Stock Gumshoe

I’ve written probably far too many notes here about teasers from the esteemed Louis Navellier of late, but I can’t help it — his ads are making fairly huge promises (none yet kept), and they are arriving in a deluge. Perhaps ignoring them would be the saner path, but no one ever accused the Stock Gumshoe of an excess of sanity (it is, after all, a strange and lonely pursuit to chase the investment teasers down into their labyrinthine lairs).

But anyway, we’re one paragraph in here … so I’ve committed. We’ll solve this one and discuss it, should you please, and perhaps this time Louis will come through with a promise that’s achievable.

Thankfully, this time he doesn’t promise that it will double by next Friday, though he does still make some bold assertions:

If you don’t make 50% on this stock, you’ll get Global Gains free. (This is no different than the standard newsletter deal, just to be fair — most of them give a trial period for cancellation, and many will refund unused months upon request)

… and …

The stock should triple, to $150, by Thanksgiving. It might not be a bad idea to lock in those tickets to go see Aunt Mildred in Kenosha with the way fares are rising, but Thanksgiving is still quite some time away — so he’s got four months to make good on that triple. I wouldn’t take even money on it, to be honest, but who knows, perhaps he’ll be right.

But you want to know what the company is, don’t you? We’ll keep moving. Read the rest of this entry »

I think a few readers and some folks in the forum have already called attention to this teaser ad, one in a recent avalanche of teaser ads from Louis Navellier’s various newsletter services — I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little bit sick of the guy.

On the other hand, during times like this he can be an interesting guy to follow — he generally picks such rapidly growing stocks that you really get a lot of boom and bust picks when the market goes through dramatic changes.

And his picks probably change so fast that I imagine even the copywriters who throw his ads together must have a bit of trouble keeping up — I just recently heard from another reader, for example, that Navellier just sold a stock that he was, only weeks ago, breathlessly predicting would double in a matter of weeks. That was Fuel Systems Solutions — on June 22 he guaranteed that Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quick note for you, in case you happened to miss it … Navellier’s publisher is apparently enraptured with the “guaranteed double in one or two weeks or your money back” offer, and it’s happening again. For a stock we’ve already written about that failed it’s first couple tests.

A few weeks ago Gran Tierra Energy (GTE) was the focus of this campaign from Louis Navellier for his Global Growth service. The first time I saw this ad was on June 6, and the promise was that GTE, then at about $6, would double within 14 days. So that means a double by June 20, which was last Friday.

Didn’t happen.

He also said that “I guarantee you’ll thank me by next Friday,” which would have been June 13. I don’t subscribe to his service, so I didn’t feel the need to thank him, but nor have I given him any money that I expect back.

On June 6 when this campaign started, as far as I can tell, GTE closed at $6.07.

On June 13, it was up almost a dollar, to $7.01.

And on June 20, when the double was expected (that would be $12 for the mathematically challenged), the shares closed at $7.45.

They then trickled down over the last several days to close yesterady at $7.02, but, with this latest teaser campaign blanketing our inboxes and the price of oil going up again, GTE is having a good morning — up to $7.50 or so.

And the latest promise? It’s more or less the same thing, now we’re guaranteed that we’ll thank him by next Friday, and that the shares will double by July 11. Read the rest of this entry »