I’ve gotten a ton of questions about Alex Koyfman’s “AirTesla” pitch over the past week, so we’ll spend a moment on that today. This all ends up being a “next Tesla” pitch to a large degree — essentially, saying that if Tesla can create this trillion-dollar company to lead the electric vehicle revolution, and grow […]
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
Happy re-entry day! The Thanksgiving holiday break didn’t give investors a lot of reasons to give thanks this year, but your friendly neighborhood Gumshoe is back in the saddle and ready to sniff out some more teaser picks for you. And since most of the newsletters jumped on the “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” themes […]
November 29, 2021
Motley Fool Everlasting: Firecrackers
Part of the Fool’s “Everlasting” lineup of portfolio advisories, this one focuses on identifying and buying a portfolio of microcap stocks (market caps well below $1 billion).
November 23, 2021
2021 Turkey of the Year
For our 14th annual Turkey of the Year we’ve got a little something new… I always include my worst pick of the year when I’m covering the Turkey of the Year, too, to be fair… but this time around, they are one and the same. I too bought the Turkey, and I too paid the […]
November 19, 2021
Friday File: Money Flows to Data Centers
I don’t know what will happen in the world, but I just looked over my regularly updated Annual Review spreadsheet… and it looks like about a dozen of the stocks I owned as of last February are in my “buy” range right now. Those are in many cases contextual, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to […]
November 17, 2021
What’s the Fool’s “Five Star” Pick?
Sometimes I forget that not every Gumshoe readers scours through all of my articles, or has ardently followed every teaser solution we’ve published since 2007… so as I see the same questions over and over and over, sometimes responding to emails to let people know what kind of story they’re being sold, I do find […]
I’ve seen this ad circulated so many times, with adjusting deadlines, that I didn’t realize I hadn’t specifically covered this pitch for my favorite readers… at least, not in its current iteration with a new company in that “Day Zero” position. “Day Zero” is now trumpeted as being December 9, 2021, but a year or […]
November 12, 2021
Friday File: Metaverse Gainers, Quarterly Updates and more…
Infrastructure week! Looks like there’s a big ol chunk of cash that will be rolling downhill in the coming years for all the construction companies, broadband companies, materials companies, etc. after Congress finally passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill that they’ve been sitting on for months. Certainly our roads and bridges and public transport systems and […]
November 11, 2021
What’s NICI’s teased “The next IIPR and a 1,400% return?”
The National Institute for Cannabis Investors (NICI), a publishing subsidiary of Money Map Press, is pitching its entry-level membership now ($39/yr) by dangling the promise of a “next IIPR” stock… and that’s a stock I own and have written about a lot over the years, so the ad caught my eye. Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR) […]
November 10, 2021
Friday File Unlock: “Microsoft’s $20 Microcap Match?”
This article was originally published as part of the Friday File for members of the Stock Gumshoe Irregulars on October 8. We’re opening it up to all readers now, but it has not been updated since it was first posted a month ago. There has not been a huge amount of news from the company […]
November 9, 2021
What’s Kohl’s “Intel of quantum computing”?
Keith Kohl is selling his Topline Trader service, which is a weekly trading advisory, by using the promise of a “next Intel” investment in the early stages of the quantum computing era. Topline Trader used to be sold as a trading service that bets on biotech catalyst events, but I guess they’ve branched out. It’s […]
November 9, 2021
Topline Trader
Biotech-focused newsletter that does short-term trading — from their website: “Our strategy here at Topline Trader is simple: Identity major catalyst events in drug development, and position ourselves to profit handsomely from the wild price swings that follow.”
November 5, 2021
Friday File: One Sell, Five Buys as Earnings Season Steams Ahead
Last weekend I was on an airplane for the first time since March of 2020, thanks to a family wedding, so I got a personal experience with a couple trends that we’re hearing from other people: First, travel is back in a huge way, every flight is completely full, and many airports are even more […]
November 3, 2021
Will the Apple Car mean “R.I.P. Tesla” on November 19?
Jeff Brown’s latest pitch about an “Apple Car” is similar to stories that have made the rounds several times over the past five years, teasing companies from Tesla to Magna International as potential partners for this secretive project to put four wheels on an iPhone and take over the world. Here’s a little taste, it […]
November 1, 2021
What’s “Tom Gardner’s Double Down Stock?”
This one’s going to sound a little familiar, but we’ll give it a quick once-over for the folks who haven’t been aboard the good ship Gumshoe for long. The Motley Fool is pitching their flagship Stock Advisor newsletter with a pitch about a company that they think might become a “hall of fame” investment like […]
October 28, 2021
Friday File: Earningspalooza Gets Underway (plus a teaser preview)
This is the meat of earnings season for my holdings, so I’ve got a lot of fairly minor updates for you today in this one-day-early Friday File (OK, call it a Thursday File… sorry for the schedule change, but I’m traveling to Las Vegas, the Land of Good Choices, for a wedding this weekend, and […]
October 27, 2021
Solved: Empire’s “Most Obvious 10X Opportunity I’ve Seen” Pitch
Crypto stories are running hot and heavy once again, as Bitcoin and Ethereum have recovered to make new highs in recent weeks after a big slump midyear (OK, Ethereum is not quite at new highs — but it’s close)… and whenever that happens in a sector, we know the newsletter sales pitches will follow. This […]
October 26, 2021
De-Teasing Dave Forest’s “Amazon Warrants” Pitch
Dave Forest at Casey Research is selling his Strategic Trader newsletter ($1,750, no refunds) by promising new subscribers a report about how to profit from the warrant windfalls that Jeff Bezos has engineered for Amazon.com (AMZN). This ad presentation takes the form of an “interview” with Chris Hurt, a Disney-trained host who may look familiar […]
October 25, 2021
What’s Carr’s “Ultimate $10 Growth Stock”?
Here’s the headline that has driven some Gumshoe reader questions our way… “The iPhone Mega-Upgrade “Apple Is Reportedly Building a Secret $330 Million Facility to Add One New Technology to Its iPhones, iPads and Laptops. “Here’s Why Investors in One $10 Stock Could Make Big Money as a Result…” So what’s the story? It’s an […]
October 22, 2021
Friday File: Trump Media, Cloudflare, GAN, Match and more…
I’ve had several readers ask me about the Trump Media deal, which is an announced plan to take a new company, Trump Media & Technology, public through a merger with a SPAC called Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC). It has generated a lot of attention for sure, and the stock price has soared, but so […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on December 2, 2021
Posted on December 1, 2021
"Discrete" means in an individual and distinct action. "Discreet" means circumspect and careful. I used the former. What I mean is that the dollar is likely to continue losing its value, as it has done for 100 years or more, but that we're not going [...]
Posted on November 30, 2021
That's the most worrisome hotspot in the world, at least when it comes to economic impact, but certainly nobody knows how it will play out. He has pitched hyperspeed weapons development in the past as a play on this arms race/Taiwan standoff, though I hav[...]
Posted on November 30, 2021
MELI is probably the most value-priced of the emerging market e-commerce plays, though I haven't yet owned it personally -- it is back to the price/sales multiple it has traded at for most of the past decade, so it no longer has a "Covid premium" like most[...]
Posted on November 30, 2021
Tough one. I've never had a real handle on what made Lightspeed particularly unique or appealing -- Going by product and market dominance I would most likely opt for SQ or SHOP over LSPD for generic POS technology for retail, and TOST for their restaurant[...]
Posted on November 30, 2021
I invested in Teladoc a couple years ago, and COVID was indeed a boom for them -- the challenge has been that it didn't result in enough real growth in clients or partners, so it has remained a niche business in an increasingly competitive area. They're p[...]
Posted on November 30, 2021
I covered that one back in February here, though the story has changed a bit and I'm probably due for an update -- https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/penny-stock-millionaire/koyfmans-oil-killer-to-hand-you-up-to-11300/[...]
Posted on November 30, 2021
Thanks for the info. Is this different from the old Fischer Tropf process for fractionation relied on by Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa when their liquid fuel access was cut off?[...]
Posted on November 30, 2021
I have not used that particular crowdvesting platform, but it's been around for a while and I don't know of any particular security concerns. Any reputable broker in private shares, crypto or stocks will have you prove your identity first, and that proces[...]
Posted on November 30, 2021
That's just a proprietary uranium fuel company, covered here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/the-20-trillion-report/whos-teased-as-the-undiscovered-tech-company-behind-the-coming-trifuel-238-revolution/[...]
Posted on November 30, 2021
Most brokers will let US investors buy OTC stocks, though that's a true penny stock so a lot of brokers will restrict trading to try to protect you. I just checked and this particular one is blocked at my brokers as well (Fidelity and Interactive Broker[...]
Posted on November 29, 2021
More or less, though almost all of that is within the past 18 months, and probably thanks mostly to infrastructure spending talk.[...]
Posted on November 29, 2021
Could be, though the Fool’s attention on this seemed heavy over the weekend — doesn’t take much new attention to cause a big move if the company is very small.[...]
Posted on November 29, 2021
That's why this world of investing is so interesting... lots of ways to win, particularly if you're patient, and lots of different perspectives. Time is indeed the cure, but most of us fear losses more than we appreciate gains, and that creates a lot of v[...]
Posted on November 29, 2021
Haven't seen any helpful clues regarding other picks from that service, but I'll keep an eye out.[...]
Posted on November 29, 2021
Oops, thanks![...]
Posted on November 28, 2021
They seem to mostly copy our answers, we’ve covered that ad a few times — it originated with Lango’s predecessor. Most recent piece is here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/luke-langos-innovation-investor/luke-langos-1-electric-vehicle-stock-of[...]
Posted on November 22, 2021
Fisker isn’t a manufacturer, it’s a designer — their first car will be made by Magna, the next one is planned to be with Foxconn. No idea what Brown thinks at the moment, but I would assume he is picking more than one stock for a particular trend.[...]
Posted on November 22, 2021
Very likely true, at least in the US markets.[...]
Posted on November 22, 2021
Indeed… the goal of a copywriter is to make you feel like something is almost guaranteed… but avoid actually promising that.[...]
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You've certainly been right about Tesla and I've been wrong, and I agree that Musk's aggressive promotion of EVs is good for the planet, and it has certainly been good for shareholders. I wouldn't urge anyone to listen to me about Tesla, given how wrong I[...]