In March 2018 I reviewed Apex Algorithms and their claim to provide a “low risk” investment which had previously generated between 26% and 90% annual returns. I concluded that the offer was an extremely high risk investment into an unregulated firm, and highlighted inconsistencies in its published results.
Apex Algorithms has recently launched a new website at algocorp.com. There is no mention of Apex Algorithms on the front page, but the offering is substantially identical, and its address and phone number remain the same as Apex’s, along with its “Deliver the Knockout Blow to the Bookmakers” identity. The initial version of Algo Corp’s “Terms and Conditions” page referred to Apex Algorithms throughout; this has since been changed to Algo Corp. At time of writing the apexalgorithms.co.uk still appears to be running with the old brand identity.
Why Algo Corp / Apex has felt the need to create a new brand identity is not clear.
Who are Algo Corp?
No details of who is behind the business are provided on Algo Corp’s website.
Algo Corp Limited was incorporated in December 2017 and is yet to file accounts. It is 100% owned by its sole director, Nathan Burgoyne.
Apex Incorporated’s last accounts (made up to July 2017) showed £592 (pounds, not thousands or millions) in net assets, consisting of £31,495 current assets and £30,903 creditors. Due to its small size, the company was exempt from auditing and was not required to file any information of substance.
How safe is the investment?
Algo Corp claims that this is a “Low risk investment with a maximum of 2.5% of each trade ever risked and we apply an obsessive risk management strategy.”
Algo Corp also states in their website’s FAQ that “On average we tell clients to expect between 1-1.5% a week”.
In reality this is an investment into an unregulated betting syndicate and investors risk losing 100% of their money if the bets Algo Corp places on their behalf fail to come off.
While Algo Corp claims to have an algorithm and “advanced Artifical Intelligence” that can outperform the bookmakers’ odds, it goes without saying that no-one is guaranteed to beat the house.
And while anyone can make 1.5% in any particular week from gambling (in the same way that I can make a 100% return in a few seconds in roulette), the odds of consistently making a 1-1.5% a week – that’s 68% a year – are miniscule.
Even if Algo Corp does only place a maximum of 2.5% of investors’ money in each bet, the potential cumulative effect of repeated failed bets is such that investors should still consider the risk of losing up to 100% of their money.
More dubious past performance
Algo Corp publish two tables of purported past performance results on their website, one broken down by categories of bets, and the other by month. The table is the same as the one I reviewed in my earlier Apex Algorithms review, but with a new column for 2017-18 added.
The problem with these tables in brief: in order to convert a series of monthly returns to an annual return, you take what you started with, then multiply it by the percentage return in month 1, multiply that by the percentage return in month 2, etc… such that the annual return is the product of all the monthly percentage returns. (A break-even month being 100%, a 5% loss being 95%, and so on.)
In order to convert the returns across a series of categories to the total return, you multiply each category’s return by the percentage that category contributes to your total (known as weighting), and then add up all of those weighted returns, giving you the weighted average.
The problem with Algo Corp’s table is that their tables don’t add up properly. A five-second calculation shows that the “totals” of each column are simply the sum of all the numbers above them.
While I have no insight into Algo Corp’s historical bets, it is a fact that these tables do not make mathematical sense.
Apex / Algo owner Burgoyne was unable to explain these discrepancies in a series of comments last year, and my opinion is unchanged that the most likely explanation of this mathematical discrepancy is that these “performance” tables show made-up numbers that happen to add up to the same amounts at the bottom.
This lack of transparency raises serious questions about Algo Corp’s statement that “On average we tell clients to expect between 1-1.5% a week”.
The new column for 2017-18 manages to make even less sense than the old figures. Both the tables showing returns broken down by bet type and returns by month show a ROI of 35.47% for 2017-18. The returns by bet type duly add up to 35.47% – which, as I have explained above, is gobbledygook, as they should be a weighted average. The table for returns by month, however, add up to only 29.18% (despite the same 35.12% being shown in the total row) – so the table isn’t even wrong consistently anymore.
Should I invest with Algo Corp?
This blog does not give financial advice. The following are statements of publicly available facts or widely accepted investment principles, not a personalised recommendation. Investors should consult a regulated independent financial adviser if they are in any doubt.
Over the past year, Apex / Algo Corp has doubled down on its misleading claims. From claiming to provide a “low risk investment”, it is now telling investors, according to its own FAQ, to expect a return of 1-1.5% a week (with compounding, that’s 68% a year).
There remains no independently audited evidence that Algo Corp has any “advanced artificial intelligence” algorithm whatsoever. Their nonsensical “performance” table is strong evidence that they don’t even possess a calculator.
Do not proceed unless you are prepared to lose all your money.