It’s Friday and I’m mostly working on my Friday File and Annual Review for the Irregulars, but I couldn’t resist a quickie answer for you on this latest Investorplace pitch… Matt McCall is selling his Early Stage Investor service ($1799, nonrefundable) with a spiel about eight life-changing microcaps in his “Microcap Millionaires Portfolio.” He gives […]
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
February 13, 2020
5G “Tollbooth” Stock to Climb from $8 to $68 in Five Months?
Briton Ryle at The Wealth Advisory loves to tout the dividend-paying stocks that underly some big trends, and, of course, to hint at them in misleading ways to make them seem every more secretive and special… which doesn’t mean the stocks are necessarily bad ideas, but does mean we should dig deeper and understand the […]
February 12, 2020
De-teasing Kramer’s “The No. 1 Value Stock for 2020”
Growth stocks get all the attention these days, what with talk of a final “melt up” in the market before things finally return to rationality, and “value stocks” have been floundering for years as they’ve failed to capture the attention of investors… so last fall we saw a lot of predictions about the “turn,” the […]
February 10, 2020
Can you really “Grab Your Share of $1.1 Quadrillion Streaming Bucks?”
Personal Finance ($39 for the first year) is a relative low cost “entry level” investment newsletter, the kind that all the big publishers use to recruit the wave of new subscribers who get fed into their marketing “funnel” that generates leads for their higher-priced services… though, to be fair, we also often hear from readers […]
February 7, 2020
Friday File: Annual Review Part 3 (plus PANIC, SPCE and more)
Here’s the scenario of a week ago: China is in the midst of an epidemic of possibly explosive proportions, with fear gripping much of the country (and the world) as a coronavirus spreads and seems to have a pretty high mortality rate, with conspiracy theories abounding and the fear of social unrest as whole cities […]
February 7, 2020
What’s Casey’s Tiny $10 “5G Master Key” Stock? [Updated]
This teaser ad has been running for several weeks now, and the article below was originally published on January 21… but we continue to get lots of questions about it, and the story has changed pretty dramatically in the interim, so I’m re-posting it here for you and have added an update at the end. […]
So… what’s a “Q-Share?” Are they some magical kind of stock that you can buy, through some secret method, that’s much better than the dumb old regular kinds of stocks you have in your brokerage account? Um, sadly, no… not really — but there is a rationale worth investigating here, and a secret stock to […]
I’ve gotten a few questions about the new “True Alpha” pitch from Charles Mizrahi that uses “David and Goliath” imagery, so we’re checking that one out today… mostly because the idea of this firm having “a virtual monopoly on the future of 5G and IoT” piqued my interest. Mizrahi’s letter extols his past success in […]
February 4, 2020
Who’s the Insider “Betting $350K on his Biomed Company’s Stock?”
Today I’m looking into an insider trading pitch from a service I haven’t heard of before — the ad is staged as a “seminar presentation” by Ross Givens about how he follows insider buying signals to pick winning stocks, with the implication that he’ll be finding ideas that match some of the historically phenomenal insider […]
February 4, 2020
Insider Report
High end newsletter that recommends equity and options trades based on insider trading patterns, generally three ideas per month.
February 3, 2020
What’s this “One Stock for the First Addiction-Proof Cure for Pain?”
Today we’ve got another ridiculous promise, made to sell you a subscription to a very expensive and nonrefundable newsletter — sound familiar? This time it’s Jim Pearce advertising Investing Daily’s Radical Wealth Aliance, which will run you $2,495 (“on sale” from $5,000) with no hope of a refund (they offer the “if you don’t like […]
February 1, 2020
Annual Review Part Two
It’s time for part two of our Annual Review, this week I’m getting to a few of my largest holdings, including some that reported earnings recently and have had a big impact on the market. In the big picture, we’ve seen what impact a surprise event like the viral epidemic in China can cause… and […]
January 31, 2020
Friday File unlock: What’s the “Bank of Marijuana?”
This teaser solution first appeared in the Friday File on December 20. It has not been updated or revised, Irregulars can see the original here if they prefer. The ad has not been in heavy circulation since we originally covered it, but I thought non-Irregulars might find it interesting. The teaser that some folks have […]
January 29, 2020
Will “Blue Gas” be the “Tesla Killer?”
The most-requested teaser to start this fresh new year is probably the Blue Gas/Tesla Killer one from Jimmy Mengel, in an ad for The Crow’s Nest ($99/yr) — and today I’m finally getting to it. If you’re keeping track, we first saw these “Blue Gas” iterations of the ad around December 18 (though different “Tesla […]
January 28, 2020
Elfenbein’s “ONLY 5G Stock You Need to Buy”
You should follow Eddy Elfenbein on Twitter, he’s a funny and interesting guy. But you shouldn’t sign up for his newsletter just to learn a “secret” stock pick. I’m not picking specifically on Elfenbein there, of course, just my regular public service announcement that sending money to someone to learn about a stock pick that […]
January 27, 2020
Fool’s “Small-cap ‘Amazon of the North'”
This article was originally published on October 30, 2019 when we first saw the Motley Fool “Amazon of the North” ads — it’s being teased again this week, so we’re re-posting this solution to help answer reader questions. The stock being teased has risen about 15% since we first covered the pitch, but the story […]
January 24, 2020
Annual Review Part One
Today I’m starting my Annual Review, during which I take a (hopefully fresh-eyed) look at every stock in my Real Money Portfolio and update my opinion for you (and, frankly, for me, since it’s a good exercise). Some of these stocks pop up in my writing practically every week, but for others where there might […]
This is a teaser pitch that we solved back in May of 2018, but folks continue to ask about it… and our older article is getting pretty stale, so we’re digging in for an updated look today. The headline of the ad pretty much says it all: “The little-known Washington D.C. financial “think tank” that […]
January 23, 2020
What’s Jeff Brown teasing in his “Timed Stocks Summit?”
Jeff Brown’s “Timed Stocks” pitch is essentially just another spiel about “buying biotech stocks before a catalyst event,” but it’s wrapped up in one of those video “summit” meetings that implies it’s something beyond a newsletter ad… and it’s so filled with massive promises of potential 1,000%+ gains that it’s driving a lot of Gumshoe […]
Happy New Year! Today I’ve got a teaser solution for you from one of the Cabot newsletters, and you’ll see in a minute why I chose to cover this one in the Friday File… and I’ve also got a few portfolio updates to share as the year gets underway and I finish up this first […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on September 18, 2024
Posted on September 18, 2024
Thanks for acknowledging my noble sacrifice :)[...]
Posted on September 18, 2024
We love you, too, David. Thanks![...]
Posted on September 18, 2024
Thanks! Glad to have you here, stick around and tell all your friends :)[...]
Posted on September 18, 2024
Pretty low, I think, which is why I sold the $10 options to reduce the cost of the $2 ones to roughly "in the money" levels.[...]
Posted on September 17, 2024
Thanks... guess they're not promoting Scheidt as much as the old Agora did.[...]
Posted on September 17, 2024
Thanks for the confirmation... and the GDOT news, which I guess he must be teasing for a different letter.I know some of the Paradigm folks don't really get into individual stock picking, like Jim Rickards, but didn't know Zachary Scheidt was one of the[...]
Posted on September 16, 2024
He's been running with that one since the Spring of 2023 (https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/the-big-secret-on-wall-street-this-week/de-tease-porters-secret-energy-grid-obamas-screw-up-and-reagans-premonition/), but yes, the ads continue to roll teasing [...]
Posted on September 16, 2024
Will take a look, but that sounds a lot like New Found Gold, which Williams' colleague Luke Burgess was pitching a while[...]
Posted on September 16, 2024
That's a different type of firm -- more of a commodity trading company, right? Interesting call, sort of a play on the interest in gold rather than the gold price itself.[...]
Posted on September 14, 2024
That one has certainly demanded some patience. I remain somewhat assured that Nolan Watson has been saying that they've already bought their growth, so they'll likely just be paying down debt and holding off on major deals for a while... but there's alway[...]
Posted on September 11, 2024
Several SMRs are in early stage development, none of the US ones are permitted or under construction yet. BWXT works on most of the naval reactors and does other nuclear contracting for the government, including building a microreactor for military bases,[...]
Posted on September 11, 2024
Could be, a lot of the smaller defense contractors have been acquired over the years. Don't know if any of their technology is particularly valuable or proprietary, but they are doing some interesting things with rocket engines and other stuff in addition[...]
Posted on September 10, 2024
Indeed, that's certainly the flavor of the month... there won't really be any SMRs in operation for five years or so, though, even if they proceed without hiccups it will take quite a while for them to be meaningful contributors to the grid.[...]
Posted on September 10, 2024
It wasn't the permit that drove it up to $8, it's been moving up pretty steadily for a few months -- they just didn't bother to update their ad.[...]
Posted on September 9, 2024
I imagine a lot of folks still doubt the permitting will come through, so maybe that doubt will ease over the next 6 months or so. But investors often find it hard to hold on to mining stocks once it gets "real" -- when they're borrowing and spending and[...]
Posted on September 9, 2024
Could be, though if they can really borrow $1.8 billion and the terms are friendly enough, they could perhaps go it alone. I hope it works out for you in the end, either way.[...]
Posted on September 9, 2024
Yep, a 12,500% return would mean it grows to a $63 billion market cap. I guess it's theoretically possible someday... but no.[...]
Posted on September 9, 2024
I think Apple has used ARM's basic chip design tech every since they designed their first chips. Whether they're using "more" of it for this latest chip, or ARM is more involved in Apple's chip design for this one than usual, I have no idea, but the big d[...]
Posted on September 9, 2024
Apple has acquired several voice-enabling technologies over the years, but if they haven't used SOUN to this point it seems unlikely that they need to -- it seems like auto companies are partnering with SOUN so they can avoid having to be captive to Apple [...]
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I'm sure this isn't what you want to hear, but that stock is so dramatically over-followed that there aren't really any cost-effective ways to trade it -- you can buy puts or calls to bet on huge changes of direction, but so many people are already doing t[...]