Author/Editor
Teeka Tiwari
Publisher
Palm Beach Research Group
Description
Broad investing/”think rich” flagship letter that Mark Ford/Michael Masterson launched with Tom Dyson (formerly of Stansberry) back in 2011, was aimed at contrarian/alternative investments and income and has expanded focus to become a more generalist newsletter under Teeka Tiwari.
Primary focus is on “safe, income-producing assets like dividend-paying stocks”, but also recommends “off-Wall Street markets such as cryptocurrencies, real estate, and collectibles”.
Overall Rating
Rating: 2.9/5. From 75 votes.
Please wait...
2.8
Rating from 281 votes
If you’ve subscribed to Palm Beach Letter, please click the stars below to indicate your rating for this newsletter, and please share any other feedback about your experience using the comment box below.
Investment Performance
Rating from 83 votes
Rating: 2.7/5. From 83 votes.
Please wait...
Your vote
- 5 Stars 13 Votes
- 4 Stars 15 Votes
- 3 Stars 11 Votes
- 2 Stars 20 Votes
- 1 Stars 24 Votes
Quality Of Writing/Analysis
Rating from 62 votes
Rating: 3.0/5. From 62 votes.
Please wait...
Your vote
- 5 Stars 11 Votes
- 4 Stars 14 Votes
- 3 Stars 16 Votes
- 2 Stars 5 Votes
- 1 Stars 16 Votes
Value For Price
Rating from 61 votes
Rating: 2.7/5. From 61 votes.
Please wait...
Your vote
- 5 Stars 8 Votes
- 4 Stars 11 Votes
- 3 Stars 14 Votes
- 2 Stars 9 Votes
- 1 Stars 19 Votes
Customer Service
Rating from 75 votes
Rating: 2.9/5. From 75 votes.
Please wait...
Your vote
- 5 Stars 12 Votes
- 4 Stars 18 Votes
- 3 Stars 16 Votes
- 2 Stars 7 Votes
- 1 Stars 22 Votes
This service has only been available for about 6 months, but I think the service and the approach to investing is suberb. I value Mark Ford and Tom Dyson’s investment wisdom.
The Palm Beach Letter is unlike any financial newsletter I’ve ever read…and I’ve invested in quite a few over the past 20+ years. The advice from Mark Ford and Tom Dyson feels like something you would overhear in a country club locker room, not the same old rehashed advice you get from other letters. It’s like I am being let in on the REAL money-making secrets of the wealth and powerful. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
The original newsletter that got me into this scene was Tom Dyson’s “12% Letter” and now he has moved on to PBL which is a little more broad-based (there is not a stock pick every month.) I like these semi-contrarian financial newsletters much more than the steady stream of personal finance cliches and stock picks from the mainstream press. It is the closest I’ve seen to a dearly departed newsletter called the “Wealth Legacy Advisor” written by Joseph Brennan for Taipan Publishing. And it is also more entertaining than most writing from the Motley Fool, who has become quite stodgy over the years.
As a fairly new (2 years) investor I have taken classes and subscribed to various newsletters to gain insight and knowledge about the process. While learning I have lost $$$ which I chalked up to “my schooling” in the stock market. However, when I discovered The Palm Beach Letter I realized that the advice given by Mark Ford and Tom Dyson is pure, simple, well-researched and worth following. I am so sure of this that I purchased a subscription for my 28 yr old nephew/Godchild so he can build a healthy portfolio and have financial peace of mind. Thank you Mark & Tom for going against the grain—God bless you!
The Palm Beach Letter has taught how to be risk adverse and have confidence in my investments. As a novice investor this letter has been invaluable to me.
This is the only newsletter I need. I will be cancelling other newsletters I subscribed to. Mark and Tom are the best. I always look forward to reading their well written and researched issues, reports, and updates. Thank you Mark and Tom and keep up the good work.
I currently have over 30 current subscriptions to financial newsletters and the Palm Beach Letter sets the bar high, that many others cannot meet.
An excellent value priced “cheap” by industry standards. Do not let the price deceive you.
I am very pleased with their product and service.
Straightforward, usable information, and interesting recommendations. Look forward to more from Mark & Tom.
Yours is one of my top three. Have discontinued all others. Like more content on investments outside the stock market. Hope that your new news letter fills the bill.
I have never invested in the stock market and liked the PBL’s approach to safe market investing. Unfortunately, with my luck the first stock I picked, HTH, on their super safe rating list was a loser for me at a 25% loss. Other than that they had only one other loser of 25% if you used the stop-loss which was Niska Gas. Their overall portfolio including gold with that 50% loss is up about 80% which is a very good return for overall safe picks. Mark Ford also has a pen name, Michael Masterson. It took me two emails for him to reply why he was using the other name. You can do a simple google search to see for yourself. I didn’t like that he didn’t post my question in his reader comments to let his other readers(who might be skeptical) know which I had suggested. Why would he want to hide this? Even though discouraged, I will continue my subscription because I do like the education and ideas.
Oh. And for you newsletter bashers scam speculators out there. I saw you bashing Chris Weber’s publication by inquiring as to why so many people wrote in during a certain timeframe. The reason why you will see so many reviews on the same day is because Mark’s recent weekly report gave a link to stockgumshoe so that they may place a review.
Good advice for a resonable price. I’ve made good money over the last several years from the advice and recommendations provided by Tom Dyson. I was really disappointed when Tom left Stansberry and Associates so when I heard that he landed at the Palm Beach Letter, I subsribed immediately. Tom and Mark make a good team. They offer conservative, common sense advice. It doesn’t quite square with Tom’s penchant for riding trains but I like the investing advice.
Living in Sweden and as a subscriber to four different economical US information letters I definitely find The Palm Beach Letter to give me the most useable information. Your letter gives value for the cost and I like your more conservative way of advices which will give a better result in the long run.
I’m a subscriber myself. I got transferred to PBL from the Liberty League Street advisory by Michael Masterson. I’m also a subscriber of the Weber Publishing and S&A Investment Advisory. Only 3 of them. And imho, PBL is the worst of them, but still good. Let me explain.
1st of all. As far as I know, PBL is new, so i doubt my fellow reviewers here who said they have been a subscriber for years. Most of the review are also about very general comments. I believe that most of the review here is done by the staff of PBL. Do your due diligent guys.
Ok, the PBL review…. (excuse my english. it’s not my 1st language)
The writing style = good, professional, and high quality. I give 5 of 5.
The education = Good, but nothing earth shattering. PBL said that they do not take normal market analysis. They said that they are searching for the boring and ultra safe investment. Well, how can you give good education of the boring and ultra safe investment? Weber recommendation of the global market is top notch IMO. Porter Stanberry, if you can ignore the endless ads, is almost on par of Weber. PBL? Still one one level below both SIA and Weber. I give 3.5 of 5.
They also have the “Joe cigar bar” weekly articles. It is about self development, or money making principles (it’s principles, not ideas, but principles, like reading a book rather than advisory). Around 30% of this Joe cigar Bar weekly letter is good read, in terms that it is educational. Most of the time, are unnecessary and useless principles. Well, they have the promise to write once a week, so I think sometimes they run out of idea to write something good. So, they rant. But, it’s still acceptable.
Consistency = Not good. In the newsletter, they provided a pick for a bank, HTH if i’m not mistaken, and gave a strick stop loss of 25%. By time, the stock got hit on the stop loss. What did they do? PBL said clearly in the newsletter something like: “For those of you who already bought HTH according our recommendation price, please cut loss your HTH. For those of you who are new, HTH is still a good business, and the price is now 25% lower than our recommendation, so it’s time to buy.” It’s very confusing. It’s similar to say “HTH is a good business, just buy and hold till you die!” Why the fake-pro attitude of putting a stop loss while violating it at the same time? Well, at least PBL has the courage to put it on writing and publish it to every newsletter. Consistency?
Lately, they also published a “bond ladder” portfolio. The idea is to buy 12 bonds, 1 expiring each month of the year, making it a passive income machine. Nice idea, if it works. The 1st bond recommendation is actually give lower rate than bank deposit. They too inclined to make a bond ladder, while forgetting that we, investors, don’t really care about bonds or stocks as long as it makes money. One of the subscriber pointed it out, and at the next publication, they admit the mistake and recommend to replace the 1st bond ladder to bank deposit. At least they are honest and have the courage to admit it. Consistency?
Almost forget, the “bond ladder” portfolio is free for subscriber. Which is very good. I bet if you stay at Porter SIA, you will need to pay extra money for this advice. Two thumbs up for PBL on this move.
PBL said that they are focusing on boring and super safe investment idea. However, lately they also created a “dividend growth” portfolio. This portfolio is focusing on small cap companies. Some people will consider it micro cap companies. Well, how can small cap companies be boring and super safe? I think it’s more high risk, rather than super safe. Consistency?
Another point to say is, the “dividend growth” portfolio is also free to subscribers. By this as subscriber we get 3 portfolios, the original PBL, the dividend, and the bond. It’s very very good, considering with Porter Stansberry we have to pay 3 products.
I don’t think PBL is very consistent. Perhaps they are understaffed, or perhaps they are new. At least one thing for sure, they have the courage to admit it. However, this kind of mistakes can not be continually comes up, it costs money for people who follow their advices.
Customer service = so far still ok. I also consider they have the courage to admit their mistakes, which is good.
Performance of picks / advice = I joined several months already, the overall market is down, so I think it is expected that PBL recommendation is also down. They say they are searching for a super safe investments, so I expect the stocks will at least “safe”, but well.
They recommends stocks that i’ve never heard of and considering that PBL is new, I don’t have the heart to put my money on them. So I hope another subscriber who have experience on this could give the review.
Value for the money = considering the price is around $50 per year. They don’t have something that triggers me to unsubscribe, but they also don’t have something to trigger me to recommend them to my friends, even with the $50/yr price. Considering they are new, we could only see how their picks perform. So, I can only value PBL on based on the picks, but on the educational side. Do I want to subscriber PBL so that I could enter trades recommended by them? For now, I don’t. Some of the good books out there are priced $10 – $30. Do I want to pay $50 per year to the education they give? YES!
Hope that’s not too confusing for you guys.
Originally discovered Palm Beach Letter from another website newsletter I follow called “Live and Invest Overseas” (http://www.liveandinvestoverseas.com). Wife, kids, and myself live in the Philippines and USA as dual-residents, so we like investment and society outlooks for the future that are unconventional in perspective. The USA is not the best place in the world to live, and certainly not the center of the financial universe. The hard economic times USA has seen in the past few years may be just the start, not the end.
Regardless of peoples nationalistic opinions, the general investment approaches at PBL seem to be conservative, and far enough away from general Wall Street brokerage philosophy to give some sense of comfort. I don’t trust Wall Street or America, as fleecing people seems to be their main goal.
In general, thumbs-up to PBL for not going with the flow.
I subscribed to the Palm Beach Letter and found that most of the advice is quite the same as you would find in another similar publications. With one difference: in this newsletter the emphasis is on increasing your earnings and savings before you increase your investments. The idea is that the investment strategies are more of a long term strategy, almost like a retirement plan, and in the mean time you must work on improving your wealth through additional (and possibly residual) income. Pretty straightforward but many people are still looking for the shortcuts to becoming a millionaire overnight.
Me too 🙂
Solid Newsletter
I am a subscriber to PBL, it started out at $49 and then renewed for $79 without any sort of notice. Now they have this special deal that if you renew now for I think about $50 more which would be $129 a year they will reset for 1 full year. They tell you how excited they are well wouldn’t you be to in their shoes with increase from $49 to $129 a year. Then they bug you everyday with the count down with last chance. I told them to just cancel when it runhs out. One thing they do as with their last pick the buy up to price is so close to the starting price that you are stopped out before you get a chance. I’m still waiting on their advice that Microsoft is going to buy Yahoo. It’s an OK letter but they have lost credibility with me with these price increases.
I dropped Palm Beach Letter a couple weeks ago after subscribing for roughly 3 months. They offer a lot of articles about accumulating wealth, being smart with your money, etc., which I can see being beneficial for those readers with a demonstrated history of poor money management. I need solid stock picks. I even subscribed to their Palm Beach Income service for a while which focuses on selling put and call options. I found I did better selling options using recommendations from Daily Wealth Trader. The stock picks were ho hum. They provide a bond ladder and what they call “Legacy Stocks” which is a list of companies we’re supposed to own forever. It’s a lot of information focused on sound money management and long term money growth. I just didn’t feel it added much to my investment success and they often sent emails that were essentially paid advertisements from other investing companies, which gets annoying after a while. I felt I got similar but better investment advice from Daily Wealth Trader and 12% Letter. Maybe others will benefit from the overall money management component but it didn’t do anything for me.
Tom Dyson states in his pitch for the Palm Beach letter tha Kraft is owned by Philip Morris. It was sold years ago, so with an error like that, I can’t trust my money to his advice.