Lots of stories this week in the world of Gumshoe, as earnings season really hits full swing, and lots of our companies reported earnings this week… I’m not going to get to quite all of them, but I do have updated thoughts and opinions to share on a bunch of stocks this week, and we’ll […]
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 25, 2024
What’s the “#1 Gold Play for 2024?”
The price of gold has been surging in recent months, setting new records, and that has Stansberry blanketing the world with this “#1 Gold Stock” pitch again, so we’re re-checking the details of that tease and re-sharing the solution with you to help answer questions. Gold hasn’t been a smooth ride, for sure, partly because […]
Elon Musk is the gift that keeps on giving for the newsletter peddlers of the world — his name always draws attention, and once an ad copywriter has your attention he’s got a good chance of sucking you in to his FOMO story. This time it’s Luke Lango, who’s selling his Innovation Investor newsletter with […]
This ad started circulating in late 2023, and this article was published on December 4, 2023. We’re re-sharing this teaser solution because of a new surge of questions about it, and we’ve added some mild updates to the bottom, but neither the ad nor this article have changed in any substantial way. We all know […]
Earnings season is officially sputtering to a start in the Real Money Portfolio, so we’ve got some meaningful new numbers from one of our favorite stocks. And it’s nice to have something real to talk about, instead of having to fret all day about whether the latest clues dropped by the latest hot company mean […]
April 18, 2024
Reveal: “The AI Patent Powerhouse” teased by Banyan Hill
Here’s the intro to Charles Mizrahi’s latest teaser ad: “1 COMPANY = KEY TO UNLOCKING NEXT-LEVEL AI “Dow 100K is coming. “It’s not a matter of if … but when. “And you don’t need to buy into the Dow Jones (DIJA) to benefit from its rise. “The big gains will be made from the companies […]
April 12, 2024
Friday File: Cutting Down the Tower, Speculating on Gold
If you think about inflation and interest rate risk, you can sometimes see how that plays out in a portfolio in real time — particularly if you stare too closely at that portfolio every day, like I do. And it can remind you of the value of real diversification — you want to own a […]
I covered the “Imperium” ads from Adam O’Dell a couple years ago, when they first started running… that ad, which features a photo of a desktop DNA sequencing machine and calls it an “Imperium Machine”, still looks about the same as it did about three years ago, when the ad started running in the Spring […]
We haven’t looked at a Louis Navellier ad in a while, so when he came out with a new pitch this week for Navellier Growth Investor ($49 first year, then $79/yr), I thought I’d take a look… the intro to the ad is all about how you should invest because this is the next “change […]
I was just skimming through an Oxford Club ad from Alexander Green, and I came across some hints that sounded a bit enticing… so I thought I’d sniff out some answers for you. This came at the end of an ad for their regular “entry level” membership and subscription to The Oxford Communique ($69/year), and […]
We’ve had another up and down week, dominated by daydreams of artificial intelligence riches… and nightmares about the Federal Reserve maybe not cutting interest rates anytime soon. The big picture remains inscrutable, with an economy that continues to hum along well, with low unemployment but inflation that continues to make people nervous, a Federal Government […]
Frank Curzio is out with a teaser promo for his Curzio AI newsletter, which, you’ll no doubt have guessed, is focused on picking artificial intelligence stocks. His video is largely a big picture argument for investing in AI, talking up the ways in which AI stocks are more ‘real’ than the dot-com bubble stocks of […]
Here’s the lead-in to Adam O’Dell’s latest ad for his Green Zone Fortunes (currently $49/yr or $199 for a “lifetime” sub, 12 month refund period)… “He’s Made as much as 3,250,000% in just 3 Years on Companies like Facebook, Airbnb, and PayPal … But His Current Investment May Lead to His Biggest Payout Yet. See […]
April 2, 2024
Plaehn’s “#1 Bet On Gold for Dividend Investors in 2024”
Tim Plaehn’s promotional emails indicate that he held an “emergency meeting” to talk about what’s happening with gold last month, and that presentation ended up being mostly a pitch for his “#1 Bet On Gold for Dividend Investors in 2024” — and, of course, a sales pitch for his Dividend Hunter newsletter ($129/yr). So with […]
April 1, 2024
Fool’s “Next Big AI Investment Wave”
Seems like April Fool’s Day means we should cover the Motley Fool… so we’ll look at an ad I’ve been getting from them about the next big AI wave. And no, it’s not biotech — though I’m sure we’ll cover more of that soon, too, because everyone and his brother is spittin’ hype about biotech […]
March 28, 2024
Thursday File: A Buy and a Sell before Good Friday
Getting this out a bit early because everything’s closed up for the Good Friday holiday tomorrow. What’s up with the Real Money Portfolio? We did get a few final 2023 reports… and that led to some investment decisions on my part. The Boston Omaha (BOC) annual report came in a little later than last year, […]
March 27, 2024
What’s Lashmet’s “Hunger Switch” Stock?
We’ve seen tons of stories about GLP-1 drugs, and have watched the big sellers of those drugs, Novo Nordisk (NVO) and Eli Lilly (LLY), become by far the largest pharma companies in the world (Lilly, in particular, has touched a $750 billion valuation… closing in on the “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks and breaking into the […]
The world of psychedelics was briefly exciting for investors, mostly back around 2019-2020 or so, when everyone was looking for the next version of the cannabis bull market (remember that?)… and as potential for legalization of some drugs, like psilocybin (“magic mushrooms”), seemed to be in the wind, and old hallucinogenic or psychedelic compounds were […]
This article was originally published on May 24, 2022, and has not been updated. The ad seems to be circulating heavily again, and Ian King’s video “presentation” is also unchanged since 2022, so we’re re-posting our explanation here to help answer questions. The “next gen coin” has since fallen by about 75%, then recovered to […]
March 25, 2024
Hiral Ghelani’s “Top AI Stock for 2024”
The folks who sell trading tools or run “chat rooms” for day traders aren’t usually at all interested in the specifics of a business — they don’t often care what the free cash flow might be, or what the story is behind the founder of the company or whether their product is better than the […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on April 26, 2024
Posted on April 26, 2024
I wrote about IONQ a couple weeks ago here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/blue-chip-growth/detease-navelliers-qaas-and-bezos-next-trillion-dollar-bet/[...]
Posted on April 26, 2024
Much more likely it's a bait and switch, "buy Universal Matter when/if it goes public, and in the meantime buy this other graphene-related penny stock" ... but perhaps that's just my skepticism showing through.[...]
Posted on April 25, 2024
FYI, a reader called attention to the fact that they've recomended a different gold stock recently at this newsletter, too -- in their list of recent articles is a headline, "Buy This Beaten-Down Gold Producer Ahead of the Crowd”, which is, a reader says[...]
Posted on April 24, 2024
He usually showed up on Hulbert's list as one of the best performers in bull markets... but also gave back a huge amount of that by being one of the worst performers in bear markets.[...]
Posted on April 24, 2024
Looks like Marin is again out with a tease about his "Project Gold Rush" -- he doesn't drop as many clues this time around, but the few he does give are the same as they were a year ago... and the "special report" still has the same title, so I would imagi[...]
Posted on April 24, 2024
Thanks Paul, we love you, too!Let us know what you think about those new letters...[...]
Posted on April 24, 2024
They followed the specific portfolios of a group of newsletters for about 20 years, as I recall, maybe a bit longer, and provided some really valuable data from that subset, but they essentially shut down that project about ten years ago. Not sure if it [...]
Posted on April 24, 2024
Yep, your comment went through -- that just meant it was waiting for moderation.We love receiving real-world feedback about newsletters, either directly from our readers or as postings on [...]
Posted on April 23, 2024
Thanks for the positive slant on my work, but yes -- for those who don't know, gum shoes, which is what they called rubber-soled shoes in the 19th century, when they were rare and almost all shoes had leather soles, were quiet and gave you an advantage whe[...]
Posted on April 22, 2024
The price of bitcoin has gone up in the period after the previous halvings... but we should be careful about extrapolating a lesson from something that has only happened a few times. The price of bitcoin has gone up so dramatically over that per[...]
Posted on April 21, 2024
The drop in the preferreds last year was primarily driven by interest rates, I expect.[...]
Posted on April 20, 2024
Good ones to think about, thanks -- there's a whole world of adjustable preferreds that reset their rates, which, as you know, could be good or bad over the next few years. I like this idea but haven't looked at these specific issues, probably mostly bec[...]
Posted on April 19, 2024
I'm not the guy to talk to about altcoins or alternative exchanges -- I pretty much stick with Bitcoin and Ethereum, and just use Coinbase. Lots of other folks here are way more into crypto than I am, so perhaps they'll have suggestions.[...]
Posted on April 19, 2024
I expect that's the general "AI bubble might be bursting" panic that washed through the market today because SMCI didn't pre-release their earnings. Most "AI plays" down similarly today.[...]
Posted on April 19, 2024
That ad has been running, with some variation, for a long time -- the primary stock he teases for these "UFO" weapons has always been Leidos, which has a division working on hypersonic weapons (though is primarily a tech contractor for the US government), [...]
Posted on April 18, 2024
Bitcoin has probably surged this year in part because of the "halving", plus the new ETFs, so it's an open question how the price will react to the actual event.It's not really "splitting," to be clear -- the halving means that the reward for mining is [...]
Posted on April 18, 2024
It has really become more of a quarterly to 2-year ladder these days. It's fairly simple, just requires some activity once a quarter -- I started out by buying roughly equal values of three month, six month, nine month, 1-year and 2-year bills and notes, [...]
Posted on April 18, 2024
That's still Exscientia (EXAI), which Oxford Club has been pitching for more than six months -- covered here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/oxford-club/answers-kansas-welder-story-leads-to-company-alex-green-believes-will-become-the-most-important-a[...]
Posted on April 18, 2024
That's a midstream MLP (pipelines, storage and processing/refining gas), not an energy producer.[...]
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They've been banging the drum for that one in their "special reports" tease since May of 2018 -- it enjoyed quite a run from the surge of laptop demand in 2020, and server demand (or perceived demand) during the AI surge of the past year, but rarely builds[...]