Are all Agora & Stansberry newsletters pure scams?
by Anonymous Questions | October 22, 2012 10:59 am
”Pump & Dump” schemes for Penny Stocks are proliferating through ”fear & greed” Newsletters.
Question: Are all Agora[1] & Stansberry newsletters pure scams? Do they all accept payment for touting penny stocks?
What about PENNY STOCK RESEARCH (free) by Gordon Lewis[2]? Is that unbiased?
Are all newsletters that DO accept payment for touting stocks REQUIRED to state the conflict of interest in a disclaimer?
Victim of recent Pump & Dumps: TAGG, PRTN, SNPK, SOPV, XCLL, WTFSE.
Small money, but near total losses.
Endnotes:
- Agora: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/agora/
- Gordon Lewis: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/gordon-lewis/
Source URL: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/2012/10/microblog-are-all-agora-stansberry-newsletters-pure-scams/
The Agora and Stansberry newsletters (Stansberry is an Agora affiliate, as are Money Map Press and the Oxford Club and a dozen others) are not scams in that way — they may or may not be good or useful newsletters, but they have trading rules about the stocks they cover and they don’t appear to participate in “pump and dump” trading. They have extremely profitable businesses selling subscriptions, so taking advantage of their readers by promoting lousy penny stocks would be counterproductive in the long run.
Which isn’t to say that their mailing lists aren’t used for penny stock pump and dump promotions by folks who rent or borrow those lists, on that I don’t know.
“Newsletters” who accept compensation for promoting or recommending stocks always, in my experience, do disclose that in their disclaimers — but it’s usually in fine print at the bottom of the page and often in unclear language. I’m not sure if there are loopholes to let them avoid that disclosure, but usually paid promoters make it pretty clear that they’re paid promoters. As long as you read the disclaimers.
Penny Stock Publishing, which publishes Gordon Lewis’ letter, says that they do not accept compensation for recommending stocks. I don’t know if they allow trading in the stocks they cover or not — every publisher has different rules for whether or how writers and editors are allowed to trade stocks that they write about — but they say that in that way they are unconflicted. Which doesn’t mean they’re unbiased, of course, not one of us can make that claim.
Stocks that are supported by paid promotion almost always have no real business or actual future earnings potential, and the stock almost always returns to its pre-promotion level once the promotion stocks, so there are some folks like Timothy Sykes who try to trade these events (riding the stock up and shorting it on the way down, since their patterns can be somewhat predictable), but other than that there’s no sense in doing anything other than just staying away.
I don’t write about promoted stocks very often, but I did put out a longer piece about how to identify penny stock scams and some warning signs to look for last year, you can see that note here: http://stockgumshoe.com/2011/01/pennystockpromoters/
Blah Blah Blah…sour grapes perhaps? I am amused with all the Stansberry bashing here. Personally I have found MORE common sense, regarding to investing than with ANY other
financial news letter in the market. In addition, I have made more money by making smarter decesions when it comes to investing, by considering what all Stansberry research has to say. Do I buy into all the news letters and programs? Heck no! But . Its like anything in life- take what information you can use, and benefit from, and discard that which you don’t want to consider. How simple can that be.
Stansberry Associates has some value to it.
It’s the S&A Report and the new Alpha that came out is a good options strategy as long as the underlining stock has intrinsic long term value in a growth area of the economy like their recommendation to buy Chicago Bridge and Iron who will make all the infrastructure for Nat Gas Export terminals. If you remember the Gold rush which now is Nat Gas exporting it was the people that provided the infrastructure to the Gold miners that got rich. Companies that made the Picks and Shovels. Don’t forget Levis was born due to the Gold rush and look at them today. Chicago Bridge and Iron will do very well no matter how you play it in my opinion, but what do I KNOW BEING IN PRIVATE EQUITY.
I’ve made good consistent money with the Stansberry’s Daily Wealth Trader. I’ve also learned a lot about options and have made money selling puts/calls. Prior to DWT, I knew nothing about options. I’ll gladly put up with the regular promotion of other newsletters to keep DWT.
I I see that bobs is a buy outat15.50 I think its trading @16 plus theeis aquestion here
People are speculating that the CEO and his buyout team might have to raise their bid, or that a competitor will emerge
Possible, but I think the odds are in the buyers’ favor now since they have a large position already, there aren’t other strong institutional holders, and individual shareholders rarely vote.
Any thoughts re: the advisement sources (from Agora and Money Map) that recommend micro or penny stocks with 300+% upside? These are selling at $2,000-$5,000 per year?