Comments on: Stock Newsletters: Are They Worth It?

By: Nats

Nats — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 03:18:49 +0000

I agree with Patti …Lansing is a joke ….i have lost tons of money with parabolic options, trending123, ken trester, and Chris Jhonson

The only Newsletter that has work for me so far is TReasures under 10 http://treasuresunder10.investorplace.com/ Nancy Zambell is pretty good!!! Actually, I already paid 2 years of service. she gives very insightful analysis …

Regarding options, I like option hotline the bad thing is that they dont tell you when to sell ….however if you dont get greedy you can sell when the option hits a 10 o 20%

My dad really likes carla pasternak her picks are winners according to him!!

Im a looking for a good options newsletter …..any suggetions???

By: patti

patti — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:40:57 +0000

I have used many different newsletters and I would definitely stay away from anything Louis Navellier or John Lansing have written. Parabolic Options from John Lansing is a joke. The best one I have found is Charles Nenner. He does not really advertise and I found him after hearing him being interviewed. His assistant actually calls you and discussed the type of investing you do and sees if you are a fit and they determine based upon the size of your portfolio what they will charge. He has been fantastic on his predictions for the market. I have tried over 15 different newsletters and his is really the only legitimate one I have found. Check him out

By: Doug H

Doug H — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:03:50 +0000

Just an update to motley fool million dollar portfolio performance….I called today (11/10/09) and their “Charger” portfolio is down 22.9% since inception. However, they also said this was 2.6% better than S&P. That said one needs to know the stocks to adjust for risk.

By: James Eicher

James Eicher — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:46:02 +0000

I like many others have tried a variety of newsletters. I’ve lost money with all of them. (Motley Fool, Changewave, Bernie Schaeffer )
Bill Kraft has the best information I have found. He has a book on trading that is one of the best I’ve ever read. If anybody knows a newsletter that really does what it says, I’d like to know about it.

By: Bill Brennan

Bill Brennan — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 19:43:09 +0000

I have one… what about Louis Navelliers Newsletter ” Emerging Growth ” has anyone tried this newsletter? Any comments?

By: arthur swanson

arthur swanson — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:48:24 +0000

Richard Band and Richard Young have cost me lots of money. Fool’s million dollar portfolio is down 17.99% as we speak. I am down over $81k following all of their recommendations and percentage purchases.

By: arthur swanson

arthur swanson — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:48:09 +0000

By: arthur swanson

arthur swanson — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:47:57 +0000

By: rookieram

rookieram — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:56:17 +0000

Hi Frugal,
I was a slient reader for a while on this site; do you think you’re stock newsletter recommendations are good for novice investor?
BTW Capital & Crisis by Chris Meyer link is broken here

By: crystal

crystal — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:03:03 +0000

True. If you assume that they nobody at their end puts any time doing any research, they can just recommend any old company, get money off people and keep going, for however long. But they do seem to have a well-qualified staff, an office, and subscribers who interact with them face-to-face during their trips (they have trips to visit the companies), get-togethers etc. They also have a good performance on their other newsletters which have been going on for over 5 years at least.

Even if they have a staff who are well qualified, and do real work researching companies for us, they are obviously aiming to make a profit on the whole venture (isn’t that what we want from the companies we invest in?). The question isn’t whether they make a profit, or how much they make, but whether they provide value for my money.

So far it seems to me that they do. Time will tell!

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:31:21 +0000

Not to be syndical but I guess one could argue that if Motley Fool signs up 1,000 subscribers at $499.00 each then they make 50% on their money right away. So even if they are using their own money to invest it is not their performance that matters as much as the number of subscribers they can convince to keep their subscriptions for the full year.

By: crystal

crystal — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:20:42 +0000

Bob,
They just started it, and the first purchase was in October 07. It is not fully invested yet. I don’t think there is any public posting of performance. All I can remember is most of their selections did well during the recent upswing.

But some stocks have crazy pricing – they go up 30%, then tumble down 25% in a matter of weeks. Now, if I were buying such a stock on my own, I would be wishing I had sold it when it was up 30%.

With the Motley Fool, they put out enough analysis to convince me that they have researched the stock thoroughly and since they are putting their money and reputation on it, I assume they will be following it closely enough, so I don’t worry about it. With Jeff Siegel, I receive so little information, that I am selling off everything as soon as it goes up 5% or so, even though I know I should hold on to the winners to make up for the losers.

By: Bob

Bob — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:52:49 +0000

Crystal,
I am very curious about the Fool’s Million Dollar Portfolio but of course there are no performance stats published anywhere that I can find. Is there a public performance result posted anywhere that you know of?

By: Crystal

Crystal — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:50:30 +0000

I have been subscribing to Million Dollar Portfolio from the Motley Fool. I like the way they analyze the stock and do follow-ups. I can’t talk about performance yet, since I only started 3 months ago. But they seem to be honest, giving a honest performance report – every week you can see the performance of each of their newsletters versus the S&P 500 – in fact they send it to you by e-mail if you go for the free subscription. And for the past few weeks a couple of their newsletters have been doing worse than the S&P 500 or going into the negative. They also write articles about the stocks they chose which lost money.

Another one I started on is Jeff Siegel’s Green Chip newsletter. Performance has been abysmal this year – but that is because all the ‘favored’ small caps have been getting hit by the market. However, their explanation of the selection process, follow-up on what is going wrong is perfunctory to say the least, more marketing than anything solid. I have stopped buying anything from their recommendations as a result. Just hoping that whatever I have bought will recover enough for me to get out without being skinned.

By: Frugal

Frugal — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 15:50:42 +0000

David T,

Glad to hear it’s improved. Things can change certainly after almost a year now.

By: David T

David T — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 17:58:52 +0000

I agree that there are some really bad apples out threre, but i must disagree about sound advice (www.soundadvice-newsletter.com). I have been subscribing to that for about 8 years and have gotten some solid rec’s from them. I admit i have had some problems getting my isssues in the past, but they really seem to have gotten their act together latley…

By: Frugal

Frugal — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 04:23:14 +0000

Thanks Miles for your tip.

I respect that publication, but don’t personally subscribe to it.

By: Miles

Miles — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 03:10:11 +0000

My favorite publication is http://www.dowtheoryletters.com. He has been writing for over sixty years. I am looking for some other good publications.

By: frugal

frugal — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 02:23:40 +0000

Thanks Boytoy. Really appreciate your sharing of the experience. I lost money too, and I was not impressed at all by Tobin Smith. Too bad that there are so many subscribers out there who are probably losing money from his recommendations. His changewave seems to be quite popular for some reasons.

By: Boytoy

Boytoy — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 00:55:47 +0000

I tried several of the changewave publications and have lost a TON of money. They constantly hound you trying to sell subscriptions.
While they sometimes comes up with profitable trades, if you review their sold list they appear to have many more losers that gainers. Tobin Smith is always bragging aboujt how much moeny they are making, yet they offer not performance. Simply looking at the sold list seems to indc iate that over 60% of their recommendations are loosers. Don’t make the same mistake that I did!

By: frugal

frugal — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:27:41 +0000

I think Motley Fool is a little too young to be judged. Hulbert at the MarketWatch ranks some 200+ newsletters based on their historical and current performances or any kinds of measurements that you choose I believe, but it will take some $150 to find out what newsletters are good.

I believe that newsletters are probably not for every investor. To duplicate the exact performance of a newsletter, you need to buy every stock that they recommend (or else you may be unlukcy to buy the under-performers in their recommended stocks). But to buy every stock (or close to every stock) that they recommend, it takes quite a bit money. Since I will recommend the trading commissions should be less than 0.5% of each transaction (including buy & sell), that will give you about $2000 or more for each stock that you should put in ($5 for buy & $5 for sell). Then you assume that you buy 10 to 20 stocks from their recommendation, you will need to have at least $20K to $40K of money.

Furthermore, assuming that you don’t bet your farm on just one newsletter, but have at least 50% (or preferably 80%) of money invested using other methods, then you end up with a total portfolio size of $40K to $200K (using 80%).

So if your portfolio size is not that big, I will advise you to stay with index funds.

By: John

John — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 10:51:24 +0000

To Frugal, others:
I highly recommend looking into The Motley Fool and offering an opinion. All of their recommendations are highly lucrative and they have different newsletters for different investing styles (i.e. growth, income, and value among others). I plan to subscribe to their “Stock Advisor” newsletter in the next year or two. Anyhow, their subscription rates are a bit pricey–from $150 to $200 yearly–but I like to fancy the notion of “getting what you pay for.” Please offer your opinions; I’m still a novice investor, but it looks solid to me.

By: frugal

frugal — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 04:25:41 +0000

Thanks a lot, Keller. That will definitely save people from trial & errors. Unfortunately, there are more bad apples than good ones out there.

By: Keller

Keller — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 03:29:11 +0000

I too wanted some help with a straight forward process to investing some extra money. I used the Hulbert\’s Financial Digest from CBS.Marketwatch.com site to give me some long term independent results. From there I looked at ones that seemed to be easy to implement and satisfy my tax needs, meaning I don\’t want Short Term Cap Gains. I have been using the Turnaround Letter for 18 months now with good results. I am very disciplined with it. It recommends one new stock a month which I have been buying and annualized results for the last 18 months have been about what you would have gotten with a Small Cap Index, although his picks are across all categories.

By: Mighty Bargain Hunter

Mighty Bargain Hunter — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 03:29:09 +0000

Carnival of Investing #29…

Welcome to this week’s Carnival of Investing! Without further ado, here we go!

Free Money Finance highlights a reader’s comment on how to pick a company with winning management.
Who are mutual funds good for? Blueprint for Financial Pros…

By: frugal

frugal — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 14:17:25 +0000

Thank you for your input. I forgot which newsletter from changewave I subscribed to, but definitely not the one that you mentioned. I think Tobin has several publications.
Feedbacks on newsletters are very hard to find. If you have any positive or negative experiences, they will all make this post more valuable. And more recent experiences the better, since the performance is usually a time-varying function.
Please let us know how you do by following the newsletter. At least, I’m personally interested in the outcomes.

By: Todd

Todd — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 13:51:46 +0000

I recently bought the 25% cash machine publication from ChangeWave. It was a pretty interesting read. It confirmed what I have been trying to figure out. I bought it mainly for a list of high dividend investments in different asset classes. I want to combine different investments to lower beta and hopefully mainly end up with the high dividend. The publication gets the 25% from 10% dividend income and 15% capital appreciation. The investments have to be activily followed in order to get in and out of the different sectors that are hot.