Among the Real Money Portfolio companies, Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) is usually the first to release substantive financial updates each quarter… so getting that ISRG update always feels like the official beginning of earnings season for me. And I don’t often write about this one, so please indulge me for a bit as we go into […]
Author Bio
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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
January 13, 2022
Fool’s “Buy Alert: Self-Repairing Technology”
I very rarely get asked about teaser pitches from outside the US and Canada, even though the financial publishing model has certainly migrated to most of the developed markets in the world… so when someone asks about a teaser pitch from another country, it catches my attention. And that leads us to today’s article. The […]
Here’s a little bit from Lou Basenese’s spiel for his Takeover Trader: “In the coming days, I believe Walmart will announce plans to acquire a little healthcare company that trades for just over a dollar. “As far as an offer price goes, THINK BIG… “I expect Walmart to make a buyout offer of $15.25 per […]
Dave Forest has updated his pitch about the “Bitcoin Key” to include some hype about a mysterious factory in the desert, including some aerial photos, so although he’s still teasing the same stocks he was with the first version of this ad back in October, we’re re-posting it with a few updates to help new […]
January 9, 2022
10X Stocks
“Upgrade” service from Adam O’Dell, focused on recommending relatively small stocks in trending industries, goal is “100% gains in 100 days.”
January 7, 2022
Friday File: Fintech for the Lock Box
Happy New Year! The world is turning to a focus on (maybe) rising interest rates, fear of inflation, and “value” stocks in many ways, or at least so says the perpetual punditry machine that is investment media. Nobody really knows what’s going to happen next month, of course, or for the next year… nobody should […]
Whitney Tilson has a new teaser pitch out that talks about something he calls “Connexa Terra” and which most of the rest of the world now calls “The Metaverse” — the ad is his latest effort to recruit subscribers to Empire Investment Report ($49/yr, that’s one of the entry level “top of the funnel” newsletters […]
The Motley Fool is launching yet another “upgrade” portfolio service to start this year, they call it Showdown 2022 and it’s essentially an evolution of what Stock Advisor used to be — Motley Fool Stock Advisor started as essentially a monthly competition between brothers David and Tom Gardner, with each picking a stock each month […]
January 5, 2022
Motley Fool Showdown 2022
Higher-end portfolio service from the Fool that features competition among four separate portfolios run by different analyst teams with different strategies (led by Emily Flippen, Tom Gardner, John Rotonti and Ayal Cusner).
January 5, 2022
Fool’s “The Tesla of Canada is Here” Pitch
This article was first published on April 27, 2021 — the Motley Fool is again pushing the story heavily in its ads here in early 2022, so we’re re-posting it here for your information. The future expectations for the “secret” company, and the valuation, are very similar to what they were when these words were […]
December 23, 2021
Friday File: Year In Review
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and a lovely solstice and holiday season to you, whichever traditions you choose to embrace. It’s awfully dark and cold here in New England as the year begins to turn, and I hope you’ve got enough love and friendship to keep you warm… I’m having a nice end of the […]
December 22, 2021
What’s Simpkins’ “IPO Opportunity of the Decade” Pitch Teasing?
Jason Simpkins has an “IPO Opportunity” ad circulating these days for his Wall Street’s Proving Ground newsletter — that’s letter which carries an entry-level price, usually offered at $49 for the first year, but it has been fairly specialized… it used to focus on defense-related investments, but has branched out a bit of late, mostly […]
December 20, 2021
Thinkolator answers: What’s Lashmet’s “Biggest Drug in the World?”
We’ve got a new ad today from Stansberry’s Investment Advisory ($49, renews at $199), and it sounds a bit familiar — it’s a pitch for an obesity pill that Dave Lashmet, who now helms that letter, thinks could become the best-selling drug in history. It’s pretty much a global consensus that obesity and Alzheimer’s Disease […]
December 19, 2021
What’s Alex Green’s “#1 5G Megastock?”
This article was originally published on September 18, 2019, what follows has not been updated. It seems that the plague of celebrity endorsements is washing across the newsletter world these days, with CNBC star Robert Herjavec pitching a “buy private companies” network, former House Speaker John Boehner touting a marijuana stock service, and now, political […]
Inflation has certainly caught the attention of everyone in the market these days, and whether or not you’re comfortable investing in stocks probably has as much to do with whether you think this 5-7% inflation will continue for more than a few months as it does with your analysis of the economy or the future […]
December 16, 2021
Robinson’s “Metaverse” Pitch — Two Stocks and a Crypto Revealed
A quickie for you here today, as your friendly neighborhood Gumshoe deals with a tooth emergency and a feeling of impending doom about Christmas shopping… Michael Robinson is pitching the Metaverse as “The Next Tech Rush,” and teasing two stocks and one cryptocurrency as plays on that theme, all in ads for his Nova-X Report, […]
December 16, 2021
What’s Carr’s “Ultimate $10 Growth Stock”?
This article was originally published in October, but we’re getting more reader questions about it and Matthew Carr has a second version of the ad that focuses a little less on Apple and the iPhone, so we’re re-sharing our solution below. What follows is based on a slightly different ad, but the “secret” $10 growth […]
December 15, 2021
What’s the “Miracle Mineral” that could “Hand Investors up to 16,335%?”
The Outsider Club folks are pitching a junior mining stock again, and this time it’s all about phosphate — not the drink that was wildly popular in soda fountains 100 years ago, but the mineral that forms one of the basic ingredients in modern fertilizer. They’re calling it the “Miracle Mineral” in this particular ad, […]
Here’s a little lead-in to the ad we started to see rolling on Friday from Empire Elite Growth ($5,000/yr, no refunds “on sale” for $2,000): “This the first page of a 49-page document officially released in the same year that President Trump promised “a new American moment.” “The document struck down a federal law, which […]
Let me start with a special welcome to our new Irregulars who came aboard this week, during the still-ongoing Charitable Membership Drive (tell your friends, the campaign goes through December 15!) — thank you for supporting Stock Gumshoe, and I hope you can grow to tolerate, and sometimes even enjoy, my lengthy Friday blatherations. I […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on September 5, 2024
Posted on September 4, 2024
Del Real is out pitching this story again, though with a preamble that one of the three stocks has been acquired for about $3 billion -- so that confirms that the copper stock that I did not unearth above was indeed Filo Corp (FIL.TO, FLMMF), which is bein[...]
Posted on September 4, 2024
Welcome aboard, Chet -- the pitchmen love to get us revved up about quick gains and juice those gambling urges... but sadly, one telltale sign of a great long-term investment is that you don't have to decide whether or not to invest within five minutes. S[...]
Posted on September 4, 2024
Those are the super-levered ETFs that are designed to either generate large options income or one-day levered gains to a single stock. The YieldMax ones are pretty prominent, but there are a lot of others that can let people bet on short-term moves or tak[...]
Posted on September 3, 2024
He's run similar ads all year, though I think he swapped out some of the "secret" partners in more recent ads. First time around it Was TSM, ARM and (maybe) SMCI... in later versions it looks like it was ANSS, ARM and maybe VRT, though they could have sha[...]
Posted on September 3, 2024
Interesting, new one to me -- thanks![...]
Posted on September 3, 2024
Not really, I handle situations on a case by case basis... there are some companies that I primarily own because I see a shorter-term opportunity to make a profit, and I might own that stock for just a few years (or even just a few months, in rare situatio[...]
Posted on September 1, 2024
Don't know anything about it -- are they planning to build a mine (PEA or feasibility study?), or is it just a discovery?[...]
Posted on September 1, 2024
$377 is still my preferred buy level, but it hasn't hit my preferred level very often over the years. My "max buy" is currently $463, which is my latest estimate of intrinsic value per share.[...]
Posted on September 1, 2024
The DNOPY ADR represents half of a share on the Warsaw exchange.[...]
Posted on September 1, 2024
Succession planning (make the portfolio easier for next CEO), likelihood of higher taxes, high concentration, or just a richly valued market Sparking him to remember his regret that he didn't sell some KO shares when it was trading at 50x earnings a couple[...]
Posted on August 31, 2024
For which stock?[...]
Posted on August 30, 2024
Depends on how T-Bills change over the next few months, mostly. The big reason to buy REIs or any dividend paying stocks is that the dividend can rise, which won't happen with a bond... but most REITs are under pressure and not raising their dividend much[...]
Posted on August 30, 2024
Thanks Shaun. A lot of investing is about accepting that a lot of your decisions are going to be "wrong" in the fullness of time... so when possible, especially when your level of certainty is low, make the decisions smaller.[...]
Posted on August 29, 2024
Haven't seen that ad, but if it's about investing it's probably one of Amazon's landlords -- a warehouse REIT like PLD on the e-commerce side, or a data center REIT like DLR on the AWS side.[...]
Posted on August 29, 2024
For now, at least, looks like ALAB bottomed out around when most newly public companies do... in the week or two surrounding the end of the six-month lockup period, when insiders began to do some post-IPO selling. We'll see how things settle down in the[...]
Posted on August 29, 2024
If greed didn't often overrule judgement, there wouldn't be many retail investment newsletters.[...]
Posted on August 28, 2024
I give up on trying to predict recessions, the economy is so different than it has been in the past... but I agree, the risks of a really bad stock market are more acute than they've been in a while. If only because valuations remain extended.Doesn't [...]
Posted on August 28, 2024
Well, they're also all a little desperate after subscriber numbers have plummeted over the past couple years -- everyone's hunting for a pitch that works to bring in new subscribers.[...]
Posted on August 27, 2024
Not very "AI," but a high end travel services firm. Seems tough to scale, In my opinion, but I've never looked deeply at Lindblad.[...]
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Haven't suffered through the latest Altucher pitch yet, but Credo was the stock he was similarly touting back in June. (https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/luke-langos-innovation-investor/answers-apples-silent-ai-suppliers-who-are-luke-langos-three-tin[...]