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 […]
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
We don’t just uncover all the teased stocks from those hyped-up newsletter ads we all see each day… we also keep track of those teased stocks, look for trends, and monitor performance, and the biggest story and the biggest driver of stock prices over the past year has been our newfound fascination with artificial intelligence. […]
This article was originally published on January 24, it has not been updated but new versions of the ad with different headlines are driving questions our way so we’re re-posting here. If you’re looking for Stansberry Innovations Report’s “#1 AI Stock for 2024” that was covered separately here. Today I thought we’d look into a […]
February 9, 2024
Friday File: Brookfield, WESCO, Pershing and China
We’ve got a couple trades this week in the Real Money Portfolio, as well as some updated thoughts on portfolio companies who reported recently, so let’s just skip the jibber-jabber about the S&P 500 hitting a new round number (closing above 5,000 for the first time) and get into the details. Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) […]
February 8, 2024
“Inception” — Tiny Stock teased as “Next NVIDIA” by Tim Bohen?
Here’s a little excerpt from the email I’ve been getting recently: “What does Bill Gates know about this tiny company that we don’t? “From the outside, it looks like a worthless $2 stock… “But according to Bill Gates… “This company is working on a unique technological innovation that is going to change the world as […]
This article was originally published on April 27, 2023, when Mizrahi’s ads started running. The ads have started running again recently, with emails saying that the weakness in oil prices recently has created a good buying opportunity, but the teaser pitch remains unchanged and is still dated “April 2023.” What follows has not been updated […]
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 with Stock Gumshoe for long. The Motley Fool is pitching their flagship Stock Advisor newsletter ($59 for the first year, renews at ?) with a pitch about a company that they have “bet” on […]
Marc Lichtenfeld has a new promo out for his Oxford Income Letter ($49 first year, renews at $79), and much of the first part of it is focused on the strategic petroleum reserve (SPR)… and how desperate things will get if we need to tap that reserve in an emergency. Here’s how the ad begins: […]
OK, so my Detroit Lions aren’t going to win the Super Bowl this year, thanks to that teeth-gnashing final loss last weekend. But it was a heckuva ride, my son and I had a great time and built some great memories watching the season and going to a playoff game in Detroit, and it’s been […]
Eric Fry is teasing us about the coming “A.I. Wars,” and the necessity of building more and more advanced AI-ready chips in the United States and reducing our reliance on Taiwan and South Korea, and the heart of his pitch is that some companies will see huge profit opportunities as semiconductor capital spending grows to […]
January 30, 2024
What’s Porter’s Controversial “A.I. Keystone?”
Here’s the lead-in to Porter’s latest ad: “Why Bill Gates, Sam Altman, and even Warren Buffet are all investing hundreds of millions of dollars into this controversial new technology. “THE A.I. KEYSTONE “Without it the artificial intelligence market will collapse” And then, after a brief lesson in classical architecture to explain just what a “keystone” […]
January 26, 2024
Friday File: Berkley, Bro, Deere and more…
Sheesh, Netflix (NFLX) reports a great quarter, enthusiasm for AI remains high, and we get new record highs for almost everything again this week. Things were especially lusty for most of the big tech names, including AI darling NVIDIA (NVDA) and Alphabet (GOOGL) in our portfolio, but also Microsoft (MSFT), which just bumped up against […]
January 25, 2024
Musk’s “Project Dojo” and the “#1 AI Stock for 2024”
It’s a little unusual for me to be covering the same pundit and the same newsletter for two days in a row, but, well, sometimes we’re unusual people here at Stock Gumshoe. And when readers clamor for answers, we aim to provide. So today’s pitch, like yesterday’s, is from Eric Wade at Stansberry — we […]
This is one of several ads we’ve seen over the past few months that basically say, “AI is awesome, but NVIDIA is going to collapse and some other secret stocks will be the next big winners.” Here’s how the pitch of this presentation begins: “FORMER MICROSOFT EXEC: ‘Nvidia Could CRASH on February 28’ “The AI […]
January 19, 2024
Friday File: Dino, Berk, McCormick & Acacia
Sounds like the name of the world’s strangest law firm, right? Car accident? Call Dino, Berk, McCormick & Acacia, justice will be served and we’ll make you rich! Maybe not. But those are the things that caught my eye this week — that’s Dino Polska, some more mild updates on Berkshire Hathaway, a slouching dividend […]
This article was originally published on August 29, 2023. The ad is circulating heavily again from the Motley Fool, so we’re re-posting it with some updates… the stock being teased is still within 5% or so of where it was back in August. The Motley Fool has pitched their flagship Stock Advisor newsletter with artificial […]
We’re starting this week a little late, dear friends — mostly because I’m coming off of an incredible high and some rough winter travel, I just got back from seeing my Detroit Lions win their first playoff game in thirty years, in person, in the loudest and happiest crowd I’ve ever celebrated with. Wow, what […]
January 12, 2024
Friday File — Creeping into Earnings Season
I’m getting this Friday File out to you a little earlier than usual, because I’m bringing one of my kids to Detroit for the first Lions home playoff game in 30 years (well, I’m trying to bring him, at least… crossing my fingers that the weather allows planes to land in Detroit tomorrow). The city […]
January 10, 2024
Answers: Jovine’s pitch about “Israel’s Brand New Weapon”
Dylan Jovine has been pitching a few different defense-related stocks for several years now, including some A.I. companies tied to the war in Ukraine as well as some aerospace and missile companies… but I haven’t covered one of those in a while, and we’ve got a new take on the spiel from his Behind the […]
This article was originally published on September 18, when we first saw this Teeka Tiwari ad circulating… it is still in very heavy rotation, and still has a “September 2023” date, so the ad has not been updated. What follows has also not been updated, but questions are still rolling in so hopefully this will […]
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[...]