Review by SnoopyJC, May 18, 2009

Overall Rating
Performance of Picks/Advice
Consistency
Interesting to Read/Educational
Customer Service
Value for the Money

In late 2008 when the market started to come unglued, I saw Peter Schiff on a TV show and picked up his “Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets”. Some of the things in that book are starting to play out, though he was very early with his advice (e.g. the dollar went up instead of down like he said it would).

I took 1/5 of my retirement account and opened a EuroPac account with it. I didn’t do exactly what his broker advised, but I did wind up investing most of my money in his picks.

First they started going down, but recently they have been going up, and going up a LOT!!

His best pick, SkyWorth (SWDHF) almost doubled in price, and all of the other picks are currently up from where I bought them (but not “crazy-up” like this one).

EuroPac is an old-fashioned “full-service” brokerage, which charges old-fashioned 3% commissions on transactions, so you need to minimize your trading (e.g. “buy-and-hold”). They also don’t offer features like internet orders or stop-losses - there is a website where you can see your current holdings, though. Once you phone in your orders, they do buy the stocks directly on the foreign exchanges, though, not on the “pink-sheets” or through ADRs, which gets you better prices.

Overall, I am very happy with Peter Schiff, the broker he assigned me, and http://www.EuroPac.net/ .
–joe

Review by normdiamond, September 22, 2009

Overall Rating
Performance of Picks/Advice
Consistency	Not Rated
Interesting to Read/Educational
Customer Service
Value for the Money

I read Peter Schiff’s books and believe his predictions,some of which have occurred and others which will occur in the future. I am trying to put my assets into foreign stocks and currencies.

My account is medium size, over a yrar old, and his picks (or his associate broker’s) have gone up in value and most have paid better dividends than US securities. I’m pleased with the results and plan to invest more money with him

Review by Cautious, October 11, 2009

Overall Rating
Performance of Picks/Advice
Consistency
Interesting to Read/Educational
Customer Service
Value for the Money

Having been convinced a few years ago that it would be wise to diversify into foreign stocks, I opened an account with EuroPacific. I could tell you about some of the recommended stocks that lost over 90% in the last year, but instead I will be more general and simply provide some cautionary information.
When you invest with EuropPacific, be prepared to do your own research. They provide absolutely none. They trade through Pershing, which has a website where you can watch the value of your portfolio, but again, no research. The brokers give no recommendations to sell as the stocks decrease. It is entirely up to you, and it is very difficult to find data on the various companies. Their commission rate is 3.5%; the claim is that they get better prices buying directly on the foreign exchange, but that was never proven.

After significant frustration, I pulled my money out and will be content to invest via ADRs or even the pink sheets.

Review by StronglyAgainstEuropac, November 28, 2009

Overall Rating
Performance of Picks/Advice
Consistency
Interesting to Read/Educational
Customer Service
Value for the Money

I invested half of my total life’s savings in Europac in the end of 2007, after learning of Peter Schiff’s investment philosophy.

His philosophy is wrong. I learned the hard way.

My money plumetted 70%, and although it gained during the recent bull market, it is still down 35%. Of course, if you invested with him at the bottom of the U.S. market crash, your investment would be up 50%. But that is basically the same as the Dow and Nasdaq for the same period.

Stick with index funds and broad market domestic and international funds, unless you have plenty of money to play with.

The good news is that Peter Schiff has left investing. He’s now running for U.S. Senate (and has the nerve to solicit donations from his Europac clients).

Review by mary, February 25, 2010

Overall Rating
Performance of Picks/Advice
Consistency
Interesting to Read/Educational
Customer Service
Value for the Money

very disappointed with this company. they claim to be a full service co. with a 3% fee but i found them to be anything but that. i found it like pulling teeth trying to get answers on individual stocks, dividends etc. pershing which handles their trades i found wholly inadequate as far as a paper trail on trades. counting fees i lost over 25% of my initial investment.

Review by Lukester, February 26, 2010

Overall Rating
Performance of Picks/Advice
Consistency
Interesting to Read/Educational
Customer Service
Value for the Money

SnoopyJC and NormDiamond are favorably impressed with EuroPac because they purchased recommended EuroPac shares somewhere near the March 2009 lows. They should talk to the EuroPac clients who lost their shirts holding “long and strong” all the way through the 2008-2009 meltdown. Europac brokers are surly, and only interested in chatting you up when you have large amounts to invest. Cautious, StronglyAgainstEuroPac and Mary all have it right.

This is a “boutique” brokerage with outrageous commissions, spotty guidance on the buy side, nonexistent guidance on the sell side, and a notoriously snotty CEO who parlayed his “notorious snottiness” into ever greater publicity while he sashayed from a modest single office west coast brokerage (I was a client since 2003) with a modest roster of clients, into opening multiple offices including an “old money” office in Darien ,CT and has demonstrated the keenest interest in using his brokerage and client lists as a launch pad for garnering sufficient public attention to run for the Senate. I

I’ve known this broker from his early days, and his instincts for self promotion before any overly tender concern for his brokerage client’s safety is clear enough to me that I would not trust my own funds to his company’s guidance, and far less trust those of any retiree to his broker’s wolfishly self interested guidance. Oh and BTW, in the 2004-2006 period when I maintained a fully invested portfolio at Europac I was one of their top performing investors.

But there is a twist to that story. I started (all green, and “wet behind the ears” full of trust in their having more wisdom than I as to which stocks to buy - and after barely four months when I saw many of their recos performing like absolute dogs, I sold every last one of their suggested stocks and took a month or two to research and cross reference the best stocks out of two or three investment newsletters instead. That’s how I put a strong portfolio together. NOT by adhering for any length of time to a EuroPac portfolio.

I don’t trust those guys nor their tender care and concern to build my stock portfolio one INCH. And those of you guys who are sitting in a portfolio of stocks built for you by EuroPac, you have been very dangerously lulled into a sense of complacency by the (chance!!) confluence of having embarked on their recommended stocks somewhere close to the bottom of the market in March 2009. Wake up and smell the coffee.

You guys need to take your profits on those stocks - ALL OF THEM - and then spring just a few bucks and buy yourself some REAL stock picking guidance, from the likes of maybe JAMES DINES, or THE ADEN FORECAST, or OUTSTANDING INVESTMENTS, or Stephen Leeb’s THE COMPLETE INVESTOR (he’s gotten a bad rap from his Millionaire letter, but his proven record spanning 20+ years is actually as an outstanding stock picker and has over these past 20 years also earned a record as as a very damned good market timer too).

All of these, and I would bet a good number of the better newsletters reviewed here at Stock Gumshoe more favorably, are better at building your portfolio than EuroPac’s brokers! You guys who are sitting in EuroPac “custom-built” portfolios need to be very cautious about any complacency in those “structured positions”. I don’t think those brokers give a rat’s ass what happens to your positions after they’ve gotten your buy commissions, except maybe to look forward to your sell commissions on the back end.

I still have an account at EuroPac, but it’s only got $1000 in it, and I’m very glad to confess that it’s been 100% dormant for the past 4 years. =:-). ***Don’t let the blistering market rally of the past year impair your keen perception of the true caliber of the outfit whom you believe is “guiding” your investment***.

Interesting tidbit about EuroPac. Back in 2002-2003 they had a very modest client base and were basically just another brokerage among the generic ones in Newport Beach. What happened to set them on their hyperbolic growth? There’s a newsletter writer called Bob Czeschin who had a slightly disreputable penny stock advisory back then, and he recommended EuroPac as a brokerage who could place stock purchases on a lot of foreign bourses.

Then Czeschin’s newsletter at that time closed down, and Peter Schiff had this large client roster of clients with money who had been speculating in penny stocks. He put out a shingle in front of this shop, saying he provided strategic investing advice and this big fat mailing list of clients of Bob Czeschin’s newsletter came over in droves. The rest was history as he parlayed a rapidly growing client base there into the opening of an East Coast office in Connecticut.

Along the way, he espoused the “housing is a bubble” thesis and by getting into every available interview online and on the air to drum up some noise about this thesis (he most certainly was not alone in this thesis!) he started to accrue all the trappings of a “guru” and actively encouraged that. I lived many years in NYC and I have learned to spot the flurry of self referent publicity activity which people engage in when they are “on the make”.

I watched Peter churn and churn his publicity from being a small time brokerage into being increasingly referred to as a “guru” on the markets, into making lots of loud noise about our polticio-economic quandary, into running for the US senate while using his brokerage clients (a vast number of whom lost their shirts holding his stocks during the meltdown) as a “popular base” to launch his run for the senate.

It’s my considered opinion, that Peter Schiff has “hustled” every step of the way to where he is now. Hustling’s fine, but puhleese - don’t pretend that your hustle is purely out of concern for giving exemplary and prudent investing advice (like putting client’s into 100% stock portfolios with all their liquid assets!! - NOT! Yet EuroPac brokers aka “investment advisers” don’t even blink at offering such strategic posture advice).

Or, don’t pretend that your “concern for the nation’s direction” is the only reason you are then forsaking much further attention to those clients, to then devote yourself to a run for the senate. In short, after observing this operator morph from one thing into another for the past decade, his constantly highly vocal profile seemingly *everywhere* including YouTube gives this jaundiced observer a pain in the neck (mixing my metaphors, but you get the point).

He’s got a fascinatingly “blunt” debating style which leaves you feeling in the pit of your stomach that he’s telling the “unvarnished truth” while everyone else must be some kind of pansy for offering slightly more moderate or nuanced opinions. Peter does not do “nuance” because “nuanced” does not sell nearly as well as harsh and blunt controversy.

Consequently his delight in the shockingly blunt approach which has so many people convinced he’s the only guy in the room who is telling the truth, is actually a well crafted way to grab everybody’s attention “by the throat”. At first it’s fascinating to observe but if you watched this guy parlay it all the way up you begin to understand it’s primary intent is to move Peter up the escalator.

Regardless of his oratorical fascination, to this long time observer, he’s an opportunist. I lived long enough in NYC to spot a hustler, and this is just one more, now gunning for the Senate. Doubtless if he makes it there, he’ll find the place quite congenial as he’ll find plenty of other birds of the same plumage there.