical analysis.

From there he started Caruso Investments and launched Caruso Insights in June 2021.

2) Matt Has Verifiable Success

I review a lot of these investing programs and many are from snake oil salesman.

They sell trading courses and don't even really trade themselves.

Tom Gentile is an example of this. ClayTrader is another example. 

But Matt actually has verifiable success with investing and competes in the US Investing Championship.

In the first half of 2020 he had over 300% returns while in the contest.

He ended up finishing 4th with 346% returns.

Now this may sound amazing and it is a good accomplishment but it's not as great as it sounds.

Many people juice their returns for these competitions by sending out stock picks to their audience and having them inflate stock prices.

Mark Minervini gets accused of this. 

Matt was president of an investment firm while this was happening so who knows if he did this or not.

3) Mark Is Heavy On Technical Analysis

Like I mentioned before Mark taught the first technical analysis class in Canada.. Matt relies heavily on technical analysis in his trading.

Technical analysis requires you to analyze past performances of a stock and price to determine the price in the future.

This is done with charts.

It looks like the following:

Now there's a lot of debate whether technical analysis is even a legitimate trading method and many well known investors think it's a garbage practice.

Like I noted in a review yesterday, Peter Lynch and Warren Buffet both don't believe in technical analysis.

The problem with technical analysis (as Warren Buffet points out) is you can find a technical analysis pattern to verify any trade.

Buffet famously said he knew technical analysis was garbage when he flipped a chart upside down and got the same answer. 

Technical analysis assumes the market is predictable and you can guess the future by just looking at the past. 

However, in practice it can fail.

For example, a trader who goes by Mindful Trader bascktested his technical analysis strategy to the year 2000.

His results were phenomenal in backtesting.  

Here's what his strategy claims he would have earned since 2000:

This could crush the markets if he actually got results like this.

So what happened?

The Mindful Trader went live in 2021 with his strategy and is getting less than 10% returns (below the market). It's also 1/3rd the returns of his worst year in backtesting.

In theory technical analysis seems great. In practice it can lead to poor results. 

Recommended: The Best Place To Get High Return Stock Ideas

Active Growth Investor Overview

Active Growth Investor is a pretty simple and a short training program.

Here's a breakdown of what you'll get:

Education

The training program is broken into 8 modules and has 10 hours of material.

You get the following:

• Module 1 (Mindset) - In the first section you'll learn about the winning mindset Matt has cultivated through his years of trading.
• Module 2 (Settings Goals) - In module 2 you get a strategy development document that you fill out as you go through the course. You'll set your goals here as well.
• Module 3 (Principles) - Whenever starting something new you need to know the core principles of what you're starting. You'll get the core principles to investing and technical analysis here.
• Module 4 (Getting The Job Done) - In module 4 you'll learn about the tools and methods you need to trade like a pro.
• Module 5 (Portfolio Essentials) - You'll be building a portfolio as you begin trading.. here you'll learn all the tips and practices to keep a highly profitable portfolio going.
• Module 6 (Market Direction) - You'll learn how to gauge the market and makes trades based on the direction it's going.
• Module 7 (Long Term Success) - You'll only build wealth in the long term - trading rarely delivers fast results. Module 7 will set you up for the future so you have a long and healthy investment career.
• Module 8 (Deep Dive Case Studies) - Lastly you'll get some case studies that cover real life trading strategies.

On top of this you'll get 200 charts with notes and plenty of technical analysis strategies.

My Thoughts On Active Growth Investor

After going through Active Growth Investor I have a few thoughts about it.

Here's a summary of what I think:

It's Very Pricey

The price for Active Growth Investor is $1,299.. that's a lot for what you're getting.

Basically this is just 10 hours of training with some annotated charts.

There's plenty of programs that will give you training + stock picks + livestreams + a chatroom that cost less than this.

In terms of a program that is solely education, this is definitely on the pricier side.

I mean, if you go to Amazon and look at the top technical analysis books you'll find the following:

All of these books have hundreds to thousands of positive reviews and cost a fraction of Active Growth Investor.

I signed up for Kindle Unlimited and two of these books are free for me!

A big part of Active Growth Investor is the mindset training abut again.. on Amazon there's plenty of trading psychology books:

If you pair a couple of the technical analysis books up top with this book you'll pretty much get the same training.

For me it'll literally cost nothing. If you don't have Kindle Unlimited it'll cost you under $100.

If Active Growth Investor had something more than just the training (like a weekly newsletter or weekly livestream or SOMETHING), the price would make more sense.

I'm just not seeing the value here.

No Refunds (BOOOOO!)

You know what makes the price way worst?

You can't get your money back if you're dissatisfied.

Matt doesn't display that there are no refunds and you have to search through the terms and conditions to figure out there isn't one:

I basically never recommend any products that don't have a refund policy.

If someone isn't happy with what they get they should get their money back.

If you're confident in the course there won't be that many either.

So it's a red flag this program doesn't gives refunds.

There's Just Better Ways To Trade

I covered this earlier but just want to repeat it - technical analysis isn't the best way to trade.

And to top it off.. technical analysis is just so boring.

Do you really want to spend hours a week looking at complicated charts to predict a price?

Do you really want to learn all of these complicated strategies and then have a win rate of around 50%?

I promise you there's better ways to trade.

You need to actually look at a company and decide if they're worth investing in long term.

This includes looking at debt, revenue, product, competition, owner and more.

Invest in companies that you trust - don't invest based on a silly chart.

Recommended: The Best Place To Get High Return Stock Ideas

Active Growth Investor Conclusion

I like Matt and think he's a good trader.

I'm not sure how big of a deal him doing well in the US Investing Championship is because a lot of people think these competitions are rigged.

But it's still impressive he got verifiable results over 300%. 

He has a pretty impressive resume as well.

However, this course is a swing and miss in my opinion.

The price is crazy for what you're getting - 10 hours of training just isn't enough for $1,299.

Not having refunds drives me crazy.

Unless Matt adds some serious bonuses (like a newsletter or livestreams) I can't recommend it. 

Here's A Better Opportunity

I'd pass on Active Growth Investor.

The good news is there's plenty of resources out there to help you make profitable investments.

To see my favorite place to get high return stock ideas (that's very affordable), click below: