Intelligent Income Investor is an investment service from Brad Thomas.
He makes a lot of big claims with this newsletter (like that you can make $28,000 from "Amazon's Secret Royalty Program.")
Is he telling the truth, or is this another overrated stock-picking product?
We'll get to the bottom of this question in this review.
Additionally, we'll investigate any red flags, and I'll cover what's being offered.
By the time you're done reading, you'll know if Intelligent Income Investor is worth buying or not.
Let's get started!
Intelligent Income Investor Summary
Owner: Brad Thomas
Price: $49
Rating: 2/5
Do I Recommend? No.
Summary: Intelligent Income Investor is a technical stock picking service, and that's not a compliment.
Brad will make manipulative statements like you can make tens of thousands of dollars per year with "secret Amazon royalty programs" and things like that.
It's all nonsense (unless you have $1 million to invest, which I'm guessing you don't).
At the end of the day, Brad likes to recommend REITs.
These are similar to dividend stocks and trailing stocks in the last 10 years (beating stocks over a longer period).
Intelligent Income Investor may seem cheap, but it's just a bait product to get you into the sales funnel.
After that, much more expensive products will be offered to you that cost thousands.
There is too much baggage, in my opinion, and I think you should avoid it.
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Another MarketWise Newsletter (Not Good!)
Before we get into the finer details of Intelligent Income Investor, you need to know how it operates and why it exists.
Intelligent Income Investor is published by Wide Moat Research, which is owned by a bigger company called MarketWise.
MarketWise is publicly traded and owns over a dozen popular investing publishers, like Stansberry Research.
I pretty much recommend avoiding all MarketWise newsletters because they don't treat their customers well.
MarketWise's goal is to get as much money from you as possible, and they do this through upsells.
All their publishers work in the exact same fashion: they offer an extremely cheap newsletter to get you into the sales funnel and then upsell you after.
In this case, Intelligent Income Investor is the carrot dangling from the stick.
But once you buy Intelligent Income Investor, you'll be bombarded with sales pitches for products that never produce.
Most of these newsletters will cost thousands of dollars per year and will not come with a refund.
Many of the publishers at MarketWise have been fined millions in the past for deceptive marketing.
It's just not worth handing over your credit card details to people like this.
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What Is "Amazon's Secret Royalty Program?"
So one of the reasons I despise MarketWise is their manipulative advertising.
What makes it worse is that their audience tends to be elderly and not as online-savvy as younger generations.
They tend to fall for manipulative online advertising more often.
The main marketing campaign for Intelligent Income Investor is highly promotional and is titled "Amazon's Secret Royalty Program."
Brad is making it seem like there's a secret way to get Amazon to pay you thousands of dollars per month, but that's not true.
He's just pitching a real estate investment trust (REIT) called Prologis that rents warehouse space to Amazon.
That's all the "secret royalty program" is.
But in order to make the $28,000 per year that Brad Thomas is hinting at, you'd have to invest over $1 million into Prologis.
Do you see how manipulative this marketing campaign is now?
What Is Being Offered?
Intelligent Income Investor is set up like a million other investing newsletters are set up.
Here's an overview of everything that you get:
Monthly Stock Picks
This is the main thing that you're paying for.
Once a month, you'll get a new stock recommendation from Brad Thomas.
I'm not really a fan of the "once a month stock pick" that most newsletters do.
Why force yourself to make a recommendation if you don't actually have to?
And what happens when you like more than one stock pick a month?
You're just going to superficially withhold it until the next month?
Personally, I like newsletters that just send out stock picks when they get them.
Special Reports
There are a bunch of different special reports that you get when you sign up.
These act like sweeteners and typically used in the advertising compaigns.
For example, one of the special reports is "Amazon's Secret Royalty Program."
We already discussed this report, and I revealed earlier that it's Prologis.
Additionally, there's two more "royalty" special reports.
One hypes up an energy royalty play, and the second claims it's royalty "better than gold."
These stocks are just more REITs.
Model Portfolio
The last part of this offer is the model portfolio.
The portfolio contains all the stocks that Brad is currently recommending.
With each recommendation, you'll get a price to buy up to.
Additionally, if a position needs to be closed or just held, you'll be alerted when to do that.
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Intelligent Income Investor FAQs
Still have some questions about this newsletter?
Here are the answers to any remaining questions you might have:
1) Is Brad Thomas legit?
Anyone who's willing to participate in MarketWise's shenanigans has loose morals.
I don't know how you can see the marketing they do and want to be a part of that.
Not to mention, there are legit fraudsters selling newsletters at this company, and your name is going to get connected to that.
Putting that aside, I think Brad does have knowledge of real estate investing.
He wrote a book on the topic that has pretty solid reviews on Amazon (4.3/5 stars).
Brad also teaches classes at NYU.
2) How much does Intelligent Income investing cost?
Intelligent Income Investor costs $49 for the first year.
MarketWise owns over a dozen publishers, and they all have a newsletter (their flagship product) that costs $49 per year.
This is just to get you into the sales funnel.
Once in, you'll be pitched Brad's other products that cost thousands of dollars per year:
The funny thing is that the cheaper newsletters at MarketWise almost always perform the best.
The reason for this is that people typically only want to spend thousands on advanced investing strategies.
You'll see that Brad's other products have to do with option trading and high-yield investing.
These strategies are much riskier and tend to fail more than safe investing.
3) Is there a refund policy?
Yes, there's a refund policy for Intelligent Income Investors.
You have 60 days to get your money back.
You might be thinking this is a good refund policy, but there's more to it.
MarketWise only gives you cash refunds on cheap newsletters.
They don't mind giving back $49.
But they don't give cash refunds for their expensive products.
So if you do fall for one of the expensive upsells, you won't be getting your money back.
4) What is the investing strategy?
Brad likes to focus on income investments, and Intelligent Income Investor focuses on REITs.
REITs act just like dividend stocks, where a portion of the revenue of these companies is paid back to shareholders.
A REIT, in particular, owns and operates real estate that generates income.
For example, Prologis (the stock Brad is recommending as a secret royalty program of Amazon) owns warehouses and rents them out to companies.
Other REITs may own apartment buildings or office buildings.
These have been solid long-term investments, outpacing the stock market over the last 30 years.
However, more recently, they've been trailing the market for the last 5 to 10 years.
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Wrapping Things Up
That's the end of my review of Intelligent Income Investor.
This is just another MarketWise investing newsletter, and if I had to guess, I'd say they sell over 100 now.
They all work in the exact same way.
There's manipulative marketing to get you into the sales funnel, and then aggressive upsells to get you to spend thousands.
It wouldn't be so bad if the newsletters performed well, but every MarketWise newsletter I've looked at trails the market.
You get promised massive returns, and they almost never deliver.
In many cases, you'll end up losing money!
So my advice is to steer clear of MarketWise, which includes Intelligent Income Investor.
The good news is that there are high-performing investing newsletters out there.
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