Elon Musk is the gift that keeps on giving for the newsletter peddlers of the world — his name always draws attention, and once an ad copywriter has your attention he’s got a good chance of sucking you in to his FOMO story.
This time it’s Luke Lango, who’s selling his Innovation Investor newsletter with a pitch about “Project Apollo” … and a sub-$1 investment that’s going to make you rich, starting on June 30. So what’s the story? We’ll go through the details of the ad, get you some answers, and then you can make your own call. It is, after all, your money.
Here’s how the ad starts:
“Man who was ranked #1 stock picker in America reveals details of… Elon Musk’s “Project Apollo”
“Before June 30, Elon is set to shock the world with his latest invention and mint new millionaires in the process.
‘[Project Apollo] has the fastest rate of innovation maybe ever for any internet company. It’s going to surprise people [with]
just how powerful it is.’ – Elon Musk”
And, of course, Lango and his copywriters love to trot out his “#1 stock picker” graphic from TipRanks from several years ago…
Which means we have to counter that by noting that enthusiastic growth stock pickers pretty regularly run through booms and busts… he may have been #1 out of 15,123 experts at one point, but today he’s considered, by that same system, to be ranked almost at the absolute bottom, #36,230 out of 37,421 experts.
I don’t know that TipRanks is necessarily the best way to measure someone’s stock-picking skill, I don’t check it routinely, and Luke Lango is pretty much the only person who uses it’s “endorsement” in his promos… but if you brag about the time when that system thought you were great (a few years ago), you’ve gotta acknowledge the time when it says you’re terrible (now).
But that’s all in the past… we’re curious about what Luke Lango sez will boom this Summer, with the latest wave of Elon Musk-generated enthusiasm. So what’s the story?
It’s mostly about Elon’s goal of turning Twitter (now X) into the “everything app”, kind of like Tencent’s WeChat in China… not just a social network, but a payment platform and e-commerce system and whatever else he wants to throw in, all powered by AI (and advertising). Here’s how Lango starts teasing that…
“X will soon become a digital payment platform that could transform how you and millions of Americans handle money….
“In the late 1990s, Elon co-founded the online bank X.com…
“Which later merged with a Peter Thiel-led business to form PayPal.
“So this is NOT Elon Musk’s first rodeo in fintech startups.
“This is a plan 25 years in the making.
“That’s why I believe very soon…
“You’ll be able to send both money and crypto through the app X.
“And that’s just the beginning.
“Elon wants you to conduct your entire financial world on his app.”
And apparently some progress is already being made…
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“X has already received licenses to facilitate money transfers in 18 total states…
“And counting.
“Elon expects soon he will have approval nationwide.
“As soon as that happens, he will flip the switch.
“I believe this could happen before June 30th.”
That sounds fairly optimistic, if X is only licensed in 18 states now (they started this process before Musk acquired Twitter two years ago), particularly since the licensing process in some states, like California and New York, is much more difficult than others… but who knows, maybe they’ll be licensed nationwide later this year.
And, of course, Lango has the “secret” way to get rich from this:
“Most people will have no idea how to profit from this project…
“Because X is a private company.
“You can’t simply buy shares of X.
“But after months of research…
“And after calling my contacts in Silicon Valley…
“I found a fintech investment that’s trading for less than $1…
“One that I believe will give you direct exposure to the growth of X as a new payment solution.”
And yes, as you’ve probably guessed, the fact that he said “fintech investment” and not “company” or “stock” likel means that this has to do with cryptocurrencies… he goes on…
“Elon Musk is planning to use a specific type of blockchain technology.
“How do I know?
“Because as part of my research…
“I learned of a leaked text message between Elon Musk and his brother…
“Where they specifically mentioned this technology.
“It’s a tech that can process payments almost five times faster than Bitcoin.
“And I found the company that owns that tech.
“In fact, Elon has been working with this company behind the scenes since 2021…
“To help them develop the payment processing ability just the way he wants.
“So what am I doing?
“I’m issuing an urgent buy recommendation on this tech play that’s trading for less than $1…
“Because I believe it’s the best way to bet on the future of X.”
Well, I don’t know about leaked — those text messages, in redacted form, were released by a court in Delaware as part of the discovery process, back when Elon was trying to back out of his acquisition of Twitter, in the Fall of 2022. Lots of people “learned of” that behind-the-scenes stuff, which was headline news at the time — it’s a little bit mean, and certainly has an agenda, but I was amused by The Atlantic’s take on that trove of text messages:
“As part of the discovery process related to this lawsuit, Delaware’s Court of Chancery released hundreds of text messages and emails sent to and from Musk. The 151-page redacted document is a remarkable, voyeuristic record of a few months in the life of the world’s richest (and most overexposed) man and a rare unvarnished glimpse into the overlapping worlds of Silicon Valley, media, and politics. The texts are juicy, but not because they are lurid, particularly offensive, or offer up some scandalous Muskian master plan—quite the opposite. What is so illuminating about the Musk messages is just how unimpressive, unimaginative, and sycophantic the powerful men in Musk’s contacts appear to be. Whoever said there are no bad ideas in brainstorming never had access to Elon Musk’s phone.”
What other clues do we get? Here’s what Lango says is in his special report, “How to Profit From X: The Sub-$1 Play That Could 10X Your Money right now…”
“Elon Musk expects they’re going to launch this payment platform this year.
“The CEO of the company has confirmed this is just ‘around the corner.’
“I believe Elon could flip the switch between now and June 30th.
“Once that happens, it could send this play skyrocketing.
“If you wake up tomorrow and see this story in the front pages of the Wall Street Journal…
“I believe it will be too late for you to profit…
“And your window of opportunity will be closed forever.”
Twitter/X CEO Linda Yaccarino did indeed use the words “around the corner” in reference to X offering payments, that was on the internal “all hands” call that was covered by The Information back in October.
So what is it that Luke Lango says we should do to profit from the launch of the “everything app” at Twitter/X?
Thinkolator sez he’s just recommending we buy Dogecoin, arguably the original “meme crypto”, and one that is widely available pretty much everywhere (I know it’s on Coinbase, which has tended to be the most restrictive of the big exchanges, and I think it’s on Robinhood, though it’s not necessarily available from many of the regular stock brokerages that have started to offer some crypto trading, like Fidelity and Interactive Brokers). Dogecoin is always one of the most liquid cryptocurrencies these days, and is among the ten largest cryptos at the moment, so there’s at least theoretically $20+ billion worth of value circulating around in Dogecoin today (an unlimited amount can be created, there’s no cap like their is with Bitcoin, and it’s apparently pretty cheap to “mine”). Here’s how Coinmarketcap describes Dogecoin:
Dogecoin (DOGE) is based on the popular “doge” Internet meme and features a Shiba Inu on its logo. The open-source digital currency was created by Billy Markus from Portland, Oregon and Jackson Palmer from Sydney, Australia, and was forked from Litecoin in December 2013. Dogecoin’s creators envisaged it as a fun, light-hearted cryptocurrency that would have greater appeal beyond the core Bitcoin audience, since it was based on a dog meme. Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted several tweets on social media that Dogecoin is his favorite coin.
I know, it’s stupid — Dogecoin was invented as a joke, to prove to people how silly cryptocurrencies were during the early days of Bitcoin and Ethereum enthusiasm (even one of the “copydogs” of Dogecoin, Shiba Inu (SHIB), is a $15 billion crypto now). But it’s true that Elon Musk really embraced Dogecoin about five years ago, partly as a way of poking fun at the crypto world and getting attention and partly because, at least as far as I can understand the mind of Musk (not very far), because he thought it would be funny if Dogecoin became the dominant form of money for the world, and, whenever the whim came upon him, he used his overwhelming celebrity presence to see how far he could push that.
Why does Dogecoin get talked up so much, despite seemingly having no real technological advantage or scarcity? Maybe it’s just that — because there’s not much there, it can become solely a story, and a story can go anywhere. Like a Rorschach ink blot, it appears in your mind as whatever you believe it can be.
Who knows, maybe it could even become a real medium of exchange for money transfer, as Musk has intimated, because it’s not obviously worth anything on its own — people don’t use Bitcoin to buy and sell stuff, they like to hold it as a possible store of value because of its enforced scarcity, but nobody pretends that Dogecoin is really worth anything for any technical or fundamental reason, so maybe they’ll be more willing to use it when moving money around.
I think cryptocurrencies are primarily trading vehicles at this point, without a real practical use case for most coins, which means that most cryptos are essentially “meme stocks,” they’re brands that are traded because people believe that other folks will want to continue trading them, largely divorced from any objective measure of value (I’m sure many of you will disagree strongly with me on that point, and there are certainly exceptions). And Dogecoin is one of the original extremes on that front, as arguably the first real “meme” crypto to be widely discussed, though there have been thousands more created since. Maybe that’s enough. After all, people are still buying stock in AMC (AMC) and GameStop (GME), or holding on for dear life, because of fond memories of the meme stock surge they enjoyed a few years ago. Humans are seekers of narratives, and if enough people love the story and embrace the excitement, led by Elon Musk, who continually attracts more people to his orbit, who knows, maybe Dogecoin will transform from Pinocchio to become a “real boy,” and will be one of the technologies used in payment processing at the new “everything app” that evolves out of Twitter/X.
Should you get excited about this?
That’s up to you.
I’m not, I need at least a fundamental understanding of what something really is, what my ownership means, and where the potential for cash flow or future value increase comes from before I want to invest in something new. I don’t understand Dogecoin at all, and from what I can tell it is simply a representation of trader sentiment… largely sentiment about what Elon Musk will say next about Dogecoin. Things that are valued because of self-reinforcing excitement within certain groups can certainly go up dramatically in value — we have only to look at the past for Dogecoin to see that, or the old stock charts of GameStop. It’s just not enough for me, not when I’m thinking about putting real money at risk. I might just be a fuddy-duddy, maybe I’m too old or too skeptical to really embrace this new narrative — certainly other folks might, and have before, and that can obviously be enough to make a price go up.
Here’s the chart for Dogecoin going back about five years, to April 4, 2019, when Musk first tweeted that “Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency”… that first mention of Dogecoin didn’t do much for the price, since the consensus was that he was just goofing around, but the interest built, and he kept tweeting about it, and eventually it really went bonkers when meme-stock mania seemed to leak into meme cryptos as 2021 chugged along… and when Elon Musk hosted Saturday Night Live, part of what fans saw as his implied promise to “moon” the coin, which was roughly the peak for DOGE back in 2021.
Value is driven by the consensus of people about what is valuable, that’s true of all assets and all forms of currency. And, as we’ve seen, it’s certainly possible for Elon Musk to move that consensus among large groups of people. He has even made it possible to buy some things in the Tesla merch store using Dogecoin over the years, trying to create real-world utility for the coin, and he says he still owns a bunch of it.
Beyond that, you’ll have to figure out what you believe the story will be. It has certainly been covered like crazy so far this year, including by other Investorplace authors and lots of other folks speculating that Dogecoin payments might be a part of the “Everything App” development at X. Even Coinbase has jumped in with a plan to offer futures trading on Dogecoin, saying that its “enduring popularity” means it’s no longer just a memecoin.
Maybe. As Tesla shareholders have been learning lately, Musk’s memes giveth, and they also taketh away, nothing is steadily popular forever… so if you decide to adopt a cute little Doge yourself, just know that it may not be housebroken quite yet.
Big fan or foe of Dogecoin? Think the “everything app” from X will be a huge success? Let us know with a comment below.
P.S. Lango also included a second tease in this ad… here’s a little piece of that:
“I’m a huge fan of Elon Musk because he’s basically the Thomas Edison of our generation.
“So when he launched his new Artificial Intelligence company to compete with ChatGPT…
“I immediately started making calls to my contacts in Silicon Valley…
“To try to figure out how to profit from this company called xAI, which is still a private company.
“My research led me to a company that’s supplying Elon Musk with a key piece of A.I. technology for his new startup xAI.
“And when I say key piece, I mean that without this technology…
“Elon Musk’s new A.I. venture would not be possible.”
So if you’re interested in going down that rabbit hole, this is just a rerun of a teaser ad he’s been running for a long time — his “key piece of A.I. Technology” bit is just another pitch for Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM), which makes almost all of the AI-focused GPUs in the world, including those from NVIDIA, AMD and, yes, Tesla and xAI. I covered that most recently for a different Lango teaser about Musk’s Project Optimus about a month ago.
Disclosure: of the investments mentioned above, I own shares of NVIDIA, and I own some Bitcoin and Ethereum. I will not trade in any covered investment for at least three days after publication, per Stock Gumshoe’s trading rules.
I have a subscription to Lango’s AI Trader with mixed results . Lango hasn’t changed his bragging ways. He greatly highlights his winners ( which he should) but glosses over his losers. Alway says we are freeing up capital for the next buy. With the losers, freeing up LESS capital. I have sent several comments to CS asking him to be transparent about the losses. Not much has changed so far. Oh well. One of reasons I will not renew my subscription later this year.
Love Stockgumshoe! Keep up the great work.
I was sucked in a few times in the past. Not so much lately. Thanks to Stock Gumshoe!!! Why is it called Stock Gumshoe in the first place?
Probably because “Gumshoe” is slang for detective, etc. — so seems to be quite appropriate for his expert, insightful sleuth work.
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 when sneaking around… so the folks who used them were detectives (and less-savory prowlers), and “gumshoe” became popular slang for detectives, especially private detectives, in the early 1900s.
I’m a big fan of old-school detective stories, from Sherlock Holmes to Sam Spade and beyond, so I borrowed some terms from another era when I started Stock Gumshoe — including the Stock Gumshoe Irregulars, our premium members who I named after Holmes’ Baker Street Irregulars.
And Columbo thank’s for sharing Travis!
Cause when it sticks on, you will never forget it…:-)
I LOVE IT! Travis, if only every Newsletter pitchman like Luke Lango had to show their most recent Success Returns when they blow-hard one from years ago, there wouldn’t be such a plethora of charlatan Newslettrs!
I just had to chortle at what you’ve sleuthed out, Travis:
While Luke Lango raves about being “Ranked #1 out of 7.889 Bloggers on TipRanks (#1 out of 15.123 overall experts), with a Success Rate: 82%; Average Return: 59.6%”, you point out that “he may have been #1 out of 15,123 experts at one point, but today he’s considered, by that same system, to be ranked almost at the absolute bottom, #36,230 out of 37,421 experts: Of 590 ratings, their Success Rate was -24.90%!”OUCH1
There are so many Newsletters like Luke Lango’s, which cater to the unwary . Why not request from your dedicated followers like me that every time they see something routed in a Newsletter that doesn’t pass their smell test, they bring it to your attention and you can then decide whether it warrants your writing it up as you have done this time?
Travis, that could be a very fine marketing tool for you to beard these monsters who falsely proclaim that they are the second coming if only you invest in their Newsletter. By using this new tool ( what should it be branded?) ,You will attract so many NEW SUBSCRIBERS as we , your acolytes, mention this added benefit of your fine, objective service to family and associates….What do you think?
Travis, I just sent you a detailed response about your excellent sleuthing with regard to Luke Lango’s bragging with an idea for a new Stock Gumshoe marketing tool to bring a new subscribers . I saw it in bigger letters than I had typed and then, all of a sudden, it has disappeared. Did you indeed get it?
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 our Review pages, that all helps other investors get a better perspective on the newsletters they’re being sold. Maybe we should look to codify that data a little more strenuously, thanks for the idea.
Travis – I love Stock Gumshoe, and I am getting a glimpse into the Luke Lango world because Rogue Economics has ended Palm Beach Research, and for those of us who had lifetime subscriptions, we now have subscriptions to InvestorPlace and Crypto Investor Network. So far it has cost me nothing; time will tell whether either of them is worth anything.
Best to you!
Paul
Thanks Paul, we love you, too!
Let us know what you think about those new letters…
Didn’t Hulbert Digest do that for years?
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 was because the world of newsletters had proliferated so dramatically and changed so much over the years, or just because Marketwatch didn’t want to invest in the project anymore.
Yes, Louis Navallier would talk about his credentials tracked by Hulbert and although Louie seems to have a good track record to his blue chip letter it seems that I never wind up buying his picks that do well. He does cut his losers after they loose quite a bit so his active list looks good
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.
Travis just wanted to let you and everyone know the term ” Gum Shoe ” is also used at railroads in reference to the railroad police that protect the things being shipped on the rails and the brakemen and engineers transporting the goods. keep up the great work WOO WOOOO!
I had several types of non fungal coins for a while. I sold them all for a modest profit before a huge drop. I have no interest in jumping back in since I’m retired. I’ll stick to stocks and bonds.
Another trail. After suffering thru Lango’s presentation, my sleuthing took me down the path of blockchain technologies related to Twitter/X, looking for new ways to profit. That’s when I came across this interesting article, backed by a few other similar articles:
https://marryonchain.com/p/articles/exploring-the-impact-of-blockchain-technology-on-twitter-harnessing-the-potential-of-blockchain-twitter
They highlight the importance of FLOW, NEAR and SKALE platforms and their impact on Twitter. I was particularly interested in FLOW, traded on a few exchanges at that sub-$1 price point. I’m tired of the same old-same old, and looking for something truly innovative (and speculative).