CW 323: Deceptive Advertising Schemes & Scams with Investment Counselor Doug

Jason Hartman opens with one of the investment counselors as they discuss current news, rental properties and the biggest obstacle to investor success. More at: http://www.jasonhartman.com/podcast/ With our guest for this episode, you'll hear opinions on some of the too-good-to-be-true advertising schemes out there. Jason and Doug will render opinion on, expose and debunk some advertising claims in this investigative report. This is just our opinion, as Dennis Miller says; we could be wrong - you decide. Here are a few very cleaver ad examples, targeted at investors, for your consideration:

"Stock Picks" newsletter:

• Isn't anybody who advertises high-return stock picks is usually "cherry picking" their winners while completely ignoring their losers? We think that may be the case. One example might be Porter Stansberry's own report card, he under-performed the S&P 500 by around >10% in 2012 for the Stansberry Investment Advisory Newsletter. Still an interesting and well written newsletter in either case. Maybe this year or next year will be better for stock picking, we'll see.

"Five Words" to get real silver from banks:

• Those five words are "do you have half dollars" ... the idea is that half dollars minted prior to 1971 contained physical silver, and are worth far more than their face value.
• The problem is that most banks don't carry half dollars any more, and most people's time is too valuable to spend going to banks and picking through coins to try and find ones minted before 1971.

"Buy $2 dollar silver" - really?:

• This strategy is to buy a bag of "junk silver" at current spot prices of around $23/oz. Junk silver are old coins with physical silver content. The cost of a bag nets out to ~$2.00 for a dime with enough silver to be worth $2.00 in the open market. Effectively this strategy teaches you to buy silver at the market price. Isn't this useless?