Is InvestorPlace Any Good?

Review of stock picking service, InvestorPlace

IS INVESTOR PLACE ANY GOOD?

TLDR:

• Mostly recommend long-term, long shot stocks

• Best recommendations are free. Most paid recommendations are mediocre at best

• News is wrong sometimes

• They are good at spotting long-term trends in where the new money is flowing to, e.g. thematic investing (online gambling, EVs, rare minerals, etc). I derived value from seeing companies linked to these trends I may not have heard of otherwise.

IS INVESTOR PLACE REPUTABLE?

They make an obscene amount of recommendations across their blog and have many subsidiary newsletter services and promotional picks, so my tracking here is admittedly biased, as I only tracked what I ended up buying. Like Fool, they have a very long investing horizon and may end up being right…years from now. They make recommendations based on thematic trends, e.g. EVs, cybersecurity, etc. However, they also push recommendations based on events or news. 

I signed up for Matt McCall’s Investment Opportunities and followed their website recommendations. The newsletter divided up stock recommendations along long-term thematic investing trends like AI, 5G, EVs, online gambling, precious metals, crypto, data analytics, etc). 

Their basic principal is long-term investing along big emerging trends. There were about 50 stocks or so in the portfolio at any given time, but since they do long-term investing, many had been in there for years and they offered no advice on how to enter a trade they had entered 4 years ago. So I never did. 

CAN YOU TRUST INVESTORPLACE?

Here are the ones they recommended as buys that I actually bought:

Pct of Recommendations Up: 27%

AVG Return: Not able to calculate this since I didn’t take advice to hold long term for most

Workhorse (WKHS). Return: -100%

I purchased some call options in WKHS because they made an announcement the company was a shoe-in to get an $8B EV supplier contract with the U.S. Postal Service. They claimed there were no other competitors that made EVs and therefore this would be a game changer for the company. I didn’t do my own due diligence, stupidly. A few weeks later, the award went to Oshkash, a defense contractor most known for making the MRAP military vehicles. Oshkash partnered with Ford on the contract to make the EVs. I lost 100% of my call options on this poorly sourced news piece.

7.15.21. Buy SWBI.  Smith and Wesson: -40% since then. I sold it when there was a pop for breakeven returns after a shooting, which triggered an increase in price, sadly. 

1.4.21 Buy BGNE - Beigene (Chinese Pharma). Return: -48%

The return here has not been good as of late but it was up and I’m holding anyway as this company is the gatekeeper for a lot of large Pharmaceutical companies (Novartis, AstraZeneca, Amgent) to get into the Chinese market. In my view, it was a good recommendation and was largely up until recently.

1.21.21. Buy STPK Starpeak Energy. Return: +100% or 0%
Correctly predicted the stock would double. It did, then gave up 100% of its gains.  Glad I sold it when it doubled. 

1.22.21 Buy Magnite (MGNI). Return: -76%.
My stop loss triggered at -12%.

2.1.21 Buy MP (rare earth materials). Return: +32%

This was a good pick. I actually bought on the rec and made about 50% from trading options and selling covered calls. I would not have known about this stock without them. I plan to buy it back at 25. They are one of the few providers of the rare earth minerals in every electronic outside of China.

2.4.21 Buy ACAD - Acadia Pharmaceuticals. Return: -71%.
Their report cited 30% revenue growth and a robust pipeline of drugs. Revenue is around 17% growth now. At one point it had doubled in value. I’m still holding. My lesson learned: trade biotechs, don’t hold them.

2.5.21 Buy AYX - Alterex. Return: -60%

Straight downhill since the recommendation. Touted as a cutting edge AI/Machine learning data analytics company I bought 100 shares. Revenues are up 50% y/y but I sold it in February 2022 for a -20% loss.

2.10.21 Buy LYSCF (rare earth minerals). Return: +69%

Like MP and another good pick in a sector I knew nothing about prior to their recommendation. I have since sold it but was up +60% when I closed out. I will buy it again at some point when commodity prices have cooled.

Feb 2021 Buy ILMN (Illumina - genetics company). Return since: -49%

They pushed this stock hard and it tanked after each recommendation, which made me believe it was a pump and dump job. I traded options on this one and cut losses -28%. 

2.19.21. Buy blank (had to remove - thank your mods) Return: -94%

Thankfully stop lossed this one at -7%. 

Feb 26 2021 Buy FTCH (Farfetch 2nd hand clothing): Return: -85%

I traded options on this one, using their recommendation as the pump I dumped and made 20%.

2.5.21. Buy RSI - Rush Street Interactive. Return: -72%. Still holding. They offer sports gambling online and were growing revenues 75% y/ but it’s slowed to 16% growth.  

2.10.21 Buy PDYPY - Flutter Entertainment (online gambling). Return: -15%. Bought this one as the online gambling is doing well. We shall see.

12.17.21 Buy NIO. Return since: -55%. I traded a few options on it but generally think EVs are overvalued and risky given the huge capital expenditures and exposure to macroeconomic issues. I ended up a few percent as I sold after an initial bump.

WHAT’S BETTER INVESTOR PLACE OR MOTLEY FOOL?

I conducted an analysis of both services and provided comparisons of the outcomes of their stock recommendations and my returns in another blog post. I’m due to update it in 2024 with new findings and am working on that soon. Here’s what I found when I looked at whether InvestorPlace was legit and if InvestorPlace was good at picking stocks or was just another click bait pump and dump site.

Click the article below to see

InvestorPlace vs Motley Fool: