One of Luke Lango’s many recent teaser pitches is a play on Elon Musk’s Project Optimus, which is the humanoid robot which generates news for Tesla every now and again — the first prototype was shown off in mid-2022, with predictions from Musk that they’d be selling it by 2027, and then on Tesla’s earnings […]
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
I’m sure this sounds like a hugely appealing promise, especially for folks who are getting close to retirement age and worrying whether their portfolio will be big enough to support them in the years to come… here’s how Tim Plaehn is selling his Dividend Hunter newsletter these days: “Collect legal ‘backdoor’ income from pre-IPO Silicon […]
An earlier version of this article was published on March 23, 2023, when the ad started circulating. The ad has been tweaked a little, and the story has changed somewhat, so we updated the story below in October, and I’ve added a March 2024 update down at the bottom as we hit the one-year anniversary. […]
Pitchmen love to find the hottest product, and then say they’ve used their uncanny skill and their unparalleled industry connections to find the secret little company who will benefit from that hot product. They’ve been doing it for years with Apple, fueled by the cottage industry of “whisperers” inside Chinese manufacturing plants who start the […]
March 15, 2024
Friday File: Acquisitions, Acacia and Intuitive
You’ve already heard quite a bit from me this week, since I shared the latest buy news from the $100K Lock Box portfolio yesterday… but I’ve still got a few things to share with you to close out the week… including one more add-on buy. We’ve got news from a few of our Real Money […]
March 14, 2024
More Advertising for the Lock Box
To some degree, my personal preferences about the industries that I find understandable and attractive are coloring the $100K Lock Box Portfolio — yes, my intention is for this to be a portfolio that is as diversified as possible, within the restrictions I’ve set up (high growth, relatively small size, justifiable valuation, potential for business […]
March 14, 2024
Answers: Kohl’s “NVIDIA Killer Could Make you 120X” Teaser
This article was originally published on January 3, though the ad had been running for some time before that. It continues to run now, and we get a lot of questions about it, so we’re re-posting our teaser solution here for your information. It has not been updated or revised since 1/3/24, the company has […]
This is from the order form for a recent Charles Mizrahi ad for his Alpha Investor ($47 first year, renews at $79)… “I’d like for you to imagine getting a second chance to invest in… “Nvidia in 2017 before it debuted its first AI chip (+1,858%) “Tesla’s 2010 IPO (+13,869%) “Google’s in 2004 (+5,317%) “Amazon […]
Time to check out another A.I. pitch… and this time it’s from The Wealth Advisory, which has been through a few editors over the years but is now edited by Jason Williams. If this pitch is anything like the past ones we’ve looked at from them, it’s going to be an exaggerated spiel about a […]
March 8, 2024
Friday File: Sweet Times
You might note that there aren’t a lot of green “Yes” entries in the “is this a reasonable buy right now” column on the Real Money Portfolio page. That’s mostly because, though I do update those numbers as the outlook gradually improves over time (for most of these companies — sometimes the numbers go down, […]
Alexander Green apparently focused his March issue of the Oxford Club’s Communique newsletter on Argentina, and the free excerpt that they shared of that leads to a ‘secret’ stock pick that we can reveal for you. The back story is the rise of Javier Milei, the new President of Argentina and a man whose leadership […]
The Motley Fool is pitching its “Market Pass” service ($998 first year, ? auto-renewal price, no refunds), which is their “package deal” subscription (Stock Advisor, Rule Breakers, Everlasting Stocks, Real Estate Winners and Rule Your Retirement, plus an “Ultimate Portfolio” that they choose from the recommendations of those services), and the hook they’re using to […]
Almost no professional stock picker or forecaster was expecting that 2023 would be a boom year for the stock market, and I don’t imagine that many folks were predicting that February of 2024 would be the best February for the markets in a decade, but still, we crave predictions. People are endearingly ridiculous, and markets […]
February 28, 2024
What’s “America’s #1 Retirement Stock?”
Here’s the lead-in to the Dr. David Eifrig pitch some readers are asking about this week… “If I had to Pour Every Single Penny of My Retirement into ONE STOCK… This Would Be It” “And today, while it’s still at a good price, I’d like to share it with you, too.” The ad is for […]
It’s hard not to get the “FOMO” feeling when reading through a Motley Fool teaser ad, because they always start with their past blockbuster winners — here’s how the latest tease begins: “Can you imagine if you could go back to 2002, when cloud computing burst onto the scene… “And invest $10,000 in Amazon at […]
February 26, 2024
Ferris’ “Green Scare” and “The Linchpin” Investments
Dan Ferris at Stansberry is pitching his “entry level” newsletter, The Ferris Report ($49/yr) by talking up what he calls the “Green Scare” — which is basically a spiel about how “climate alarmism” is being used by the government to “stretch its tentacles ever further into your home,” a new version of the “Red Scare” […]
February 22, 2024
Friday(ish) File: NVIDIA, Teqnion and more…
I’m on vacation this week, but still have a few thoughts to share on some of the earnings reports and other news items that we’ve seen since last Friday… I’ll try to keep it quick, and there are still plenty of earnings updates and news items I haven’t caught up on, so we have something […]
Inflation may not change that quickly, but inflation expectations can change very abruptly — like this week, when a hotter-than-expected CPI number finally pushed the market over the edge and convinced investors to stop expecting a rate cut in March, or five+ rate cuts this year. That relatively small shift in sentiment, with the market […]
February 16, 2024
Altucher’s “Apple Market Disruption” Event Pitch
This article was originally sent out as a bonus note for the Irregulars on Friday, February 2… but people are still asking about it two weeks later, so we’re now releasing it for anyone to read. What follows has not been updated since it was originally published. Altucher is pitching his Paradigm Mastermind Group ($5,000/year), […]
February 14, 2024
What’s Going On with Palm Beach and MarketWise?
This isn’t really about a new teaser pitch, but I’ve had lots of readers ask what’s going on with the flurry of changes at Palm Beach Research and MarketWise recently… so if you’re interested in that bit of publisher crisis, stick with me for a few minutes and I’ll share my perspective, a little back […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on April 25, 2024
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.[...]
Posted on April 14, 2024
I don't think I've ever analyzed either of those.[...]
Posted on April 11, 2024
It certainly seems to go in big cycles, which I guess is why several newsletters are out now touting the opportunity that might be present in all these beaten-down biotechs that raised a ton of money in 2020 or 2021 -- still quite a few that have way more [...]
Posted on April 11, 2024
Good feedback, thanks![...]
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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[...]