Porter's Greatest Stocks of All-Time... and Dozens More to Watch
Porter's greatest stocks of all-time – and dozens more to watch... 'This is like hitting the pause button'... Goats, moats, and bats... Doc's special COVID-19 briefing... Record one-week unemployment claims... The virus is everywhere people are...
'I wouldn't be surprised to see stocks at new highs by the end of this year'...
Stansberry Research founder Porter Stansberry made that statement earlier today in a special video presentation with our Director of Research Austin Root.
If you missed it, be sure to click here to watch the replay. We believe any investor will find the talk insightful and well worth the time.
In short, Porter and Austin not only covered a lot of timely information about the COVID-19 crash and what might happen next in the markets... but they also talked extensively about how to successfully invest for the long term.
The discussion covered what Porter looks for in the type of stocks he considers the "Greatest of All-Time"... how to spot the world's best businesses... and why he's talking about this all right now...
Porter believes investors currently have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to buy shares of these sorts of high-quality companies – like Coca-Cola (KO), American Express (AXP), and Starbucks (SBUX)... and hold them and make money forever. As Porter said in today's broadcast...
This is a rare opportunity like the Great Depression, like 2008 or 2009 [in the financial crisis]. This is the opportunity that you've been waiting for.
I never thought ever in my career that I would get a chance to buy these stocks at the kind of prices we saw in '08 and '09. I thought that was gone forever.
As Porter describes it, he didn't know "they ate bats in Wuhan" or that a sick animal would cause a pandemic that sparked the fastest drop into a bear market in U.S. history... spur businesses to close their doors around the country... and force almost everyone to stay home for weeks.
But now that it has happened – and especially if your stop losses have been triggered recently during the stock market's drop and you're sitting on a pile of cash – you should take advantage of what he thinks is a short-term blow to the broader market and global economy...
This is like hitting the pause button. It might take 60 days to get everything back to normal, but the market's going to look past that... There is no permanent change to the U.S. economy or world economy.
We're not talking about a permanent disruption to trade between China, America, and Europe. This is all going to go away. As soon as that becomes really clear, and the timetable for that going away can be plotted, stocks will rebound.
As we'll share later in today's Digest and as Porter mentioned, we're not out of the virus woods yet. The number of cases worldwide crossed 500,000 today.
Still, as of today's close, we've now seen the major U.S. indexes rebound 20%-plus in three trading days (a one-week bull market!) as the details and a timeline of the government stimulus package have become clearer...
In any case, Porter says the pandemic has created a tremendous opportunity to buy his 'GOATs'...
These are his "Greatest of All Time" stocks... not a reference to any animals from a farm.
These "GOATs" are the stocks that Porter says you should buy and never sell – as long as you want to make money. They're great, world-class businesses, and they all have two distinguishing characteristics going for them.
These traits should sound familiar to longtime Stansberry Research readers...
- A capital-efficient business model, and
- Economic goodwill
Take Coca-Cola, for instance. This is the first stock Porter ever bought. And in today's discussion, he shared why the company has been so successful...
First, its capital-efficient business model (Coke basically sells syrup to bottlers and owns a huge distribution network)... and the power of economic goodwill (when the company changed its soda formula in the 1980s, for example, customers started stocking up on "Old Coke").
And all the cash the company generates from its business lines allows it to use its market-dominating position to buy stakes in new products – like millennial-friendly Monster Energy drinks or staple products like bottled water – and plug them into its existing network...
The money rolls in and growing dividends are consistently paid to investors.
And this is just one example...
Porter and his research team put together a list of 40 great stocks to potentially own forever...
Longtime subscribers may recognize a lot of these names for their GOAT traits...
I (Corey McLaughlin) am not giving too much away because Porter mentions them during the broadcast... We're talking about companies like Coke, fast-food giant McDonald's (MCD), and chocolate maker Hershey (HSY)...
But roughly half of the stocks on this "shopping list" are less known...
These are the "greatest stocks nobody has heard of"... companies like insurance provider W.R. Berkley (WRB)... and a select group of "up and comers."
These businesses aren't covered much in the media, but they also have the specialized services and competitive moats in their industries that Porter and our research team value.
So there you have it. Goats. Moats. And all because of bats. Like we said, the video is worth a watch. Click here to view it right now for free.
Speaking of video, Dr. David 'Doc' Eifrig and senior analyst Matt Weinschenk recorded a special COVID-19 briefing...
We urge you to check out this special video briefing that they published yesterday.
The video is available to anyone... And Doc's subscribers can check their inboxes or the Retirement Millionaire, Retirement Trader, Income Intelligence, and Advanced Options product pages for more detailed information about the strategy for those publications.
The video is about 50 minutes long and well worth your time. Plus, we made a transcript available for browsing, too.
Like we touched on in Monday's Digest, when we shared an excerpt from Doc's most recent Retirement Trader issue, Doc and Matt detailed the possible recovery scenarios for the market in yesterday's video...
They laid out their 'best case,' 'baseline,' and 'worst case' outcomes for the markets, the economy, and the virus...
The outcomes range from a peak in COVID-19 cases in two to four weeks and a sharp market rebound... to six to eight months of more widespread uncertainty, 20% unemployment, and a long, slow recovery.
In part, Matt explained why small businesses are feeling such a big, quick impact as government officials enact "social distancing" measures to help prevent the spread of the virus.
Matt shared the results of a study showing that many small businesses' "cash buffers" – how much money they have on reserve in income stops – is typically 27 days. For restaurants, the average buffer is 16 days. As Matt explained in the video...
That's scary. And even well-run businesses and even conservative businesses have never prepared for a decline in revenue to zero. Right? A 100% decline in revenue has never even been on the table before.
If you're smart and you say, 'Hey, someday we might have a recession,' but what do you buffer for? A 30% decline? A 40% decline? Never a 100% decline.
All kinds of businesses have had to furlough or lay off employees because making payroll is simply an impossibility. That's especially true for businesses considered "non-essential" and unable to even open due to restrictions surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak.
And business isn't exactly booming for the ones that are open... We went into a local pizza place last night here in Baltimore. We were the only customers there during what's normally a busy time. A skeleton crew of employees was working.
It's the same story at a lot of places, and it all adds up... to $2 trillion stimulus measures, to people looking for work, to people wondering how long it will all last.
No wonder more than 3 million Americans filed for unemployment last week...
That's according to government data released this morning... 3.3 million to be precise.
That's nearly five times the previous weekly record back in 1982. For context, the worst weekly jobless number in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008 was 665,000.
Jobs were just part of the extensive discussion between Doc and Matt... They also covered what they themselves would consider when deciding whether to buy or sell stocks now.
This is the sort of service Doc's subscribers have come to expect from him after more than a decade in this business. For more from Doc, Matt, and his entire research team, we urge you to start by signing up for their free daily Health & Wealth Bulletin newsletter. You can do that right here.
The spread of the disease that sparked this bear market has yet to slow down...
This is something Doc and Matt talked about at the start of their video yesterday.
Today, according to the most cited numbers we can find from Johns Hopkins University here in Baltimore, the disease is doubling among Americans between every two and three days... and at a rate that's the fastest of any industrialized nation.
The U.S. has more cases today than both China and Italy – the other poster-children for infections – had reported at the same point in the virus's spread in those countries. (We're talking about 20 days after the first 100 reported cases.)
We've missed the boat on early preventative measures that countries like Singapore successfully employed. (Our international editor Kim Iskyan, who lives there, reported on that in last Monday's Digest.)
In the meantime, hope of a safe and effective treatment is still just that...
Sure, we sense there may be less overall "fear of the unknown" in the world today than a month ago – which is a big deal for public and financial health alike. But that still doesn't do much to stop a contagious, invisible virus from spreading.
People are dying from the virus in big cities like New York. The outbreak is growing in other large metropolitan areas like New Orleans and Atlanta.
And we don't know how well our social-distancing measures here in the U.S. will really turn out for probably weeks or months.
Here in Maryland, public schools are closed for at least another month, which gives a sense of the gravity of the situation.
In the short term, there's still uncertainty about the outbreak itself... even if it's now crystal-clear the Federal Reserve will print into the ether...
The disease continues to pop up wherever people are right now...
That means the "real," on-the-ground economy is still upside down...
Our colleague and Stansberry Venture Technology editor Dave Lashmet shared a simple-yet-powerful visual for context.
It compares the map of confirmed cases of the virus with what the U.S. looks like from space on a clear night, all lit up by the electricity of our population centers...
Things are far from "normal," but hopefully – day by day, six feet by six feet – we're getting there.
New 52-week highs (as of 3/25/20): none.
In today's mailbag, one subscriber considers the impact of "commission free" brokerages on the speed of this month's sell-off... Do you have any questions or comments for us? As usual, send an e-mail to feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
"How's this for a theory: The reason the market saw such a steep decline was because most brokerage houses have gone 'commission free' recently. So Joe Blow the investor figured 'I might as well sell now since it won't cost me any commissions, and if I am wrong, I can jump back in for no cost.' And now, the reverse will be true for the move back up. My .02." – Paid-up subscriber Randall B.
All the best,
Corey McLaughlin
Baltimore, Maryland
March 26, 2020