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Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe

Author Bio

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

Another day, another interminable sales “presentation” … my kingdom for a transcript! This ad is from Jeff Brown for his higher-end tech stock picking service, Exponential Tech Investor (“on sale” for $2,000 for two years), published by Bonner & Partners, and he says he’ll be offering “tiny 5G bonus picks to buy now” as well […]

What will probably serve investors best right now is patience. Don’t sell all at once, don’t buy all at once, and don’t feel like you have to do something every day. If you’re someone whose heartrate climbs as you open your brokerage account website and feel the urge to buy or sell every few minutes, […]

I knew to buy like crazy last Friday morning, because people say that I am the SMARTEST INVESTOR IN THE WORLD. Woohoo! Oops, sorry, I forgot that I wasn’t selling myself with hype-filled puffery. That’s obviously not true, I did some buying last week and opened a few new positions that have done well so […]

I’ve had a bunch of new questions about this almost evergreen Motley Fool ad for their Stock Advisor service, so I thought I’d share some answers with you here — partly because this is a stock that I write about a lot for our paying members, since it’s a substantial part of my portfolio, but […]

Where might we find opportunities these days? Perhaps in the beaten-down marijuana sector? It’s awfully hard to say, since every sector is really “beaten down” this month, but let’s look at the latest pitch from Cabot Marijuana Investor ($497/yr), since they’ve been touting a hot idea that editor Timothy Lutts is calling the “Apple of […]

Ian Wyatt has been out over the past couple weeks with some “webinars” in which he talks up the coronavirus outbreak (for an hour!) and then ends his show with a tease about several “special reports” on the stocks he thinks will make you a lot of money as we fight COVID-19… and, of course, […]

It’s been an unusually active month in the Real Money Portfolio — a couple big sells, several brand new positions, and quite a bit more churn than I usually have. Those transactions have mostly been fairly small, the largest position that I opened or closed was the sale of my sub-2% Facebook position, but that’s […]

Recent Author Comments

On Microblog: Altuchers stock tease APPLE supplier.

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[...]

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On "Trade of the Decade" 10-Bagger Picks teased by Junior Resource Speculator

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[...]

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On Lichtenfeld's "The Tiny Company Nvidia Can't Ignore"

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[...]

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On Porter & Whitney's "New Form of Money" -- What's "The Secret U.S. Currency No One Told You About?"

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[...]

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On Lichtenfeld's "The Tiny Company Nvidia Can't Ignore"

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[...]

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On Friday File: NVIDIA, Booze, Poland, Sky Quarry... and Happy Birthday, Warren Buffett!

Interesting, new one to me -- thanks![...]

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On Friday File: NVIDIA, Booze, Poland, Sky Quarry... and Happy Birthday, Warren Buffett!

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[...]

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On "America's Second Coming" Picks from Porter Stansberry

Don't know anything about it -- are they planning to build a mine (PEA or feasibility study?), or is it just a discovery?[...]

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On Friday File: NVIDIA, Booze, Poland, Sky Quarry... and Happy Birthday, Warren Buffett!

$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.[...]

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On Friday File: NVIDIA, Booze, Poland, Sky Quarry... and Happy Birthday, Warren Buffett!

The DNOPY ADR represents half of a share on the Warsaw exchange.[...]

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On Friday File: NVIDIA, Booze, Poland, Sky Quarry... and Happy Birthday, Warren Buffett!

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[...]

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On Friday File: NVIDIA, Booze, Poland, Sky Quarry... and Happy Birthday, Warren Buffett!

For which stock?[...]

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On "Stimulus Stipends" teased by Jason Williams -- Can you really "Claim $7,882 Every Quarter?"

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[...]

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On Friday File: Gold, Keys and "Quality" that's Just Too Expensive

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.[...]

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On "Stimulus Stipends" teased by Jason Williams -- Can you really "Claim $7,882 Every Quarter?"

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.[...]

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On Reveal: "NVIDIA's Secret Partner" teased by Shah Gilani

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[...]

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On "Stimulus Stipends" teased by Jason Williams -- Can you really "Claim $7,882 Every Quarter?"

If greed didn't often overrule judgement, there wouldn't be many retail investment newsletters.[...]

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On Friday File: Gold, Keys and "Quality" that's Just Too Expensive

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 [...]

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On What's "The Last Retirement Stock You'll Ever Need?" (Called "NVIDIA's 'Secret Royalty'" in teaser pitch from Dylan Jovine's Behind the Markets)

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.[...]

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On Alex Green's "Emergency Summit" Picks for Fed Rate Cuts

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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