We haven’t looked at silver in a while, so let’s check out the latest ad pitch for Jim Fink’s Velocity Trader — he’s talking up a silver trade that he says you can make for $1 and generate 400%+ returns. This is the intro: “I’ve found a way for you to make an absolute fortune […]
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
March 19, 2017
Bonus Buy Note: Real Money Portfolio
I must confess having made another iconoclastic little investment this week — even as I make clear that although I’ve really invested in it, and it’s in my Real Money Portfolio (with a likelihood that I will ignore it for a while as it settles in as a newly public company), it’s extremely illiquid and […]
Individual investors are obsessed with marijuana stocks these days, hoping to get in on pot stocks the same way Joe Kennedy got in on whiskey in the days before prohibition was lifted… so it certainly caught our readers eyes when Hilary Kramer started promoting that she has “The One Stock That Could Make You a […]
The Disruptors and Dominators newsletter, one of the “entry level” letters from Weiss, is out pitching a “silver bullet” company — a firm that has developed a universal cancer vaccine. And, of course, they’ll tell you all about it — for your $49 subscription fee. Here at Stock Gumshoe, we’d like you to think things […]
March 15, 2017
Motley Fool’s “Like Buying Apple Before the iPhone” Pitch
This article was first published January 23, 2017, it has not been updated or revised. This ad caught my eye over the weekend, and it had enough clues that the Thinkolator started chugging along almost before I turned the switch this morning — so let’s dig in, and maybe we can even make it a […]
“Why Are Trump Insiders Pouring Millions Into This Mysterious Energy? “One that history has shown could mint all-new millionaires. “But NOT in fossil fuels or renewals. Instead, it’s an unusual kind of fuel that’s critical to his energy plans… his climate plan… even his foreign policy… “This kind of fuel has boomed ONLY twice before […]
March 10, 2017
Friday File: Debt Ceiling, Gold, Fairfax and Ligand
Hello, merry Gumshoe-ers! I’m going to be on the road next week to attend two conferences, the Grant’s Interest Rate Observer conference in New York mid-week, and the MIT Sloan Conference on Friday — so I’ll be sharing some notes with you with my thoughts on what I hear at those confabs, with fingers crossed […]
Nicholas Vardy has a newer low-end advisory called Smart Money Masters, and it looks like he’s aiming to be one of the “whale watchers” who run 13F-following services — the folks who watch the big buys by Warren Buffett and a couple dozen of the big hedge funds and institutional investors, and try to emulate […]
March 9, 2017
Smart Money Masters
Short-lived service that followed and recommended the investments owned by large money managers and well-respected investors (Warren Buffett, successful hedge fund managers, etc.) No longer publishing, Vardy left Eagle Financial for the Oxford Club in 2018.
My eyes lit up when I saw the latest ad from Paul Mampilly for his Profits Unlimited newsletter — more geothermal! Woohoo! Even the ad looked familiar — we saw quite a few of those ‘heat map’ images of the US five or ten years ago when geothermal stocks “heated up,” so it gave me […]
Quite a few eagle-eyed Gumshoe readers forwarded the latest ad from Dr. David Eifrig to us over the weekend — he’s pitching his Retirement Millionaire newsletter, which is an “entry level” offering from Stansberry that includes money-saving retirement tips and health tips as well as investment ideas. It tends to not be an aggressive or […]
I spent last week vacationing in Sarasota, Florida, near the old stomping grounds of one of my favorite authors, John D. MacDonald… so I ended up re-reading several volumes of his Travis McGee series as part of my vacation escape from the world. But MacDonald always included some social or environmental commentary in his novels, […]
March 2, 2017
“The Device Spreading 5-Times Faster Than The iPhone”
This article originally ran on May 24, 2016, when we were in the midst of a run on virtual reality teaser pitches that had lasted for months. Apparently the ad is running again and this older article has been difficult for readers to track down, because we’re getting lots and lots of questions about it […]
March 1, 2017
Cabot’s “Next Netflix” Stock
I was intrigued when I saw an ad from Timothy Lutts at Cabot about their “Next Netflix” stock, pitched as the next opportunity for a $600,000 windfall. Who doesn’t want that, right? That windfall figure refers to their recommendation of Netflix in May, 2002 — they say that $5,000 in NFLX then would have turned […]
February 28, 2017
“New Mexico Ghost Town” and the $127 Billion Windfall?
Here’s what caught our readers’ attention in a pitch from Bill Patalon’s Private Briefing: “Early investors could reap as much as $115,900 beginning April 21 “In the barren, hostile plains of the New Mexico desert, not far from the Mexican border, they’re building a city like no other. “A city with high rises, avenues, parks, […]
This article first appeared over a year ago, on February 8, 2016, but the teaser pitch is still making the rounds and I’m still getting questions about it, so I’m re-posting it here for your information. The data below and my comments are all from a year ago, I have not updated or revised them […]
February 27, 2017
Lichtenfeld’s Alzheimer’s Disease “Genius Molecule Discovery”
Welcome back from vacation, me! There’s no question what ad should be covered first as I brush the sand off my feet and turn up the heat here at Gumshoe HQ… it’s the pitch from Marc Lichtenfeld for his Lightning Trend Trader over at Oxford Club, and the “special report” he’s dangling as bait. That […]
February 17, 2017
Porter’s 10X “Venture Value” Ad Spurs Some Friday Guessing…
Lots of readers have been sending questions our way about Porter Stansberry’s new high-cost Stansberry Venture Value newsletter, which is his attempt to build a service that essentially recommends small cap value stocks for long-term compounding value. An admirable goal, and I guess we’ll start to learn in the coming year or two how it’s […]
February 17, 2017
Stansberry Venture Value
High cost newsletter launched early in 2017, focused on identifying “10X” stocks that are small but have great capital efficiency and potential for very high long-term returns. Originally sold as part of a $7,999 lifetime package (plus $299/year renewal fee) with Dave Lashmet’s Stansberry Venture Technology, then was quiet for a while but was later […]
February 17, 2017
Friday File: Portfolio Updates, Positioning and more
I’ve got a hodgepodge of ideas and small news items for you this week, plus a few transactions in my Real Money Portfolio that I’ve mostly noted for the Irregulars in quick notes earlier in the week. The market is expensive, but there’s no reason for a long-term investor to sell just because it’s expensive […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on September 19, 2024
Posted on September 19, 2024
Have never heard of that one, but I'll try to take a look. Anything in particular you like about them?[...]
Posted on September 19, 2024
BTBT, per Altucher. Don't know whether he actually made the investment yesterday or not.[...]
Posted on September 19, 2024
Sounds like that's the second coming of Adam O'Dell's "Imperium" pitch -- I did indeed cover that back in 2021 and 2022, the stocks did terribly... and I covered the updated version, which teases some different stocks, a few months ago:https://www.sto[...]
Posted on September 19, 2024
I've written about Verses a couple times since it went hyper-promotional in the first half of 2023 -- they have finally gotten revenue growing, but I still don't trust the business. It might work out, but with them borrowing money and issuing shares at a [...]
Posted on September 19, 2024
Sorry for not getting back to you... I don't have a problem with the current proxy and executive compensation, after being relatively reassured that it was in line with what they were doing before.I will be interested to see what's said at the meeti[...]
Posted on September 18, 2024
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[...]
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.[...]
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I haven't looked in the last month or two, but last wrote about it here:https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/green-zone-fortunes/the-next-google-answers-eccentric-billionaire-makes-a-big-bet-on-a-tiny-ai-company-tease-from-green-zone-fortunes/[...]