Dear Reader,
Happy Thursday!
Glad to be back from an investor conference in Miami. I’m a man who likes my routine.
So, on the heels of this conference, I want to talk to you today about something really important when it comes to protecting your wealth ...
Stock promoters.
The conference I was speaking at this week is one that brings investors and people with investor followings together with smaller, publicly traded companies that are trying to get the word out about their stock.
I met a lot of the CEOs of companies that you and I have never heard of.
And for the most part, these are legitimate businesses …
They’re $50 million, $100 million companies.
Some are cash-flow positive.
They’re in sectors like mining, or energy, etc.
A lot of them are good companies, trying to get the word out about their stocks.
See, something a lot of entrepreneurs don’t realize is …
You know, you think you IPO, you ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ and all of a sudden you’re a hero and your stock trades and goes to a hundred.
That’s just not the case.
Nine times out of 10, you go public and nobody notices.
You have the same shareholders you did when you were private, give or take a few.
Your stock trades “by appointment only” – it might trade $1, $2 a share, and there’s a wide spread (difference between the bid and ask price – you pay a premium when volume is low).
So they hire public relations companies and say …
“Hey, can you get Bloomberg to talk about us? We have such a great story, product, and nobody knows about us.”
“Can you get us on CNBC?”
“Can you get us on Fox Business?”
And they attend conferences like the one I was at.
They want to talk to investors and people with followings, “influencers” (ick – I hate that word).
Now, you know I’ve been doing this a very long time …
Not only have I been writing newsletters and been in the publishing business for decades …
But I owned my own investment bank on Wall Street.
When you’ve been doing this as long as I have you’ve seen just about every kind of hustle there is.
So I’m sitting there having these conversations and meeting these companies and most of them are completely legitimate.
The PR firms they’ve hired are also completely legitimate.
They’re just hired to tell a story about a company so they can increase their exposure, get more shareholders, raise more capital, expand their businesses – all the things all entrepreneurs try to do.
But I’ve noticed something. And this is very important …
My “public service announcement” –
What you may not know is a lot of these kinds of companies and a lot of their PR people try to hire people like me.
They’ll say, “hey, we’ll give you $100,000, $200,000, $500,000 to talk about this company to your customer base.”
So a lot of people in my position are offered a ton of money to talk about companies that are being promoted.
You’ve got to watch out for that.
This is RAMPANT in cryptos.
A lot of people in cryptos hire PR people and try to pay influencers a lot of money to talk about their stuff.
And you have to understand something …
First of all, here at Behind the Markets we will never take a penny to talk about anything.
You can take that to the bank.
It took me 30 years to build this reputation and it takes a second to lose it. I will not lose it that way.
But you have to know this:
Not everyone in my position has the same philosophy.
A lot of the small-caps and micro-caps you hear about … and certainly cryptos – it’s crazy in cryptos – they have hired people who are being paid to tout these investments.
BUYER BEWARE – you have to know this and really use discernment here.
Now, you know in Breakthrough Wealth we recommend micro-caps. I want you to know that this is completely independent.
All of our picks come from my own investment research – not from anybody telling me about the stocks, and certainly not from getting paid to recommend them!
I will NEVER do that. You have my word.
Nobody’s going to come in here – there’s not a check big enough for me to hurt our members – to not want to look in the mirror anymore – I can promise you that.
What I’ve learned about me is that money is not important enough to me to do anything shady for it.
I’d rather be broke than do anything unethical to make a buck – I don’t care how much it is.
It’s not worth me hurting another human being. I’m not in the “hurting people” business.
It’s just not the way I’m programmed.
But not everyone is like that.
One of the things I was thinking about during this conference is, at a time like this – the market’s raging higher – Trump just won and everyone’s in this kind of euphoric state …
Now is the time the bad players are coming out.
They will take advantage of the frenzy.
And there are other newsletter writers out there …
It works like this – a company goes to a PR firm and says, “I’ll give you a million shares of stock at a penny. Our stock’s at $2 right now. But if you get a bunch of newsletter writers to run it up to $10 a share, having all their members buy it, you can sell your million shares and make $10 million.”
That’s a big number. There are publishers out there who do this, too – promote stocks for pay. They cash out, the stock crashes, and their readers are left holding the bag. It’s called pump and dump.
If you read something talking about a micro-cap that gets you all excited, take a breath, do some research – don’t get sucked into a mistake.
We’re not young anymore.
We have to protect what we have.
Rule #1: Don’t lose money!
Rule #2: Don’t forget Rule #1!
I consider myself a steward of your capital and of your trust.
So in these euphoric times, just be careful.
Invest responsibly.
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