What’s your favorite newsletter?
Stock Gumshoe does not recommend or endorse specific newsletters, out of fairness and because we don’t subscribe to all of them (or any). You can see the newsletters that are currently favored by the Stock Gumshoe community by clicking “Reviews” at the top of this page or by browsing the “Strategies and Sectors” menu for rankings by type of newsletter.
How do I change my email address?
For the Irregulars emails or the free Daily Update newsletter, you can change your address here using your StockGumshoe login. If you haven’t set a user name with us before and have a legacy subscription to our original Daily Update free letter, you can change your address using the link in any copy of that newsletter (at the bottom) or sign up for a Free membership here with your new email address. You can also Contact Us if you have any trouble with this and we can help.
Why isn’t your email newsletter coming to me? I signed up!
If you signed up, we are certainly trying to deliver it.
Some email systems and providers block all or most mass emails, even those from respected providers (we currently use Constant Contact, which has an excellent anti-spam reputation and policies). If your email is getting through the ISP or email service you use (ie, Comcast, AOL, Gmail, etc.), it could still be caught up in your personal spam filter — if you add ILoveStockSpam@gmail.com and Irregulars@stockgumshoe.com to your address book or whitelist, that can help you avoid missing our emails. There’s a good set of instructions for adding our addresses to your safe list/white list/address book for various email providers and systems here.
If your email “bounces back” to us as undeliverable or is repeatedly flagged as spam, the system may stop trying to deliver after a while — you can enter your email address again here and you will be given the opportunity to reset or update your email subscription (Constant Contact, our email provider, will send you an email with a link, click that link and check the box that says yes, you do want to receive occasional emails from us — you can also use this to opt out of the daily email and get just the Weekend Wrapup instead). Both the free and paid member (Irregulars) emails are sent from this same email system, so blocking or unsubscribing from the free email may also stop the paid emails from being delivered, you can always Contact us to change your email preferences.
How do I unsubscribe? Take me off your email list!
It’s easy — just go to the last email newsletter that you got from us, and click on the unsubscribe link — there’s one at the top and bottom of every Daily Update and Irregulars email. If you do this you will still have a StockGumshoe username, we just won’t send you the email newsletters. This will NOT change your paid membership in the Irregulars if you have one, but it will mean that you’re blocking the Irregulars email from reaching you. If you want only the Irregulars email and not the daily or weekly updates, please Contact us and we can change that for you.
Every Day is too much! Do you have a digest option?
If you’re getting the free Stock Gumshoe Daily Update, you can choose to instead get just the Weekend Wrapup — that’s our weekend newsletter that shares links to all the articles from the week. You’ll miss occasional email commentary, but will get most of our stuff. Just open the last email you got from us and click on the “Update Profile/Email Address” link at the bottom. Click Submit and we’ll send you an email with a link to use to update your profile — click the link in that email, and you’ll be able to make the change yourself. Or Contact Us and we’ll do it for you.
What are the Irregulars and Premium Members? Why the locked articles?
Stock Gumshoe is supported both by advertising and by paid memberships, the paid/premium members are called the Stock Gumshoe Irregulars and, as thanks for their support, they get access to some content on the site that is only for them — this includes the weekly Friday File commentary, our “Idea of the Month” article each month, and Travis’ comments about his personal portfolio and current list of equities that he owns. If you are an Irregular, all content on the site should appear for you as long as you’re logged in (login is at top right of every page).
How do I cancel my paid membership in the Irregulars
You can cancel future renewals anytime. If you have an autorenewing membership through either PayPal or Amazon Payments, a cancellation simply prevents future renewals so your membership will remain active until your expiration date — you can cancel through your PayPal or Amazon Payments account, or by notifying us that you’d like us to process the cancellation for you. If you’re paying us directly via Credit Card, we can process cancellations or refunds for you or stop the automatic renewals, just use the Contact Form to let us know.
We are always happy to refund your last payment for any reason, but it is never automatic — you do need to ask us to process the refund. Please use the Contact Form to make sure we don’t miss your request (no, you don’t have to call us or sit through a sales pitch — we just need to make sure we get the message).
Do you have a trial period or refund for the Stock Gumshoe Irregulars (paid membership)?
We don’t have formal trial periods, though you can sign up for as little as a month if you like — if you sign up for a monthly membership you can cancel it during that first month and you’ll never be charged again. We’re also always happy to refund your latest payment or a pro-rated portion, whatever you think is fair, if you don’t like the site or if your subscription renewed and you had meant to cancel before the renewal, or for any reason at all (or no reason) … but you do have to ASK for a refund using the Contact form, none of our systems are set up to process them automatically.
Canceling future renewals through your Amazon Payments or PayPal account or by contacting us directly to cancel recurring credit card orders will work to make sure that you don’t get charged again, but your membership will still be active until the next expiration date unless you request a refund.
Do you trade these stocks that you’re writing about? Are there rules about Travis buying and selling these stocks?
Stock Gumshoe, Inc. does not actively invest in stocks or anything else, but our writers and employees, including Travis Johnson, do own and trade stocks and other investments.
Sometimes stocks that Travis writes about, or that are otherwise covered by Stock Gumshoe, do move as a result of that additional attention — usually because they’re small capitalization stocks. We promise not to try to profit directly from that movement, and our basic trading rule is that Stock Gumshoe employees may own a stock that is covered in published articles, but they may not buy or sell any stocks for three trading days after those stocks are covered in an article on the site — usually any kind of pop that’s caused just by our articles will be very short-lived, so that should prevent buying the stock, writing about it, then profiting from the pop (not that we’re going to try do to that anyway). If Travis owns a stock before publishing an article about it, he will disclose that either in the text of the article or at the bottom in a disclosure note, and he can not sell that position within the three day window. The only exception to this is if Travis writes about a stock for which he has a limit buy or sell order with one of his brokers — ie, a stop loss order to sell a stock if it falls by 20%, or a limit buy order to purchase a stock if it falls to his target price — in that case, the limit order will be disclosed in the article and it’s possible that it could trigger in the three days following the article publication, but the limit order may not be changed during those three days.
This does not apply to indirect ownership, as through a mutual fund or ETF that might own the stock in question, or to follow-up comments that might be made by Travis or another author on a particular investment, since we’d never be able to keep close track of that effectively. Travis also discloses the individual equities that he buys and sells to the Irregulars on the day that he makes the trade, in notes under the Personal Portfolio Comments category. He does not necessarily write about each option or mutual fund trade he makes, though he will always disclose those if there is a connection to a stock he’s writing about and the 3-day trading rule does apply to leveraged or derivative investments like options or warrants as well as to equities. Commenters, guest authors, and Irregulars who post opinions or questions in the Discussions section are not bound by any such trading rules.