Altucher’s Investment Network Review – James Altucher Scam?

The Altucher's Investment Network is an introductory investing newsletter from James Altucher.

This product offers tips on how to make money with stocks, crypto and other opportunities.

If you're here I'm guess you want to know if it's a scam before pulling the trigger.

This review will help shed light on this.

You'll get a complete breakdown of Altucher Investment Network including background information, price to join, what's actually being offered and more.

You'll know if this product is worth it by the time you're done reading.

So, set aside a few minutes and read through everything..

Let's get started!

5 Things To Know About Altucher's Investment Network

Before we breakdown what this product is let's take a look at some important background information.

This is what I think is most important about Altucher's Investment Network:

1) It's Run By James Altucher

James Altucher is the creator of this newsletter and he's a complicated guy.

He's the type of person that can make rapid and lifechanging decisions on a whim and completely reinvent his life.

Like when lost $15 million in two years after selling one of his companies or when he sold everything he had to live out of a suitcase.

I personally believe this type of a personality seems like a nightmare to deal with and be around.

I don't know about you but I personally wouldn't want to take investment advice from a guy comfortable with losing everything he has. 

Unlike many people that I review on this website James isn't exclusively a trader and investor. In fact, it's not really what he's most known for.

Altucher is more known for the businesses and websites he's started.

In the late 90's he created a business called Reset Inc and sold it for $15 million.

After losing this money he started his investing and trading career. 

2) James Gets A Lot Of Heat

A personality like James is going to attract a lot of attention and a lot of criticism.

Although people like Mark Cuban are friends with James and seemingly follow his advice from time to time, many other people are much more skeptical of James.

One thing people don't like about Altucher is he'll peddle dubious stock picks to his large audience.

For example, James notoriously likes to recommend microcap or penny stock companies to his readers.

These are very small companies that have low stock prices..  a lot of times they're not even listed on major exchanges.

The problem with penny stocks is many are outright scams and ripe for pump and dump schemes.

Because these stocks are so cheap and rarely traded, someone with a big audience can temporarily and superficially inflate the stock's price.

Before inflating a price a trader will load up on the stock and dump the price as it peaks.

They make money while the people they get to buy the stock lose money.

I have no clue if Altucher is picking these microcap stocks on merit or if he's doing some sort of pump and dump scheme - he certainly has the power to raise a stocks price.

Some of the picks definitely come with a lot of red flags.

3) The Crypto Genius?

James ran a very aggressive marketing campaign declaring himself the "crypto genius." 

These ads were shown all over the internet and many different people were mocking the campaign.

Many pointed out he Tweeted in 2013 Bitcoin was a scam and ponzi scheme (he's since deleted the Tweet)

Again, James personality and style will always attract a lot of attention.

Although these ads were cringey, you would have made a lot of money if you were listening to Jame's advice to buy Bitcoin in 2017.

Here's how much it's gained in that time to now:

Just up 3900% since then!

A $10,000 investment in Bitcoin then would be worth a cool $390,000.

Many people were calling him "the face of the Bitcoin bubble" in 2017 as well.

Bitcoin might end up being a giant bubble that pops one day but articles declaring it a bubble in 2017 have aged like milk. 

But James has made some boneheaded decisions with his crypto predictions and marketing.

He sent out an email to his followers claiming he knew Amazon was going to accept Bitcoin:

This was completely made up and this spread around to other people making the same prediction. 

After it didn't happen James claimed it would happen in February and again.. it never happened.

Amazon came out explicitly stated it has no plans to accept Bitcoin.

4) Owned By Agora Financial (Gross)

Ughhh..

Agora Financial is a company that owns a lot of the financial newsletters you see out there.. they're the biggest financial newsletter distributor.

I've reviewed a lot of their products in the past including this one, this one and this one.

They employ some of the grimiest people in the industry like Teeka Tiwari who is literally banned from trading stocks on behalf customers because of his involvement in scams.

They don't just sell financial products, though.

They have a boiler room that sells all kinds of health products as well.

Agora doesn't have a good reputation and just recently they were convicted of selling fraudulent diabetes cures to over 35,000 people..

They were also forced to pay $2 million in fines for selling phony financial products to senior citizens.

Doesn't get much lower than that.

Agora unfortunately owns Three Founders Publishing who publishes Altucher Investment Network.

This isn't a good sign and means you'll be pressured through your email into buying one of Agora's other more expensive products all the time.

Typically I suggest staying away from anything Agora related.

5) Altucher Has Recommended Some STINKERS

James Altucher is constantly running promotions where he hypes up different picks.

These picks are paired with his products and he uses them to get you to buy his newsletters.

These are supposed to be well researched stock ideas and are usually ones James promises will make you a lot of money.

Here's a look at how some of these stock ideas have performed:

ShotSpotter In 2018

Back in 2018 James started hyping a stock which he called "Electronic Police." 

He claims a company has a new "futuristic crime fighting technology" and that was going to "land in your neighborhood."

This stock turned out to be ShotSpotter.

Altucher claimed the stock would rise because it would get funding through a potential Trump infrastructure bill.

The problem, however, is the infrastructure bill never materialized. 

As a result the following has happened with the stock:

As you can see the stock improved slightly at some points but is down overall.

Had this campaign started 18 months earlier there would have been nice gains.

Apricus Biosciences In 2018

Apricus Biosciences is a pharmaceutical company that tried getting an erectile disfunction cream called Vitaros approved by the FDA.

They failed in their initial attempt 10 years before James made this prediction.

However, they were giving it another shot in 2018.

Altucher marketed this stock picks as "The Greatest Biotech Opportunity Of The Decade" with a chance to receive 54,000% returns.

This all hinged on the FDA approving Vitaros but if you wanted to get maximum returns you needed to get in before that.

So what happened?

The FDA didn't approve the drug and the stock CRASHED:

If you invested in this stock pick you pretty much lost EVERYTHING.

Auxly Cannabis In 2019

A 2019 marketing campaign focused on a marijuana stock that Altucher claimed is "The Only Mrijuana Stock You'll Ever Need."

Altucher claimed this Canadian company would single handily grow more weed than the rest of the Candadian market COMBINED.

The company is Auxly and here is how the stock has performed since this marketing campaign:

Another loser..

If you invested when Altucher said to you'd be down pretty significantly now.

Altria In 2019

In June 2019 James started another marketing campaign around a marijuana company.

I guess James was hoping no one noticed he called his last marijuana stock idea "the only marijuana stock you'll ever need."

James claimed this company, called Altria, could "double your retirement" and that your "401k can't compete with it."

Here's a look at how this stock has performed since this announcement:

The stock was down for a number of years and has recently gotten back to break even level.

So yeah..

Any time you see James advertising a stock pick in one of these promos I would stay away from it.

Better yet you might want to short it!

Recommended: The Best Place To Get High Return Stock Ideas

What Does Altucher Investment Network Offer?

The Altucher Investment Network comes with a few different components.

Here's a look at what you get:

• Monthly Newsletters - Every month you get a newsletter delivered to your inbox and mailbox. This newsletter comes with stock picks, market news and looks at additional investment opportunities. You get crypto picks here as well.
• Alerts - Sometimes a stock needs to be sold before the newsletter gets sent out. These email alerts will let you know if this is the case. You can also choose to get text message alerts as well.
• Special reports - The special reports are the stock idea promotions we covered in the last section. These are full write ups about stocks, companies and other investment ideas explaining why they're worth investing in. However, as you've seen a lot of these reports end up flopping.
• Daily Letters: You get 3 additional daily letters with this membership. This includes Altucher Confidential, One Last Thing and 5 Minute Forecast.

My Thoughts On Altucher's Investment Network

There's a lot to digest here.

Here's may main takeaways from this newsletter:

Customer Reviews Aren't Good

James has been around for a while.

I noted earlier that he gets a lot of attention and a lot of that attention is negative.

That's part of being in the light and doing the kind of marketing that he does.

So hate from journalists and rivals is to be expected.

However, it's not a good sign when customers are negative about your service and James has a lot of negatives reviews regarding his newsletters.

Here's a review from someone who bought one of Jame's more expensive newsletters:

The stock this person is talking about is Apricus Biosciences which we covered up top.

Apricus Biosciences basically crashed overnight and this person (and a lot more people) lost a fortune.

This is the kind of stuff that can happen when you follows James.

Here's what another customer had to say:

After a year of following the picks he lost $3,000.. add that to the cost of subscription and he's down $6,000 for the year!

There's Going To Be A Million Upsells

The price for this newsletter isn't that terrible.

There's deals out there where you can try it for $49 for the first year and then it's $299 for every year after.

That's what a lot of other newsletters cost, so I'd say it's fair,

However, the reason the price is on the lower side is because there's a lot of upsells.

There's 9 more newsletters and services on Three Founders Publishing website and some of them cost several thousands of dollars a year.

For example, James has a newsletter that costs $5,000 per year:

You will definitely be marketed this product and all the other products constantly.

Additinally, since this is an Agora owned company you will be marketed there other newsletters as well.

There's literally hundreds and possibly thousands of products they're going to try and sell you on every single day.

Your email will be flooded with these offers.

It drives a lot of people insane.

There's A Good Refund Policy

This is probably the best thing about Altucher's Investment Network.

You get 90 days to test out this product to see if you like it.

If you're not satisfied (or lose tons of money on one of Jame's bad picks) you can get a full refund.

This is an excellent refund policy.

Recommended: The Best Place To Get High Return Stock Ideas

Altucher's Investment Network Conclusion

Some people will look at James Altucher and call him eccentric or quirky or something like that.

While this may be true to a degree I personally think he's kind of a sociopath.

James can lose millions of dollars or sell of his possessions to live out of suitcase on a whim.

This wouldn't be such a horrible trait if he weren't guiding others on stocks.

I mean do you really want this man advising your portfolio?

Sure he's up millions at the end of the day but that's mostly from his businesses.

He's created several multi-million dollar companies and I'm sure his newsletters bring in millions.

He can offset big stock loses with this.

Can you?

Are you comfortable taking one his stock picks and losing 70% by the time you wake up?

I'm not.. and James doesn't seem too concerned about it either.

No matter how big his failures are he comes back with the same attitude and makes the same grandiose predictions.

His marketing simply doesn't change no matter what happens.

Again, seems a little sociopathic to me. 

Here's A Better Opportunity

I'd pass on Altucher's Investment Network.

The good news is there's much better newsletter to get good stock ideas.

I've reviewed all the best..

To see my favorite place to get high return stick picks (that's very affordable), click below: