Is Luke Lango’s Innovation Investor Really Good Or Scam? [2024]

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Is Luke Lango really legit?

Does his investment membership product Innovation Investor have a good track record of better-than-average returns?

Can you really get exceptional returns by following Luke Lango’s stock recommendations?

Are there any other better alternatives?

Who Is Luke Lango?

So, who is Luke Lango?

Luke Lango is in his late 20s.

According to Investor Place’s website, Luke Lango graduated from Caltech with a degree in Economics.

He previously worked at a fintech startup Scoutables, designing cash flow management models for professional sports organizations based on player injury and performance data.

After that, he went on to be the founding manager at L&F Capital Management, a small family-owned investment fund based in San Diego where they combine quantimental analysis (i.e. fundamental +quantitantive) with behavioral economics to identify long-term growth investment at early stages.

I did a bit of research, and it seems that L&F Capital Management ceased its activities in 2019 after about 4 years.

In 2019, Luke Lango joined Investor Place as an equity analyst and is the author of many paid investment newsletters such as “Innovation Investor”, “The Daily 10x Stock Report”, “Early Stage Investor Breakout Trader”, and “Ultimate Crypto”.

Luke Lango’s Innovation Investor Investment Strategy

Luke Lango launched his investment newsletter “Innovation Investor” in December 2020.

Here’s his investment process for picking stocks:

1. Identify investment megatrends
2. Find the most innovative companies that will dominate the megatrend
3. Pick innovative megatrend leaders with the most hyper-scalable business models

Once they identify a megatrend, they buy a small group of companies equally so as not to put all hopes on just one stock.

Here are the investment megatrends that Luke Lango has just revised recently:

• Renewable energy
• Electric vehicle
• Autonomous vehicles
• Synthetic biology
• Automation
• Space exploration
• Blockchain
• Metaverse

From Dec 2020 to 2021, below were the eight investment megatrends that Luke Lango was recommending his Innovation Investors members to focus on:

• Renewable energy
• Electric vehicles & Autonomous vehicles
• Space exploration & tourism
• Plant Power (e.g. plant-based food, cannabis, etc)
• Artificial Intelligence, Big Data & IoTs
• Digitalized entertainment
• E-commerce
• Enterprise Virtualization (cloud, e-learning, etc)

I was just wondering if it was really a megatrend, wouldn’t it last for at least many years if not decades?

During 2020 -2021, one of the megatrends that Luke Lango identified was Plant Power.

According to Luke Lango, “A wave of new academic research coupled with shifting consumer attitudes and changing laws is paving the path for a new class of foods and drugs to fundamentally alter our consumption and treatment habits in the 2020s.”

That’s why he recommended the following three stocks:

• Beyond Meat (with a recommended buy price of up to $150)
• Canopy Growth (with a recommended buy price of up to $27)
• WM Technology (Weedmaps) (with a recommended buy price of up to $24)

By the way, all these three companies are not profitable, and they were so-called “story stocks”.

Let’s see how these stock picks performed.

Beyond Meat (with a recommended buy price of up to $150)

Canopy Growth (with a recommended buy price of up to $27)

WM Technology (Weedmaps) (with a recommended buy price of up to $24)

For both Canopy Growth and WM Technology, Luke Lango issued a “Sell” alert to take losses on these two stocks in Nov 2021.

As you can see, it’s highly risky to invest in unprofitable “story stocks”.

“Story stocks” only do well when there is widespread market euphoria (i.e. stock market bubble) and people are not prudent with their investments.

At the end of the day, the share price of most “story stocks” would probably fall by more than 90%.

Next, let’s look at another megatrend e-commerce that Luke Lango identified and the stocks that Luke Lango recommended.

• Farfetch (with a recommended buy price of up to $55)
• Wayfair (with a recommended buy price of up to $300)
• POSH
• Square (with a recommended buy price of up to $210)

Luke Lango recommended these stocks around their historic high. Three of these stocks have since fallen by almost 90% and the last one has dropped by about 60%.

Farfetch (with a recommended buy price of up to $55)

Wayfair (with a recommended buy price of up to $300)

Square (Now stock ticker: BLOCK) (with a recommended buy price of up to $210)

POSH

Posh went into IPO around Jan 2021 and hit a high of around $100.

Ever since its IPO, its share price had kept dropping by about 80% to around $18.

Eventually, Posh got acquired for around $18 per share and got delisted.

As you can see from the above, Luke Lango identified two mega-trend “E-commerce” and “Plant Power” and recommended several stocks to ride these so-called megatrends.

The results were quite disappointing.

If you had invested in these stocks, you would be looking at more than a 50% loss for some and more than an 80% loss for others.

An innovation could change the world, but it does NOT necessarily mean that you could make money by investing in these innovative companies.

In fact, it’s very easy to lose money betting on the newest and most innovative companies that are not even profitable yet.

Here’s what Warren Buffett talked about cars when they were first invented and poised to change the world.

“What you really should have done in 1905 or so, when you saw what was going to happen with the auto is you should have gone short horses. There were 20 million horses in 1900 and there’s about 4 million now. So it’s easy to figure out the losers, the loser is the horse. But the winner is the auto overall. 2000 companies (carmakers) just about failed.

— Warren Buffett, speaking to University of Georgia students in 2001.”

Back then, cars were the most innovative technology.

With over 2000 car makers, only 3 companies survived.

What is more, these 3 companies (e.g. Ford, General Motors) cannot even grow your money as fast as simple businesses such as Coca-cola and Mcdonald’s did.

Of course, I am not saying that it’s not possible to make money by investing in innovative companies.

It’s just highly risky if the technology is new and the companies are not even profitable yet.

Luke Lango’s Innovation Investor Stock Picks & Performance

Now, let’s look at Luke Lango’s Innovation Investor stock picks and their performance.

When Luke Lango launched Innovation Investor in December 2020, below are some of the stock picks he recommended:

• Shopify (with a recommended buy price of up to $1000): down 57.11% as of March 2023
• Pinterest (with a recommended buy price of up to $60): down 62.74 % as of March 2023
• Snap (with a recommended buy price of up to $40): down 31.22% as of March 2023
• Twilio (with a recommended buy price of 320): down 77.64% as of March 2023
• Nio (with a recommended buy price of $47.98): down 81.05% as of March 2023
• Compass Pathway (with a recommended buy price of $48.08): down 82.22% as of March 2023
• SolarEdge Tech (with a recommended buy price of $273.5): up 21.39% as of March 2023
• The Trade Desk (with a recommended buy price of $86.69): down 34.95% as of March 2023
• Roku (with a recommended buy price of $281.33): down 34.66% as of March 2023
• Chegg (with a recommended buy price of $76.03): down 78.9% as of March 2023
• Axon (with a recommended buy price of 123.9): up 64.57% as of March 2023
• Tesla (with a recommended buy price of 149): up 27.79% as of March 2023

The majority of Luke Lango’s stock picks at the end of 2020 didn’t perform well.

My guess is that realizing that these speculative “story stocks” are too risky (i.e. many of his stock picks showing huge losses), Luke Lango changed his strategy and started to recommend a “two-portfolio” approach:

• Core Portfolio focuses on larger innovation stocks with lower risk profiles
• Venture Portfolio focuses on smaller innovation stocks with higher upside potential

For Core Portfolio stock picks, you would see some established large-cap companies (e.g. Google) and these relatively safer stock picks would help reduce the volatility in his model portfolio.

Next, let’s see his stock picks in the year 2021.

In the table below, you will only see the stocks that are still currently in his model portfolio.

Not included in the table below are some stock picks that Luke Lango has already told his members to cut losses in 2021 (e.g. Peloton, Skillz, etc).

Of course, there is also profit-taking (trimming 1/3 position) for some stocks such as Tesla, Shopify, Roku, and Axon.

But, I think overall there are still more losers than winners, with losses being larger than gains.

Luke Lango’s Stock Picks 2021	Return (as of March 2023)
AI Stock Jan 2021	-81.21%
Energy Stock Jan 2021	4.36%
EV Stock Jan 2021	-95.07%
Battery Stock Feb 2021	-81.03%
Energy Storage Stock Feb 2021	-76.87%
Software Stock Feb 2021	22.50%
Software Stock March 2021	-22.18%
EV Stock March 2021	-10.95%
Music Service Stock March 2021	-52.63%
3D Printing Stock March 2021	-87.58%
Aircraft Company March 2021	-59.15%
Biotech Stock March 2021	-32.99%
Cloud Computing Stock March 2021	-4.61%
EV Stock March 2021	-20.41%
Online Gaming Stock May 2021	-17.6%
Software Stock May 2021	-18.51%
Software Stock June 2021	-80%
Beverage Stock June 2021	45.23%
Software Stock July 2021	-75.52%
Autonomous Vehicle Stock July 2021	-85.64%
Autonomous Vehicle Stock August 2021	-50.47%
Real Estate Stock Sep 2021	-92.46%
Software Stock Sep 2021	-62.93%
Banking Stock Oct 2021	-61.19%
Real Estate Stock Oct 2021	-76.84%

Now, let’s take a look at Luke Lango’s stock picks in 2022.

Not included in the table below are some stock picks that Luke Lango has already told his members to cut losses in 2022 (e.g. Zoom, TuSimple, Astra, LivePerson, Beam Energy, etc).

Again, there were more losing stock picks with larger average losses than gainers in 2022.

Luke Lango’s Stock Picks 2022	Return (as of March 2023)
Software Stock Jan 2022	-40.34%
Cloud Computing Stock Jan 2022	-45.21%
Cloud Computing Stock Jan 2022	-52.09%
Cybersecurity Stock Jan 2022	-91.69%
Online Dating Stock Jan 2022	-67.96%
Software Stock Feb 2022	-13.62%
Biotech Stock Feb 2022	-67.77%
Financial Stock Feb 2022	-77.09%
Software Stock Feb 2022	-43.85%
Software Stock Feb 2022	-26.73%
Edu Technology Stock Feb 2022	50.66%
EV Stock March 2022	-28.16%
Cybersecurity Stock March 2022	-23.78%
Software Stock April 2022	49.77%
Sensing Technology Stock June 2022	-37.37%
EV Stock June 2022	-37.25%
Cybersecurity Stock June 2022	47.34%
Robotics Stock Aug 2022	15.51%
Software Stock Oct 2022	23.73%
Energy Stock Oct 2022	20.79%
IT Security Stock Oct 2022	-19.96%
Software Stock Oct 2022	18.44%
Technology Stock Oct 2022	-5.6%
Software stock Oct 2022	15.75%
Streaming Stock Oct 2022	27.31%
Software Stock Nov 2022	43.54%
Footwear Stock Nov 2022	50.8%
Technology Stock Nov 2022	91.67%
Battery Stock Nov 2022	-31.88%

Luke Lango’s stock picks in Oct and Nov 2022 performed quite well because they coincided with the market bottom in 2022.

The market rallied strongly in the first month of 2023.

So, what do I think of Luke Lango’s stock picks?

I feel that many of his stock picks are highly speculative and therefore highly risky.

The underlying businesses are not profitable, and they have no good fundamentals.

I wonder how Luke Lango could actually calculate a “fair value” for these businesses and decide it’s actually cheap to buy at the “recommended buy price”.

Take for example his “Autonomous Vehicle” stock picks (e.g. Aurora Innovation) and his “Space” stock picks (e.g. Astra Space).

Lastly, I feel that what he is doing is speculating rather than investing because he could exit his position within months either for profit or loss.

Personally, I think his style is just too speculative and risky.

Luke Lango’s Innovation Investor Pricing

So, what do you get as a member of Luke Lango’s Innovation Investor?

Here’s what is included in Luke Lango’s Innovation Investor:

• One-year membership where you receive a monthly research advisory letter with at least one new investment idea
• Free Reports with Attention-Grabbing Headlines: “The 4th Divergence: Three Companies That Could Snap Back 100% or More In Next 12 Months”, ” The Price: The Secret to Finding Undervalued Companies In a Bear Market”, “The Divergence Portfolio Purge”, and “The Project Titan Prospectus: How To Cash In One Apple’s Next Potential Trillion-Dollar Product”
• Innovation Investor Model Portfolio

How much does it cost?

Usually, Innovation Investor costs about $199 a year.

But right now, it’s only $39 a year.

Yes, it’s very cheap compared to the “subtly hinted massive potential returns” that members could get from Luke Lango’s stock picks.

This is a very typical sales tactic where he first sells just a (fully-refundable) super low-priced product to get more people in so that he could market other high-ticket products to them later on.

Here’s a list of high-ticket products that Luke Lango also sells:

• The Daily 10x Stock Report (monthly subscription product @$49/month)
• Early Stage Investor (Usual Price $5998; Now $1999)
• Breakout Trader (Usual Price $4000; Now $2146)
• Ultimate Crypto ($1999)

When I saw that he is also selling crypto investment products, that raised a big red flag for me.

Personally, I think that crypto is just a scam, and crypto speculators are simply playing a greater fool game.

Another big red flag is the “suggested massive returns” on its product sales page for Early Stage Investor.

Here’s a screenshot that suggests a potential 200% return in the next 12 months, a potential 1,500% return in the next five years, and a potential 5,000% return in the next decade.

Wow, I didn’t realize that making tons of money in the stock market is so easy.

On the other hand, we have legendary investor Warren Buffet who aims for an average of 15% annual return in the long term and he would be very contented if he could achieve it.

Is Warren Buffet underestimating how easy it is for average investors to make money from stock investing?

Below is Warren Buffet’s investment holding company Berkshire Hathaway’s stock performance.

So, I think Warren Buffet understands a thing or two about what is a reasonable and rational expectation of an investment return on stocks.

When you hear people say that you could double, triple, or even 10x your investment in a short period of time, you should be very cautious.

If the potential return is high, the associated risks are certainly very high.

Alternatives to Luke Lango’s Innovation Investor

Motley Fool Stock Advisor is focused on giving stock recommendations that are high-quality companies with long-term growth potential, which suits my investment philosophy.

The reason why I subscribe to Stock Advisor is to get stock ideas as Motley Fool has a proven record of finding stocks with massive upside potential.

Personally, I don’t buy every single stock recommendation.

What I do is that if I find any interesting stock pick, I will do my own research again using Seeking Alpha and Morningstar.

First of all, let’s take a look at their track record as of 26 June 2024.

Below is the performance comparison between Motley Fool Stock Advisor and S&P 500 between 2002 and 26 June 2024.

 

As of 26 June 2024, average Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendations have returned over 756% since inception while the S&P 500 has returned 161%.

In short, the Motley Fool Stock Advisor has outperformed the market 4 to 1.

But, what about its individual stock picks?

This metric is important because I might not be buying every single stock recommendation made by the Motley Fool Stock Advisor.

Below is a table that shows you the performance of individual stock picks over the years.

As of 6th September 2023, Motley Fool Stock Advisor has had 173 stock recommendations with 100%+ returns.

[Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Individual investment results may vary. All investing involves risk of loss.]

Will the Motley Fool Stock Advisor always be right about their stock recommendations?

No, because no one can be right about their stock picks 100% of the time.

Let me sidetrack a bit here.

If any stock picking service tells you that they have a close to 100% success rate on their stock picks and can guarantee you high investment returns, you should definitely stay away.

Even Warren Buffet has loss-making stocks in his portfolio, but he still achieves above-average returns because a few big gainers in the portfolio can make up for the under-performers.

What I like about the Motley Fool Stock Advisor is that they are very open and transparent about their bad investments.

As a member, I can see the performance of ALL its past and current stock recommendations (even for closed positions).

Some other stock-picking services that I’ve tried, don’t publish the performance of all their past and current stock recommendations, so it’s not easy for you to find out their true track record.

So, if you are thinking of getting into stock investing, I highly recommend the Motley Fool Stock Advisor because I think there are a lot of well-researched stock recommendations.

So, if you are thinking of getting into stock investing, I recommend the Motley Fool Stock Advisor because I think there are a lot of well-researched stock ideas.

By the way, I don’t buy every single stock recommendation by Motley Fool Stock Advisor.

I mainly used Motley Fool Stock Advisor to get stock ideas because they have a track record of finding multi-baggers.

For example, it first recommended Nvidia back in 2005, then again in 2009, then again in 2017.

It first recommended The Trade Desk in 2017, and has recommended it multiple times over the years as shown below.

It first discovered Netflix back in 2003 and has recommended it multiple times over the years as shown below.

So, I like to use the Motley Fool Stock Advisor as an important source of investment ideas.

I will read their research team’s analysis and then also do my own independent research on platforms such as Stock Rover and Morningstar before I decide whether or not I want to invest in the stock.

In terms of pricing, Motley Fool Stock Advisor is also much more affordable.

Usually, its annual subscription is $199.

Right now, there’s a special limited-time 50% OFF offer* for new members for the first year when you click the link here to try it out for 30 days with a Membership-Fee-Back Guarantee. (*Billed annually. Introductory price for the first year for new members only. First-year bills at $99 and renews at $199)

So, for $99 a year- that’s just $1.8 a week – you can gain unlimited access to their library of expert stock recommendations which are carefully selected to help you grow your wealth.

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