Another teaser pitch from the Motley Fool Canada for us to peruse this morning… they’re pitching another social media company that is apparently taking over the world, in the wake of TikTok’s dramatic surge in 2020, and, like TikTok, it’s coming out of Asia but spreading to new markets. The ad is for a big […]
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
August 27, 2021
Friday File: Back to the Woods
Perhaps the most glaring reminder of the current investor mindset is that the new exchange approved by the SEC a couple years ago, the Long Term Stock Exchange (LTSE), designed to help build long-term relationships between companies and their investors, has just now formally gone live with its first two listed companies at launch, Twilio […]
August 26, 2021
What’s Lichtenfeld’s $30 Crypto Stock?
This is a teaser pitch that I solved in a Friday File for the Irregulars back on May 7, but I continue to get a lot of questions about it so I’ve opened that solution up to the rest of our readers — most of what follows was published in that Friday File three months […]
August 25, 2021
Stansberry’s “Venture #73 — The Pentagon’s Chipmaker”
Yesterday we got a ton of questions about another full-throated pitch for a high-end Stansberry newsletter, this time Dave Lashmet’s Stansberry Venture Technology, which they say has a list price of $5,500 and is typically offered in promotions, as is the case today, for $2,500/yr, no refunds (as with most publishers, Stansberry offers a brief […]
The first version of this teaser ad was “solved” here on April 23, 2020, when we first saw the ads from Paul Mampilly — most recently this has been more aggressively pitched with the idea of the “12 million mile battery,” so we’re re-posting our solution for you. The ad has changed a little and […]
So what’s up this week in the Real Money Portfolio? Quite a bit of news for our companies this week, so I’ll spare you any ranting about politics or current events for the moment (you’re welcome!) First, the ugly news. GAN (GAN) reported pretty much what they said they would report, strong growth fueled by […]
We’ve gotten a lot of questions about this ad, which has been circulating for at least a few weeks now, so today I thought I’d dig in — what the heck is TriFuel-238? Well, just from the name you’d think it has something to do with uranium — with Uranium-238 being the most common isotope […]
August 16, 2021
What’s Ferris’ “Smallest Extreme Value Stock in 7 Years?”
I like Dan Ferris. I’m sure I disagree with him on a lot of things, I don’t know him personally, and I don’t know what his overall long term track record is at Extreme Value (the stocks we’ve covered have included both hits and misses, with more of his best returns that we’ve looked at […]
August 13, 2021
Friday File: Another High Yielder to Light Up the Portfolio
I’m of many minds about the market, depending on how I feel in a given moment, so I try to avoid prognosticating… but if you want to force yourself to think about risk, as we all should do at least some of the time, one of the best go-tos is John Hussman, who has a […]
This ad actually came through a couple weeks ago, but it caught my eye this morning when I was trying to decide what to cover today… mostly because of the big Peter Thiel pitch they use to get our attention. The ad is from the Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor Canada service (C$99/yr), which essentially tries […]
What’s the “L5 Revolution?” That’s the next big step forward in autonomous driving, when cars begin to be “highly automated” under most conditions — and Charles Mizrahi has a teaser pitch out for the company he thinks will get us there, dangling his “No. 1 Autonomous Vehicle Stock of the Decade” special report for those […]
I’m celebrating my birthday tomorrow, so this Friday File comes to you a bit early — call it a Thursday File, I guess. That means I won’t be catching any interesting news that might come out of this evening’s conference calls, as earnings season continues to progress, but I’ll catch up with those next week… […]
August 3, 2021
Who Owns Bill Shaw’s “Super-Charged Battery Royalties?”
OK, OK, so the problem here is that I’m kind of a sucker for royalty companies… so when I see a new one teased, that often percolates up to the top of the coffee pot that morning. And it’s really just my inner laziness that drives that fascination, of course — I love the idea […]
July 31, 2021
Friday File: Fears Rising in a Strong Quarter
Is the world going to hell in a handbasket? I get essentially that question all the time, particularly as the newsletters who are more prone to fearmongering ads begin to pepper our inboxes with panic about debt and social collapse and government overreach and, well, whatever things happen to be scaring the people who are […]
This teaser pitch has been sticking in my head for a day or two, so I thought I’d write about it for you while I’m chewing on it. The pitch is for Ian King’s New Era Fortunes (currently being sold at $1,995/yr), and this is an excerpt of the pitch email I received… “… in […]
There’s a new take from the Motley Fool that a lot of folks are asking about recently, a “rare triple-buy alert” for a “practically perfect ‘mini-Berkshire’”, all in an ad to entice new subscribers to their flagship Motley Fool Stock Advisor newsletter (currently $99 for the first year, “list price” $199), and for those of […]
The Fool’s Investor Digest over the weekend included a little tease about one of their favorite small growth stocks, so I thought we’d dig into that for you on this lovely July Monday. The pitch is for their Next-Gen Supercycle service, which is one of the many premium-priced, no refunds upgrade services ($1,999/yr) that the […]
I pull together these thoughts for the Friday File throughout the week, and sometimes that means I end up feeling almost bipolar — the market sentiment on Monday was so wildly different than the sentiment this morning that our emotions can get a little whipsawed. Which means, of course, that I should be tuning down […]
This article was originally published on April 12, 2021. We’re re-posting it here in response to a new wave of questions, and the ad in question continues to circulate, but what follows has not been updated. Adam O’Dell is pitching an “Imperium” machine and the world-changing returns that might come from… and, as you might […]
“Goldman Sachs Says It Will Create the World’s First Trillionaire “And a tiny sub-$1 stock is racing to build a first plant this year!” That’s the headline hype of the new pitch from Nick Hodge for his Family Office Advantage newsletter, in which he’s pitching a penny stock in the helium market (Ooops, I gave […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on September 22, 2021
Posted on September 22, 2021
Good point. I expect that lots of relatively new traders in both crypto and stocks are getting their first big tax shock either this year or next... even small dollar amounts of trading that generate fairly minor gains can add up quickly to surprising tax[...]
Posted on September 22, 2021
Indeed, no real business updates... that move is probably mostly from the little wave of attention flying into the shares after Barron's highlighted the Buffett connection on Sunday (https://www.barrons.com/articles/warren-buffett-berkshire-stock-516318147[...]
Posted on September 21, 2021
The stock chart makes me feel a little dizzy, but I haven’t actually looked at their financials. That’s also a huge market, though there have been lots of “we’re going to make credit decisions better and faster” companies in the past, many of wh[...]
Posted on September 21, 2021
Haven't looked at them since I posted this update in April... at that time I thought their marketing kiosk par[...]
Posted on September 21, 2021
That certainly brought in some more interest... September 16 and 17 were among the highest volume trading days ASAN has had.[...]
Posted on September 19, 2021
The SEC requires at least minimal disclosure to make sure you’re not doing an undisclosed “pump and dump” — a lot of ugly things are legal if you disclose. We go beyond that, mostly to try to be clear and make sure there’s no conflict between wh[...]
Posted on September 19, 2021
I was surprised by that, since they’ve indicated they consider DFH a long-term partner, but not particularly worried. If I remember correctly, they sold about 10% of their position.[...]
Posted on September 18, 2021
Basic rules we go by are here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/about/ The important ones are that I disclose if I own anything I write about, and won’t trade it for three days after publishing… and we never are paid to cover (or not cover) a stock or a n[...]
Posted on September 17, 2021
We covered that one here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/green-zone-fortunes/what-the-heck-is-an-imperium-machine-how-can-it-make-us-rich/[...]
Posted on September 17, 2021
I agree with you. The focused company doing one thing really well often has an advantage, and Roku’s OS is far superior to the other ones I’ve tried in streaming. The competitors will catch up, but Roku has the biggest user base and isn’t sitting s[...]
Posted on September 16, 2021
Rivian should go public in the next few months, probably at a valuation which assumes their trucks will be huge hits. I might eventually be interested, I like the cars but it’s a high risk bet that will probably be wildly overvalued by people looking fo[...]
Posted on September 16, 2021
Long-term potential hasn’t really changed in my eyes… will have a short update tomorrow.[...]
Posted on September 16, 2021
Never heard of them… do they have meaningful and growing revenue? That’s the first indicator a company is doing something useful or valuable, at least for non-experts like me who can’t evaluate the real merits of the product.[...]
Posted on September 15, 2021
For me it’s a hold, though that’s probably because I’m biased from following it since it was in the $30s, five years ago. The valuation is nutty, but it’s also a spectacularly excellent company and continues to grow at a ludicrous pace, so in th[...]
Posted on September 15, 2021
Musk's Starlink is building its own ground equipment. The stock being pitched is Gilat (GILT), covered a while back here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/lou-baseneses-trend-trader/trend-traders-the-secret-5-company-behind-elons-race-to-own-the-inter[...]
Posted on September 15, 2021
Trade Note: I added on to a relatively new position today after they announced their first real dividend increase. AFC Gamma (AFCG), our marijuana mortgage REIT, had told us to expect a dividend that was at least as [...]
Posted on September 14, 2021
What do you like about that one?[...]
Posted on September 14, 2021
Interesting, I don’t use any of the full service broker platforms but Fidelity allows me to buy ETHE in a retirement account by signing an extra “it’s not your fault if this is a stupid investment” agreement. I haven’t ever bought that one , bu[...]
Posted on September 14, 2021
No, but I don’t spend much time looking for little explorers.[...]
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Oof, sounds terrible! There are plenty of hacking horror stories in the crypto world, for sure — as well as horror stories of people who pulled their coins offline or into a secure wallet and lost them just by forgetting or losing their key.[...]