There is no free lunch and there is no free trial.

But there is a cheap peek.

When we last changed our website in October, 2008, we put this sentence in an FAQ:

If you are an experienced trader, write and tell us about your background and we'll probably allow you to monitor the room for a couple of days.

Boy, was that a mistake. Within a week we had a couple of dozen requests, and while we tried to spread them out over a longer period of time, more kept coming. It reminded us why we have not offered a free trial since January, 2006.

This is a dilemma for us. It is reasonable for people to want to see how the room works before they commit to a membership. But we have to do something to limit the number of requests.

So we decided to use a classic disincentive; we are going to charge for our free trial.

Here's the deal

For a modest fee of $25 we will allow you to monitor the live chat room for one week, starting Monday morning and ending Friday night. You will also have access to Nat's real-time charts and trade set ups during that time, and you can view her trading desktop, but not the member's area of her website.

After the trial ends you have a week to become a full subscriber. (See this page for membership details).

If you subscribe within the week, we'll give you your $25 back. If not, we keep it.

We chose $25 because it is the value of two ticks on the SP500 e-mini, and the fee Nat charges for two trading days in her room. So it represents a bargain for serious traders who want to see how the room works, but it is still enough to deter people who are just casually curious.

We'll try that for a while and see how it works. If it needs to be changed, we'll change it.

We strongly recommend that you do not try to trade with real money during your trial period. Use a demo account or paper trading instead. It takes time to understand what Nat is doing, and you should not risk real money during this period.

So if you want to see how Nat's room functions, click the Membership Information link in the breadcrumbs just below the top menu bar, and take us for a spin. You'll find the ride enlightening.