Many Gumshoe readers wanted me to follow up on yesterday’s marijuana article right away, identifying the other two stocks hinted at in the ads for Nick Giambruno’s Crisis Investing… and we aim to please, so let’s jump right into it. If you missed part one, you can check that out here — the overriding argument […]
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
October 30, 2017
Second Chance at “Pot Stock Mania?”
This is the headline that so many readers have been asking about in recent weeks… “URGENT: If you missed America’s ‘pot stock mania,’ here’s your second chance to become a marijuana millionaire. This 58¢ pot stock is set to soar on October 31, 2017, when Canada votes to legalize marijuana for the entire country.” That’s […]
October 27, 2017
Friday File: Tech Happy, Gold, Uranium and Insurance Sad
Well, we finish out the week with yet another dramatic performance from the market-dominating tech stocks. Alphabet (GOOG) did better than expected and popped a bit, climbing further through the day, almost as much as the gains Microsoft (MSFT) made on a more dramatic ‘beat’ of expectations (though analysts have always been better at estimating […]
The promise is familiar to anyone who has had the pleasure of sitting through a promo pitch about a junior mining stock… here’s how Gerardo Del Real’s latest ad for his Junior Mining Monthly opens: “Score at Least 1,000% on This Metals Superplay — But Only If You Get in by Its Next News Release” […]
What to do when the market is looking ugly, and pessimism is trying to sneak in through the back door of our long-running bull market? Look for a purveyor of optimism and see what he says. So that’s the mission today — as interest rate worries (and perhaps fears of political risk) catch enough attention […]
October 24, 2017
Will “Elastic Metal” Change Everything?
It’s been a while since we saw a graphene pitch, so this one caught my eye — it’s from David Fessler, in an ad for his Oxford Resource Explorer ($995/year), and he refers to graphene as “elastic metal” to make it seem even more secret and mysterious. Here’s how one of his emails got us […]
October 23, 2017
Fool’s “Obscure Company Growing Faster Than Google and Facebook”
Today we’ve got another pitch from the Motley Fool to look at, all about Tom Gardner’s “Latest stock pick” … so can we figure out what it might be? Let’s check out the clues, Gumshoe-style. It’s a brief pitch that’s trying to lure you into subscribing to Motley Fool Stock Advisor with their regular “you’re […]
October 20, 2017
Friday File: Gold, Shop and China
So… what’s going on this week? The world watched Congress actually pass something last night, on the 30th anniversary of the 1987 stock market crash (they passed their spending framework bill for 2018, which is importantly mostly because it sets the stage for tax reform legislation to proceed in the coming months), so that made […]
October 19, 2017
What’s “The H.E.I.S.T. Moneybomb” from Extreme Alpha?
This ad has popped up several times over the course of the year, and it’s now running again with a slight variation — mostly to change the “urgent” trade date from April 15 to November 9… so I thought we should take a quick look. The basic idea is that Robert Williams has a team […]
October 19, 2017
Extreme Alpha
Weekly options trading service, seems to typically recommend options spread trades on either large cap stocks or indexes.
Kevin Massengill has recently been pushing his Defense Technology Alert by dropping some hints about his two favorite investments… including what he says is “My Top Defense Play of All Time.” So what’s the story? Well, you could subscribe to find out, I suppose, if you feel like ponying up $2,000 a year and trust […]
October 16, 2017
Fool’s “Could This $4.05 Small Cap Be the Next Netflix?”
This latest ad for Motley Fool Hidden Gems caught my eye over the weekend, partly because, yes, I am bitter about not investing in Netflix (NFLX) when the Motley Fool folks were teasing it as the “next Dell” back in 2007… but I also like a challenge sometimes, and this one’s a little short on […]
October 15, 2017
Friday File: Fairfaxes, Blackbirds, Nodaks and more
When the market is doing well, holding hedges like cash and gold is going to hurt your portfolio performance when you measure against the S&P 500 or other common benchmarks. That’s the case for me right now, and has been for the recent past — though it hasn’t been enough to bring me below the […]
This article first appeared on August 3, 2017. It has been updated slightly. Nick Hodge takes second place to pretty much nobody when it comes to teasing microcap stocks that he claims will have massive, massive market success and soar to “dizzying heights” … so when I first saw this pitch about a “new FDA […]
October 9, 2017
Christian DeHaemer’s “Better Than the Bakken” Mexican Oil Play
These are the kinds of ads that we used to see all the time, during the fun and exciting days when oil was first headed toward $100 a barrel… there’s not so much of that “next Bakken” talk anymore, given the softness in the oil markets, but perhaps that’s a reason to look more closely. […]
The latest ad for The Casey Report caught my eye this week, partly because I thought they might be following in teasing eCobalt (ECSI)… but it turns out that’s not the case, this pitch from E.B. Tucker about the next cobalt bull market being driven by lithium-ion battery demand is all about two other cobalt […]
This is a pitch from Jason Stutman’s The Cutting Edge newsletter, his higher-end service from Angel Publishing (about $1,500/year), and what caught my eye was the headline promise that Harvard University is “calling for a 29,000% surge for one tiny company you’ve never heard of.” So what is it? Well, it’s appropriate that we’re looking […]
Today we look into the teased “Gold-X” from Gerardo Del Real, who writes the Junior Mining Monthly newsletter and calls himself a “Texas gold expert” … his ad promises an easier way to get huge returns on little gold stocks while taking a lot less risk. “Gold-X” seems an odd name for a “secret” investing […]
September 29, 2017
A New Stock for the Watchlist
Today I’ll try to keep my blather a little more limited than usual… I have one update on a stock that I bought recently, and a couple updates on our watchlist this week (that list always lingers down there at the bottom of the Real Money Portfolio, in case you’ve missed it). The update is […]
I’ve written a couple times about Kim Iskyan’s teaser ads over the past year, but this is the first time I’ve seen ads for his higher-end International Capitalist (the last offer was a $3,000 “lifetime” subscription). Iskyan has sold a few investment newsletters over the past decade, first with Stansberry, then later on his own […]
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 [...]
We use cookies on this site to enhance your user experience. By clicking any link on this page you are giving your consent for us to set cookies.
More Info Please note that this is your publicly visible biography - we recommend not including any personal information (phone, email, address, etc.) and ONLY linking to any other pages or profiles you're comfortable sharing with everyone.
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[...]