I’ve gotten a bunch of questions about Teeka Tiwari’s “Trump Tower” teaser pitch recently, so although the ad is actually a little bit old now (it’s still got a January 29 date under the signature) I thought I’d give it a look today. It is still circulating heavily, and it’s an ad for Palm Beach’s […]
Author Bio
Travis Johnson is an individual investor who founded Stock Gumshoe in 2007 as a way to air his dissections of overhyped marketing pitches... and to share the "secret" stocks that stock newsletters hype to get your attention and your subscription dollars. His thinking? If you already know what the "secret" stock is, you can make a much more reasonable and thoughtful decision about whether or not to commit to an expensive newsletter subscription. (And if you don't pay for the info, you'll be more free to think for yourself about whether or not the investment is worth your money.)
In his charmed life he has been, among other things, a university faculty member, a fundraiser, a writer, and a world-champion ice-cream scooper. Now he runs Stock Gumshoe for you, allowing us all to discuss and dissect the latest overheated stock ideas... as well as review and talk about investment newsletters and enjoy the commentary and opinions of Stock Gumshoe's other special contributors and the discussion with our unusually attractive, erudite and polite readers. He lives with Mrs. Gumshoe and all their little Gumshoes in the wilds of Western Massachusetts.
Author Archives
April 3, 2020
Friday File: How about Hedging?
What will probably serve investors best right now is patience. Don’t sell all at once, don’t buy all at once, and don’t feel like you have to do something every day. If you’re someone whose heartrate climbs as you open your brokerage account website and feel the urge to buy or sell every few minutes, […]
I’ve gotten a few questions about the latest Technology Profits Confidential (currently $79/yr) tease from Ray Blanco, so although it’s a few weeks old now, and started circulating right in the heat of the first coronavirus downturn in mid-March, I thought I’d take a look today. It is still a current ad, I got it […]
Jason Stutman is peddling his Technology & Opportunity letter ($99/yr) with a new tease about blockchain, so I thought it would be good to take a look at that after we sniffed around in Paul Mampilly’s (older) blockchain tease yesterday. The spiel is all about an “arms race” in bitcoin mining that will be spurred […]
You’ve almost certainly seen these ads from Paul Mampilly, the ones that start with the headline “These Warehouses Hold the Key to a $3.1 Trillion Dollar Revolution…” The ad has been running since at least the Summer of 2018, and has not really been updated at all in the interim as far as I can […]
March 27, 2020
Friday File: Gambling on Sports, Micro-Dosing on Stocks
I knew to buy like crazy last Friday morning, because people say that I am the SMARTEST INVESTOR IN THE WORLD. Woohoo! Oops, sorry, I forgot that I wasn’t selling myself with hype-filled puffery. That’s obviously not true, I did some buying last week and opened a few new positions that have done well so […]
March 27, 2020
What’s Motley Fool’s “Netflix Killer” Stock?
I’ve had a bunch of new questions about this almost evergreen Motley Fool ad for their Stock Advisor service, so I thought I’d share some answers with you here — partly because this is a stock that I write about a lot for our paying members, since it’s a substantial part of my portfolio, but […]
A version of this story first appeared on January 22, when we first saw Christian DeHaemer’s ad. The ad has been very lightly updated in recent months and is being heavily promoted now, so I’ve gone through and updated this article and my thinking to reflect the coronavirus collapse and any updates the companies have […]
A version of this article was published on January 13, 2020, when Mampilly’s ads first called this his “#1 Stock for 2020”, and though the ad is unchanged we’re seeing it a lot again now — most recently, the ads from Banyan Hill now say that this “$10 Stock Gets ‘All In’ Buy Alert on […]
Today we’re taking a little side path into the gold markets, since gold has recently shown a little spike of enthusiasm following talk of bailouts, and we’ve gotten a bunch of questions about Gerardo Del Real’s “Tier 2 Gold” teaser pitch for Junior Mining Monthly ($99/yr). So what is he talking about? Well, like most […]
During these crazy market moves, a lot of us are keeping in the back of our mind a notion along the lines of, “hey, this might be the chance to buy something cheap… but it better be really, really good!” And for many of us, that means our minds drift to “blue chip” type stocks […]
Thank you for coming back and reading my musings week after week, we here at Stock Gumshoe would not exist if not for the attention and generosity of readers like you. I don’t say it enough, I’m sure, but I really appreciate you being with us… and having the patience to slog through these sometimes […]
ed. note: The first version of this article was originally published in September of 2018, when we initially saw these ads rolling. It has been re-circulated several times, most recently because of the attention Amazon is getting through the coronavirus outbreak, so readers are asking again and we’ve lightly updated this teaser solution. The answer […]
March 19, 2020
Cabot’s “Apple of Cannabis”
Where might we find opportunities these days? Perhaps in the beaten-down marijuana sector? It’s awfully hard to say, since every sector is really “beaten down” this month, but let’s look at the latest pitch from Cabot Marijuana Investor ($497/yr), since they’ve been touting a hot idea that editor Timothy Lutts is calling the “Apple of […]
March 19, 2020
Cabot Marijuana Investor
Monthly newsletter focused on the marijuana industry and on finding top growth stocks within that industry.
I’ve been knocked out by a non-coronavirus illness for the past couple days, and I have to tell you, that’s probably the best thing that could have happened for my sanity — watching the stock tickers fly by and freaking out at the constant stream of COVID-19 news is not the best way to keep […]
March 16, 2020
Wyatt’s picks for “Coronavirus Biotech Boom?”
Ian Wyatt has been out over the past couple weeks with some “webinars” in which he talks up the coronavirus outbreak (for an hour!) and then ends his show with a tease about several “special reports” on the stocks he thinks will make you a lot of money as we fight COVID-19… and, of course, […]
March 13, 2020
Friday File: Buying and Selling (at a Social Distance)
It’s been a wild week. The mood was still pretty upbeat on Monday and Tuesday, a little anxiety but a lot of complacency (including mine)… I was in Toronto early this week, with plenty of hand washing and hand sanitizer but no real signs of panic or changes in lifestyle for most folks — the […]
This is the latest teaser pitch that a lot of folks have been asking about — and rightly so, I expect, because it’s designed to be extremely topical and get you revved up immediately. Here’s the intro to the ad that I’ve seen in some Angel Publishing newsletters: “We’re now in crisis mode over coronavirus […]
Almost as soon as I posted my update to our teaser solution about Stephen Leeb’s big copper pitch last week, the questions started coming in about his other mining ad that’s been popping up with gold’s rise — the ad is for The Complete Investor, his entry-level newsletter over at Investing Daily ($39/yr), and the […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on April 9, 2020
Posted on April 8, 2020
Trade Note: This one probably won't be a surprise, but I reviewed the short attack on iQiyi and the [...]
Posted on April 7, 2020
Thanks for the feedback, interesting choice. Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is a great company, they own a couple dozen exchanges and really benefit from market volatility so it's probably a good idea here (better at the trough, of course, then in Januar[...]
Posted on April 7, 2020
Which ones do you like, and why do those stand out for you?[...]
Posted on April 6, 2020
Perhaps this discussion is what you're looking for: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/2019/07/microblog-what-is-george-gilders-moonshot-stock-using-ai-and-crypto-blockchain-security/[...]
Posted on April 6, 2020
Thanks Bry. 1 is just simple math, assuming "at the money" pricing for the options contract without any additional premium (though if markets are falling, put options would do better than that because there would be a premium on the price). For exa[...]
Posted on April 6, 2020
I expect that's still this one: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/commodity-supercycles/the-1-gold-stock-to-buy-in-2019-virtually-unknown-7-investment/ He started teasing Sandstorm last fall, I'll look to see if the ads have changed at all. For wha[...]
Posted on April 5, 2020
I don’t think it’s very likely that insurance will have a catastrophic outcome like that, which is why I’m willing to hold and buy more of some of these companies. I’m not worried about reputational risk for insurance in general, since it’s not [...]
Posted on April 5, 2020
No, not with those clues.[...]
Posted on April 4, 2020
I like it... disturbingly close to reality, I guess I should be doing these things via video![...]
Posted on April 4, 2020
Byrne tried to shift the focus of Overstock into being a venture capital fund for Cryptocurrency investments. I think that division was called Medici... it made for a wild ride a couple years ago, then Byrne later got into (another) scandal. I wrote abou[...]
Posted on April 4, 2020
I hope so. Glad you’re still healthy![...]
Posted on April 4, 2020
They’re not as widely used here on the US, so I have no experience with CFDs... if you want to run through the mechanics of that hedge I’d love to hear a real-world experience.[...]
Posted on April 4, 2020
Every public health person has been well aware of the risks of a new pandemic and talking about it for decades, it’s the rest of us (and our leaders) who’ve been short-sighted and indifferent to the risk.[...]
Posted on April 4, 2020
Good point, lots of people use those for “income” purposes but they do have a general smoothing effect on a portfolio.[...]
Posted on April 4, 2020
Good point, that’s how I generally hedge individual stock shorts.[...]
Posted on April 3, 2020
Comments are moderated primarily for offensive language, and to try to avoid things like personal attacks and name-calling, they are not moderated for accuracy or rationality. Thankfully, readers often respond to and try to correct the most uninformed opi[...]
Posted on April 3, 2020
That ad started running many years ago, if memory serves they were talking about Goldman Sachs at the time. Sometimes it seems that the marketers push out ads that are very old just to see if they still "work" to get attention, but I haven't looked at thi[...]
Posted on April 2, 2020
Yes, I wrote some about that above.[...]
Posted on April 2, 2020
Funny, that’s the one he “gave away” for free in the ad.[...]
Trade Note I'll write about this some more tomorrow, but I reduced my position in Innovative Industrial Properties by a further 50% today. This follows the bear attack on IIPR by a short-seller outfit, and while I am not convinced of the validity of th[...]