Frequently Asked Questions

Here's a list of the most commonly asked questions. If you're unsure what something means, this should be your first resource to check.

Free Trial Subscription Questions

Every new Rebel Investor user gets a FREE fully functional trial to ANY portfolio of their choice. No strings attached, and no credit card is required.

How to Redeem Your Trial Subscription: Simply go to any portfolio that you want to subscribe to and click the blue "Subscribe for Free" button.

If you're already logged into your Rebel Investor account, you're all set. If you're not logged in, you'll be prompted to register using your Phone Number and Email Address, and then asked to finish the registration process.

During the trial signup you'll be given the option to enable TXT and Email Notifications (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!). Simply uncheck the boxes if you don't want automatic updates sent to you.

To continue receiving updates, and ongoing access to the portfolio after your trial period, simply Subscribe to the portfolio by clickin the green "Subscribe" button drop-down menu. From there you'll start the process of adding your payment information.

Misc Questions

At the bottom of your mobile browser, you'll see this icon:

Click the icon and then click "Add to Home Screen." Note: you might need to scroll sideways through the icon options to find the add to home screen button.

Here's a video walkthrough:

Android User Instructions:

If you're on an Android device, you can follow the simple instructions here.

Portfolios and Trading

We use your portfolio's starting cash amount in order to calculate an actual return for your portfolio.

We only display your portfolio's starting cash amount to your paid subscribers when a subscriber views the calculations of your return and risk score.

We require a verified phone number from:

  1. Anyone who wants to subscribe to other Rebels
  2. Rebels with a portfolio

This step helps secure Rebel Investor™ from bots and scammers, and provides a layer of protection against those that would abuse the system.

Requiring a phone number also helps to prevent us from sending text notifications to fake phone numbers.

Helpful tips: You can always turn off text alerts if preferred from your Communication Settings. We also suggest that Rebels with a portfolio subscribe to their own portfolio so they can see all the alerts they send to their subscribers in real time. Subscribing to your own portfolio is free!

When we list a return percentage for a portfolio, we use Time Weighted Returns (TWR).

We chose TWR because it's the most accurate measure of how an investor has performed from day one, regardless of deposit and withdrawal activities.

For an overview of different type of returns, and more information on how Time Weighted Return is calculated, click here (investopedia)

At Rebel Investor™, we use the Sharpe ratio to determine each portfolio's Risk Score. The Sharpe ratio is a measure of how much return the portfolio has made, relative it's level of risk.

Here's a simple example: Two competing portfolios both had single year returns of 30%. Portfolio A has a Sharpe ratio of 1.25, while portfolio B has a Sharpe ratio of 0.75. This indicates that Portfolio A provided the same return at a lower level of risk than Portfolio B.

It's not unusual for your Sharpe ratio to flucuate over the short term after setting up, or updating your portfolio.

What the numbers mean:

To give some context to what these numbers mean, From 1976 to 2011, Berkshire Hathaway had a Sharpe ratio of 0.76. During the same time, the overall stock market had a Sharpe ratio of 0.39. Given this context, it's a bit easier to understand what different scores mean. It's important to understand that everyone will view risk in different terms. What's "good" to someone, may be "too risky" to others. But the Sharpe ratio gives you a measure to compare how each portfolio arrived at their returns relative to their chosen level of risk.

  • Score of 0 — A score of zero would denote a portfolio with neither high, nor low risk.
  • Score less than 0 — The lower the number (negative numbers), indicates more risk.
  • Score greater than 0 — The higher the number (positive number), the less risk.
  • Score of 1 or greater — A ratio greater than 1 is considered acceptable to good by most investors
  • Score of 2 or greater — A ratio greater than 2 is rated as very good by most investors.
  • Score of 3 or greater — A ratio greater than 3 is rated as excellent by most investors.

Each portfolio on Rebel Investor™ can be categorized by two criteria: Portfolio Style and Investment Type.

These classifications allow you to find which Rebels are trading with a style and investment instrument that is closed to your own style, or what's closest to your own comfort level.

Here are the Portfolio Styles options used on Rebel Investor™:

  • Aggressive Growth — A mix of small cap domestic, small cap foreign, emerging markets, - companies in rapid growth mode - typical for investors with a very high risk tolerance level.
  • Growth — Mid sized to large cap companies (domestic and international) still seeking growth (usually not yet paying dividends ) - typical for investors with a high risk tolerance level.
  • Growth & Income — Typically large cap companies or investments that are paying dividends, with a mix of larger cap companies still in growth mode - typical for investors with a moderate risk tolerance level.
  • Income — Typically a mix of bonds, large cap companies that pay dividends (including ) and other investments that deliver yield - typical for investors with a low risk tolerance level.
  • Fixed Income — Bonds, money markets, preferred stocks or other investment vehicles that pay a defined level of yield- typical for investors with a very low risk tolerance level.

Investment Types are the assets that you can choose from to make up your portfolio, like stocks and bonds.

  • Stocks — When you buy shares of a company’s stock, you own a piece of that company. Stocks come in a wide variety, and they often are described based the company’s size, type, performance during market cycles and potential for short- and long-term growth.
  • Investment Funds — Funds such as mutual funds, closed-end funds and exchange-traded funds—pool money from many investors and invest it according to a specific investment strategy.

Yes! The categories are used as a basic guide, but most portfolios will make a mix of multiple kinds of instruments. Some Rebels will stick to only the investment types listed in their portfolio classification, others will have a diverse mix, and many will vary over time. These classifications should only be used as a first step in understanding each portfolio's overall strategy.

The time horizon is the length of time an investment is held.

Short vs. Long Term investment: short-term investments are generally meant to include anything to be held for less than 1 year. Long-term investments are typically meant to be held for 1 year or more.

Most portfolios on Rebel Investor™ will likely include some short-term and some long-term investments, but that is at the discretion of each Rebel.

We want to help match you with other Rebels that have a similar portfolio strategy and investment arrangement. Because of this, you can only choose one selection to represent your portfolio as a whole.

NOTE: Selecting a particular portfolio strategy and investment type in your portfolio settings page does NOT prevent you from selecting investment types or running a portfolio strategy that are different from your selection. These are just guides to help other Rebels find trust worthy Rebels to follow and subscribe to.

No. Rebel Investor™ is a simple platform designed to allow investors to create their own newsletter and portfolio to share with fellow investors.

Rebel Investor™ makes no trades on your behalf, and does not need access to your trading account.

You can follow or subscribe to other Rebels to get access to their portfolios. It's up to you to setup and execute any trades using your own trading account.

Following or subscribing to other rebels does NOT require you to setup your own portfolio, you only need a user account. You are never required to setup your own portfolio on the site.

If you want to make trades from the Rebels that you subscribe to, then yes, you'll need an investment account with a third-party company.

Rebel Investor™ does not make any trades on your behalf.

Standard trading hours are 9:30AM Eastern to 4:00PM Eastern, Monday through Friday.

For NYSE holidays, see here:

In order to prevent cheating and abuse of the Rebel Investment platform, any updates to your portfolio (buying or selling) are only allowed during the standard trading hours.

Our platform is designed to create as much trust as possible in each Rebel's trading history. If we allow after hours trading, it would leave open numerous opportunities to cheat the system and provide subscribers with bogus buy/sell notifications.

We allow the following types of options trading:

  • Covered Calls - we allow you to buy call options or sell covered calls. Covered call writing is simply the selling of the right for someone else to buy 100 shares of a stock that you currently own in exchange for cash paid today. ... A call option is a contract that gives the buyer of the option the legal right (but not the obligation) to buy 100 shares of the underlying stock at the strike price (the price you are granting them to buy your stock at), any time before the expiration date of the option. In summary, it’s selling the right to buy 100 shares of a stock you own at an agreed upon price by a certain date. We do allow "covered calls" as long as you attest that you own enough shares in your portfolio to cover your call.
  • Put Options - we allow you to buy or sell a put option. A buyer of a put option allows the buyer of the option to sell you a stock at an agreed upon price by a certain date. A seller of a put option means the seller is agreeing to buy a given stock at an agreed upon price by a certain date.

Each option contract represents 100 shares of a given stock. Each option has its own symbol and trades like a stock during normal market hours. If you write/sell an option contract, then we will automatically "exercise" that option and update your portfolio's holdings when the strike price is met. If you buy an option contract, then you have the option to exercise it before expiration.

In a call option, the strike price is the price at which the option holder can purchase the underlying security. For a put option, the strike price is the price at which the option holder can sell the underlying security.

For instance, Heather pays $100 to buy a call option priced at $1 on ABC Inc.’s shares, with a strike price of $50. The option expires in six months. That means that any time in the next six months Heather can exercise her option to buy 100 shares at $50 regardless of the current market price of ABC shares.

Strike price is one of the factors used to determine the profit in an unexpired option. The strike price is compared to the current market price to determine if an option is in or out of the money. The strike price, time to expiration and asset volatility and interest rates are the key determinants of an option’s market price.

For instance, Heather’s ABC call option is in the money any time ABC’s market price is above $51. That’s because Heather’s cost of the ABC stock will be $50 per share, plus the $1 per share cost of the option. If the ABC stock is below $51, the option is said to be out of the money.

Read more: Strike Price - Video | Investopedia

Subscribing and Following Rebels

Simply navigate to the portfolio that you want to unsubscribe from. In the top-right corner of their portfolio profile, you should see a green "subscribe" link. Click this link and click "Unsubscribe."

Similarly, you can unfollow a portfolio by clicking on the green "heart" button and click "Unfollow portfolio."

You can also unsubscribe or unfollow a portfolio by going to the "Subscription Center" section on the Settings page.

You are locked-in at the rate that you originally signed up for, even if the Rebel increases or decreases their subscription cost.

Want to pay their new rate? You can cancel your existing subscription at any time, and then re-subscribe at the new monthly subscription price.

FOLLOWING a Rebel is FREE and adds their portfolio to your follower sidebar and dashboard, so you'll be able to keep track of their progress. Following as many Rebels as you like. Following will also give you access to any protected FOLLOWER-ONLY articles.

SUBSCRIBING to a Rebel is a paid-only tier. Subscribing, like following, will add their portfolio to your follower sidebar and dashboard, so you'll be able to keep track of their progress.

SUBSCRIBING a Rebel also gives you access to their full portfolio, trade history, and more. This unlocks access to their portfolio weightings, entry and exit prices for each assets, and how well their past trades worked.

Subscribing will also give you access to any protected SUBSCRIBER-ONLY articles.

You can subscribe to as many Rebels as you like.

Here's a quick overview of access that subscribers get:

  • Complete Portfolio access with entry and exit prices, and all historical portoflio data.
  • Subscriber-only articles written exclusively for subscribers.
  • Live Trade Notifications you'll get a TXT message and/or email immediately when a new portfolio asset is bought or sold.

Yes! And we recommend that you do! Subscribing to your own portfolio is free, and will allow you to see your own notifications after you've made trades or hit your target exit prices, etc.

When you create your portfolio, you are automatically subscribed to and following your own portfolio in order to see your alerts going out in real time, but you are always welcome to unsubscribe if you don't want to get alerts.

Creating Your Subscription

One of the most important features of Rebel Investor™ is the opportunity to monetize your portfolio and newsletter articles. Setting up your subscription is very simple:

Step 1 - Fill out your portfolio Information: This includes basic things like your portfolio name, portfolio bio and photo, as well as your portfolio strategy and investment type, etc. Click here to jump to your portfolio Settings.

Step 2 - Enable your portfolio Subscription: Simply check the box to enable subscriptions, choose your subscription fee (or leave it blank if you want!), and enter your Paypal email address so we know where to send your monthly earnings. Click here to jump to your Subscription Settings.

Don't forget to click the save button when you're done!

Any Rebel Investor™ user can create a portfolio. And we recommend that you do!

Creating a portfolio and tracking your performance allows you to build a track record, even if you're not interested in creating a paid subscription.

All of the relevant portfolio information will be kept private unless you choose to enable subsciptions. This is handy if you're only interested in tracking your performance for yourself, but in the future you want to enable subscriptions, because you've proven yourself as a successful Rebel!

The platform currently only allows each account to have one portfolio.

If you would like to create additional portfolios, you can simply create multiple accounts. Each one will appear on the site and be tracked as usual. While unusual, some Rebels may want to create multiple portfolios to attract subscribers with different types of investing needs.

You can use the same PayPal account for multiple Rebel Investor™ accounts.

When you setup your subscription level, you should have entered your Paypal email address. We will use that to send your monthly subscription earnings.


The performance of every portfolio is tracked and ranked. The leaderboards automatically update to include the portfolios that are performing the best.

At the top of the leaderboards page are two drop-down options, allowing you to select the timeframe of the leaderboards and the portfolio style. All of these leaderboards are automatically generated based on current performance of the portfolios.

In order to help pay for the Rebel Investor™ platform, there are third-party banners displayed in a few select areas of the website.

Every Rebel Investor™ who has an active portfolio with a return performance high enough to appear in the top 4 portfolios on any leaderboard, will receive a share of the ad revenue. 50% of all advertising revenue will be paid out to Rebels, proportional to the amount of time they appeared in the top 4 of any leaderboard.

The more days that you appear on the leaderboards, the higher percentage you'll earn. The share percentage will be calculated at the end of the month.

Payouts are distributed only after we've received payments from our advertising partners.