by Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe | December 23, 2020 1:01 am
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[1] 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[3] | 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[17] | 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[27], 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)[28] and to the fact that they’ve been teasing The Trade Desk (TTD)[29] 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[30], 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[31] that have been most successful also came early in the year — with Fastly (FSLY), Roku (ROKU)[32] and Par Technology (PAR)[33], 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)[34], Stitch Fix (SFIX), Cloudflare (NET)[35] and Unity Software (U)[36]… and among stocks I’ve owned for years, Shopify (SHOP)[37], The Trade Desk (TTD), Okta (OKTA)[38], DocuSign (DOCU)[39] or Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR)[40] 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[41]… 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[42]’s “TaaS” pitch (Alphabet (GOOG), Aptiv (APTV)[43] and Nvidia (NVDA)[44], 4/16/2020)
Teeka Tiwaris’ “Genesis” Blockchain stocks (Intercontinental Exchange (ICE)[45], Square (SQ)[46], NVIDIA (NVDA) — 4/6/2020)
battery[47]/">Matt McCall[48]’s Quantum Battery — (Ilika and others, 1/17/2019, still heavily pushed two years later)
Jimmy Mengel[49]’s “Blue Gas Tesla Killer” (Ballard Power (BLDP)[50] — 1/29/2020)
Paul Mampilly[51]’s “America 2.0” pitch about a “South Carolina Disruptor” (3D Systems (DDD)[52] — 1/13/2020)
Alex Koyfman[53]’s “$6 Semiconductor to turn $1,000 into $313,000 before the year ends” (Everspin Technologies (MRAM) — 8/18/2020)
E.B. Tucker[54]’s $10 “5G Master Key” (Gilat Satellite Networks (GILT) — 2/7/20)
Ray Blanco[55]’s “Apple-Fi” Pitch (Aerojet Rocketdyne (AJRD)[56], Loral Space (LORL), Echostar (SATS)[57], Virgin Galactic (SPCE), Maxar (MAXR) — 6/1/2020)
Paul Mampilly’s “Battery Breakthrough fo the 21st Century” (Maybe Eaton (ETN)[58], perhaps also secondary investments in private Sila Nanotechnologies — 4/23/2020)
Motley Fool’s “Netflix Killer” (The Trade Desk (TTD) — 3/27/20)[59]
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”[60] 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[61] 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.
Source URL: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/2020/12/top-teaser-stocks-of-2020/
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What a year !
I did really well with Long Call options on Amazon and Google with a return of 1000% on each. Increased my net worth by $60,000.00 US with these trades.
my two best for the year were TDOC and COST
Are there sector specific ETF’s that you recommend in Real Money Portfolio. Some I own were the best investments I have made in the last few year like CLOU, -76%, BUG-43%, BOTZ-50%, EKAR-59%, SMH-52%?
I don’t make recommendations, but write more about individual stocks than ETFs. The only sector ETFs I own currently are XLU, AMLP and SRVR
Hi, Travis. I really appreciate all the things you do for us!!
That being said, I’m very curious to know if Stock Gumshoe is looking into the “Profits of a Lifetime Summit” or “Power Portfolio 2021” or “Early Warning Summit 2021”. Please tell us if SG is working on any of them.
Thank you!
Which newsletters are those from? The titles of their infomercials are pretty generic now, so I don’t remember which is which.
Those are Matt McCall’s teasers I believe
LIT and BATT might be good
Everyone on this thread must be multi-millionaires by now, based on all the “Top Teaser” stocks they bought in 2020. My biggest position and biggest gainer was GRWG, purchased at $6.50, hitting $43 at its peak. But this pales by comparison with all the stocks I see listed that did 1000% returns this past year. Must be nice to be right so often!
Hello! I’m new here and new to investing in stocks. I have a lot to learn still! Any thoughts on NOK?
Hi There, Travis wrote lot about NOK and sold from real money portfolio(For irregulars). You may search in this website by typing NOK. Good luck.
What is the stock symbol and name?
Referring to an Oxford Club tease 10$ energy alternative that is changing the world.
Wh at is name of 10$ stock teased by Oxford Club- revolutionary technology to do with Mars project used by Wal Mart and HD and 23 other major Corporations
BE bloom energy.
My 2020 winner was Palantir (Pltr) Bought in at $10 and I think it’s a great long term investment and I’mplanningon buying more as it pulls back. (Hpr) is my current speculation stock pick. Bought at $8.40 saw it rise above $15 before it’s recent pullback. Here’s to a successful 2021
What is Alex greens #1 microcap for 2030 at $4?
Have y’all heard of a company to be curing blindness? Brown is talking a lot about it
I’m still fixated on EDIT, maybe too much so. They went down to about $70 on 12/30 (were into the $90’s I believe shortly before that) so I bought more. Feeling nervous that I’m going to give up my profits from buying at $35 originally. Anyone have any recent insight into the drop? I know the other crispr technology stocks dropped too. No real news to explain it. Maybe profit-taking before year -end for those who have held LT and want to be sure and get the LT capital gains treatment before new administration changes things?
All of the CRISPR stocks are speculative, and they are riding a speculative fervor right now — partly because they’ve made some progress in taking the next steps toward drug development (EDIT filed an IND for another drug, for Sickle Cell, recently), but mostly because the sentiment shifted last month and people got excited about CRISPR again… partly because Cathie Wood of ARK talked them up again.
The story of CRISPR technologies, whether EDIT or NTLA or CRSP or the other entrants win, will be told over a very long period of time. There was no fundamental reason for all of those stocks to double in a week, so it stands to reason that there does not have to be a reason for them to fall 50% in a week, either.
I don’t know what will happen, but pay attention to your time horizon and your reasons for investing — are you betting on Editas leveraging its patents and its first-mover status with a couple genetic treatments to become a gigantic and leading healthcare company five or ten years from now, or are you betting on how popular the stock will be in February?
Suggest using 59-day average to trade biotech stocks.
50-day
Grokmor, January 12, 2021, 3:00 AM.
Regarding EDIT, Brown sells it pretty hard – strongly implies the he’s seen first hand proof that CRSPR can cure a common genetic form of blindness. Similarly, a paper using BEAM’s CRSPR related technology was recently published demonstrating this feat convincingly in mice. But EDIT’s human phase I clinical trial has been ongoing for a very long time with little if any news, and it is somewhat curious that no Editas insider has yet to step up and buy back stock. And yesterday (Jan 11), a key high ranking scientist announced his resignation to pursue a new opportunity. Along with this disturbing revelation, the company now promises to update investors on Jan 13 as to the status of the blindness trial, but the timing of all this does not inspire confidence – the stock dropped on the news from 90 to ~76. The excessive delay, lack of insider buying, and resignation of a key player is indeed worrisome. Editas likely feels obliged at this point to step up to the plate and provide some transparency – but what will they report? I’m a scientist with direct experience with CRSPR. It works, it is almost certainly the next big thing in the pharmaceutical arena , and it seems pretty clear that it has worked already in mouse models of the disease. I would normally expect great news and Brown practically guarantee’s it… but trials that work beautifully in mice do not always follow suit in man. It cannot be guaranteed a priori. I’m still long, and hopeful, but have reduced my position nonetheless due to the several red flags noted above, which may account in part for the recent volatility discussed above by others. At long last, we will find out tomorrow – Jan 13 – for better or for worse.
Editing the genome of a living human being is a big deal. CRISPR therapies are amazing, but they will almost certainly face extraordinary scrutiny for a very long time before they become used in any mainstream way.
Any insight into why TTD has been dropping drastically lately? I don’t see any news…
I’d guess just “profit taking” — most of the big high-valuation tech “winners” have been falling, and TTD is among the craziest valuations in that bunch so it’s no surprise if it falls harder than many. I did sell a little on a stop loss after Christmas, and might sell more if it hits another trigger as it declines, we’ll see — still at 50X sales, so there’s no real “floor” for the shares that you can be particularly confident about.
Hi Travis,
Do you think PAR is a good buy now at around $60 or would you await for another pullback? Even though I was watching it, I MISSED it back in early fall when it made its run from $36 up to $68. Kicking myslef a litle bit, but I had a feeling I could get another chance on the pullback.
The only honest answer I can give is that I think it’s a great company, but just took a little profit. I would expect we’ll probably see dips below this price in the future, but I certainly don’t know that we will.
What I’d suggest to anyone interested in being a long-term shareholder in a fast-changing or growing company is to buy a small taste while you watch, then you’ll follow the company closely and will be primed to buy more at some future point when other investors overreact to bad news. That takes off some of the pressure to find a “perfect” price, which is an almost impossible goal, and most of us pay far more attention to stocks we own than to stocks we’re just watching.
Great advice Travis, I’m glad you’ve validated this as its something I have already been doing. Ever since you introduced PAR, I’ve done further research and I really like the company, but missed it since I was distracted by other stocks (which I can’t complain since those stocks have seen good gains).
I think PAR will pull back some more, but will invest in a “bite-size’ for now to follow it, and then will scoop up more shares when it dips. Thanks!
Natural Shrimp was deep value penny stock in March. Had three disasters with COVID-19, founder passed away, and plant burned down. Bought a $0.03 last was $0.38. That is over 120%. They are working on getting NASDAQ listed, and resuming production. Patented electro-coagulation technology that allows healthy fish farming. They have plan for multiple production facilities. If it works could go to $1 soon and possibly $5 over several years. Not grandma’s stock. Potential high risk, high reward play.
Hi Travis,
What do you make of this?
Last week Marginal Ideas critiqued Innovative Industrial Properties (NYSE: IIPR — $4.18 billion), a medical marijuana REIT conducting questionable sale-leaseback transactions.
You own it and I own it, but now I wonder if I should sell?
What’s “Questionable” about them? Haven’t seen that particular critique, though IIPR has been targeted by short sellers a couple times, and certainly not all of their tenants are rock-solid… and the stock is undoubtedly expensive. I haven’t done anything to my position in six months or so, other than reinvesting dividends.
Hello. When one joins the premium to become Irregulars member and wants to see Real Money Portfolio. What can the premium member see in Real Mon Portf?
Is it only current stocks that Travis is holding? Is it his past bought & sold stocks.
Can you see what he bought lets say in 2018 or 2019, and if he is still holding those stocks…. or is it only 2021 real money portfolio you can see?
Thanks
What shows on the RMP page are current positions, with my allocations and performance of those positions, including last trade size and direction (buy or sell).
Older positions that have been sold are recorded (average buy price and sell price and dates), but usually I only display the past couple months to avoid clogging the page.
All buys and sells are noted in the Friday File
And Trade Note commentaries in the week they happen (or on the same day, if they’re larger).
Most positions are both bought and sold slowly, so it’s complicated but I try to be as transparent as I can to help give a sense of how I build the portfolio. I also provide more limited info about my fund and option/warrant positions. Hope that helps.
It does thank you. I think I’ll try a month and see how it is…
Hello , I too am new to the service and wonder if there is a page that gives info on how this all works?
I joined after reading your writing on a newsletter I follow. I liked the answers to questions in detail. I would be interested in knowing more about the site.
Cheers!
Been in IIPR twice. First in 5/18, stopped out 3/20 with a small loss. Back in 10/20 and am up 70% now. A good pick if pot stocks can hold up this year. Members please utilize trailing stop losses on any stock you buy that stops can be set on.
Oh, and to add one of my best long dividend stocks is Taiwan Semiconductor TSM. Been in several years now and it’s up 290%. And if I’m correct they still plan on building a new plant in Arizona.
It’s a wonder that the Community of website tipsters haven’t alighted on Angle plc in the UK yet.
A company with a device that can pull viable, living, “growable” Circulating Tumour Cells ( Cancer) for analysis, gere profiling, drug testing and continual monitoring from a simple blood test, by-passing the need for a biopsy, which is on the verge of being granted FDA approval.
They are in advanced talks with Abbott, and Angle’s total addressable markets (for a $250m company) are $5Bn+
What is this Alexander Green’s new Oxford Microcap Trader get the #1 Microcap Stock in the World
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