Author/Editor
Frank Curzio
Publisher
Curzio Research
Description
Entry level newsletter from Frank Curzio’s new research company (he previously wrote the somewhat similar letters Small Stock Specialist and Disruptors and Dominators for Stansberry and Weiss, respectively), aims to focus on stocks of any size (most of his previous newsletters were small-cap focused) and on large trends.
Overall Rating
Rating: 3.5/5. From 76 votes.
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3.3
Rating from 358 votes
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Rating: 2.9/5. From 105 votes.
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Quality Of Writing/Analysis
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Rating: 3.4/5. From 86 votes.
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Rating: 3.4/5. From 91 votes.
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Rating: 3.5/5. From 76 votes.
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Some very good ideas and picks and some bad. I think the main problem with this newsletter is that the bullish case is talked up too much (as seems to be very common in this industry) but the bearish case is often neglected. I think the research is pretty good but do your own due diligence.
I am disappointed with Curzio because of is his constant spam with ‘new offers’. These tend to be not his offers, but someone else’s newsletter. I asked him about it and he said I can just unsubscribe from his emails. The problem with that is I don’t get updates. So much for customer service.
In regards to his picks, they are interesting long term holds. I’m fine with that. As of today, my biggest looser is GE. His analysis is pretty good, just very long winded. But, that is common within this industry.
Am I satisfied with my subscription? No. I should have spent the money on Bitcoin and beer.
Performance of Curzio’s stock picks has been poor to date, hopefully, that will change with time. As mentioned below, the writing style is overly “spammy” with too much up talking of the bull case; GE is a classic example of this where Curzio advises everyone to remove their stop losses, only for the stock to keep plummeting and eventually advising everyone to sell. Also, his investment thesis seems to change quite rapidly with some stocks, having recommended AK Steel Holding Corporation only to advise selling a few months later. Overal I can’t say I recommend others to buy this newsletter based on my experience so far.
CRA has Boring picks that Sophisticated investors already know about. He violates his own stop loss rules, ie GE. So if you ride his bad picks you can lose a lot. He says he vets management, but all his traveling didn’t stop him from picking companies that quickly disposed of their ace management. He has no BS detector. For the average investor, you can probably do well buying his picks with a tight trailing stop of 15%, versus the 35% stops he puts on. He overhypes and then digs in. USAU was a transparent Ventures pick (not a Venture Subscriber) that he bought wrong and sold wrong, IMO.
Like other commenters, I do think Frank is a little overoptimistic with his recommendation but you can still make money long-term, I prefer his partner Mike Alkin more but you have to pony up $3,000 a year for MoneyFlow Trader and be a more active trader.
I am a lifetime subscriber to CRA because it was a good deal and I like reading his commentary on getting my wheels spinning. I have a small position in three of his 10 recommendations and a few more on my watchlist.
He has a weekly podcast (Frankly Speaking) that doesn’t give away his investment picks, but it gives you a good idea of his investment outlook. I encourage listening to a few episodes before you subscribe to his newsletter
I have been a CRA subscriber for a few years and I think the research is good and in depth. Personally I have some experience and have learned a fair amount about analysis, but I am not always to get many companies on my radar. For the money I think this is great value, and often good education about ways to look at the market. The picks do well overall, and I generally use the newsletter to add to my own research and filters.
I’m more of a technical swing trader and I can’t imagine how one goes about researching the fundamentals of any of the thousands of stocks available in the universe. So, that’s why I have a subscription to Cursio Research Advisory. I have learned over the past year not to just buy whatever stock he recommends, but to put it on my watchlist and buy it when technicals confirm. And to sell when they stop confirming. I was hoping to use his picks to maintain in a buy-and-hold part of my portfolio, but that is a strategy meant for passive investors, not active traders. And I need consistent income from my trades. So unless one of his picks sets up technically as a long term investment, where a stop order can be trailed up, I’ll stick to swing trading in and out of his picks.
WARNING — I bought a “Lifetime” Membership, Just got an email stating “I’m writing to let you know that your annual Curzio Research Advisory maintenance fee of $19 is due in 7 days. “. Maybe he disclosed this up front but I didn’t keep screenshots. I can’t justify paying $19 for a bunch of picks I already own or know about.
Me too. What a nerve after a terrible year recommending such dogs as GE and DBD. A refund to the “lifetime” members would be more appropriate. Plus we get spammed with a bunch of offers for other crap. Very disappointing.
I took saved the webpages of the offer when I signed up, and the maintenance fee was disclosed,
I also am a lifetime member. I was really surprised with the maintenance fee. He has hired some high priced employees that will cover topics that do not apply to my investing style. He probably needs more income to play them.There was no mention of a maintenance fee when I signed up. I also am not impressed with his stock picks, There have been more losers than winners in the last 11 months.
Signed up for Curzio Research Advisory when it first opened and have been tracking every one of his picks. Let’s just say you’re better off using a dart board. He’s had a couple of winners, but they are more than offset by his losers.
I’ve been following Curzio for years now. He provides good analysis but his stock picks in both CRA and his previous newsletter have not performed well overall. Definitely way under the performance of the S&P 500. I’ve lost a lot of money trusting Frank’s picks. I still like listening to his analysis, but rarely buy any of his recommendations.
Frank Curzio is a snake oil salesman that really needs to look into the mirror and realize he is doing way more harm then good. I hope he seriously is trying to pick winners, but sometimes I think he just wants volume sales of his newsletters and doesn’t really put much effort into his picks.
I tried giving him the benefit of the doubt, but you seriously have to try to hard to be as bad as he has been. Especially in this raging bull market where buying FANG or index funds could have made a lot more money. His strategy consists of picking stocks at 52 week lows and proclaiming that a turn around is coming… but it never does.
DO NOT GIVE THIS MAN YOUR MONEY — better off investing in index funds or picking companies blindly.
CURZIO likes to hide his losers so there is no evidence. More so, he flip flops on his podcast covering every side of everything so he can return and say “SEE? I recommended XYZ” although he said XYZ was great and bad within a couple month span.
Huge losers in the following stocks since I have followed Curzio: GE (he doubled down on this pick stating it will be the best stock in the DOW and then it lost another 30%), DBD, TRVG, NLNK (he manged to turn a 180% winner into sell half and let the other half lose 210% until hitting his original stop loss), GLDLF (HUGE SCAM w/ Amir Adnani… garbage gold company that owns gold mines that NEED $2000 an oz), USAU (another gold miner he pumped that proceeded to go from $3 to near $1 and he got out); GSV and AUG (more loser miners). There are likely many more but I stopped following him.
There are likely a lot more losers and his winners are few and far between. Do your own research, but I just hope this message prevents someone from following Frank. Like I said above, I obviously liked his podcast and gave him the benefit of the doubt… but his newsletters are garbage. Bad picks, no timing, sloppy with typos, and he always hides his losers after he sells so his portfolio looks much better than it really is. I am lucky I realized this early enough that I could completely modify my investing strategy and not follow someone who proclaims to beat the market… he definitely doesn’t.
Love his Podcasts but since starting his own company the quality of his picks have really dropped. He gets winners but his losers cause massive damage to the portfolio. Subscribing to his newsletter has literally cost us thousands in losses. This is not the safe long term hold newsletter touted in the beginning – its turnover is high and he manages to multiply our losses with double down bets. I really like him but I’m scared to listen to his picks at this point.
What a joke. Like the others in this commentary, I got burnt ever listening to this salesman. My portfolio without his picks +30% annum… with his picks -25% I lost a thousands with his garbage picks. He provides worthless advice unless you short everything he recommends as a buy. To boot, his $19 annual maintenance fee… I paid lifetime but have been locked out because I refused to pay the maintenance fee.
Thought I’d update, since I cancelled WITHOUT paying the maintenance fee.
Frank must have had a battle with his conscience. Although I’m locked out of his worthless site. He is still sending updates and his latest picks. I give him some credit for that. I assume other “lifetime” subscribers received the same deal. At least then the other lifetime subscribers can get out when he gets out and buy his new picks (see suggestion below).
I’ll also give him credit on CTRL, which I knew nothing about. The CTRL management is impressive on con calls, hiring the right people, etc. He got this one right and it may actually be a long term hold, but if they are successful they’ll likely get bought out before then. But if you subscribe to Gumshoe, you would have know about TTD (not a Curzio Pick) that has the same potential and Travis does an honest non-pump evaluation of the gumshoe portfolio. After all these are just stocks, not your kids, you shouldn’t give them unconditional love like Frank.
My suggestion is that if you subscribe to Curzio letters, then you should IGNORE Curzio’s buy and sell prices and use Technicals to get you in and out as some folks have stated herein. Do not wait for his 20-35% stop losses. I also suggest doing your own due diligence on management and the product. Simply asking your banker what they use for ATMs and when they plan to upgrade would have put you short DBD, not long as Frank recommended.
TEVA,GE,DBD,T,DAL,MCD (he said short MCD, but it doubled since that call) …Just to name a few of his dogs. I cant think of one pick that he ever said in his broadcast thats up. I like his podcast, but his picks are terrible.
I’m enjoying CRA. It’s the low-cost newsletter, so it isn’t where the best picks are. How well are their picks doing overall? I cannot tell you simply, because he removes the closed positions (i.e. the failures) from the model portoflio on the website, and doesn’t publish performance numbers of the portfolio.
The mistakes I’ve made are to try to pick and chose his picks and to take too big positions on some, so I’ve lost out of some of the winners I wasn’t convinced about initially. The right thing to do is not the second guess and cautiously buy everything with position sizes that are about equal and within risk tolerance. What I’m doing lately is playing the picks by using call options, if it isn’t a dividend pick, which gives me an automatic stop loss and therefore limits the downside. I think it’s also important to look at the chart and not buy when CRA publishes because the stock might be in a temporary uptrend. You can get a better price and that’s can make a big difference. At the very least, ease in a position.
I find the writing style of the newsletter bombastic and the headlines often have ludicrous promises of triple digits profits. I don’t know why he thinks he needs to do that. Frank has started to make video updates, too, some of which are only for lifetime subscribers. It looks like he knows he’s not very good at writing and is now trying to avoid it if he can. Still, having the videos that review the portfolio positions by positions is pretty sweet. I think that’s quarterly. When your stock is down, it can take a few days to get an email update it, if ever, that’s another drawback. Frank doesn’t care the way you might about every tick the stock goes through. He’s busy having beers with Rick Rules or whatnot.
With all this negative, you might be wondering how I can possibly enjoy CRA. It’s simple. I like Frank, and CRA lifetime has cost me 269$ (plus yearly maintenance fee of 19$) and I’ve made thousands of dollars and learned about stocks I would not have known about. I manage a seven digits account and CRA is just one of the inputs I use. If I had a small account and this would be my main input, I would not be as pleased. You might be better off just listening to the podcasts and take the picks there. This isn’t a DYI investing newsletter to design your portfolio, you’re just getting one pick a month and it will not result in a safe and balanced portfolio.
STAY AWAY from CRA.
I couldn’t figure out how to update my original post, so I’ll add this one. By my count, Frank has recommended 24 stocks via CRA. Of those 24, eight (33%) declined so bad he dropped them off his list – including such winners as GE, DBD, GROW, JD, OII and AKS. Of the 16 that remain in his CRA portfolio, only 6 are in positive territory. His biggest gainer – AMZN. Would you really need to pay someone to recommend AMZN? Great pick Frank,,,, duh.
Frank is a great salesman. The man knows how to sell a newsletter. Every newsletter/recommendation makes you feel like you’ve got the winning numbers to the lottery. Buyer beware…. you’ll be better off investing your money in lottery tickets.
Lots of losers for me with no big winners to offset. Was initially excited about what I saw as his sincere attempt to create a newsletter for the masses but now I’m just about done giving the benefit of the doubt. I’ve hit stop limit on just every pick except one which is barely above.
As I read through the comments, a majority of them have had a poor experience with Curzio Research Advisory and I couldn’t agree more. I purchased a lifetime membership on CRA and a limited subscription of two other products (MFT and CRO). None of these have resulted in any significant gain for me. I’ve since dropped CRO and plan to drop MFT . I also plan to stop paying the maintenance fee for CRA when it comes up. I’ll be interested to see how they respond. Honestly, I’d love to get some insight on quality newsletters and what separates them from this waste of time and money. Thanks!