Schaeffer’s Investment Research: Exaggeration At Its Finest

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Invalid Image
Schaeffer’s Investment Research of Cincinnati, run by Bernie Schaeffer, has been sending out e-mail promotions which are as clever as they are opaque. The solicitation  is to join the Elite Trader service. Some of the statements in the e-mail are odd and incredible.

The e-mail lays out the case for the service. People who have already signed up, the letter says, have made a promising decision. “And in the next few days, they’ll get their first of at least 50 trades primed to deliver big gains in short order.”

The e-mail has a long list of “some of the winning trades my Elite Trader subscribers have cashed in on in the last 12 months…” All of them are up  in the triple digits. The letter does not point out what positions the firm took on  investments in which it lost money.

The part of the e-mail that is the most puzzling is that “you’ll also get at least 50 MORE trade recommendations in the next 3 months…with each one targeting gains of +100% or more.” Looking at that with a cool analytic eye, it raises the question of what happens if Schaeffer’s cannot find 50 promising trade recommendations. Targeting returns of +100% seems attractive at first blush, but what if none of the investments return triple figures, or even double figures?

The conclusion of the e-mail has another strong pitch: “So let me summarize…when you join Schaeffer’s Elite Trader by midnight TONIGHT, you’ll get a minimum of 50 trades in the next 82 days…each targeting gains of +100% or more.
And your cost? A measly $79. That’s less than $2 per trade. It’s a small price to pay for the opportunity to bank a multitude of big winners over the next 82 days.”

Two dollars a day may be a lot if that +100% part does not work out at all.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

MRNA Vol: 199,309,797
EL Vol: 13,669,604
MRK Vol: 32,776,235
COIN Vol: 16,963,537

Top Losing Stocks

CTRA Vol: 73,319,495
STX Vol: 5,970,288
STLD Vol: 2,477,904
WDC Vol: 6,981,530
DELL Vol: 7,072,431