Regular investors are getting interested in gold again, after the big run it had in the first half of this year… and many of us also remember the ludicrous returns that many folks got from buying bitcoin early on… so it’s only natural that this ad puts our greed receptors into overdrive: “The time to […]
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
September 21, 2016
Dividend Confidential
Launched in 2016, aims to recommend trades in companies that pay special dividends (either one-time or ongoing)
September 21, 2016
Can you Really “Collect a 35% Dividend in October 2016?”
Ian Wyatt has been a fan of “special dividends” for some time, and has hinted at the huge potential payouts for his various investment newsletters over the years… this ad from him is in much the same vein, though he’s now selling a newsletter that is specifically focused on just these “special dividends.” And, as […]
September 20, 2016
Motley Fool’s Next Breakthrough: “Vertical Cloud” or “Industry Cloud”
The Canadian branch of the Motley Fool has been pitching a cloud computing stock that they say is “breaking out” right now, and the spiel is all about the next transition in cloud computing, from “general cloud services” to those that are specifically designed for one industry or customer group. So what’s the stock? Well, […]
September 20, 2016
True Wealth China Opportunities (defunct)
China-focused stock advisory launched late Summer 2016, initially aimed to profit from Chinese internet stocks that they thought had the potential to rise more rapidly than their US counterparts. Uses different subscription model ($2.000 nonrefundable fee, then $149/yr. for as long as you want to keep getting updates). Newsletter is no longer active.
This ad has been rolling for a week or so, and a group of Gumshoe readers have already been discussing it and trying to figure out exactly what the Stansberry folks are talking about… but there are lots of questions still coming over the transom here at Castle Gumshoe, so let’s take a look. The […]
September 16, 2016
September Idea of the Month: What about Deflation?
Time for some “Idea of the Month” thoughts for you, dear Irregulars. When you think the investing climate is a little more nerve-wracking than usual, why not go with a master investor who’s also nervous and is preparing for an awful economy? I’ve spoken quite a few times about my fondness for insurance company stocks. […]
September 15, 2016
More of those “Social Security Insurance” Ideas
Yesterday I spent some time looking at Nathan Slaughter’s “Social Security Insurance” pitch, which ended up being a roundabout way of saying “you should buy high-yielding stocks, and I’ve got some favorites to share if you’ll subscribe to my newsletter.” And I ended up naming three of those stocks for you, and taking a quick […]
This ad caught my eye, because Nathan Slaughter (or his ad copywriter) is doing the same thing a lot of newsletter pundits do: Comparing apples to oranges in trying to give the impression that there’s some “secret” alternative to social security that save your retirement. (There is the old “secret” alternative, of course, it’s called […]
September 13, 2016
“A Better Restaurant Stock” from Cabot’s Mike Cintolo
I got a few requests to take a look at the “better restaurant stock” that Timothy Lutts of Cabot alluded to in his recent article about Chipotle (CMG), and one of those readers pointed out that one of the other stocks that Cabot has been teasing, LeMaitre Vascular (LMAT), “has been looking good” … so […]
September 12, 2016
Crisis Investing (defunct)
Newsletter from Nick Giambruno at Casey Research (now owned by Stansberry), focuses on investing in “Crisis” strategies advocated by Doug Casey over several decades, particularly strategies for investing overseas. This newsletter has closed.
Nick Giambruno is helming the Crisis Investing letter for Casey Research now, which must come with a fairly high degree of attention because Doug Casey really made his name with his bestselling book of the same name in the late 1970s (later revised a couple times). And after all this time you know what you’re […]
September 9, 2016
Friday File: Apple, Miners, Wanna-Buys and more
There’s not one “big thing” that jumps out at me this week to blather to you about for your Friday File edutainment, but I do have a smorgasbord of thinklinations to share… including a few “quickie” teaser solutions as we go along. First, for those who have been asking: Yes, I have now covered my […]
September 7, 2016
What’s that “Safer Aspirin” Pitch from Ernie Tremblay About?
Another month, another big pitch about a biotech stock with a great “P-Value Indicator” from Ernie Tremblay, all in an ad for his Biotech Insider Alert. Should we pay attention? Well, we can hardly avoid noticing it — we’re being battered about the head and neck with the constant email fusillade from Tremblay’s publisher and […]
September 6, 2016
“Motley Fool’s ‘Double Play’ Buy Alert on Recent IPO”
The folks at the Motley Fool like to make a lot of the success of their “double down” or “double play” or “triple play” stocks, which generally is a reference to stocks that are either picked by both of the founding Fool brothers (David and Tom Gardner, who together choose the stocks for their flagship […]
September 6, 2016
Personal Portfolio Shakeup
This is not a fundamental look at any of these stocks, but just a quick update on my personal portfolio. Like you, I have many priorities in my life… and some of those priorities changed a bit over the last week or two, so we’re considering some real estate transactions that make it important for […]
September 2, 2016
Friday File: Telecom REIT tease, plus another REIT to tempt me
Today we’ve got a couple quick dividend investments to take a look at, one which is being hinted at by a newsletter writer as a current pick with a high yield, and another one that I’ve personally been looking at as a way to diversify my REIT position a little bit. I’m already a bit […]
Yesterday I started to look into the stocks teased by Cabot Emerging Markets Investor, and today we’re going to continue on that journey. If you’re just catching up, you can see that previous note here — the short version is that the Cabot folks see much more upside in emerging markets stocks in the near […]
Today we’re taking a quick look at a teaser ad that went around late last week, for Cabot’s Emerging Markets Investor. That’s the letter that used to be called Cabot China & Emerging Markets Report, it’s changed names to reflect the relative lack of popularity of Chinese stock picking these days but is still edited […]
August 30, 2016
Washout for my small non-metals royalty investment
Those of you who’ve been following Stock Gumshoe for more than a few months may have noticed that I love royalty companies — firms that don’t have to do a lot of work or incur a lot of costs, but just get to make an up-front investment and participate in the top line for their […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on September 20, 2024
Posted on September 19, 2024
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/[...]
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[...]
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Haven't seen a new ad from him lately, but earlier this year he was pitching DFH as an "echo boom" pick (https://www.stockgumshoe.com/reviews/charles-mizrahis-8-figure-fortunes/reveal-mizrahis-16-trillion-echo-boom-stock-pick/) -- I'll look for any newer a[...]