I thought I’d start with a “benchmarked returns” question, since a couple readers have asked recently how the Real Money Portfolio’s returns compare to the broader market. In general, I have usually done a little better than the US stock averages (I use the S&P 500, just for convenience), but sometimes I’ve done a little […]
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 15, 2021
Fool’s “Undervalued 5G stock with 268X growth potential”
OK, so I should warn you up front that this teaser pitch is a little strange. It’s from the Motley Fool, in one of their “Investor Digest” emails that are typically just an excuse to send readers another ad. And, of course, it’s “top secret” — this is what the email said that several readers […]
April 14, 2021
OK, OK, Let’s talk about that “ID Coin” Teaser Pitch
I’ve been getting questions about the “ID Coin” teaser out of Stansberry for several years now, and I did briefly comment on it way back in 2018 when I was buying a stock that I think they were also teasing using this “ID Coin” spiel… but I didn’t get very detailed or write a full […]
This ad has made the rounds before, under different headlines, but now it’s coming in with an Apple-related tease, which usually gets attention… and the newsletter itself has changed names, too, so we’re taking another look. Here’s part of the tease from the latest ad for Jason Simpkins’ Wall Street’s Proving Ground newsletter (currently being […]
Adam O’Dell is pitching an “Imperium” machine and the world-changing returns that might come from… and, as you might imagine, his favorite “one small company” that is the best investment play on those changes. So let’s dig in and see what he’s talking about, shall we? O’Dell used to be a market technician specialist for […]
April 9, 2021
Friday File: Par-ty Time, or a World in Decline?
Blather alert… skip down a ways to the ***** if you want to get right to the specific investments I’m talking about today… The market feels very uncertain, despite the massive stimulus and reopening boost that we all expect to see in the real economy this year, and the doomsayers are clearly out in strength […]
We haven’t looked into one of the overblown “buy private stocks” pitches for a while, so this one caught my eye… and it helped, of course, that they had a good hook — dropping hints about “private codes” usually gets my attention, and this ad implies that there’s a secret “cheat code” you can use […]
April 7, 2021
Cabot’s “Buy This Soaring Stock Now” Pitch
The folks at Cabot are so often enthusiastic about great growth companies, often picking them and re-picking them as they soar higher, that they sometimes remind me of David Gardner and his Motley Fool Rule Breakers… and given their yen for growth, I imagine both probably are coming off of exceptional years with the explosion […]
This is only the second time I’ve looked into a teaser pitch for Frank Curzio’s Crypto Intelligence newsletter since it was first launched — the timing for that launch was pretty rough, the newsletter started promoting itself in the first half of 2018, when bitcoin was crashing off its first bubblicious peak and everyone was […]
April 2, 2021
Friday File: Cheaper SPACs and a Year to Remember
We’re now a year past the beginning of the real full-on panic about the coronavirus, and just a year past the worst drop in the stock market in March of 2020, so I went back to read my stuff from last April to see what I was doing and how I was feeling. Here’s a […]
I get really sick of the fearmongering pitches about the “death of the dollar,” but readers keep asking so I thought I should take a quick look today at one of them. This is a pitch from Nick Giambruno about a “Reset” of the US Dollar, and in many ways it’s effectively a repeat of […]
March 31, 2021
What’s Basenese’s $3 “Buy LEO” Pitch About?
Here’s the lead-in from a new Lou Basenese ad that got a lot of our readers asking questions: “URGENT BUY ALERT: “America’s Leading Technology Analyst Says Buy “LEO” Now! “This tiny company is poised to transform a $2.7 Trillion market with the single flip of a switch. “Its groundbreaking technology is already being used by […]
March 30, 2021
Where to Move Your Money Before “America’s Final Tech Panic”
Today we take a little gander at a pitch from Stephen McBride over at RiskHedge, he’s selling a new service called Disruption Trader (charter memberships “on sale” for $2,000, no refunds), and the sales pitch, as always, includes both a freebie idea and a “top secret” one. That newsletter is new, so we don’t know […]
March 30, 2021
Disruption Trader
Upgrade trading service based on the same basic ideas of “disruption” as in Disruption Investor, but that aims to trade in and out of “hypergrowth” stocks.
March 29, 2021
What’s Empire’s “TaaS 2.0” Pitch All About?
It’s been a little over a year since Whitney Tilson’s Empire Financial entered the world of big-time newsletter promotions with a teaser pitch for “TaaS” — and as that anniversary of a really successful teaser pitch comes near, they’re updating it today with some new stocks… and a tease for a different newsletter. The new […]
March 26, 2021
Friday File: Goose in the Box
Markets are people, and people overreact — bull markets get too excited and people pay irrational prices for popular stocks sometimes, and bear markets get too fearful and people sell regardless of company fundamentals and drive prices down to silly levels at other times. We can come up with some assessment of what we think […]
This is the promise which comes our way from the folks at Contrarian Outlook: “I’ve found a proven way for you to bag double-digit price gains – year in and year out – in your income portfolio. “And you won’t have to sacrifice a single cent of dividend income to do it. In fact, you’ll […]
March 24, 2021
Altimetry’s Hidden Alpha
Monthly newsletter that calls on Altimetry’s “Uniform Accounting” database to pull stocks with a large discrepancy between “real” and “as reported” earnings, and picks large caps among that group which also meet the criteria (including analyzing conference call voice patterns for CEO sentiment).
March 24, 2021
What are the Stocks Teased by “America’s Top ‘Stock Cop'”?
I though the new pitch from Joel Litman at Altimetry was kind of interesting, and it sure teased a bunch of ideas, so we’ll run through that one today. The newsletter being touted is Hidden Alpha ($49 first year, renews at $199), and it’s part of the Altimetry group that’s a joint venture between Litman’s […]
Today’s tease for our consideration comes from Charles Mizrahi, who in recent years has been putting out Alpha Investor, one of the entry level (currently $79/yr, one year refund period) newsletters from Banyan Hill — that letter tends toward relatively stable investments, from what I can tell, and focuses less on the mega growth stuff […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on April 15, 2021
Posted on April 15, 2021
I don’t know what the margins are, but one of the studies I read indicated that the optimum yield for tomatoes on CEA is about 500,000 lbs per acre per year. If that’s at all close to what AllHarvest is doing that’s maybe 30 million pounds of tomato[...]
Posted on April 15, 2021
Spoken like a farmer! That's been one of the potential interests of Power REIT (PW), which like IIPR is a REIT I own that leases property to marijuana producers. They've often talked about wanting to expand into vegetables and such, beyond just marijuana[...]
Posted on April 15, 2021
Thanks for the confirmation, JBW[...]
Posted on April 15, 2021
Thanks for the confirmation, ronwill[...]
Posted on April 15, 2021
This ad wasn't teasing a cryptocurrency or token, but a stock or ETF -- maybe that's one of the other picks they talk up in special reports or something, but not anything they hinted at.[...]
Posted on April 15, 2021
This ad wasn't teasing a cryptocurrency or token, but a stock or ETF -- maybe that's one of the other picks they talk up in special reports or something, but not anything they hinted at.[...]
Posted on April 15, 2021
It's not a cryptocurrency they're teasing, it's either a stock or ETF that can be bought through regular brokers.[...]
Posted on April 15, 2021
When I find one. No promises.[...]
Posted on April 15, 2021
I've been pondering that a bit and waiting to see if the company provides a more detailed response. Some good points in there, some hyperbole and misleading points, and INTZ is really in a "prove it to me" position while we wait to see if they're really g[...]
Posted on April 15, 2021
The company and a share of the company are the same, whether traded in NY or in Toronto. We don't know for sure if Galaxy will get a NY listing, only that they say they plan to try to do that later this year. Typically, when a company that has OTC trad[...]
Posted on April 15, 2021
They own a lot of the same stocks, most of ARKF's differentiation comes from heavy bets on their favorite ideas -- so half of ARKF's assets are in its top ten holdings, while for BLCN it's much more conservatively spread out, with the top ten holdings onl[...]
Posted on April 14, 2021
Sure. I don’t think it’s a high probability, but without many specifics it could match.[...]
Posted on April 14, 2021
Quite possible... the valuation is nutty and Coinbase is relatively expensive and restrictive, but it’s also true that Coinbase is a strong consumer brand, and is aiming for the 95%+ of US investors who aren’t really diehards or in the “community” [...]
Posted on April 14, 2021
I'll put it on my list... what do you like about it?[...]
Posted on April 14, 2021
The quiet advancements in surveillance are pretty creepy, no? I don't see any signs of it stopping, but they are pretty far beyond the capabilities that a lot of writers imagined 50 and 100 years ago. Huxley was the author of Brave New World, by[...]
Posted on April 14, 2021
It's likely to start trading at a ludicrous valuation for such a big company... but the interest in Bitcoin is so high and rising that it will probably shoot higher. Great company, huge US leadership position, and there's something to be said for buying [...]
Posted on April 13, 2021
That’s a Reg A offering, right? Haven’t looked at their financials, what does the order flow and revenue look like relative to the valuation?[...]
Posted on April 13, 2021
I'd make sure to think of that 20% as a block, and work out a scenario for what your plan will be if Bitcoin lost 75% of its value in a market rout or panic. How you'd feel about that, and what the real risk would be, depends a lot on your situation in li[...]
Posted on April 12, 2021
Both merger arbitrage and SPAC arbitrage are fairly reliable ways to, on average, make a return that I'd typically expect to be in the 5-10% neighborhood annually, sometimes a little more, and this fund does both so that's somewhat appealing as a non-corr[...]
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Sounds frustrating, sorry. Haven’t had issues with that, but their support pages are here if you haven’t come across them yet: https://help.coinbase.com/en/coinbase/getting-started/other/how-can-i-contact-coinbase-support[...]