Bespoke developed a proprietary stock strategy to compete with the benchmark S&P 500 - the "Bespoke 50". Since its inception on 3-1-12 it is up 122.1% compared to the S&P's 76.0% (see below). After a one free month introduction, Bespoke will charge you $99 a month for its information. Its website calls this "a great deal".

Without the advisory charge the Bespoke 50 takes $10,000 and turns it into $22,210 since 3-1-12. Recognizing that the current Spy Pro signals weren't in real time back in March 2012, the back tested trading dates do outperform the Bespoke approach by a wide margin. Without the $50 monthly fee for BPT being considered, a $10,000 initial hypothetical investment does compound to $49,202 using the Rydex unleveraged Russell 2000 long/short funds. No benefit was considered for cash, and no trading costs were considered in either example.

Someone willing to take more risk and use the 200% leveraged RUT funds would have seen their hypothetical account grow to $166,925. My understanding  of the Bespoke 50 is that the strategy is invested in 50 stocks 100% of the time. Obviously the Spy Pro approach would have been in cash for a reasonable amount of time during this time frame - helping to reduce the inherent investment risk during this period of time.

Of course, depending on the size of the account vale invested in the Bespoke 50, the $99 monthly fee over the past 5.26 years, and the trading costs could certainly have reduced the net account value to less than just holding an S&P 500 index fund on a buy and hold basis in a low cost no-load fund or etf. Also to be considered is the cost of liquidating 50 individual stocks in case you wanted to redeem the account vs just selling SPY, IWM, QQQ, etc.