Pitchmen love to find the hottest product, and then say they’ve used their uncanny skill and their unparalleled industry connections to find the secret little company who will benefit from that hot product. They’ve been doing it for years with Apple, fueled by the cottage industry of “whisperers” inside Chinese manufacturing plants who start the […]
Author Bio
Travis Johnson is an individual investor who founded Stock Gumshoe in 2007 as a way to air his dissections of overhyped marketing pitches... and to share the "secret" stocks that stock newsletters hype to get your attention and your subscription dollars. His thinking? If you already know what the "secret" stock is, you can make a much more reasonable and thoughtful decision about whether or not to commit to an expensive newsletter subscription. (And if you don't pay for the info, you'll be more free to think for yourself about whether or not the investment is worth your money.)In his charmed life he has been, among other things, a university faculty member, a fundraiser, a writer, and a world-champion ice-cream scooper. Now he runs Stock Gumshoe for you, allowing us all to discuss and dissect the latest overheated stock ideas... as well as review and talk about investment newsletters and enjoy the commentary and opinions of Stock Gumshoe's other special contributors and the discussion with our unusually attractive, erudite and polite readers. He lives with Mrs. Gumshoe and all their little Gumshoes in the wilds of Western Massachusetts.
Author Archives
March 15, 2024
Friday File: Acquisitions, Acacia and Intuitive
You’ve already heard quite a bit from me this week, since I shared the latest buy news from the $100K Lock Box portfolio yesterday… but I’ve still got a few things to share with you to close out the week… including one more add-on buy. We’ve got news from a few of our Real Money […]
March 14, 2024
More Advertising for the Lock Box
To some degree, my personal preferences about the industries that I find understandable and attractive are coloring the $100K Lock Box Portfolio — yes, my intention is for this to be a portfolio that is as diversified as possible, within the restrictions I’ve set up (high growth, relatively small size, justifiable valuation, potential for business […]
March 14, 2024
Answers: Kohl’s “NVIDIA Killer Could Make you 120X” Teaser
This article was originally published on January 3, though the ad had been running for some time before that. It continues to run now, and we get a lot of questions about it, so we’re re-posting our teaser solution here for your information. It has not been updated or revised since 1/3/24, the company has […]
This is from the order form for a recent Charles Mizrahi ad for his Alpha Investor ($47 first year, renews at $79)… “I’d like for you to imagine getting a second chance to invest in… “Nvidia in 2017 before it debuted its first AI chip (+1,858%) “Tesla’s 2010 IPO (+13,869%) “Google’s in 2004 (+5,317%) “Amazon […]
Time to check out another A.I. pitch… and this time it’s from The Wealth Advisory, which has been through a few editors over the years but is now edited by Jason Williams. If this pitch is anything like the past ones we’ve looked at from them, it’s going to be an exaggerated spiel about a […]
March 8, 2024
Friday File: Sweet Times
You might note that there aren’t a lot of green “Yes” entries in the “is this a reasonable buy right now” column on the Real Money Portfolio page. That’s mostly because, though I do update those numbers as the outlook gradually improves over time (for most of these companies — sometimes the numbers go down, […]
Alexander Green apparently focused his March issue of the Oxford Club’s Communique newsletter on Argentina, and the free excerpt that they shared of that leads to a ‘secret’ stock pick that we can reveal for you. The back story is the rise of Javier Milei, the new President of Argentina and a man whose leadership […]
The Motley Fool is pitching its “Market Pass” service ($998 first year, ? auto-renewal price, no refunds), which is their “package deal” subscription (Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, Everlasting Stocks, Real Estate Winners and Rule Your Retirement, plus an “Ultimate Portfolio” that they choose from the recommendations of those services), and the hook they’re using to […]
Almost no professional stock picker or forecaster was expecting that 2023 would be a boom year for the stock market, and I don’t imagine that many folks were predicting that February of 2024 would be the best February for the markets in a decade, but still, we crave predictions. People are endearingly ridiculous, and markets […]
February 28, 2024
What’s “America’s #1 Retirement Stock?”
Here’s the lead-in to the Dr. David Eifrig pitch some readers are asking about this week… “If I had to Pour Every Single Penny of My Retirement into ONE STOCK… This Would Be It” “And today, while it’s still at a good price, I’d like to share it with you, too.” The ad is for […]
It’s hard not to get the “FOMO” feeling when reading through a Motley Fool teaser ad, because they always start with their past blockbuster winners — here’s how the latest tease begins: “Can you imagine if you could go back to 2002, when cloud computing burst onto the scene… “And invest $10,000 in Amazon at […]
February 26, 2024
Ferris’ “Green Scare” and “The Linchpin” Investments
Dan Ferris at Stansberry is pitching his “entry level” newsletter, The Ferris Report ($49/yr) by talking up what he calls the “Green Scare” — which is basically a spiel about how “climate alarmism” is being used by the government to “stretch its tentacles ever further into your home,” a new version of the “Red Scare” […]
February 22, 2024
Friday(ish) File: NVIDIA, Teqnion and more…
I’m on vacation this week, but still have a few thoughts to share on some of the earnings reports and other news items that we’ve seen since last Friday… I’ll try to keep it quick, and there are still plenty of earnings updates and news items I haven’t caught up on, so we have something […]
Inflation may not change that quickly, but inflation expectations can change very abruptly — like this week, when a hotter-than-expected CPI number finally pushed the market over the edge and convinced investors to stop expecting a rate cut in March, or five+ rate cuts this year. That relatively small shift in sentiment, with the market […]
February 16, 2024
Altucher’s “Apple Market Disruption” Event Pitch
This article was originally sent out as a bonus note for the Irregulars on Friday, February 2… but people are still asking about it two weeks later, so we’re now releasing it for anyone to read. What follows has not been updated since it was originally published. Altucher is pitching his Paradigm Mastermind Group ($5,000/year), […]
February 14, 2024
What’s Going On with Palm Beach and MarketWise?
This isn’t really about a new teaser pitch, but I’ve had lots of readers ask what’s going on with the flurry of changes at Palm Beach Research and MarketWise recently… so if you’re interested in that bit of publisher crisis, stick with me for a few minutes and I’ll share my perspective, a little back […]
We don’t just uncover all the teased stocks from those hyped-up newsletter ads we all see each day… we also keep track of those teased stocks, look for trends, and monitor performance, and the biggest story and the biggest driver of stock prices over the past year has been our newfound fascination with artificial intelligence. […]
This article was originally published on January 24, it has not been updated but new versions of the ad with different headlines are driving questions our way so we’re re-posting here. If you’re looking for Stansberry Innovations Report’s “#1 AI Stock for 2024” that was covered separately here. Today I thought we’d look into a […]
February 9, 2024
Friday File: Brookfield, WESCO, Pershing and China
We’ve got a couple trades this week in the Real Money Portfolio, as well as some updated thoughts on portfolio companies who reported recently, so let’s just skip the jibber-jabber about the S&P 500 hitting a new round number (closing above 5,000 for the first time) and get into the details. Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on March 18, 2024
Posted on March 18, 2024
Lots of promises about that from various newsletters, all of whom are selling different ideas. Which newsletter pitch are you thinking of?[...]
Posted on March 18, 2024
That was my best guess when I wrote about this pitch earlier today... and a couple readers have con[...]
Posted on March 18, 2024
Your reasoning is almost as clear as Altucher's![...]
Posted on March 18, 2024
Thanks for the confirmation![...]
Posted on March 18, 2024
Nowhere near matching any of the clues, so no. Have written about other teases of GSIT as a "NVIDIA Killer" in the past.[...]
Posted on March 18, 2024
He didn't mention a share price in the promo I watched.[...]
Posted on March 18, 2024
Yep, covered those three here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/the-big-secret-on-wall-street-this-week/porters-artificial-illusion-pitch-buy-the-beneficiaries-of-ai-not-the-future-pretenders/[...]
Posted on March 18, 2024
I don't know whether GSIT will "win" or not, of course, I'm NOT trying to talk you out of investing in the company, just trying to make the point that they don't "own" that space. The makers of rad-hardened chips include almost any big player in automotiv[...]
Posted on March 18, 2024
Could be, I guess we'll find out in the fullness of time... though it's not really an investment recommendation when nobody can invest in the company (it's still private).[...]
Posted on March 17, 2024
Nope.[...]
Posted on March 16, 2024
Sure. But there are dozens of very large chip companies who sell rad-hardened chips. No idea of anyone has a particular edge in that area.[...]
Posted on March 16, 2024
That's to meet specifications for military and satellite chips. Not particularly unusual, but too expensive for chips that don't require radiation hardening.[...]
Posted on March 16, 2024
Have not looked at ADBE in a very long time. My impression is that they're an exceptional company trading at a pretty extreme valuation.[...]
Posted on March 15, 2024
I'd say "slim", but never say never.[...]
Posted on March 15, 2024
Will be interesting to see. They're playing offense in AI, though we won't know whether they win new customers because of that for a while. I expect a lot of the value for advertisers, using TTD or DV or competing platforms, is in providing cross-platfor[...]
Posted on March 15, 2024
We write about ANET pretty regularly -- last update here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/alpha-investor-report/detease-the-next-microsoft-earn-generational-wealth-from-the-ai-guardian/[...]
Posted on March 14, 2024
Have only looked at one of Bohen's ads in the past year or so, and it sounds like this wasn't the same one -- will look for that promo and see if he drops any clues, thanks.[...]
Posted on March 14, 2024
SuperMicro has been one heck of a burner, those are exactly the kind of stocks (rising analyst estimates, earnings and revenue momentum) that get graded highly by Navellier's quant systems. Did he drop any hints about the five stocks in his ad? Haven't [...]
Posted on March 14, 2024
I've never come across him, but I generally stay away from the crypto pitchmen -- soooo much scamminess in that group that I'd have to be far more expert on the topic to ferret it out.[...]
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Saw that new email this evening. Yep, makes the match worse... though I don't have a better one.Perhaps more importantly, it's probably 99% hot air from Altucher about an "announcement" this week anyway, whether it's SGH or some other little distributo[...]