Empire Financial Research Review – Scam or Legit? Exposed!

Empire Financial Research is an investment newsletter that claims to help you generate passive income. The question is, is the founder Whitney Tilson telling the truth, or is this one big scam?

I understand there are so many scammers in the investment field. And you may hesitate to subscribe to his investment newsletter. 

Having tried out different investment strategies, I can recommend an investment newsletter based on my experience.

At the end of this article, I’ll also tell you a much better alternative that can help you generate passive income with almost zero risk. 

Who is Whitney Tilson?

Whitney Tilson is the man behind Empire Financial Research. He is the founder and former managing partner of Kase Capital in the United States. He has co-authored several books on investing (including Poor Charlie’s Almanac) and numerous articles in the Financial Times, the New York Times, Forbes, and Kiplinger’s. 

Tilson is also known for promoting brightly colored shorts. In 2016, he appeared on 60 Minutes and claimed that Lumber Liquidators’ flooring products contained dangerous levels of formaldehyde. The stock dropped as a result, and 60 Minutes won an Emmy for investigative journalism for the episode.

However, since 2014, Kase Capital’s AUM has steadily declined, leading to the fund’s closure in 2017. After the fund’s demise, Tilson founded Kase Learning, a company that claims to educate the next generation of active managers.

In fact, Whitney simply shifted his business focus to stock picking service for retail investors. Empire Financial Research was born at this time.

However, since its inception, Empire Stock Investor has underperformed in the market.

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What Is Empire Financial Research?

Empire Financial Research is an investment newsletter. An investing newsletter is a collection of stock picks, market analysis, and other investment advice. These newsletters are typically delivered via a subscription model, in which you pay a set amount per month or year to receive the newsletter.

Whitney Tilson claims that his strategy offers subscribers the opportunity to capture huge long-term gains by buying stocks while they’re still cheap.

In his latest presentation, he highlights a particularly promising opportunity that offers members an opportunity to play for growth on the ground floor.

What Does Empire Financial Research Offer?

Empire Financial Research is a typical investment service and offers what every other investment newsletter does.

The following is a breakdown of everything you get:

Empire Stock Investor ($49 Per Year)

Empire Stock Investor is the flagship newsletter of Empire Financial Research and is managed by Whitney.

This is probably the newsletter you’ve been considering and the reason you’re in my review right now.

This newsletter works like any other investment newsletter.

You’ll receive a monthly issue with new stock recommendations, a sample portfolio, special reports, etc.

Also, the stock picks are large caps and you’re supposed to hold the stocks for 3 to 5 years.

Empire Breakthrough Investor ($3000 Per Year)

This newsletter is one of several upsells you will receive after joining the Empire Financial Research sales funnel.

Enrique Abeyta heads Breakthrough Investor, which specializes in SPAC, IPO, and pre-IPO investing.

This is an extremely long-term investment strategy, with some of these investments lasting a decade.

It is also recommended to start with $10,000.

Empire Elite Growth ($3000 Per Year)

Empire Elite Growth is similar to Empire Stock Investor, but much more expensive.

This newsletter serves as a supplement to Empire Stock Investor, which focuses on large cap stocks.

Again, this is a long-term holding service and you can expect to hold some of these investments for more than a decade.

Empire Elite Options ($3000 Per Year) 

This service is aimed at more active traders and those who want to achieve much faster returns than the other available services.

You will receive option alerts twice a month and will be able to buy and sell positions within a few months, if not weeks.

Empire Elite Trader ($69 Per Month)

Empire Elite Trader is a swing trading service focused on mid to large-cap stocks.

Every Wednesday you’ll receive a trading alert, and you’ll hold your positions for a few days to a few months.

Empire Investment Report ($3000 Per Year)

This is another newsletter for small and medium businesses.

There is only one real difference between Empire Investment Report and its predecessor, which focuses on smaller stocks.

This service suggests investing in stocks for two to three years.

Herb Greenberg’s Investment Opportunities ($3000 Per Year)

Herb Greenberg runs this investment newsletter, which focuses on industrial services stocks and consumer and health care stocks.

Herb also recommends SPAC mergers.

Holding periods range from two to five years.

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Empire Financial Research Pricing

As you can see, the flagship newsletter of Empire Financial Research only costs $49 per year.

You will, however, be pitched much more expensive products as soon as you subscribe to the newsletter. In my experience, very expensive stock picking services are rarely successful. 

For the first year, you might be able to get a discount. If you’re interested in the newsletter, contact Empire Financial Research and see if you can a discount on your subscription. 

Is There A Refund Policy?

There is a 30-day money-back guarantee for the cheapest newsletter they offer. The expensive upsells, however, cannot be refunded.

In my opinion, 30 days aren’t nearly long enough to determine if their stock picking services are good. You won’t have time to test their investment strategies. 

Who Is Empire Financial Research Not For?

This newsletter is not for risk-averse investor who prefers lower returns with known risks rather than higher returns with unknown risks.

Most stocks recommended by Empire Financial Research are risky. There will be big swings in either direction. Trading these stocks is difficult because they aren’t well known.

If you are risk averse, index funds might be a better option for you. Since an index fund mimics its underlying benchmark, there is no need for an efficient team of research analysts to help fund managers pick the right stocks.

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Who Is Empire Financial Research For?

Their newsletters are only suitable for experienced investors with spare funds. I say this because you will have to investigate these companies on your own. Whitney Tilson’s research on the products is not enough for me to trust him.

In some cases, there is very little information available about the recommended stocks, so only experienced investors might be able to do further research.

Empire Financial Research Pros

1. Whitney Tilson is an experienced investor 

The investment ideas are given by Whitney Tilson, who has a lot of experience in the investment field. The knowledge or skill he acquires through direct participation in investment activities or market events is valuable. There may be some merit to some of his recommendations in the long run.

2. Affordable

The subscription fee is affordable to most investors. In spite of this, you should avoid buying upsells that offer little value to the membership service.

Empire Financial Research Cons

1. Stock investment is risky

The risk of investment is still high even with the Empire Financial Research’s analysis or recommendation. They don’t give any kind of guarantee. Some stocks can lose value, even all their value, if market conditions sour. Microcap stocks are particularly vulnerable to market manipulation.

2. Expensive upsells that don’t deliver much value

Upsells from Empire Financial Research are expensive, but they don’t make much difference to the basic plan.

3. You’ll need a considerable amount of initial capital 

Technically, there’s no minimum amount of money needed to start investing in stocks. But you probably need at least $200 — $1,000 to really get started right. For example, to buy a stock priced at $60 per share, you will need $6,000 in your account.

4. You still have to count on your investment skills

Empire Financial Research only gives you some insights or ideas about investment opportunities. But for the execution part, you still have to rely on your own judgment and skills. 

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Is Empire Financial Research Or Whitney Tilson A Scam?

I don’t think Empire Financial Research or Whitney Tilson is a scam.

But you must note that 95% of new traders lose their money and most of them fail to recover the money even in the long run.

Besides, on the official website, they promise you that their strategies will never cause any financial loss to you. In another word, the amount of profit is always higher than the loss.

Is that possible? To say that Empire Financial Research can secure the students from loss actually implies that the academy can get access to all kinds of insider information which is exactly not the case.

In fact, no matter how experienced you are in trading, you are still exposed to lots of uncertainties that might blow off your hard-earned money at once.

At the end of the day, Whitney Tilson’s recommendations or ideas can only serve as a reference for making an investment decision. And you have to bear your own risk in doing stock trading.

Is There an Easier and Better Alternative to Make Passive Income?

Although investing is one of the most popular ways to grow your wealth and give you some passive income, the stock is unpredictable.

Even if you have the tips or insights from the so-called experts like Whitney Tilson, it doesn’t guarantee you will win in the stock market. Only God knows when the stock price will rise or plunge. You may be able to make some money in a few attempts, but lose it all in the other attempts.

So if you really want to make a stable and secure stream of passive income, I would suggest you starting an affiliate marketing business online instead.

Affiliate Marketing is perfect for anyone who is new to online business.

In fact, of all the online business models I’ve tried, affiliate marketing is the easiest and most rewarding so far.

In affiliate marketing, you can actually run your business almost with zero cost and achieve a steady and sustainable passive income to pay for your bills. You don’t need any initial capital and can even do it as a side hustle.

And if you really want to learn affiliate marketing and build a business from scratch, I’d recommend you to get started with the most reputable platform for affiliate marketing: Wealthy Affiliate.

Wealthy Affiliate is an all-in-one platform for building your affiliate marketing business from scratch. It offers you a free account (including a free website) with comprehensive training on SEO (free traffic methods), which enables you to get started with affiliate marketing right away without paying a penny.

But How Much Can You Earn with Wealthy Affiliate ?

A 21-year old student from Wealthy Affiliate was able to earn $7,395 in just 1 week, which means he made more than $1k a day…all while using free traffic methods.

Wealthy Affiliate has existed for 15  years and there are many success stories in the past decade.

To give you more examples, here are some of the other inspiring success stories of Wealthy Affiliate members.

Where to Join Wealthy Affiliate?

Wealthy Affiliate has a very simple pricing scheme. It has free and premium membership.

If you want to feel about Wealthy Affiliate, you can sign up for the free starter membership here (no credit card required). You can select to be a free member with no time limit.

And as a starter member, you can get instant access to the community, live chat, over 500 training modules, 2 classrooms, networking, commenting, 1 free website, access to the keyword tool.

You can enjoy all these values without paying a penny.

So I strongly recommend you to register a free account and see it yourself.

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