Odd rolls of the dice here at Gumshoe HQ have led to three different Cabot teaser pitches being covered in a relatively short period of time… this one is an insurance stock, and it has generated quite a few questions from the “teaser article” Cabot sent around saying this secret, unnamed stock is the one […]
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
I’m always interested to see what kind of big-growth ideas are being teased, particularly in a market that already feels so expensive, so a Cabot pitch caught my eye again this week — this time it’s from Mike Cintolo for Cabot Growth Investor, and this is what grabbed my attention: “My Expectation: A 25% Jump […]
That’s the headline of a recent ad from Moe Zulfiqar for his Explosive Mine Stocks, a newsletter that has been published by Lombardi for at least several years (with several different editors). He’s fishing for subscribers for his service, naturally, and using this “tiny stock” and a special offer as bait — so let’s see […]
September 20, 2017
Cabot’s “This Stock is Set to Deliver 1,120% Returns” Pitch
Cabot is pitching its Stock of the Week service, which chooses a favorite stock from among all of Cabot’s newsletters each week, and in order to entice subscribers they’re dangling the promise of huge gains… including this promise: “If you’ll give me just 10 minutes a week, I promise our Cabot Stock of the Week […]
September 19, 2017
What’s the “Cyber-Security Stock North Korea Hates Most?”
It’s been a while since I looked at a pitch from Hilary Kramer’s GameChangers newsletter, and the topic is certainly timely as we eavesdrop on the UN General Assembly’s chatter about North Korea. Kramer’s last big pitch was for what she called a Mari-Pharma company, one that she said you would “regret for the rest […]
September 18, 2017
Motley Fool’s “Our CEO is betting $280,240.56 this stock could 5X”
The Motley Fool has for most of this year been teasing their Shopify (SHOP) recommendation with headlines that tout the fact that SHOP’s CEO is “betting” $560 million (or now $780 million) on the stock, but today we’ve got a slightly different spiel… this time it’s Tom Gardner, Motley Fool CEO and half of the […]
September 15, 2017
Friday File: Social SPAC, Criteo, Bitcoin and Data Centers
I’ve already shared the major portfolio change I made this week, adding that IPO to my Real Money Portfolio yesterday, and I have also separately posted my notes and thoughts from the CNBC Delivering Alpha conference for my favorite people (yes, that’s you!)…. but I have a couple other things to note as well, so […]
September 15, 2017
My Notes from Delivering Alpha
I spent the day on Tuesday at the Delivering Alpha conference, which is hosted by CNBC and Institutional Investor — it’s not the kind of confab that includes “secret” or special ideas that you can’t hear about elsewhere (it’s hosted by CNBC, after all, and they broadcast from the conference all day), but it’s an […]
September 14, 2017
Buying an IPO. Again.
This is the third time I’ve bought an IPO on its first day of trading, and the second time I’ve bought exposure to a SPAC over the past year — hopefully it will work out as well as the others. I saw Chamath Palihapitiya speak at the Delivering Alpha conference on Tuesday, along with Starwood’s […]
September 13, 2017
Could this “Secret IPO Crush Comcast and DirecTV?”
Investors love the idea of a “back door” — they want to be able to get in on something before everybody else, to get a taste of the big time without having to wait in line behind the velvet rope — and Wyatt Investment Research is using that notion to help convince people to subscribe […]
This is a teaser pitch that I covered for the Irregulars a few months ago, but several readers have asked me about it over the past day or two, so perhaps it’s making the rounds again — and I thought I’d share that teaser solution and my thoughts with the rest of the gang today. […]
September 11, 2017
Ian Cooper’s “$15 Stock You Could Retire On!”
Ian Cooper has been a newsletter pundit for a long time, I’ve mostly noticed him covering options trades and tech, biotech and natural resources stocks… but this is the first big widely-circulated teaser pitch I’ve seen over his name in a while, and I don’t think I’ve written about him since 2010. When last we […]
Weekly escalations in nuclear threats, record-breaking hurricanes… what is it going to take to shake investor sentiment for more than 24 hours? The S&P 500 is ending the week only down about a third of one percent, gold is up less than 2%, this is a market that is reacting to headlines pretty quickly… but […]
September 7, 2017
AB4 Vaccine Ignites “Fierce Bidding War” for “Small Texas Lab?”
Remember Ernie Tremblay’s pitch about a “tiny South Texas lab” that was about to cure every disease using its revolutionary CD19 Cancer Vaccine technology, and ignite a bidding war following its fantastical release of exciting information on June 23? Well, it’s back. Not the stock, that’s still languishing around where it was before Tremblay got […]
September 6, 2017
Solving Mampilly’s “New Bitcoin” Teaser Pitch
I’ve gotten quite a few questions about this spiel, which was for a recommendation that Mampilly was supposed to release yesterday (and presumably did) to his Extreme Fortunes subscribers, so I’m taking a look… despite the fact that I’m a little sick of writing about bitcoin. Extreme Fortunes is the “high end” newsletter Mampilly writes […]
Today we’ve got a quickie just to answer some reader questions — and, frankly, it’s a quickie mostly because we’ve covered this pitch several times before, in slightly different variations. This time around, the tease is coming from Charles Mizrahi in ads for “Charter Memberships” in his new Park Avenue Investment Club… which sounds pretty […]
September 5, 2017
Park Avenue Investment Club (defunct)
Mizrahi’s latest value investing service, started in the Summer of 2017 — he says that he has three “model” portfolios: “Prime Time for large- to mid-cap stocks, Special Situations for mid- to small-cap stocks, and Bargain Basement for small caps at especially affordable prices.” Newsletter has closed.
September 1, 2017
Friday File: Hurricane Insurance, Gold, and GE
We’re all growing more and more immune to hyperbole, I hope, but the combination of hype-filled newsletter pitches, shallow commentary from attention whores on CNBC, and clickbait headlines is enough to put you off investing in the market at all… how many times can you hear words like “collapse” and “beaten down” and “nightmare” applied […]
September 1, 2017
David Gardner’s “The Next Amazon.com” Stock
This article was originally published on January 12, 2017. I have updated my disclosures and the Irregulars Quick Take, and added some comments and number updates to update my thoughts on the stock, but many of the quotes are from the earlier version of the ad and not everything has been updated. The company being […]
August 31, 2017
Navellier’s “Stock of the Century”
Who can resist that headline? Louis Navellier is peddling his Emerging Growth newsletter by promising a special report called The Stock of the Century… so, naturally, we wanna know what that stock is. And we don’t want to pony up $995 for an Emerging Growth subscription to find out, frankly — if we paid that […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on September 14, 2024
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 [...]
Posted on September 9, 2024
They often throw their promo Picks into "special reports" Instead of the actual model portfolio, but some letters also keep using stocks as teaser picks even after the pundit has "sold" them.[...]
Posted on September 9, 2024
There's certainly risk of the brand plateauing. I think it's still looking pretty solid, but only time will tell, I guess.[...]
Posted on September 7, 2024
I haven't been following this management team long enough to have a great handle on their investor relations skills, but I was surprised that they just mentioned that number and didn't seem to realize it was a bombshell of an announcement that would have m[...]
Posted on September 5, 2024
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[...]
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[...]
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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[...]