Here’s a little excerpt from the order form that accompanies Michael Robinson’s latest teaser pitch for Digital Fortunes ($99 first year, renews at $199, 30-day refund period), which is another of the newsletters he inherited from Louis Basenese last year:
“For the first time in nearly 200 years, railroad history is about to repeat itself…
“However, instead of investing in power-sucking steel rails above the ground…
“You have the ultra-rare opportunity to profit from power-creating copper rails beneath the ground…
“It’s all thanks to a brand-new paradigm-shifting technology called “in-road charging” or “I-R-C” for short…
“For the first time, early investors have the chance to generate 76X MORE WEALTH than all traditional railroads – combined…”
There’s a lot of talk about this “invisible railroad,” and, to further extend the metaphor, about how many fortunes have been built by railroad owners in the past… like this…
“The world’s latest marvel of human ingenuity — an invisible railroad — sits only a few inches under the street; beneath the asphalt.
“So what gives this railroad its power of invisibility?
“The rails, friends… the rails!
“See, unlike the steel rails in use today…
“Which do nothing but SUCK power from the grid…
“Operation Nightfall’s rails CREATE power!
“Yes, you read that correctly…
“By simply driving across them…
“The rails beneath the blacktop could soon power an 18-wheeler carrying a load of fertilizer… or refrigerators… or steel pipes… or whatever else needs hauling.
“Instead of using power-sucking steel rails — designed for above-ground usage only — to propel traditional locomotives forward (pictured)…
“IRC relies on power-creating copper coils beneath the asphalt — placed in a rail-like fashion — to provide an unlimited fuel supply to cars and trucks (pictured).”
You’ve probably already noticed the logical fault in that… this is about system that recharges electric vehicles, using coils that are installed beneath the surface of the road, and of course it doesn’t create power. It takes power from the grid and creates inductive magnetic fields under the roadway, and uses those to transfer the power to vehicles that are driving over or parked above the charging coils. “Charging a car” is not the same as “generating electricity” — the electrical current still has to come from somewhere, whether that’s a solar panel or a coal-burning power plant or whatever.
Here’s how Robinson later describes the process…
“First, wireless power is transferred — invisibly… automatically… and instantaneously — from the local power grid to the copper coils placed beneath the asphalt…
“Then, the power transfers a second time — yet again, invisibly — from the copper coils beneath the street to a receiver mounted under the vehicle, which charges the battery…
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just click here...“All the while, a cloud-based software system collects transactional data, which is used to optimize the wireless power, thus offering charging insights to the vehicle’s driver.”
And he thinks the national rollout of this “invisible railroad” will create massive wealth, quickly…
“This new Invisible Railroad – equipped with IRC’s paradigm-shifting technology – won’t take anywhere near 200 years to complete…
“Not even 100 years… 50 years… or even 25 years…
“The ‘off market’ company behind this technology has vowed to transform every street… every road… and every highway in every major American city…
“… all in less than 10 years!”
Hmmm… where have we heard that kind of “vow” from a tech startup before? Oh, right, it’s EVERY SINGLE ONE. I think we can be quite confident that there is not going to be a new “recharging grid” installed beneath every road in America over the next decade. Heck, the implementation of one of the stimulus programs from the COVID panic means we’re just about to spend $42 billion to try to get broadband to more people over the next few years, and broadband is much easier to extend than “electrified roads”, and has been slowly being extended to more houses for 25 years now.
Robinson also skates through several examples of current railroads that helped to generate fortunes over the past few decades, including the comment that “BNSF Railroad helped Berkshire’s stock blast 52,454% higher — enough to turn every $10,000 into $5,255,400…”
Which I guess is sort of true, though the word “helped” is carrying a lot of freight in that sentence. Berkshire Hathaway stock has indeed generated a total return of about 52,000% for shareholders over the past 40 years… though they only bought the BNSF railroad in 2009. It was a good deal, they paid roughly $35 billion for the railroad and it has since generated about $40 billion in cash flow for Berkshire, plus BNSF, on its own, would probably be worth at least $100 billion today if it traded at a similar valuation to the other major US railroads. Since buying BNSF, Berkshire Hathaway has increased in value by about 400%… I would say at least a quarter of that leap from a $150 billion market cap to $740 billion was caused by BNSF, it was a good deal and owning railroads is profitable, but it certainly wasn’t a 50,000% deal.
And we should remember, of course, that anything we say about the wealth generated by railroads obscures the wildly volatile history of the industry — railroads were the go-go investments of the Civil War era, but about a quarter of them also went bankrupt in the 1870s, and by the 1960s huge waves of bankruptcies almost destroyed the US railroad industry. Some people made fortunes here and there, though a lot of the fortunes were made by vultures who scooped up the early players. BNSF, for example, is the result of mergers and acquisitions of hundreds of different railroads (probably close to 400) over more than 150 years. History is not so simple as, “buy a railroad, become a billionaire.”
Back to the present, though, the promises keep flowing… this “Invisible Railroad” company has big ambition…
“This little company’s CEO predicts that four in five cars on American roads will be EVs — within the next decade!
“In other words, he’s betting that IRC could shave at least 15 years off the EV adoption timeline here in America (and the world, for that matter).”
That’s a common refrain, though I’d argue it’s just shy of impossible. Nobody is expecting to have the manufacturing capacity, particularly for batteries, to have even 80% of cars sold in the US be battery electric vehicles by 2033, though some carmakers have ambitions along those lines, but, more importantly, the average car on US roads is now about 13 years old. Transition takes a LONG time when you’re dealing with a massive market of long-lived assets like automobiles (and automobile manufacturing plants, and gas stations, and etc.).
And that grandiose promise of massive wealth does come from the “math” that Robinson makes up…
“… we have roughly 4.1 million roads across our great country…
“So when you multiply them times $1.9 million (the unit cost per IRC)…
“The math works out to $7.8 trillion in brand-new wealth.”
That’s not 4.1 million roads, of course, but 4.1 million miles of roadway. Most of those roads are rural and don’t get much traffic, but even just the Interstate Highways, which are only a little over 1% of the roadways if you count by miles (about 50,000 miles of Interstate), and carry about 25% of the vehicle traffic in the country, would be a big number. It’s not super likely that you could install electrical charging grids underneath a mile of interstate for $1.9 million, of course (just resurfacing an Interstate costs about $1 million per mile), nor could you “electrify” 50,000 miles of highway in a decade without a dramatic boom in government spending, and I suspect that this wireless charging system probably needs years of improvement before it’s ready for high speed and high traffic pressures anyway… but even if you could do it, that would cost close to $100 billion. Which, depending on how you measure such things, is about half of what is spent on roads and highways in an average year in the US (combined federal, state and local money — usually the Feds pay about a quarter of that).
And he says that the big money is already pouring in to this story…
“It’s no wonder billionaire investors like Warren Buffett, Michael Bloomberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are ALL pouring billions into this technology right now…”
Which does NOT mean that those big investors are all investing in the “one tiny company” that controls the IRC technology, of course — it means that those four people are famously invested in something in a similar orbit… and knowing how much these folks exaggerate, it’s very likely that he’s basing this assertion on the fact that those four investors have some investments in “clean energy” and vehicle electrification. Which they do.
And the developments are apparently going to come quickly, per Robinson:
“… this little company is just weeks away from launching the very first public IRC road in Detroit this July…
“While current stakeholders of its stock are positioned for a 1,467% profit opportunity…
“The stakes are much higher for you.”
But interestingly enough, he actually doesn’t recommend the company that’s actually developing this technology, or laying that “road” in Detroit. Even though it’s hard at work and will be generating news soon.
“This little company has perfected its craft, friends…
“It’s able to install one mile of IRC per night.
“While also minimizing any-traffic related disruptions…”
And he talks about some of the test projects this “IRC” company has already completed, before laying this first mile in Detroit…
“Gotland, Sweden… where a one-mile ‘test’ road was installed in 2020.
“The Gotland test sought to determine if IRC could power an e-bus and a 40-ton e-truck at speeds of 80 mph.
“Karlsruhe, Germany, where another IRC test… sought to prove that IRC could power multiple EVs all at once… as in, a bunch of e-buses, vans, trucks and cars at the same time.
“I’m happy to report it was a resounding success.
Lombardy, Italy… test sought to gauge the effectiveness of IRC’s cloud-based software — to ensure it tracked every wireless energy transfer… to every vehicle traveling across its ‘rails’… with zero hitches.”
So what now? Now, apparently, it goes commercial…
“This little IRC company has all the data it needs to launch its first large-scale… fully-commercial… public-ready IRC in transportation history…
“Not for testing, though…
“But for real-world, live-traffic usage…
“On a one-mile stretch of road…
“Located in a dormant Midwestern city…
“Officially known as the “EV Mile”…
“It’s the first-ever, mass-market, electric-generating road in history.”
That’s the Michigan Central project, on the site of the old Central Station in Detroit (speaking of railways), and it’s a bit of a stretch to say it’s a “real world, live-traffic” project, this is essentially a pilot project in a controlled environment. But yes, regular cars will supposedly be allowed to drive on it, and we’ll see if it works. That and other testing projects in Florida, Pennsylvania and Utah have generated a decent amount of press attention over the past year or so, and these are all described as test installations, which means they’ll be tested and debated for years before we see massive real-world investment into projects of meaningful scale… but who knows, anything is possible. I suspect it will take a long time to settle on standards and assess whether the cost is worthwhile… but sometimes things do move quickly when a consensus emerges. I didn’t think we needed cameras in our cell phones, either, so I might not be the most bleeding-edge thinker around.
It has over 60 corporate partners helping to advance IRC technology…
What else about this little company?
“It owns proprietary rights to IRC, and…
“It stands ready to add another $912 million to its bottom line.”
But that’s when the teaser turns… he does tease it, just not to say “buy it” — here’s how he puts it on the order form:
“First up is Volume One of my IRC Profit Series…
“The ‘Off Market’ Play.
“It provides the framework for my entire IRC investment thesis.
“Inside the pages, you’ll find the little company’s ticker symbol… the foreign exchange where it trades… my long- and short-term IRC profit forecasts… and why July 31 is such an infinitely important date for the IRC.
“By avoiding this ‘off market’ play, we’re wise…
“By outsmarting early IRC investors, we’re just plain greedy!”
And why are we supposed to avoid this leader that will generate 1,500% returns?
“The company’s existing shareholders — likely the kind of people who own racehorses, yachts, and vineyards — stand ready for riches…
“Meaning a shot to turn every $20 investment into $313… every $1,000 investment into $15,670… and every $100,000 investment into $1,567,000.
That being said, I strongly advise against buying shares.
“See, the company behind IRC technology isn’t listed on a major U.S. exchange — i.e. the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq.”
So I guess he just thinks it’s too risky for his “entry level” newsletter subscribers. You can make your own call on that, I guess, the “secret” IRC Profit Play that Robinson teases as “off market” is a firm called Electreon, which is headquartered and listed in Israel, so it’s not so tough to buy if you’re interested. The ticker is ELWS in Tel Aviv, though there’s also a OTC ticker in the US at ELWSF. It’s small, with a market cap of about $250 million, and it’s also very unprofitable and pretty illiquid, so it’s certainly not for the faint of heart, but they did generate their first sales last year (only $8 million or so, which means it’s going to take a lot of test projects and partnerships to come close to catching up with their $80 million of expenses, but still, it’s good to at least have a little revenue coming in). The price did jump 10% or so in Tel Aviv this morning, so perhaps folks are excited about this Robinson pitch, or just excited that they won another tender yesterday for an electric road project (in Norway). It is, as Robinson implies, clearly a very risky speculation.
Here’s how that “Invisible Railway” developer that is running what Robinson is calling “Operation Nightfall” describes itself:
“Electreon is a publicly-traded Israeli company, developing and implementing Wireless Electric Road Systems (ERS) – a shared, invisible platform that wirelessly charges commercial and passenger electric vehicles while driving. By significantly decreasing battery size, cost and weight and improving operational efficiency, Electreon offers governments, cities and fleet operators the most sustainable and cost-effective solution towards 100% global electrification.”
You can see their investor presentation here… it’s very impressive, and it sounds awfully cool.
There have been lots of “smart roadway” designs tested and tried over the past 20 years, and there will no doubt be many more in the future — there’s a cool little company that makes concrete blocks for building smart roads, Lego-style, that have communications and charging capabilities for EVs and autonomous vehicles built in, and there are also roads that dream of creating electricity — way back in 2008 we were being teased by the idea that drive-throughs and toll booths would have pads underneath them which capture the kinetic power of cars stopping, as a kind of renewable energy.
And there are other wireless EV charging companies — Witricity has gotten a fair amount of attention in this space, and is also talking about the potential for electric charging within roadways, though their products, including the Halo line they bought from Qualcomm, seem initially to be more focused on installing an at-home or at-depot wireless charging spot to park on, for convenience. (Witricity has a lot of venture and partner investments from electronics and automotive partners, including Intel, Toyota, Duke Electronics and Siemens, but is not publicly traded.)
And there are lots of somewhat smaller ones than that, for sure — InductEV and Wave are installing static wireless charging stations for customers now, though most of those smaller players are private (Wave is actually owned by Ideanomics (IDEX), which was a popular EV story stock for a while in 2021, though it hasn’t gone well — the stock is down about 97% in the past two years) … and there are plenty of other ambitious little companies like Hevo and Plugless Power. There’s an interesting McKinsey interview with a few of the players in wireless EV charging here, though it’s not specifically about “on the move” charging on roadways, and the expectation seems pretty clearly to be that places like loading docks and bus stops and taxi stands are the most logical places to recharge fleet vehicles, who are likely to be the first adopters of wireless charging. There’s also a slightly more technical piece about how this kind of inductive charging works and what the challenges are, if you’re curious.
OK… so what should we buy? Here’s what Robinson says will generate more profit:
“Take Action BEFORE July 31…
“Look, I realize that 1,467% is a lot of upside potential for the tiny foreign stock…
“But the stakes are even greater for my backdoor play…”
“Given the potential for four million miles of IRC roads in the United States, along with the likelihood that 116 million EVs will be cruising our highways and byways by 2030…
“America’s invisible railroad will require roughly 348 billion of these little indispensable devices over the next seven years… and close to 55 trillion of these little devices by 2050.
“In such a seemingly inevitable reality…
“Most experts expect device sales to eclipse a trillion dollars.”
So this “device” company is his #1 “Invisible Railroad” stock to own now… what is it?
Other clues….
“The profit margins on this little indispensable device are nearly triple the margins of the power-generating rails themselves”
“Rather than own the tiny company that invented the technology, whose “off market” shares are tough to get…
“I’m urging Main Street investors to buy shares of a company that manufactures an indispensable… irreplaceable… downright critical device needed for America’s invisible railroad to thrive and prosper.”
So what is it?
“This type of indispensable device is inside of every ‘rail’ laid beneath the streets…
“It’s inside of every vehicle receiver…
“It’s inside IRC’s cloud technology…
“Heck, it’s even inside every EV in the world.”
Without more clues we can’t be certain, but the Thinkolator pegs our best match here as ST Microelectronics, often referred to as STMicro (STM), which is a leading chipmaker for electric vehicles, including silicon carbide chips that can handle higher voltage, and is focused on the European car market, where in-road charging is much more likely to be built relatively quickly, and on interior charging systems for electric vehicles.
It could quite easily be one of the other leading power management chip companies, maybe On Semiconductor (ON) or NXP Semiconductor (NXP), both of which are stocks Robinson has liked in the past… but I’ll settle on STM as the best guess here. Building 10,000 miles of roadway is not going to generate a huge increase in demand for more power electronics chips for the roadside power management equipment, nor would a few hundred thousand electric vehicles that might incorporate a wireless charging standard and require different onboard chips and systems, these are extremely high-volume products already, in many cases… but as the sector scales it’s possible that wireless charging could provide some significant incremental demand for those kinds of chips, and maybe for higher-spec chips that are even more profitable.
Robinson could also be thinking of a more direct play, a maker of the electrical equipment for AC/DC conversion or the vehicle electric systems more generally, but, given the high margin comment, I suspect he’s touting a chipmaker.
There are indeed some very cool things going on… but it’s also an area where a lot of continuing innovation is clearly needed, and I have no idea how it will evolve.
The big news a few weeks ago was that a new nonstop driving record had been achieved on one of the Electreon test tracks, a modified Toyota RAV4 drove 1,206 miles, only stopping to switch drivers, and was continuously recharged by the embedded coils under the track. And apparently the coils were only under a quarter of the track, so that provides some evidence that this is possible… but not necessarily evidence that it’s ready right now. In case you didn’t do the math, that means this Toyota was driving at an average of about 12 miles per hour for 100 hours. It’s still impressive that they can do that without ever drawing the battery down to zero, and it was a small battery in that car, but 12 miles per hour on a controlled track, with professional drivers and non-production equipment, is obviously not a real world test… it’s a step along the way to making the technology viable for moving vehicles. Hopefully it will get much better over time.
And Robinson doesn’t leave it there, he’s also got one more investment to pitch…
“The Pro Play
“It seeks to place you comfortably ahead of copper’s hyperbolic spike in demand.
“It’s a natural resource firm rich in copper-producing mining claims, which I expect to play a major role in IRC’s transformation of American roadways.”
There is a wide consensus that the electrification of the vehicle fleet will require massive investments in new copper supplies, with the existing mines and large discoveries insufficient to meet future demand. Since it’s consensus, one would assume it’s “in the price,” but copper has not gone up enough to inspire a ton of huge new copper projects just yet, and it can take a decade or so to turn a discovery into a mine even if financing is readily available and things go pretty well. I’d agree that copper should be a good investment for the next decade, it’s a beneficiary of a lot of the work going on to electrify and industrialize the world, which includes things like bringing reliable electricity generation to developing countries as well as upgrading power grids and building electric vehicles and charging networks.
In this case, though, Electreon specifically has used aluminum cables in its test projects to this point, saying that using direct current (DC) and distributing it on aluminum cables costs half as much as copper wiring. Still, I won’t argue with the general point that we’re probably going to need a lot more copper production in the future.
But which copper miner might Michael Robinson like? Well, that sentence above is the sum total of the clues dropped in this particular teaser ad, so on that front I’d just be making a wild guess. Since this is a pretty mainstream-focused newsletter at $99/$199, I’d guess he’s sticking with a big and solid leader in the space… but that doesn’t narrow it down all that much, either. We’ll go out on a limb and speculate that he’s picking either Teck Resources (TECK) or Freeport-McMoran (FCX), two of the larger copper producers in the world, and two stocks that are pretty regularly picked by newsletter folks as mainstream “plays” on copper. It could easily be another major copper miner, like Lundin Mining (LUN.TO, LUNMF) or Ivanhoe (IVN.TO, IVPAF) or First Quantum (FM.TO, FQLFV)… or, if you don’t feel like becoming a copper mining expert, you could always just take a look at the Global X Copper Miners ETF (COPX).
And that’s all we’ve got for you today — a definitive answer about the stock he doesn’t think you should buy, plus some guesses about the “device” company and the copper miner he doesn’t drop many hints about. Have any other favorite ideas in those areas? Think a little player like Electreon is worth a gamble? Do let us know with a comment below… thanks for reading!
Disclosure: Of the companies mentioned above, I own shares of Berkshire Hathaway, Atkore, Keysight and WESCO in the Real Money Portfolio. I will not trade in any covered stock for at least three days after publication, per Stock Gumshoe’s trading rules.
This is a technology my father talked about for 30 years before he died in 2000. I have often wondered when it would come about. I think big oil is going to fight this for years in America. Europe and Asia are a different story. The concept is solid, but the above timeline is not. Just my WAG.
This technology will never work at any scale, it requires & wastes far too much electricity. The reference to CREATING POWER is a complete lie, it would SUCK power just as he says it won’t.
We don’t have ability to create as much electricity that is needed for this to work. What’s the technology that will create electricity at a rate that is economical/affordable/efficient for the amount needed? That’s what I want to invest in. We don’t have enough electricity to power the limited number of EV’s today.
I’m glad they’re trying, promising the impossible is what gets the ball moving forward (see: Elon Musk), but they don’t have to do it with my money.
In-ground charging or wires less charging of some sort is essentially required for fully autonomous vehicles, but my guess would be that the real push will be to install it in bus stations, parking lots and taxi stands, that’s a much more
Efficient use than roadways, and easier to maintain. And,
Of course, like everything, it will probably cost more and take longer and create new unintended consequences.
Love the futuristic stuff,
But I rarely want to speculate on it.
Travis, I suggest Robinson is smoking “funny cigarettes rolled in Woodside”! The cost of installing induction loops on even 10,000 miles of roadway would cost a very large fortune. The cost of signalizing a 4 way traffic intersection can easily cost more than $1M and that’s with only 16 induction loops located 100 yards or less from the signal controller. I worked on one of the first computerized traffic control systems in the U.S., for that matter in the world, and the intricacies of designing and operating a charging system like the one he’s referring to would be a challenge of a huge undertaking. The electric grid would require a makeover that is almost unimaginable to provide power for such a system. As a comparison, last summer California utilities asked EV owners to not plug their chargers in during the hours of 4PM till 9PM to avoid blackouts. Scaling that up to the # of EV’s he’s envisioning by 2050 would require a much different electric grid than anyone is even contemplating currently!
So, we must have a different mechanism for the transmission of power or, a roadway comprised of something other than asphalt/concrete and copper/aluminum.
Regards,
Frank
Heard of virtual power plants? How about the percentage of vehicles that spend 90% of there lives sitting still. Those that are EV’s should always be plugged into the grid always be at least 50 to 75% or more charged, put all together they are the giant battery backup the grid needs!
I like the fact that this is copper. I have a small position in ACDFX (American Copper Development). How does that stack up against the ones mentioned?
That’s a penny stock, with about a $15 million market cap and no actual revenue or earnings, so it’s not in the same league as actual profitable miners (TECK makes roughly$15 million in profit every days, with a market cap near $20 billion). Haven’t ever heard of that particular one.
I’m out! They can’t even fill potholes in my neck of the woods ( MA)
Do keep in mind who controls government work. Whenever you hear a politician putting down the efficiency of government workers remember it was the politician who wrote the rules and processes those government workers have to follow. Imagine hiring the CEO of Pepsi to run Coca-Cola. That’s what we recently got at the post office!
There are newer iPhone chargers that can perform a full charge in 1 hr 40 mins. Much faster (about 3xs) than it takes to charge my current older model iPhone. This is an evolution of charging. I think that will be the most efficient and logical path for EVs. I envision a 15-minute boost coming down the pike in 5-7 years. They just haven’t figured it out yet. Of course, the fossil fuel powers are not happy with this scenario so politics will make the transition more difficult. All machines that run on fossil fuel can evolve into e-power. That will hurt the oil lobby hard. No more lamps lit by whale oil because of Edison or was it, Tesla. That era ended and so will oil. The Oil Barons will not go easy into the night, but it looks like Musk’s latest move to resolve the e-power problem of other automakers will allow the e-wave to prevail and overthrow the fossil fuel throne. It was history changing move. One man changing the destiny of mankind. We can save the ozone layer. We’re literally early in the 2nd Era of the Model T (SLA). Odd that it works out with that double entendre but it seems the logical path to me. Forget about electrified roads.
Seems there is always so much energy devoted to pushing the idea that there will never be enough energy to make something possible! Why is it that lobbyists are so good at convincing people to be so stupid to believe in shit? Shit like nicotine is not addictive. Shit like it’s good to sell a king so many weapons his people will never be free. Shit like being free means you are to stupid to choose your recreational drug of choice but fell free to choose solid or liquid diabetes to consume as much as you like for it turns the wheels of our economy! Critical thinking should start with follow the money! Don’t take my word, go back to the beginning and read George Washington’s farewell address and see what scared him the most about the future and where the danger would come from. The electrical grid is full of idle power plants waiting for peak demand, but of course, those are all fossil fuel plants, we could just as well have over built, renewable energy plants, plenty of off the shelf storage, and it’s been proved time and time again that what is said can’t be done can be done!
When I read the “Invisible Railroad” in the title I thought it was about building a rail line across the Indian ocean. After I read it, I realized the feasibility of the two are about equal.
I subscribed to Nova X Investor, with Michael Robinson, 3-4 years ago, & was a bit irked that I had to wait for a $7 stock to go back up, after it slid, but eventually it really did double( from my highest buy price). Unfortunately, I impatiently sold, thinking it would plummet.
Another Michael Robinson stock is really hurting, now, but it made me some $, too, after awhile.
Some of Michael Robinson’s other recommendations did VERY well. I always sold sooner that I should have. I still almost want to cry when I see TEAM, because it sky-rocketted exactly as he said it would.
I decided to try one of Robinson’s colleagues, but couldn’t believe Ford was such a great pick. It has since that time more than doubled, & stayed there. Beyond Meat could have made me thousands, but I didn’t even buy one share. I felt that my decision was somewhat justified when it collapsed, but not as good as I would have felt if I’d bought it, & kept it only HALF its trajectory, to the moon.
The only HUGE problem that I’ve seen with subscribing to Michael Robinson & Bill Patalon is that you assume all stock pickers will give you eventual winners. They don’t.
I wish I had remembered what I think Travis Johnson said about these more expensive services: they seem to do much better when the market is going up, but don’t do nearly as well in less than a bull market. The last one cost me SO MUCH!! Everyone was touting these algorithmic marvels. I picked one, in 2021, that could easily take me YEARS from which to recover. I was buying the cheaper ones, like TRIB, & OIIM, & some Chinese stocks that I was told had “done this before” ( implying that they go up; from $2 to my now “re-organized” $80 buy price, though?).
Anyway, I thought Michael Robinson’s articles were pretty weird, back in 2018, BUT THEY WENT UP!!! Bill Patalon is much better than I thought, too.
If I hadn’t grown so accustomed to getting stock pickers who ARE WORTH IT, I wouldn’t have bought Tupperware, which is bizarrely about to go out of business (Musk– If someone sends you this, PLEASE show Tupperware how to innovate! It’s almost CRAZY that they can’t imagine products that would sell!)
I wouldn’t have bought Reynold’s Wrap?????!! I wouldn’t have believed that Trinity Biopharmaceutical would recover, or I-Click, without being re-organized.
So this is my warning: Don’t let Michael Robinson get you accustomed to EXPECTING winners, when you subscribe to others. He’s the magic–the real deal, to me. I think he & Bill Patalon actually really care about people. Motley Fool—& Cramer—also seem to care.
They aren’t as funny & gravity-centered as Travis Johnson, though.