Today’s ad that we’re finally covering, after tons of requests, is for Gilder’s Moonshots, which is the latest publication launched in George Gilder’s return to newsletter world. Here’s the headline from the ad: “‘Don’t invest in 5G stocks or even buy yourself a 5G smartphone… until you’ve heard about this chance to triple your gains […]
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 29, 2020
Gilder’s Moonshots
Higher-priced offering from George Gilder, aims to find small cap “moonshot” stocks that will benefit from his vision of the technology future.
The latest teaser pitch from Jeff Brown has gotten a lot of attention from Gumshoe readers… so let’s dig in and get some answers (and yes, some readers already posted their findings in our discussions area… so we’ll see if they got the right answer). The ad is all about a microcap biotech stock that […]
April 27, 2020
Motley Fool Canada’s “Triple Down” Stock
The Motley Fool loves to use terms like “double down” and “triple down” in its ads for some reason, and this latest one basically extends a previous Motley Fool US pitch to Motley Fool Canada… but I’ll cover it quickly for you because the questions do pile up about these ideas. The pitch is in […]
We’re now a month past the “bottom” that the market hit on March 23 in the heat of the panic, and although the world is thinking about opening up now and throwing ever more “rescue” money from helicopters, we’re still not all that close to predicting when “back to normal” might hit… and just now […]
This teaser ad from Paul Mampilly is a bit of a bait and switch, primarily teasing a specific company that you really can’t invest in directly, so that’s your warning up front… but we’ll dig through the ad and see what he’s talking about. Here’s the beginning of the ad: “The No. 1 Stock for […]
April 21, 2020
Trade Note: Tax Loss Harvesting
I share Trade Note updates with you, my favorite people, whenever I do any meaningful buying or selling in between Friday Files, but they’re usually shorter notes in the comment threads — today I’ve chugged through a string of relatively small trades that I need to update you on, and I’ve got a few minutes, […]
April 17, 2020
Friday File: Cheap Insurance and Expensive Silver
Here’s my soothsaying bit for this week, which you should feel free to ignore — like everyone else who’s predicting the future, I’m probably going to be wrong. I don’t think, even now, that we’re pricing in even the bad news that is already almost certain this year… or if we are, we’re pricing in […]
This ad is being circulated again, and sending a lot of questions our way, so I’m re-posting our solution (which first appeared on September 4, 2019) and taking an updated look — the ad itself has not been updated at all, as far as I can tell, but I’ll add my updated thoughts throughout and […]
The newest ad for Whitney Tilson’s Empire Stock Investor ($49, renews at $199) is all about this “Taas” business, and I’ve gotten a few questions since it started circulating a week or two ago… so let’s dig in! The basic idea is that “TaaS,” which is “Transportation as a Service,” is going to take off […]
Today I’m getting a lot of questions about the “Coronavirus Recovery Package” being pitched by Alexander Green — he’s selling Oxford Club subscriptions ($99) by promising a special report called “The Three Biggest Winners of the Coronavirus Recovery.” Green’s big-picture intro is pretty reasonable and rational, and similar to lots of other folks these days […]
Sometimes when I’m choosing which ad to cover on a given day it’s based on the number of questions I’ve gotten, or the number of times we’ve seen the ad in the past few days… and sometimes it’s based on something that just feels like something interesting. Today it’s the latter… because Brett Aitken and […]
The Motley Fool put together a new push for Tom Gardner’s “no. 1 technology investment” late last week, including yet another “presentation” with Tom Gardner, Eric Bleeker and Tim Beyers, so we’ve gotten quite a few questions… and I also got a few other questions this week about a David Gardner teaser pitch, so we’re […]
April 13, 2020
Motley Fool Cloud Disruptors 2020
One of the Motley Fool Discovery services, portfolio advisories that specialize in one niche — this one is teased as having a startup portfolio of 20 “cloud” stocks to capitalize on “The Motley Fool’s No. 1 Technology Investment for the 2020s,” which will be added to with regular new recommendations.
April 10, 2020
Friday File: More on that “WeWork of Cannabis” Report
I shared a brief Trade Note yesterday about the sale of part of my position in Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR), and I promised to go much more in depth in my thinking today… so strap yourself in. (And if you don’t care about IIPR at all or aren’t interested in “bear attacks”, you can skip […]
April 9, 2020
Brown’s 5G “Top Pick to Buy Right Now”
Another day, another interminable sales “presentation” … my kingdom for a transcript! This ad is from Jeff Brown for his higher-end tech stock picking service, Exponential Tech Investor (“on sale” for $2,000 for two years), published by Bonner & Partners, and he says he’ll be offering “tiny 5G bonus picks to buy now” as well […]
I’ve gotten a bunch of questions about Teeka Tiwari’s “Trump Tower” teaser pitch recently, so although the ad is actually a little bit old now (it’s still got a January 29 date under the signature) I thought I’d give it a look today. It is still circulating heavily, and it’s an ad for Palm Beach’s […]
April 3, 2020
Friday File: How about Hedging?
What will probably serve investors best right now is patience. Don’t sell all at once, don’t buy all at once, and don’t feel like you have to do something every day. If you’re someone whose heartrate climbs as you open your brokerage account website and feel the urge to buy or sell every few minutes, […]
I’ve gotten a few questions about the latest Technology Profits Confidential (currently $79/yr) tease from Ray Blanco, so although it’s a few weeks old now, and started circulating right in the heat of the first coronavirus downturn in mid-March, I thought I’d take a look today. It is still a current ad, I got it […]
Jason Stutman is peddling his Technology & Opportunity letter ($99/yr) with a new tease about blockchain, so I thought it would be good to take a look at that after we sniffed around in Paul Mampilly’s (older) blockchain tease yesterday. The spiel is all about an “arms race” in bitcoin mining that will be spurred […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on May 26, 2020
Posted on May 26, 2020
Thanks Henry. We're tinkering around with better ways to display that, but I know it's a little irritating at the moment -- appreciate the suggestion.[...]
Posted on May 25, 2020
That teaser pitch started last Fall, I covered it here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/penny-stock-millionaire/billions-of-machines-depend-on-it-alex-koyfman-says-that-this-40-cent-company-is-toppling-a-trillion-dollar-global-industry/ Haven't upd[...]
Posted on May 24, 2020
That’s a trading symbol that US investors can use, but it’s not actually “listed” in that sense — they haven’t raised money on the US exchanges and don’t have a registered listing on the NYSE or Nasdaq.[...]
Posted on May 23, 2020
I do watch trading stops on my positions, but often don’t follow the stop signal — I use it as a reminder to re-assess.[...]
Posted on May 22, 2020
Do you mean their participation in the Virgin Australia bidding out of bankruptcy? I haven’t followed the details but last I heard they weren’t in the short list. Don’t know if they have interest in any other Virgin properties, but from what I’ve[...]
Posted on May 22, 2020
Anything under about 0.1% of the portfolio I think of as an incremental “micro-dose” buy (or sell, I suppose, though those are rarer), and I add those to the portfolio reporting but don’t send out a Trade Note each time one of these small buys goes t[...]
Posted on May 22, 2020
VTIQ is another hot "story" SPAC, since they're merging with Nikola Motor next month to take that electric big-rig company public, and electric vehicles are an exciting idea (not unlike space flight or sports gambling). Haven't looked at the financials fo[...]
Posted on May 22, 2020
Tencent isn't US-listed, but I don't know how it might shake out. My best guess is that it leads to nothing real, just a political stunt, but there's certainly a possibility that BABA or some other Chinese firms could be booted from the US exchanges (and [...]
Posted on May 22, 2020
Sort of, though if you look more closely Fastly has $116 million in cash and short-term investments vs. $20 million in long-term debt, before the $250 million they just raised in new equity, I don't remember where the small debt position came from (probabl[...]
Posted on May 22, 2020
The ad is a bait-and-switch, teasing a breakthrough technology that isn't actually directly investable, but then recommending a "blue chip" stock in the same general space. I covered it here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/profits-unlimited/investig[...]
Posted on May 22, 2020
I assume that's the same one they've been promoting for a month or so, I covered it here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/oxford-club/thinkolating-on-oxford-clubs-the-three-biggest-winners-of-the-coronavirus-recovery/[...]
Posted on May 22, 2020
Zacks is mostly a quant-driven service, somewhat like Louis Navellier's -- as I understand it they identify stocks by screening and charting, not through fundamental research into the company. Frankly, it also seems to me that many of their articles are w[...]
Posted on May 22, 2020
Interesting perspective, thanks.[...]
Posted on May 20, 2020
Not for me, but I didn’t like it before we learned they were lying either.[...]
Posted on May 20, 2020
Interesting, thanks... has he been recommending it for a long time, or is it a recent pick? Just curious.[...]
Posted on May 20, 2020
Yes, they estimate that the death rate was about 0.1% — but could be much lower, since the denominator is probably larger than the 500,000 they estimate because so many people got Measles in the pre-vaccine years (the death count, likewise, is an estimat[...]
Posted on May 19, 2020
That's from the previous surge in cases in the US in the late 1980s-early 90s, from the CDC's health surveillance data.[...]
Posted on May 19, 2020
Sure, it might. Stocks don't move in a straight line, I assume there will be some very negative days ahead for SE as well, which argues in favor of buying (or selling) such stocks in relatively small tranches instead of trying to bet on the perfect price.[...]
Posted on May 19, 2020
I hope it works out for you. What do you base the $100 prediction on?[...]
That teaser pitch started last Fall, I covered it here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/penny-stock-millionaire/billions-of-machines-depend-on-it-alex-koyfman-says-that-this-40-cent-company-is-toppling-a-trillion-dollar-global-industry/ Haven't updat[...]