Have a question in mind that you think is so dumb you’re embarrassed to ask it? That’s what we’re here for today!
This bonus post was inspired by a reader who wanted to know “where to ask a dumb question” here on Stock Gumshoe… and while his question was not actually stupid, and I’m happy to see questions pop up in our comment threads anywhere on the site, I thought it would be a great idea to open the floor and be more welcoming for the shy, the embarrassed, or, yes, even the uninformed.
So this is a no-judgement zone… smart people do things we’d call “dumb” all the time: Warren Buffett didn’t invest in Google in 2004, Albert Einstein married his cousin, and I just had to go back and double check that I didn’t call him Alfred Einstein (which I’ve done before, in print). So if you have that question that you can’t ask your stockbroker or your brother-in-law or Twitter without feeling like a dummy, let ‘er rip by submitting it below. I’ll be nice… and we might all learn something.
And yes, the SEC is always watching, so I must remind you that I can’t give personal investment advice… but I’ll try to share whatever opinion or answers I can provide to any investment-related question you’ve got, though if we end up with a lot of them it might take me a little while to answer thoughtfully.
So please, let your questions fly using the friendly little comment box below… and thanks for being the best readers in cyberspace!
(I will moderate the discussion just to make sure we don’t get too much profanity or offensive stuff, or personal attacks, but I’ll use a light hand — you can be mean to me if you like, just don’t be mean to any other participants.)
Is Altucher a fraud?
Any one knows about this program? “Agora Financial: One-day bonus indicator” Please let me know your opinion on it!
Hi Travis,
I am a new subscriber, but has been reading your articles since 2010. I really enjoy your priceless sleuthing and insights. Much appreciated. My question is this: What’s the weed trading system that Dragon Den is teasing about? Thank you.
Never heard of that one, please forward the emails to ILoveStockSpam@gmail.com and we’ll add it to the list for consideration. Thanks!
Does anyone have experience with Teeka Tiwari’s Alpha Edge service?
It’s mostly a straight put selling system on major stocks like intel Walmart etc. 1-2 trades per month hold to expiration. It’s easy to have a 95% win rate in a rising market. This should not be confused with genius. The hits can be large in a down market.
If you search the site Travis has commented extensively on put selling strategies, saying they work great until they don’t. I agree with him.
If you have a genuine interest in options trading see tastytrade
Cheers
Luc
I joined in early March and have had 5 straight successful trades. Their method involves selling puts on really good companies. Worst case scenario is you take possession of the underlying stock, which you get at a good price and can now use to make covered calls. Obviously, this works best in a bull market and/or with a stock in a good uptrend, which has hit a temporary (hopefully) downdraft. You can sell as many contracts as you feel comfortable with. I tend to set a target which will net me about $2,000/trade. I was skeptical initially, but have made good money so far.
Travis:
What is your opinion about the issues raised by Peter Stansberry in his book The American Jubilee?
Gregory
Asked this question in another post but figured I’ll ask it again here.
Whitney Tilson is offering a new flagship newsletter in partnership with Stansberry that is is outrageously priced for a brand new untested newsletter with unsurprising recommendations so far. It’s Called Empire Investment Report. But they were also offering a “Charter” lifetime membership similar to Stansberry’s Alliance that offers all future newsletters within Empire’s group and were charging $5000 for it plus a $199 annual maintenance fee.
Has anyone here looked into this and subscribed? I subscribed to their Charter membership since they were offering a 30-day trial/refund window but have honestly not been impressed so far. Looking for other opinions on this.
My thoughts are if they do eventually expand on their offerings and expand into things like options trading, then the Charter membership would be well worth it and could pay for itself easily, but as of right now that’s a big IF and of course they won’t disclose any future newsletter plans at this time. Anyone else in the same boat?
iawelal
Agree with that this does appear to worth the money. I wrote a note to Stansberry about this basically saying that as an Alliance member, what could this add that I don’t already have. Maybe if was $995 for a charter member…
Well personally, I’m not an alliance member, but would have loved to bought in back when it was actually affordable. Now at $30k plus, there’s no way I can justify that pricing. I do have a lifetime membership to TrueWealth/DailyWealth and wish I had more from the Stansberry group, if not just for the educational factor.
If I can get in early for a “comparable” service at a lower price of entry that hasn’t been built out yet, it may well be worth, but only time will tell.
My other issue with Whitney is he touts his service and expertise based on his past failures. I get learning from your mistakes, but from someone like him, that doesn’t instill much confidence for me…
iawlael, re your last paragraph, I had the same sentiment after watching the launch of Empire Investment Report. Why the litany of mistakes if one is trying to sell a product? Reverse psychology, maybe? So the initial impression I got after watching the video was that his style resembles the pump-and-dump scheme but with a much longer timeframe than day trading.
Out of curiosity, I googled the following question: “Why is Whitney Tilson no longer a hedge fund manager?” with little expectation of a direct answer. To my surprise, the following interview/article was near the top of the cache:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinharris/2018/05/01/whitney-tilson-on-the-rise-and-fall-of-kase-capital/#38b019a51d08
After reading the article, I’m now fully convinced that I made the right decision (just for myself, of course) not to sign up for the newsletter or any of the services now clogging my Inbox.
Yea, I agree and discovered the same about Whitney. However, my thinking is, since they want to become another Stansberry Research (and apparently their goal is to become even larger and more popular), then they will need to hire more reputable analysts and recruit guys similar to Stansberry’s Sjuggerud and Eifrig in order to branch out into different style investors, both of whom I’ve read some materials from and have relatively good track histories.
Since I’m in my early 30s, I could potentially wait a decade or so for this to happen and get my ROC for my Charter membership at a later point. Still kinda torn if that big IF will be worth it though…
I subscribed to the charter offer for the sole reason of zero risk and to get access to his video course being offered that night. While it seems like a good product (all two issues I’ve viewed), I didn’t feel it was worth it in addition to my Alliance membership. I was also uneasy with his constant pitch that all of his past mistakes would miraculously make him a good stock picker for a newsletter. Called to cancel today and they were very polite and gave me no grief. I wish him well.
Totally agree!
I’m still considering canceling as well. How do you like alliance? Did you buy in early when it was actually affordable?
I really enjoy the Alliance, but I did get in about 7 years ago when it was a bit more affordable, maybe $10k all said and done. If I were to do it now, I’d get the Capital or Income Portfolio Solutions products which comes with most of the best letters IMO.
Yea, I actually just ordered the defensive portfolio last night which came with a whole bunch of Stansberry stuff like you mentioned. They were nice enough to apply my previous purchases with them as credit which knocked the price down.
Hence, this is why I’d considering canceling Empire. Though, if Empire ends up being even just half as good as Stansberry Alliance, I’m still all in for both at less than 10k, so I’d considering keeping both. I figure I got another week or so to decide
Hey, since you are an Alliance member, how do you feel about the “Total Portfolio?” Not many ppl seem to have it or talk about it here. It’s a massive jump in price from the Defensive Portfolio $3000 – $12000 lifetime, but do you personally think that Total and additional trader services are worth it?
I’m actually very interested True Wealth Systems and Retirement Trader being included in that package, which alone would make the jump to the Total Portfolio worth it in terms of subscription “value.” But have you found yourself using these additional features or do you think I should just stick with the Defensive with the included 8 “basic” level newsletters?
Lael, these are not easy questions to answer. It would help if you would advise re the following:
1. Your age.
2. Amount you are currently spending on Stansberry products and what you receive for that spend.
3. How much more this new choice would cost and what additional services you would get.
4. How many years would it take before you would have spent an amount equal to an Alliance membership.
Yea, I get every use case is different, just trying to get an opinion from alliance members if those additional services are mostly being used by members. That being said:
1. Early 30s
2. Originally a TrueWealth lifetime subscriber at $700, liked the service so I recently upgraded to Defensive Portfolio lifetime for $3000 all in so far.
3. Upgrading to Total Portfolio would add the trader focused services for an additional $9000, so $12k all in for everything.
4. At that price point it would be comparable to buying an Alliance membership from several years ago but it seems like the best option to get most of Stansberry’s products for a not totally outrageous price.
If you be a bit more specific.
1. You spent $700 for a True Wealth lifetime subscription. So that was for just one service.
2. You then spent $3000 for the Defensive portfolio lifetime. Is that just for that service? If yes then you now have two services.
3. Exactly what will you get for the extra $9000?
1. I spent 700, them 2300 since the services overlapped, so total all in was $3000 for 8 services and two portfolio solutions.
3. Total Portfolio plus
• Income Intelligence
• Stansberry’s Credit Opportunities
• Stansberry’s Big Trade
• True Wealth Opportunities: China
• True Wealth Opportunities: Commodities
• Retirement Trader
• True Wealth Systems
• Cannabis Capitalist
Plus anything else that comes out in the future that isn’t their highest tier options or venture services.
So the question is are you more an investor or more a trader?
Those 8 services will 10 or more recommendations at any one time. Is that enough or do you need a 100 more to trade?
Granted, buying lifetime at your age is a good investment if you can afford it.
Just recently got into the newsletter world about 6 months ago, and it’s quite the rabbits hole to jump into. Initially I just wanted some good recommendations, but their portfolio solutions seem like very good “done for you” products that takes a lot of the guesswork out if you believe in their thesis. It’s also more comforting that it isn’t managed by any one analyst.
So to be honest I’d like to be a mix of both investor and trader on the side for some extra monthly income. So I guess my question ultimately is, how effective are Stansberry’s trader/ options strategies in generating additional income over the long term and maybe how would they compare to another type of service such as OptiomAlpha?
Stansberry is at the top regarding its services. It is still your responsibility to determine:
1. Which recos to act on
2. Determine risk/reward for each trade.
3. Have proper asset allocation.
4. Have some positions that are hedges to offset the bear market that we all know is coming.
In your early 30’s you are ahead of the game asking these types of questions. More is not always better, in fact it will overwhelm. To deal with that I use the PureQuant tool within TradeStops to help select stocks from the various newsletters (TradeStops has access to your Stansberry newsletters). This highlights the stocks based on positive momentum and provides a means to filter and position size the 100’s of stock picks in the alliance. All Stansberry newsletter portfolios have their stinkers. Using volatility-based trailing stops in TradeStops has been shown (at least in marketing material) to beat the newsletters standard trailing stops (or no stops). The main ones I would like to have that you don’t have access to are Income Intelligence and Credit Opportunities to get some access to lower volatility income vehicles. Was there a more moderate hit to get the income portfolio stuff? That might be worth it imo.
Yea, they have the Income Portfolio which I think is $6000 all in for Lifetime, so double what I’ve put in so far.
Time to update us on the China Play with True Wealth. What are SS’s picks for China besides TCEHY?
Are you asking about the TrueWealth picks or his China focused service. granted, there is some overlap between the two.
I have had an Alliance membership for about 10 years. There are more than a dozen subscriptions included.
Here are some thoughts.
1. There are more newsletters provided than you can effectively use. All are excellent for their target audiences.
2. As you age, you will change which ones you use.
3. The best ones are written by Dr. Effirig, Steve Sjuggerud, and Porter Stansberry.
4. They used to have a product where you buy a package of 3-4 of your choosing and you could swap periodically. I would definitely go with that.
Yea, they did offer that package over the phone and offered it to me (it was like $100 bucks or so to swap out the newsletters each time), but it was still out of my target budget to do so. I’m relatively young for their target market and would rather keep the substantial lot of my funds for investing and not throwing them at newsletters. It’s a delicate balance that I don’t want to screw up.
I buy products from Stansberry long before Empire.
Also Tradestops is a great investment product you will use your whole life.
” I would buy …..”
That’s helpful. Maybe I will cancel Empire and switch over to that Stansberry Flex option if they can offer me a decent deal on it. Thanks!
Tradestops looks interesting but pricey and no lifetime offer available right now… Would definitely be helpful to have, but not 100% necessary if you’re totally aware of your holdings I guess, will just take a lot of work on my part.
Agree with @hedy1234 – I would recommend getting TradeStops to go along with your Defensive portfolio package rather than the new Empire product. TradeStops method of vol-based risk management is far from perfect, but it does a few things really well: Keeps your focus on position sizing and setting an exit strategy. Newsletters generally will not do that for you.
Interesting point. Which level of tradestops subscription would you recommend as the most worth it? $229/ year for basic doesn’t seem bad, but it quickly escalates from there…
Lifetime
Took your advice and canceled Empire and ordered Lifetime Tradestops. Hopefully it was worth it =)
Tradestops is definitely worth it for portfolio management of busy people with multiple newsletter subscriptions. I would suggest becoming an irregular here too (if you aren’t) so you can add Travis’ portfolio as input to the PureQuant tool.
What criteria does your system use when it flags a post as “Comment awaiting moderation?” I’m curious because I’m seeing more and more of this even without the use of foul language nor personal attack on any person or their post.
There are a lot of criteria, none manual, though most moderated comments do get approved as soon as a person sees them (which might be in 10 minutes if we’re at our machines, or might be a day or two when no one is on duty) — mostly various stop words as well as the newness of the commenter, but also an outsourced anti-spam system that sometimes is too restrictive. There are hundreds, sometimes thousands of spam comment attempts a day, so we err on the side of keeping them out.
Thanks for the quick response! As far as possible spam comments, I think I understand. It seems that when part of my comment includes a copy/pasted link it gets flagged, even if it’s preceded by “Https”.
But what are “various stop words”?
Specific words that trigger a review. They change frequently.
What is this debt jubilee that Stansberry is talking about? Could that actually ever happen?
Among other things they basically talk about Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax and how it can be used to forgive student loans.
I guess the likelihood of it happening depends on if she wins 2020…
The debt jubilee is process of debt forgiveness. Student loans are but a piece of all the debt that could be forgiven. Many bond holders would lose the value of their bonds. This would include all pension plans that own bonds. Markets would be in a turmoil.
This question is not on the teaser side of the fence that Stock Gumshoe sleuths out and analyzes, but more on the defensive side – i.e. what stock NOT to hold or buy. According to Stansberry Research, there is a company out there that is another GE (General Electric) in the making. It is one of the largest companies and is widely held. Presumably like GE, it has all these diversified businesses which, even taken together, cannot catch up with its enormous company debt level. Does anyone know which company Stansberry is referring to?
Here are a couple of possibles;
Tesla
At&t
I agree that TSLA is on the chopping block but not AT&T. Smart exec team working on lowering their debt now. With 5G on its way, I don’t see AT&T as threatened. Do you have more reason to say that?
1. Most indebted non financial company in US with over $177B of debt.
2. Very limited ability to sell assets to pay down debt.
3. Highly leveraged. Debt to EBITA ratio over 3. If ratio gets to 3.7, bonds will be downgraded to Junk.
4. Dividends too high at 6.5% and equal $13B per year.
5. Lost key executive. CEO of HBO. He was behind Game of Thrones, The Sopranos and Sex in the City.
6. Impending economic slowdown will reduce subscribers.
Hedy…which company fits those 6 criteria you just mentioned?
mykie76 was asking why I thought AT&T could have a bad future.
While TSLA & T have their problems, they’re focused on a primary business. I think Stansberry is hinting at a conglomerate-type, hence a reference to GE in a recent webinar called “Bear Market Survival”. My initial thought was 3M, but there could easily be other possibilities.
Also Ford and GM
Two questions actually. Is the Altucher Report actually worth anything? The other question is about the Penny Stock Letter. Same question. Is it any good?
Travis, what CBD Companies is Greg Miller referring to in his tease?
Hi Travis,
While you were on your recent vacation, there was a somewhat active reader discussion re George Gilder’s Tech Summit which some of us viewed on July 2nd. Some members had sleuthed out Gilder’s teased moonshot stock to be Ideanomics Inc (IDEX). Like any healthy discussion, there were varying opinions on both IDEX as well as Gilder himself. Would you mind skimming through the thread and sharing your wisdom?
Apart from IDEX, a Gumshoer provided ticker symbols for stocks in his “Cryptocosm” world spanning blockchain, AI and Cybersecurity. Do you see great investing potential in any of these other teases from the video clip: ALLT, ATEN, CEVA, KEM, MITK & PI ?
I’ve looked at a few of those over the years, IDEX does not jump out as particularly appealing to me but I’ll try to respond in a little more detail on Friday.
Are you still in NOK and XLNX as of today (Aug. 24 2019)? You had mentioned in previous articles that you were holding these.
Are you still in NOK and XLNX as of today (Aug. 24 2019)? You had mentioned in previous articles that you were holding these.
Yes
I’ve run across quite a few situations where listed total debt is far in excess of revenue plus cash (per Yahoo Finance). I’ve seen quite a few of these among leasing and office REIT’s, asset management stocks. Can you please describe some of the mechanisms that cause such excess to be displayed like this, and above all, what to consider or look for that alleviates or rids the suggestion that such huge ratios may be indicative of a floundering company? Very helpful.
To list but a few: TRMT; CLNC; ICMB….
Does anyone know what is stansberry research’s “block wave investors guide” picks are? How about their “next 1000% winner” Altcoin pick?
$APTO Aptose Presents Highlights From Corporate Event At ASH
http://ir.aptose.com/news-releases/news-release-details/aptose-presents-highlights-corporate-event-ash
$ISEE IVERIC bio, Inc. Announces Pricing of Public Offering of Common Stock https://investors.ivericbio.com/news-releases/news-release-details/iveric-bio-inc-announces-pricing-public-offering-common-stock Both 10X+ candidates IMHO #dyoDD You’ll be glad you did. Best!
I am curious about Cultivar Holdings Inc. CULT.CN. When or why would a Canadian stock decide to go to an American stock?
I don’t know anything about that little penny stock, but the reason that most cannabis stocks are listed in Canada is that the small canadian securities exchange will allow the listing of them — US-based marijuana companies trade on the CSE because they’re technically illegal businesses under federal law, so they can’t get listed on a major exchange in either the US or Canada, though Canada-based marijuana companies that are entirely legal in Canada can list on US exchanges because they’re not breaking any laws in their home country.
Penny stocks get listings or trade wherever they can, all of the major exchanges have requirements for market size, profitability, insider ownership levels and disclosures, but the smaller exchanges (like the CSE) have very easy rules… the exchanges where there’s a lot more money and regulation, like Toronto or the NYSE or Nasdaq, would not list a little penny stock like Cultivar.
Who’s positive on Gratomic inc (CBUKF) ? I am having trouble buying thru my Merrill Accnt.
What tech stock is Warren Buffet going al in on according to Teeka Tiwari?
Hi, what are the names of the block chain companies that are “making” the blockchain technology. Thanks