Hi there, i am new to Gumshoe and excited to share experiences and hopefully make some money!

I have been a free subscriber to Mauldin Economics OTB and his other free publications for about 7 years. I have always found him an interesting read.

During 2011 I started to see more and more promoting by him of other services and experts, so I bit the bullet and in Jan 2012 subscribed to Casey’s Big Gold for $79.
After studying their portfolio and without trading for the first 12 months (partly due to red tape of setting up a Broker’s account but also wanting to gauge their performance) I could see that most of their picks were off side (naturally due to the world wide sell off?). I thought I could take advantage of this and get in at low prices and I started to trade in May 2013. Surely a no lose situation I thought. I made a little here and there and for $79 annually what did I want?!

(BTW I set aside a certain $ amount of my portfolio to trade all these recs with a ratio of 2% of the total account for each rec and 20% of the total amount to spread over the “dead certs”).

In March 2013 I subscribed to Mauldins World Money Analyst for $174 and then Bull Eye Investor for $199 in June 2013 (I think Grant Williams comes over very well in his interviews) and his past portfolio shows some good returns.

Casey Research kept pumping the ”New Bakken” and after researching what a Bakken was (!) I thought ”ill have some of that” and for $749 I subscribed to the New Bakken (PRD Energy) and got Casey Energy Report for free (our vice versa!). I immediately pulled the trigger on PRD (dead cert) and yep I bought at the high of $1.40 and it has only gone down since flirting around $1.00.

For $99 I bought ”Crisis Investing in Cyprus” which I have got to say is an excellent report. Can’t complain. Haven’t pulled the trigger because the Brokers who offer Cyprus have a terrible customer service and I just never followed through. I couldn’t tell you if any of the recommendations have made money.

Finally I subscribed to Big Tech in Nov 2013 for $99.

I gave all these subscriptions the benefit of the doubt –some were up, some were flat, some were down. The PRD trade due to its size is the worst in % and $ terms.

It wasn’t until I was reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, (excellent book by the way) when their “Personal Mentor” department approached me by phone, that I smelt something fishy with them (another story another post). This sparked something in my head and led me to research the Casey guys in Jan 2014 and there it was…..Pump and Dump. SOB’s I thought! But I then realized all the companies they recommend are real (I think?). Why should I expect to have first bite of the cherry when it’s obvious they are just doing the same as a Merryl Lynch or a Goldman Sachs – they all pump up their portfolios. Its just the guys like Casey are more calculating (or not as the case may be!!).

This is when I realized why I never got a reply from Casey when I asked them why PRD was originally recommended at 0.50 and still recommended to me at 3 times that. Also why I was missing out on bids only a few hours after receiving the monthly updates from them.
Also it always niggled me that Marin Katusa was a right pompous, thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, pr**k. He is so far up Doug Casey’s ar*e its concerning.
In hindsight, the vocabulary in the monthly reports was just not right imo. (albeit extremely thorough in their analysis)

I’ve spent the past month looking at the graphs of my investments thru my subscriptions and I can see a P&D pattern on say 50% of them. On others there is just no sign of them ever using a stop. Hell they are still recommending Holds on recs from years ago which are way offside.
There is also a connection between the portfolios of Mauldin and Casey.

I’ve started to exit some of the profitable recs at 20-30% profits (I’m not waiting for Casey to dump and I’m not waiting for the market “to turn” to see a “10 bagger” as Marin keeps chatting about).
I’ve averaged some offside recs and nicked a little here and there, trying to bring my average down from the original buy price.

So my question is…..can we not profit from these guys if we are willing to put some hours in and get in and most importantly get out before the dump. Don’t get greedy, nick the 30% profit. Set stop losses at 10%.
Has anyone here subscribed to their premium services, which I’m presuming get the heads up way before my lower subscriptions?

Or am I being naive?

Look forward to your replies.

Cheers

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