My Rockwell PowerX Optimizer Review
Rockwell Trading was founded by Markus Heitkoetter and he seems to have developed one of the best tools for swing trading stocks and options.
The flagship product is called PowerX Optimizer and is widely considered to be a very high-quality product. I am excited to show you my own experience with the product in this review.
Why would you find the PowerX Optimizer useful? It is an amazing software that give entries, exits & stops. It takes all the guesses work out of where to get in, where your stops are and most important, where to take profits!
FREE COMPLETE GUIDE TO DAY TRADING
Markus also has a free eBook that outlines his trading mentality and some strategies. It’s worth downloading the book here.
For a limited time, Markus Heitkoetter is giving away the electronic version of his bestselling book “The Complete Guide To Day Trading”
It’s 296 pages and full of tips, tricks and practical information that you can use right away in your trading.
Click here to download the book now.
Given how accomplished and experienced a trader Markus is – The Complete Guide to Day Trading seems like something we should all read! The interesting thing is that Markus is more of a swing trader these days.
Disclaimer: There are affiliate links on this page. This means that if you click through and purchase anything, I might earn a commission for the introduction with no extra cost to you.
Who is Markus Heitkoetter of Rockwell Trading?
Markus Heitkoetter started Rockwell Trading in 2005. This makes it one of the older trading programs that exists today. Here is Markus enjoying somewhere tropical…. I want to say Thailand?
Rockwell Trading is a small company in Austin, Texas.
Markus worked at IBM before coming to the USA in 2002 to trade stocks full-time. IBM pays really well, so you can imagine the risk Markus was taking when he left that job in Germany to start trading full-time in the USA!
Markus comes across well in his videos and seems to be the real deal. He admits that he lost 50% of his savings (around $30k) when he first started trading and almost couldn’t pay his rent.
It seems that Markus was able to turn around his trading ability and make a lot of money trading options. He is known for his Wheel strategy where he sells options to collect the premium for passive income.
His main tool (PowerX) is very useful for trading stocks or options. He has a bunch of other educational products, but I am going to save them for another review because the PowerX optimizer is more than enough to write about for one review.
You can learn more about the program and get a free book from Marcus here!
The PowerX Optimizer Software (PXO) Review
This software probably cost a lot to develop (I think I saw some mention of nearly a million dollars in development costs!). What I really like about it is that dashboard is relatively easy to use.
I recently did a test drive of Trade Ideas and found it impossible compared to the PowerX Optimizer Software.
The PowerX Optimizer does a great job of having just the right amount of useful tools and power but doesn’t make it very hard to get a grasp of how to use etc.
What Exactly Does the PowerX Optimizer Do for You?
- PowerX Scanning and Swing Trading.
- The Wheel.
In this PowerX Optimizer review I am going to cover my experiences with both of these features in detail. Before I get started, let’s look at the other important parts of this tool – the tutorials and community.
The PowerX Optimizer Community & Tutorials
Rockwell provides a host of easy-to-use tutorials and a great quick start guide. You get complete training for the program and it really only took me an hour or so to understand the basics.
The program is remarkably easy to understand for such a powerful system. They give you a quick start guide that is really straightforward to understand.
PowerX Review: Tutorials
The tutorials are video lessons run by a guy called Mark Hodge. He does a professional job of explaining in his videos about how to use the software.
The tutorials are carefully broken down into 10-minute videos that explain particular parts of the program and how to use it. You do have to work through them all in my opinion to fully understand how to use the software.
There is probably an hour or two of tutorials on using the PowerX scanner and swing trading strategy and a similar amount for the Wheel strategy. They are fairly interesting though and I was left with a much better understanding of how to make the most of the program.
The Community
The Rockwell Trading community is on The Mighty Network.
You can learn more about the program and get a free book from Marcus here!
PowerX Swing Trading Strategy
The PowerX swing trading strategy is designed to be used when the market is trending in a particular direction.
Like all strategies, the PowerX is much weaker in choppier markets. It must also be intelligently applied depending on market conditions etc. This is a great tool – not a get-rich-quick scheme :).
The program also includes the Wheel strategy that can be used to make money in sideways market conditions. More on the Wheel strategy in a bit.
So, what does the strategy for swing trading involve?
The PowerX swing trading strategy is a novel combination of MACD cross, RSI and Slow Stochastic technical indicators.
Basically, when RSI and slow Stochastic are both above 50 AND MACD crosses upwards then the program will indicate that an up-trend has been established. The opposite is true for a downward trend.
A simple green arrow pointing upwards appears on the stocks chart when the uptrend condition is met. Likewise, a small red arrow that points downward appears when the technical conditions above are met for a downtrend.
The end of a trade is marked with a small blue arrow.
Here is a screenshot of the dashboard that shows the chart on the top left the below that it shows P/L for two years plotted in green for two different selected exit strategies on the stock.
You can see the technical indicators (RSI, MACD and Slow Stock) below that with red bars meaning a buy condition is not met and green bars meaning that it has.
When all three technical indicators go green then a buy signal may be issues on that stock. Honestly, you can just hide these with a quick click of a button to tidy up the dashboard.
Rockwell PowerX Optimizer Review: Scanner
You can learn more about the program and get a free book from Marcus here!
The scanner is the first part of using this software and it is something that adds value to the swing trading strategy. It helps you find stocks on a daily basis with a simple mouse click that are primed to be traded.
In the previous screenshot you can see the scanner in the top right with the ‘Run Scanner’ button and the list of tickers beneath are the tickers it found.
The scanner can be set for particular parameters depending on what you are most interested in trading. Here is a screenshot of the possible scanner parameters, showing the different risk/reward settings you can set for the scanner.
When you run the scanner, you will only get a list of stocks that have a profitable track record with the particular exit strategy you have selected. For example, you can set it to only find conservative stocks or aggressive stocks.
Here is a complete overview screenshot of the scanner functions.
You can see that the PowerX scanner can be customized to scan for stocks in certain price ranges, profit factors, volume or directional trade (long or short).
It’s a pretty simple but powerful scanner.
Trade Management Analysis
So, you’ve run a scan and a few stocks fitting your PowerX strategy have appeared.
Now what?
The system then gives you the full back-tested track record for the tickers that you can then analyze to see what you would like to do.
It also gives you a simple buy price and two profit targets depending on how much risk/reward you are prepared to embrace. There is also a stop loss recommendation as well.
You can learn more about the program and get a free book from Marcus here!
PowerX Review: Example of Analysis
Here is an example of what you see initially in the dashboard.
The boxes on the right appear when you click on a ticker from the scanner (top right). In this case it is $DQ. The chart on the left updates to show $DQ.
What I like is that the information that pops up is comprehensive yet not overwhelming. You get a recommended buy price and the two profit targets.
You can learn more about the program and get a free book from Marcus here!
You can see that they become clearly highlighted as green lines on the chart with the recommended buy price in blue. The recommended stop loss is shown on the chart in red.
This data also shows how many shares you should buy based on previous settings that you change to suit your account size etc. This makes life very easy; the program spoon feeds you!
Markus also has a free eBook that outlines his trading mentality and some strategies. It’s worth downloading the book here.
For a limited time, Markus Heitkoetter is giving away the electronic version of his bestselling book “The Complete Guide To Day Trading”
It’s 296 pages and full of tips, tricks and practical information that you can use right away in your trading.
Click here to download the book now.
PowerX Back Testing Data
The constant back-testing that the program does is a very powerful feature. Afterall, one could consider just plotting the 3 technical indicators on a chart in ThinkorSwim for example.
However, this approach without the software has several major flaws.
First, it is very difficult to find the best stocks out of the 12,000 stocks on the exchange that work with these indicator combinations.
These indicators alone are not enough in my opinion. If you pick a random stock and try to trade it based solely on the indicators there is a good chance you will fail to be profitable in the long run.
In fact, my friend Steve Brooks and his team at GPS TRADER have shown that if you try to use just MACD crossovers you will lose overall. They did this with 10,000 trades with back-testing.
This is where the PowerX program excels. It shows you which stocks are and have performed well in the past with this strategy as well as data on the length of the average trade and ROI etc.
This lets you decide if the stock is one that YOU want to trade. This puts part of the power in PowerX!
After the market closes, the program processes all data from the securities on the exchanges and looks at the average daily range and other factors to simulate every trade in the last 2 years on each ticker!
The user can look at the data for how much profit the strategy would have earned them over the last 2 years of back testing.
This is useful because you can figure out from the P/L plots if this is a ticker you want to trade. You can consider things like overall profits but also look at how consistent the wins and losses are.
You don’t really want to trade something where the accumulated profit came from one trade and the rest were huge losers for example! This would make your odds of success low.
This is a powerful feature of the tool that can make the difference between being profitable overall and just losing money.
The software relies on price movements of securities (Stocks & ETFs) that are typically sustained for 5 to 20 days. When a trade has been identified as a potential setup you can either buy/sell the stock or PURCHASE an option.
PowerX Optimizer Review: Options Contracts
If you don’t want to just buy/sell the stock, the program also gives you several options suggestions depending on your risk levels.
Typically, they recommend expiration dates for the options between 30 and 60 days to avoid time decay. Here are some example contracts they are suggesting for today’s potential trade on $APPN.
You can see that they give you a choice of contracts based on your exit strategy. They also tell you the number of contracts to buy based on your settings as well. This is a very user-friendly way to look at options.
PowerX Optimizer Review: Exit Strategies
The PowerX has a variety of different exit strategies to choose from. Up until now I have just shown Conservative and Quick trades. But, there are others to choose from.
Here is a snapshot which shows the different exit strategies available and the back-tested results for this stock.
The right side of the screenshot shows the important results for the different exit strategies for this stock. The total profit over the back tested time period is shown as well as number of winning/losing trades, average trade length and an overall profit factor.
This is where your own judgement has to come in. You can decide ‘hey I think i would rather go with the Conservative exit strategy as it returned nearly as much as the Aggressive exit strategy so far but the trades are shorter duration and the win % is a little higher’.
For you in this particular market the pro’s of the Conservative strategy might outweigh the extra risk of it being a losing trade…..etc.
Can you see the power in this tool for decision making? It’s pretty awesome.
One thing that is worth noting is that the most of the strategies have a very low win rate: 41% – 47%. This means most trades are LOSING TRADES but the strategies allow for the winners to run and cut the losing trades quickly.
Hence, overall profitability is achieved. This is not something most new traders are comfortable with but it’s crucial to ensure profitability.
When you are making all your decisions based on data and not emotions, trading does get easier. Having the ability to weigh in all these factors is really powerful!
PowerX Optimizer Wheel Strategy Review
The Wheel Options Strategy is not something that Markus invented although you could certainly believe that it is! He just markets his tools well.
The PowerX Optimizer has been setup to make your life easier with a wheel strategy. Markus has a large account and knows that keeping track of your trades and buying power are a key issue for many traders that use the wheel strategy.
If you are not familiar with the Wheel Strategy, here is a high-level overview.
What is The Wheel Strategy?
In a nutshell, the wheel strategy involves selling cash secured puts to collect the premium from the options contract buyer.
This can be a very safe and high win rate strategy. If you sell puts that are far out of the money, basically betting that they will expire worthless – the chances are you will be correct and you will keep the small amount of premium that the buyer paid you.
This leads to a very high win rate but very small % gains. Markus typically looks to make just a few % on his account every month.
The wheel strategy involves just continuously selling cash secured puts and if you get assigned the shares (sometimes the options buyer will close the contract early) then you sell covered calls to generate more premium income!
If you are familiar with the selling options rather than buying them – you will most likely fully understand what I just wrote above.
The wheel strategy works well in markets that are going sideways in a choppy manner. It can work well if they are going up and down a little but preferable nothing dramatic.
When the markets get choppy – Markus shifts his capital into the wheel strategy and away from the swing trading PowerX strategy.
Rockwell Trading Wheel Strategy
Markus mentioned that you really need $10k in cash to participate in his wheel trading strategy. This means that with margin you can use $20k in buying power.
The reason for this is that his strategy requires having several positions on at one time and they can often require thousands of dollars of buying power as well as always having some buying power in reserve to help manage the positions.
Markus sells cash secured puts and covered calls that have about 2 weeks to expiration. He aims to get 90% profits and let them expire worthless.
Example of Buying Power for Wheel Strategy
Here is an example of why you need significant buying power. Imagine you want to do one cash secure put on AAPL.
You sell a put option with a strike price of $50. You must have the buying power in your account to buy 100 shares of AAPL at $50 in order to be able to place this trade.
So that is $5,000 required for that one position.
If you want to sell at a higher strike price and gain more premium then you need more buying power.
However, if assigned you also need to be able to sell covered calls on the shares you are given.
How the PowerX Optimizer Works with The Wheel Strategy
The tool on the PowerX Optimizer dashboard that helps with this strategy is called the Wheel Analyzer.
The software helps a lot for finding and managing trades for wheeling. It offers multiple features that really help you.
Here is a summary of what it provides when it comes to the wheel strategy.
- PowerX scans for ideal stocks for selling cash secured puts.
- Gives you a customizable strategy that you can see with a glance all the key stats you need to make sure you don’t over leverage.
These might not sound all that exciting but things can get complicated with multiple positions on etc. the program helps organize.
Let’s get into the details a bit more….
PowerX Optimizer Wheel Scanner
The first criteria that the PowerX Wheel scanner looks for are stocks between $5 and $300. This is a wide range and this doesn’t filter the selection pool much.
The scanner also applies a criteria that the stock must be having a down day.
The final but one of the most important parts of the scan is that it selects stocks based on Implied Volatility (IV).
IV is important because it plays a big role in the price of the option and therefore how much premium one can collect from selling the option contract.
Markus filters for stocks around 40% IV to try to get a good risk/reward. His goal is to let the contracts expire worthless and collect the full premium.
This is great because it also means he doesn’t have to care much about volume, open interest or liquidity.
The final criteria that the user is encouraged to apply to the scan selections is simple. Do you feel OK owning the shares of the underlying as an investment if you get assigned?
What Return on Investment Can I Expect?
From my experience you can expect somewhere between 20% – 50% ROI in a year using a strategy like the wheel.
Markus has stated he achieves about 30% a year on his buying power. Note that buying power can be much higher than the cash you have in the account.
The Wheel Analyzer gives you a choice of Conservative or Aggressive strategies in a similar way to the PowerX swing trading part of the software does. Conservative just suggests contracts that are further out of the money (e.g. a lower strike price) than the Aggressive suggestions.
The Wheel Analyzer also produces a very helpful table from the scan results for each ticker. It’s shown below.
This table is very useful as it gives you all the information you need to know on which exact contracts to sell and compares a bunch of them. This takes a lot of the work out of selling the optimal cash secured puts that fit your risk/reward criteria.
So, the wheel analyzer finds the best cash secured puts to sell and lets you compare all the key stats. It really does seem very useful to me.
PowerX Optimizer Reviews on TrustPilot
It’s always good to get other people’s opinions on programs like PowerX. It can be difficult to trust people in this industry. However, I do believe that after 10 years of trading and reviewing products in this niche that most products are not scams.
Markus and his company are the real deal. The software testing that I’ve done speaks for itself, but they also have an excellent trading on TrustPilot. Always a good sign as it’s not easy to ‘game’ this site as some people might think.
Here is another review of PowerX to check out.
PowerX Optimizer Review: Pricing
The PXO package currently costs $1,997. They have a really great refund policy PowerX Optimizer as they seem to be genuinely aligned to having happy customers. They offer a 90-day money back guarantee. if you decide it’s not for you, they will provide a full refund with no hassle.
You get several bonuses as part of the PowerX Optimizer. These include:
- The Wheel Master Class Training.
- The PowerX Wheel Income Calculator.
- The PowerX Wheel Income Scanner.
- The PowerX Master Class.
- MightyNetworks VIP Group.
- Lifetime Updates ($997/Year Value)
The PowerX Optimizer by Rockwell Trading Review: Conclusions
This PowerX Optimizer review will most likely be updated as time goes on. As with any of these tools, the more I use them the more updates I have for these reviews.
You can learn more from Marcus about the tool here. I think there is a free book that you just pay shipping and handling on when you order it there.
I think if you are a swing trader then this software is a good choice for you. The features it has can really help you organize your strategy, portfolio and find the best trades to fit your schedule and needs.
Good Luck!
Russell
Markus free eBook
Markus also has a free eBook that outlines his trading mentality and some strategies. It’s worth downloading the book here.
For a limited time, Markus Heitkoetter is giving away the electronic version of his bestselling book “The Complete Guide To Day Trading”
It’s 296 pages and full of tips, tricks and practical information that you can use right away in your trading.
Click here to download the book now.
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