Every year we call out a “turkey” stock teaser around Thanksgiving time and poke a bit of fun at some terrible investment ideas…
… so it seems only fair to highlight a few winners as well, and this week, when we’re getting ready to close down for the holiday, seems a good time to spread some cheer and celebrate some good stuff.
So what were the top teaser picks of 2020? It’s been a doozy of a year, for sure, and there have been some true barn-burner teaser stock picks over the past twelve months… but the ones at the top of the list do still stand out.
You can always check out the (semi-updated) teaser tracking spreadsheets to see what’s going on lately, but as of yesterday these were the winners at the top (the date links to our original article):
Date | Company | Ticker | Newsletter | Editor | Publisher | Buy Price | Current Price | Percent Change | Stock vs. S&P |
6/22/2020 | MindMed | MMEDF | Green Chip Stocks | Jeff Siegel | Angel Publishing | $0.37 | $2.88 | 685.91% | 668.01% |
3/18/2020 | The Rubicon Project (now Magnite) | MGNI | Project 5X | Chris Wood | RiskHedge | $5.01 | $27.05 | 441.12% | 388.15% |
3/2/2020 | Fastly | FSLY | Motley Fool IPO Trailblazers | Tom Gardner | Motley Fool | $20.25 | $106.25 | 423.65% | 401.12% |
9/29/2020 | VSBLTY | VSBGF | Wealth Warrior, The | Jason Simpkins | Outsider Club / Angel Publishing | $0.10 | $0.50 | 380.77% | 370.91% |
3/27/2020 | The Trade Desk | TTD | Motley Fool Stock Advisor | Dave Gardner, Tom Gardner | Motley Fool | $197.51 | $960.87 | 384.62% | 344.01% |
4/13/2020 | Fastly | FSLY | Motley Fool Cloud Disruptors 2022 | Motley Fool | $22.11 | $106.25 | 379.60% | 349.96% | |
4/6/2020 | Square | SQ | Palm Beach Letter | Teeka Tiwari | Common Sense Publishing | $50.31 | $239.84 | 376.55% | 337.78% |
3/19/2020 | Trulieve | TCNNF | Cabot Marijuana Investor | Timothy Lutts | Cabot | $6.55 | $31.30 | 377.86% | 317.06% |
3/16/2020 | Moderna | MRNA | Million Dollar Portfolio (Wyatt) | Ian Wyatt | Wyatt Investment Research | $28.18 | $127.49 | 351.99% | 306.45% |
2/24/2020 | Denali Therapeutics | DNLI | Takeover Targets | Dylan Jovine | Behind the Markets | $22.08 | $92.09 | 317.21% | 299.54% |
And we need to acknowledge that this has been an extraordinary year. I’ve been tracking these “can’t miss” teaser stocks since 2007, and this is the first year in my memory that a majority of the teased stocks beat the market. Usually it’s not even close, in a typical year at least 60-70% of the stocks will trail the market, two or three will come close to doubling, and a handful will lose more than 90% of their value.
This year, if you recall, it was a little difficult to choose our Turkey of the Year, because there weren’t that many really terrible stock picks. Two thirds of the stocks that graced our pages after being teased by newsletters beat the S&P 500, and as of yesterday FIFTY of them had posted a gain of at least 100% since being teased. That is truly extraordinary — and they have not repealed the law of gravity, so we should not expect to ever see a year like this again, but let’s take just a moment to enjoy it before we start to predict doom for 2021, shall we?
What can we see that really worked about those top stocks? As usual, there were a couple biotechs in the mix — though surprisingly enough, only one of the COVID/vaccine names made the top ten (Moderna). And several that I was skeptical of at the time that I covered them.
And not surprisingly, there were a bunch of high-growth tech stocks that led the bunch, as befits a year when technology growth stocks met their perfect market — we’ve never depended more on technology for work or entertainment than we did in 2020, and that shows in the successful stock picks. The Motley Fool takes the lead in this bunch, thanks to the explosiveness of Fastly (FSLY) and to the fact that they’ve been teasing The Trade Desk (TTD) pretty much every month for three years now, but the two tiniest stocks in this bunch, by far, VSBLTY and MindMed, were teased by the Outsider Club/Angel Publishing folks. And as befits a year that saw the world in an altered state, I guess it’s particularly appropriate that we had leading stocks who are selling, or trying to sell, both marijuana (Trulieve) and LSD (MindMed).
And as with last year, there were no repeats — last year’s top teaser list was dominated by technology hardware, with NVIDIA, Inseego, Taiwan Semiconductor and Skyworks Solutions leading the pack — but the top teaser picks of last year did continue to outperform this year, ALL of them beat the performance of the S&P 500 over the past 12 months. Will that happen again this time around? I’m a little skeptical, given the wild outperformance of the stocks that top the list this year, but you never know (the best teaser pick in 2019 beat the S&P 500 by about 60 percentage points… those top ten above all beat the market by close to 300 percentage points).
But what stands out most of all? Timing matters, and therefore luck matters. Most of those picks were teased in March and April, just as the market was bottoming out. Performance is still relative, and they did perform extraordinarily well even compared to the broader markets, which also bottomed out around those times… but newsletters typically pick hot stories, which are always more volatile stocks, with a high beta, and that means that they were down more than the market when everything crashed… and the bounced back more than the market when everything recovered.
And let’s celebrate the biggest victories we’ve all seen this year in our own portfolios, shall we? I’ll go first.
The biggest gains I’ve posted, by far, have been warrant and option speculations on growth stocks this year… but there’s a lot of luck involved there. I saw potential in those bets, of course, but did not foresee those 1,000%+ gains in any way, and they were risky bets so I kept them small. The new regular positions that I’ve added this year to the Real Money Portfolio that have been most successful also came early in the year — with Fastly (FSLY), Roku (ROKU) and Par Technology (PAR), all of which I started buying before the pandemic set in, jumping out as the biggest gainers (in that order), followed by smaller and somewhat newer positions in Sea Ltd (SE), Stitch Fix (SFIX), Cloudflare (NET) and Unity Software (U)… and among stocks I’ve owned for years, Shopify (SHOP), The Trade Desk (TTD), Okta (OKTA), DocuSign (DOCU) or Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR) would have a claim on maybe making my top ten for 2020 (OK, I admit, I mostly slipped IIPR in there because I wanted to mention at least one stock that pays a dividend — IIPR did well in 2020, but not as well as those technology barn-burners… this was a year when nobody really cared about dividends… maybe that will change in 2021?)
Your turn! What have been your best investments in this wild year?
I know many of you have ridden the speculative wave in these and other stocks, probably including Tesla (TSLA), Zoom Video (ZM), a bunch of COVID names or the new wave of SPAC speculations… now’s your chance to take a victory lap, what are your biggest winners? Let us know with a comment below.
And since it’s always interesting to see how “best” matches up (or fails to match up) with “most popular,” here are the articles that were most read at Stock Gumshoe this year, and the stocks that those articles pitched:
Whitney Tilson’s “TaaS” pitch (Alphabet (GOOG), Aptiv (APTV) and Nvidia (NVDA), 4/16/2020)
Teeka Tiwaris’ “Genesis” Blockchain stocks (Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), Square (SQ), NVIDIA (NVDA) — 4/6/2020)
Matt McCall’s Quantum Battery — (Ilika and others, 1/17/2019, still heavily pushed two years later)
Jimmy Mengel’s “Blue Gas Tesla Killer” (Ballard Power (BLDP) — 1/29/2020)
Paul Mampilly’s “America 2.0” pitch about a “South Carolina Disruptor” (3D Systems (DDD) — 1/13/2020)
Alex Koyfman’s “$6 Semiconductor to turn $1,000 into $313,000 before the year ends” (Everspin Technologies (MRAM) — 8/18/2020)
E.B. Tucker’s $10 “5G Master Key” (Gilat Satellite Networks (GILT) — 2/7/20)
Ray Blanco’s “Apple-Fi” Pitch (Aerojet Rocketdyne (AJRD), Loral Space (LORL), Echostar (SATS), Virgin Galactic (SPCE), Maxar (MAXR) — 6/1/2020)
Paul Mampilly’s “Battery Breakthrough fo the 21st Century” (Maybe Eaton (ETN), perhaps also secondary investments in private Sila Nanotechnologies — 4/23/2020)
Motley Fool’s “Netflix Killer” (The Trade Desk (TTD) — 3/27/20)
Those most-popular pitches did quite well in a few cases, too, though there were clearly a few stinkers. Teeka’s pitch of Square and the Fool’s oft-repeated pitch of The Trade Desk did make the cut for that top ten above, and certainly NVIDIA did well this year even if it none of the NVDA teases were timed quite perfectly enough to crack that 300%+ gain to make the top of the list. None of the stocks covered in those most popular articles did disastrously, as really almost no stock was a true disaster this year, but a few were relative disappointments, and mediocre at best — Everspin Technologies was a late-year disappointment as the CEO departed a couple weeks ago, Gilat was my personal “Turkey of the Year” as their merger failed, and 3D systems is just getting back to even thanks to a recent recovery.
So again, in a year of story stocks there were still a few stories that failed… but there weren’t any super-embarrassing stories among the “most popular” pitches at Stock Gumshoe. If you had invested equal amounts based on all of those stories, you would have beaten the market.
And again, I’d be surprised if we’ll be able to say the same thing about the most popular teaser stocks of 2021 when we take a look a year from now… but you never know.
Stock Gumshoe will be largely closed down between Christmas and New Year’s Day so we can relax with our families… unless, of course, the latest wave of year-end teasers spurs me into action on vacation and fires me up to send you a quick note. So let me take a moment now to wish you a happy respite from my blatheration, a merry Christmas if you celebrate that holiday, and a very happy new year… here’s hoping that 2021 is far better for the world than 2020 was… and that it will be half as good for investors as 2020 has been.
Disclosure: Of the companies mentioned above, I own shares of and/or options on Fastly, Roku, Par Technology, Sea Ltd, Stitch Fix, Cloudflare, Unity Software, Shopify, Alphabet, The Trade Desk, Okta, DocuSign, NVIDIA and Innovative Industrial Properties. I will not submit trades in any covered stocks for at least three days, per Stock Gumshoe’s trading rules, though I do have stop loss orders in for portion of my positions in Fastly, Roku and Par Technologies which might be triggered during that trading embargo.
Hey Travis. Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year. Thank you so much for all your guidance and wisdom this year. It’s been most entertaining and helpful. Also quite profitable. Since the accident left me a quadriplegic with a lot of free time on my hands, I’ve taken a more hands-on approach to my investments over the last five years or so, (after letting them run on auto pilot in my 401(k) for 25 years), learned a lot, made a bunch of stupid investments and, since you’ve been so kind to offer the opportunity to highlight them… had a few successes. I’ll organize my successes by timing with all percentage gains as of today 12/22.
LT: , which I managed to hold onto this entire year and never sell in spite of their attractiveness.
SHOP. My cost basis is $35.22 gives me a 3,526% gain.
AMZN. my cost basis is $319.45 gives me a 904% gain
TTD. my cost basis is $111.91 gives me a 768% gain
IIPR. My cost basis is $26.55 gives me a 645% gain.
VEEV. my cost basis is $43.02 gives me a 566% gain
TWLO. My cost basis is $60.01 gives me a 518% game
ST: investments I made over the past year which Have done well include:
ZM My cost basis is $68.36 gives me a 498% gain.
FSLY. My cost basis is $21.30 gives me a 392% game.
MGNI. my cost basis is $7.10 gives me a 282% gain. I almost sold this several times in the late summer/early fall as it was just sitting there doing nothing. I’m glad I just sat and watched AKA cud-chewing.
EDIT. My cost basis is $21.95 gives me a 269% gain
PAR. My cost basis is $21.32 gives me a 205% gain.
ROKU. My cost basis is $117.03 gives me a 203% gain.
LOB. my cost basis is $16.15 gives me a 196% gain.
PLTR. My cost basis is $9.76 gives me a 187% gain. Knew I should’ve bought more!
These investments are all in my Roth and my personal investment accounts. Both of these accounts have done really well this year and are now almost equal to my 401(k) balance; which is being managed more conservatively and allows me to be much more aggressive in these accounts. I also have 2 private equity investments. They both follow one of your cardinal rules; I know the principles in each business quite well with longtime professional and personal relationships. They both know what they’re doing. One of them is managing a cannabis business (grow operation and retail dispensaries) and the other a phase 3 pharmaceutical business aiming for an IPO in 2021. The top line on both of those is still unknown but could potentially be very lucrative.
I’ve also managed to hold enough cash to cover two years of living expenses, Dabble in the fine art investing through masterworks.io, continue to find ways to rehab from my accident, run my towns youth softball program, coach a travel sb team of 9 and 10 year olds and working on a voter integrity team to better analyze/understand what happened with the New Jersey all vote by mail election last month.
I am so thankful that I always purchased the maximum disability insurance at work (the best investment of all) as on the day my ability to work vanished, that coverage kicked in and my wife and I haven’t had to change too much of the way we live; except for me sitting in a wheelchair of course! We own our NJ home, my wife’s parents farm in Tennessee and a condo outside of Nashville; all mortgage free. We can keep the lights on, pay all of my home healthcare aides a good wage and buy just about anything we need.
While my arms, hands and legs don’t work so well anymore, it did give me lots of free time to do lots of other interesting things. Thanks so much for giving me a place to share the story.
What a great inspirational story. Congratulations on your investment successes and positivity going forward. Dave D.
Bravo. You have invested wisely Sir. And almost perfect entry points. Merry Christmas.
You are a great example of setting smart priorities and following them. Congrats on a great year but also a great approach to life. Inspiring!
congrats and well done.
what option trading service you use ?
thank you
I use Interactive Brokers and Fidelity for options trades, if that’s what you’re asking.
I have never traded an option.
Well done, bigorangedave! Your story will, I’m sure, be inspirational to a lot of people — not just your investing success, but your embrace of life, community and possibilities. I hope that I handle the challenges I’m sure will fall in my path as well as you’ve handled the aftermath of your accident. Thanks for sharing!
congratulations to have done wisely and timely. life is more fun inspite of all ups and downs if action is taken to do something. no action, no result. keep it up. do enlighten us with more thoughts on how to do and when to do it.
You Sir are an inspiration! Speaking of making lemonade….
Happy holidays to you and yours!
Congratulations. What an inspirational story. Merry Christmas to you
Fabulous results! Congratulations to you, and wishing you a prosperous 2021!
Hi Dave; congratulations on your fantastic investment results.
I am curious to know how many of those investments were a direct result of being first introduced to them on Stock Gumshoe?
The ones that come to mind are PAR, IIPR; there are a few others WRAP, SPCE that didn’t make the top of the list.
Congratulations! I’m new to investing. I have made good money thru out my life and invested some of it in real state. I worry about my future of our health cause we don’t have any health insurance. I want to try investing to see how I do to make me have a peace of mind I have enough money to put my kids thru college, get health insurance and for our retirement. Thank you!
I did invest in VSBLTY this year and tripled my money. I also have done extremely sell with SEDG, which continues to grow, and I bought into SQ a few weeks ago, and have seen about a 5% increase, and I’m hoping for greater growth next year. I have avoided TSLA because I think it is overpriced, but I am thinking about Toyota since I know EVs, and hydrogen cells are the cars of the future.
Me too revalidate on the EV’s and Hydrogen!
Vsblty is still under 50c, what price did you buy it at?
I bought it at 15 cents, and now that it’s near 50 cents, I sold half my stock to recoup my investment and make a healthy profit. Now I’m sitting on the other half, and will wait to see what 2021 brings.
1. Baillee Gifford American Class B income 100% since Feb 2020
2. Editas (EDIT) 165% since Nov 16th 2020
3. Quantumscape 77% in just the past 3 weeks !
4. Average increase since Feb 20 across entire portfolio 30%
Didn’t see Stansberry Research in your list! They are back again touting silver and the Silver Stock Analyst from Garrett Goggin and John Dooly. 71% off and yours for $997. It would be interesting to hear if these are same pitches that were touted back in February. You’re the best Travis.
I just started investing actively this year. Here are some of my big winners
ACUIF – up 114% -was almost 200% at one point
SBE – 140% – SPAC
CSCO – 18%
MGNI- 69%
THCB- 62% -SPAC
MICRON- 14%
LGVW -34% -SPAC
IPV -72%- SPAC
ARK FINTEC – 18%
SPT -16%
I have done well on SPACS- but i know that is not an investment strategy longterm.
Biggest loser –
AZN- _9% – how is this possible?
BZUN- -12% – I believe they can still become the SHOPIFY of CHINA – well see.
Thank you so much for all your guidance! Have a wonderful holidays break.
Thank you for doing all that you do. You do a truly great job!
Sandstorm (SAND) was my “golden goose” for the year.
Hello Travis: Thanks for the summary. I’ve ridden a few of these stocks but the biggest surprise to me was an old-economy stock, FCX, Freeport-McMoran which was touted by one of the newsletters I subscribe to (Bauman?) and has almost doubled as the price of copper has risen…. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
My best this year was a very small (and of course w/ 20:20 hindsight WAY too small) position in Desert Mtn Energy Corp (DMEHF in the US) which was touted as a play on helium. My 1000 shares have risen 192% since July 2 when I bought it.
Thanks Travis for the exciting write-ups and financial and medical news. It has helped my portfolio significantly. Seeing how you breakdown all the teasers is really helpful.
Have a Happy holiday season and Merry Christmas! Wishing you and all your subscribers a healthy, safe and prosperous New Year.
Has been a surprisingly good year investment wise. Made some big mistakes like selling TTD in March (urgh)and some other stocks in late Feb. However some of the gold and sliver stocks have done well although I have taken profits. Best open positions % wise are;
Nano Dimension + 303%
Marathon Patent + 238%
Cleanspark + 173%
Farefetch + 125%
Roku + 118%
Organovo + 104%
Growgeneration + 101%
And BTC and Ether at good multiples.
Will probably end up giving most /lot of it back in 2021. Lol
Travis thanks to you for your wisdom and hard work. Thanks also to the posters on here for their knowledge and insight. I wish everyone on here a Merry Christmas and a healthy New Year and it would be nice if it was a prosperous one for everyone too!
I liked your notion of giving it all back. Reading the comments over that last while, it seems there are lots of people who have only recently started investing. This was a dartboard year. Throw some darts and it doesn’t really matter what you landed on. I dabbled for maybe 10 years and mostly broke even. Now I am up 100% in a single year… I would like to thank my MF subscription and the GUMSHOE for that, but I know it is just the market this year and luck.
Remember to stay humble. Know that you are not a stock picking prodigy because half your stocks have doubled this year.
This year reminds me of 1999, before the crash. Not saying there will be a 2021 crash, just that this was a highly atypical year.
Here were my top 10–MGNI, SE, FUV,NIO,TTD,UAVS,PLUG,VTYYF,SBE,LAZR
16 others were also in triple digit gains.
Good research matters.
Love your work.
Raise a glass to Green Grass and High Tides!
Yeah, I know a very old song from the Outlaws. Played that one yesterday on my vintage Strat Plus just for fun.
I saw another person mentioned mgni as the next ttd? Is this a long term play?
Thanks for your expertise on finding teased stocks. You did not list EXROF that went from $0.20 to $3.70 that you mentioned in passing in one of your articles. That’s over 17x for the year and still going up. You do an amazing job with most of your comments right to the point with explanation of why you would buy or sell the stock
Yep, that one has done well (without me thinking much of it, sadly enough) — but the ad pitch started back in 2018, so it wasn’t on this year’s tracking list.
I was lucky to buy extra off at EXROF $0.39 of share for 1,000 share so yeah I’m happy
Travis, you as well as most of us had a fairly good year, I appreciate your objectivity re. the fact that post the pandemic sell off in March one would have had to have been on a par with the Jets to mess things up. Merry Christmas to all and good riddance to 2020!
Regards,
Frank
Anyone adding here? I have a small amount. Seems still undervalued
My best pick this year has been EDIT. Bought it last year in the $30 range and it’s traded in the $90 range this past week.
Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year! Thank you for all of your hard work and for providing such a wonderful service!
I am a very small player. Thanks to Travis I made 10k selling the 10 shares of SHOP I bought when he first deciphered the clues ! Bought 20 shares of Fastly @21.13 Doing well on LSPD,SFIX,ATVI, AMD AND MTCH. (too scared to buy TDD, missed the boat on that) Thank you Travis
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you Travis and I would just like to say I am truly grateful to you for the work you do and all I have learned from you! I will become a paid member in the New Year!
I have a personal E-trade account that I use to “play with stocks” whenever the market crashes (opened in late 2008) and I have a lot of fun doing it – but it’s a lot of work (research/due diligence) and it can be stressful! This year has been crazy! I jumped into gear in the 3rd week of March looking to BUY BUY BUY!!! My little account is up nearly 16k and I simply cannot believe it when I watch it increase nearly everyday! I have 34 stocks in there total, only 3 of which are down and two of those are gold stocks that are going to go up/totally not worried about them; the other is a great company that I think will be fine in the long-term. Most of what is left in my account (sold multiple stocks that I have no attachment to/reason to keep after doubling my investment) has been purchased in the past 6-8 weeks and is up more 1057% and my biggest (remaining) winners are:
BEEM – 280%
BILI – 93%
JUSHF – 90%
VLDR – 82%
TCNNF – 70%
SNCR – 58%
FANG – 58%
FCX – 44%
RDS.A – 42%
ACAD – 41%
I’m pretty tickled about my “investment game” for the year and am hopeful there will be more upside in the coming year (but who knows?!)! I’ve also got some investments in the “crypto world” that I’m hoping will make me rich (tee-hee!), but unfortunately, I couldn’t talk myself into bitcoin at $10,000…so I’m still bitcoin-less! All but one of my altcoins are doing well – but I have to admit, I am breaking your rule about not investing in something you don’t understand! I study/read all I can get a hold of but still feel like a babe in the woods! Thanks again for all you do Travis – I’ve learned so much from you and am so thankful I accidentally came upon this site! May you be extraordinarily blessed this Christmas and in the coming year! 🙂