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Reviews and commentary posted on this site by readers represent the opinions of those readers, and such content is not edited or approved by Stock Gumshoe. Review submissions are moderated to prevent the posting of offensive, unrelated, or spam commentary or reviews, but there is no guarantee that our moderating process will catch all such submissions. Reviews and commentary do not represent the opinion of Travis Johnson or Stock Gumshoe. Reviewers of newsletters and services represent themselves as current or past subscribers or users of those services, but no effort is made to verify their status or the substance of their experience. If you are concerned about the accuracy of the information about any newsletter or other content on this site you are encouraged to contact Stock Gumshoe. Presence or absence of a review, or the ranking, is not determined or influenced by any advertising relationships with newsletters publishers, but links to particular subscription offers for specific newsletters are usually placed as a result of an advertising or affiliate relationship. Please see below for full disclaimers and privacy policies.
10 Subscriber Reviews of Emerging Growth
Review by Joe, February 3, 2009
I have subscribed to emerging growth for a couple of years now. This newsletter is on the pricey side, about 1k per year. Unless the market drops as it has done and like most newsletter writers, they drop their price substantially, I assume to raise capital to invest new money in the down market. Anyway, I do okay with this one, not great, but I only invest money in the top 10 stocks. This is another newsletter that has you invest in 50+ stocks. It takes a substantial amount of money to spread it around that much. And I assume like Louis’ other newsletters, he hangs on to stocks way too long and you ended up riding the stock down due to his positive comments. He almost makes you afraid to sell some of the stocks with his upbeat and positive remarks on the stock and the market in general.
Review by Clark, February 8, 2009
In Oct. 2007 his picks were almost universally wrong. Maybe I just caught him at the market peak. SYNA, VDSI, VIVO, etc., they are small caps and when the market turns south you get slaughtered.
Review by Lee99, February 14, 2009
I subscribed to this service for 6 months in early 2007. Seems Louis is good at finding these emerging stocks, but 95% of the time will hold them too long and watch his paper profits drift away. His message is always “Buy, Buy, Buy”. He never tells you to sell - until the stocks are dropping off the chart.
To use any of his services you must be willing to pick your own exit points.
I still subscribe to his Blue Chip service. Just tune out his constant “Rah-Rah”, and use your common sense on when to sell.
Review by Steve, May 11, 2009
I’ve followed Navallier since the very early 1980s, when he published MPT Review. I liked that format better because he actually gave you a summary of 100s of stocks and saved you a lot of time on research. Honestly, I’ve made a lot of money investing on Louis’s picks. The best one ever was Key Energy Group back in ‘99, picked it up for under $3 and got out in less than 9 months at over $13. There have been many others. But I had it with him last Fall when he kept telling everyone to hold onto Graham and Dryships, and of course, both missed on earnings (and Drys had other problems) and the shorts killed both of them. The previous comments here are correct, Louis is a great analyst, has a great system, is way above average as a stock picker, but it seems like he’s never examined a chart or looked at Market Direction as an indicator in his life. It seriously puzzles me. I really like him, but he does “hang on” till it’s too late! His “Portfolio Grader Pro” is very helpful though, and it’s free–all you have to do is put up with a constant barrage of Investor’s Insight ads and emails. Worth keeping your eye on.
Review by elg09, June 18, 2009
This guy is a big scale charlatan. He has no shame to announce that a stock will double, let’s say by Friday, like it was the case for GTE last year. Well, he spelled dis-as-ter for this gullible subscriber. I won’t follow him anywhere again. I don’t even want to hear his name.
Review by jim, November 12, 2009
TOOK THIS LTR a couple of yrs, several yrs ago. It was OK, sorta middling re performance, tho w pretty good rationale for recs. other ltrs did better for me, so I dropped it maybe 3 yrs ago. dunno how its doing now.
Review by NYCguy, November 16, 2009
I subscribed to Emerging Growth for about one year, a few years ago. Navellier touts a huge return investing in these growth stocks, but I didn’t get that kind of return. One thing that I didn’t like is there were just too many stock picks. So you were left to pick as many of them as you could afford. Unfortunately, if you picked the losers, you ended up with very poor performance. While I was subscribing he had some home-runs like Hanson, QSII, and a couple others. But he also had some complete wipe-outs, like FPP. He is very good at telling you what to buy, but often does not tell you when to sell. The way I judge a newsletter is if I get a good ROI on my subscription price, I keep it, if not, I cancel it. I canceled Emerging Growth because I was not getting a good ROI on $1000/year.
Review by nuts2bolts, December 11, 2009
Navellier is a former computer programmer, who now uses his own program to pick stocks for his subscribers to his various newsletters. I’ve subscribed to 2 of them, including Emerging Growth.
One of his weaknesses is that he will trumpet his correct picks incessantly, but completely sidestep his wrong ones.
Another weakness is that he’ll recommend stocks with Market Caps in the $100-350 Million range, thinly traded, and these are very dangerous stocks to buy, because they are so thinly traded, and such small companies.
A 3rd - and critical - weakness is that he frequently does not own the stocks he recommends. I no longer subscribe to ANY Navellier newsletters as a result, but do track the stocks he actually OWNS thru several different websites that track funds, including his own, Navellier and Assoc.
I realized that if I was going to invest in stocks his own programming targets, that was the only realistic way to do it, and it’s (gasp!) free…
Review by bigguy, December 11, 2009
Of the twelve stocks I have bought in the few months I have followed this service,
nine have gained substantially, two have fallen badly, and one is somewhat down.
The net result to date is over a 30 per cent gain on the initial costs, less, of course,
the cost of receikving the Emerging Growth letter.
Review by Dale, January 28, 2010
This newsletter and Navallier himself have given me more loses than my favorite baseball team, The Kansas City Royals. At least the Royals try. You can do better by running any cheezy stock screen. Maybe thats what Navallier does. He is a marketing guru so I after the 1,000 email he wore me down, caught me on a good day and I subscribed for a year. Horrible decision. It was almost comical some of his selections. He would always claim victory once the stock went up a point or two for a brief time then once the trash he picked took a dump you would never hear anything about it. Take his picks and short them. Thats the only way to make any money on his loser selections.
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