AlphaTrends is a swing-trading education and daily market-analysis service built around Brian Shannon, the trader who popularized the Anchored VWAP. It fits self-directed swing and active day traders who want to learn a coherent technical method and get daily market context, not traders hunting for ready-made buy and sell signals. The teaching carries real depth and the lowest tier costs only $10 a month, but the absence of a published track record and the no-refund policy on the courses are the things to weigh before paying.
What AlphaTrends Is and Who Is Behind It
Brian Shannon founded AlphaTrends in 2010 as an online swing-trading analysis and education community. He trades full time with his own money, is the author of 2 widely cited books on technical analysis, and is credited with popularizing the Anchored VWAP as a charting tool now found across most major platforms. His background includes time at Lehman Brothers and other investment firms, plus more than 30 years of market experience.
He is not the only voice on the platform. Andy Moss, a Chartered Market Technician with 26 years in the markets, joined after a career that included a Senior Portfolio Manager role at Morgan Stanley overseeing more than $125 million, followed by professional trading at T3 Trading Group and T3 Live. His emphasis is process over prediction: defined risk on every trade, multi-timeframe alignment, and disciplined execution rather than forecasting.
The house philosophy is blunt and consistent. “Only Price Pays” is Shannon’s trademarked reminder that price action, not news or opinion, decides whether a trade makes money. A second motto, “Don’t buy the dip, buy strength after the dip,” rejects bottom-picking in favor of waiting for confirmation that buyers have regained control. That insistence on evidence over hope runs through everything the service publishes.
The Anchored VWAP Foundation
The Anchored VWAP is the reason most traders find AlphaTrends in the first place. A standard VWAP measures the volume-weighted average price from the start of the trading day and resets each session. The anchored version lets a trader set the starting point at any meaningful event, such as a gap, an earnings reaction, a Fed announcement, or a swing low, then measures the cumulative price-and-volume average from that point forward.
The practical read is simple. When price sits above a rising AVWAP, buyers control the trend from the anchor; when price is below a declining AVWAP, sellers are in control; when price oscillates around it, the timeframe is undecided. Shannon layers this with a strict rule that at least 3 timeframes (long, intermediate, and short) should agree before a position is taken. That demand for alignment, more than the indicator itself, is what separates the method from the single-signal approach sold elsewhere.
What Membership Actually Delivers
The Premium Membership is the core product, and most of the daily work flows through it. Members receive 3 videos every trading day: a morning stock-ideas video, a mid-day market update, and an end-of-day analysis. The daily focus list centers on the major index ETFs, SPY, QQQ, IWM, SMH, XLE, and XLF, alongside individual stock setups.
Beyond the videos, membership includes a Discord community, daily interaction with Shannon himself, and 3 educational seminars each month. The trade ideas arrive in 2 categories that change how a trader should use them. “Official” ideas are lower-volatility swing setups with more developed patterns and fairly tight tracked stops. “Watch list” ideas are more volatile or not yet fully formed, and the service openly states these suit day traders who can watch the action closely rather than set-and-forget swing traders.
The X Subscription as an Entry Point
The X (Twitter) Subscription is the cheapest way in at $10 a month, billed through X rather than the AlphaTrends site. It includes the daily end-of-day market video, occasional US stock and crypto trade ideas, and 1 monthly seminar. Stock ideas at this tier are limited to names trading at least 500K shares on a 20-day average, a liquidity filter that keeps the focus on tradeable stocks.
What the X tier leaves out is the whole point of it. There is no mid-day video, no Discord access, no daily interaction with Shannon, and no personal analysis of a subscriber’s own ideas. The service describes it accurately as a basic version of Premium. For a trader deciding whether the method clicks, that is a genuinely useful $10 test before committing to $139 a month.
The Courses
Two recorded courses sit alongside the membership. The Introduction to Stock Trading Course runs about 3 hours across 12 chapters, covering market mechanics, order types, the basics of Level 2 data, and trading psychology, and it ends with quizzes and a final exam. It costs $99, and that fee can be applied as credit toward the Advanced Course.
The Advanced Stock Trading Course is the deeper program: roughly 9 hours across 17 chapters covering the 4 stages of a stock cycle, volume analysis, short selling and short squeezes, risk and money management, gap strategies, and a dedicated chapter on trading with the Anchored VWAP. At $499 it bundles a free month of Premium Membership, a 30-minute one-on-one webinar with Shannon, and a discounted Premium Yearly renewal of $1,000 versus the usual $1,299. Those extras are excluded from bundle-sale offers.
Pricing and Tiers
AlphaTrends prices its products across a wide range, from a $10 monthly sampler to a $1,299 annual membership. The current retail pricing is below.
| Product | Price | Trial and terms |
|---|---|---|
| Premium Yearly | $1,299/year (listed as 22% savings) | 2-week trial for $59 |
| Premium Monthly | $139/month | 2-week trial for $59 |
| X Subscription | $10/month | Billed through X |
| Introduction Course | $99 | No trial, no refunds; $99 credits toward Advanced |
| Advanced Course | $499 | No trial, no refunds; includes a free month of Premium |
Two pricing details are easy to miss. The membership “trial” is not free; it runs $59 for 2 weeks. An active-military discount is also available, though the amount is not published and requires contacting the company before subscribing.
Rules, Restrictions, and What They Mean for a Trader
A handful of mechanics shape what AlphaTrends is actually worth, and they cut in different directions.
The most significant is the deliberate absence of a published track record. The service argues that no 2 traders execute the same idea the same way, that posted “track records” are often unobtainable in practice, and that it stands instead on the educational quality of its daily output. That position is defensible, but the implication for a buyer is concrete: the membership is paid for on the strength of reputation and process, not verified returns.
The courses carry a separate constraint. Both the $99 and the $499 programs are sold with no trial and no refunds. The intro fee credits toward the advanced course, which limits the downside of starting small, yet a buyer who dislikes the advanced material has no recourse at all. Because even the membership trial is paid rather than free, there is no zero-cost path to evaluating the product before money changes hands.
Equally important is what the service refuses to do, and that candor is worth crediting. It makes no specific options recommendations, no leveraged-ETF calls, and no commodity-related stock or ETF analysis. It issues no precise buy and sell instructions; analysis is provided, and the trader sizes and times the trade to personal risk tolerance. Anyone who wants signals or hand-holding is in the wrong place. Anyone who wants to learn to make independent decisions is in exactly the right one.
One more mechanic affects execution. The official swing ideas are managed with fairly tight stops, and the service suggests taking roughly a third of a position off near the daily R2 pivot on longs (or S2 on shorts) to cover costs and lower risk early. That bias toward quick partial profits is a defined method rather than a vague suggestion, and it shapes the kind of trader who will feel at home here.
Bottom Line
AlphaTrends earns its standing as an education service rather than a tip sheet. The Anchored VWAP framework is coherent, taught by the person who popularized it, and reinforced daily through live market commentary instead of recycled theory. The pricing ladder is unusually accommodating, letting a trader test the approach for $10 before deciding whether $139 a month is justified.
The reservations are just as clear. There is no track record to verify, the courses cannot be refunded, and anyone expecting actionable signals will be let down by design. None of that makes the service weak. It makes it specific.
Self-directed swing traders and active day traders who want to learn a disciplined, repeatable technical method and value daily context from an experienced operator are the natural buyers. Traders chasing signals, options or futures specialists wanting precise recommendations, and anyone who needs a verified performance record before paying should look elsewhere.
Pros
- Anchored VWAP methodology taught by its originator, with real technical depth carried through the AVWAP material, the courses, and the daily videos
- Three daily videos plus a Discord community and monthly seminars create a consistent, structured workflow rather than scattered alerts
- Unusually transparent about its limits, stating plainly that it excludes options, leveraged ETFs, commodities, and personal stock analysis
- A real $10 entry tier on X lowers the cost of evaluating the method before committing to full membership
Cons
- No published or verifiable track record, so members pay for education and process on reputation alone
- Both courses are non-refundable with no free trial, and even the membership trial costs $59, leaving no zero-cost way to evaluate the paid product
- Provides no actionable signals and no specific options or futures guidance, which makes it a poor fit for traders who want to be told what to trade