The Key to Becoming a Better Health Care Consumer

Our time in Las Vegas is ending... The 'buying opportunity of the decade'... Chinese tech stocks are set to rise from the ashes... WallStreetBets founder talks 'meme stocks' and more... Managing your 'No. 1 asset'... The key to becoming a better health care consumer... How you can watch (and rewatch) everything...

As we write this Digest, our latest adventure in Las Vegas is nearly over...

Our annual conference is concluding today with the lifetime-members-only Stansberry Alliance meeting. It's one of the biggest perks that we offer to our most loyal supporters.

Unfortunately, we can't give away too many details of what's happening behind closed doors. But we can tell you that it isn't a typical boring boardroom meeting...

Alliance partners heard from Trish Regan, the publisher of online magazine American Consequences, to kick off the day. Later in the morning, Keith Kaplan, the CEO of our corporate affiliate TradeSmith, discussed exactly how you can "BULLetproof your portfolio."

Plus, as always, we put together a series of expert panels for attendees... These sessions allow our Stansberry Research editors to detail some of their favorite investment ideas. It's also a great way for Alliance partners to get answers to their most pressing questions.

Normally, the Stansberry Alliance is an invitation-only membership. But if you're interested in learning more today, we encourage you to contact a representative at 888-863-9356.

For now, we simply want to share a few other highlights from our time in Vegas...

To start, we learned that Chinese technology may be the 'buying opportunity of the decade'...

That's according to Brett Eversole, who works closely with Steve Sjuggerud on the True Wealth team. As you might recall, Brett's colleague and True Wealth Opportunities: China analyst Brian Tycangco touched on this opportunity in the September 30 Digest.

During his presentation on Tuesday morning, Brett called Chinese tech stocks "the world's most hated investment"... And even better, he highlighted two great ways to play this sector.

Brett started by reviewing the principles that have guided Steve and his team for years. As regular Digest readers, you probably recognize them...

• Focusing on stocks that are "cheap, hated, and in an uptrend"
• The importance of putting "boots on the ground" to see things firsthand

The second aspect is critical because not everything is what it seems from far away... And it's only by going there that you'll uncover opportunities you didn't even know existed.

As Brett explained, China's tech sector has been battered by a broad regulatory crackdown...

It started with Beijing blocking the highly anticipated initial public offering ("IPO") of fintech giant Ant Group in November 2020...

Then, e-commerce giant Alibaba (BABA) was hit with a $2.8 billion fine in April of this year... A few months later, Chinese ride-hailing service DiDi Global (DIDI) was charged with violating data-security rules less than two days after a splashy New York Stock Exchange IPO that raised $4.4 billion... And in July, Beijing banned the for-profit education-tutoring sector.

These regulatory crackdowns – and numerous others – caused investors to flee from Chinese tech stocks. Rather than try to understand the aims of the Chinese government, investors simply sold their shares and moved on.

In response, prices crashed across the board...

Shares of gaming and entertainment powerhouse Tencent (TCEHY) dropped roughly 45%... Alibaba crashed about 50%... and the KraneShares CSI China Internet Fund (KWEB) dropped around 55%.

These stocks became hated. But as Brett noted... as a result, they're now attractive to investors.

Many of these stocks are trading at or near all-time low valuation levels. For example, in terms of both price-to-earnings and price-to-sales valuations, Alibaba shares have never been cheaper, while Tencent shares are lower than they've been in 15 years.

Meanwhile, the sector is continuing to post strong growth. E-commerce sales have gained 70% over the past five years... And Brett says that the sector should rise at a similar rate through 2025 as another 250 million people in China will be buying online.

Brett shared two great ideas to take advantage of this trend with conference attendees. In fairness to those folks, we can't share the specific details here... But as he explained, they're positioned to move up strongly in the coming months and years.

And in short, it's clear that some Chinese tech stocks offer an incredible opportunity today.

After Brett's presentation, Jaime Rogozinski shed some light on the 'meme stock' euphoria...

As we've discussed in the Digest many times before, Rogozinski founded WallStreetBets.

The anonymous individuals on the discussion website Reddit battled hedge-fund short sellers of "meme stocks" like GameStop (GME) and AMC Entertainment (AMC) earlier this year. The saga caught everyone's attention as the amateurs seemed to win the battle with those stocks and others soaring "to the moon."

During his presentation Tuesday morning, Rogozinski said that the rising influence of retail investors – that is, individuals rather than institutions – in the stock market is here to stay. He suggested that these folks are bringing in a new way of valuing companies.

Rogozinski cited GameStop as an example for the crowd...

The short squeeze that pushed GameStop's share price up from around $10 per share in October 2020 to a closing high of $347 per share a few months later has long since ended... And yet, the company still maintains a market cap of roughly $13 billion right now.

However, the video-game retailer is losing money.

Unlike some startups that can get away with not earning a profit while sporting multibillion-dollar valuations, GameStop has been around since 1984. Put simply, it has no excuse.

By any normal valuation metric, GameStop shares appear massively overvalued.

That's not how Rogozinski sees it, though... He reasoned that the stock being valued at that level "makes the company legitimately worth that much. There's something in there that's not what we're used to thinking of in terms of how we value companies." In other words, if that is what investors will pay, then that is what it is worth. (During an interview with CNBC in May, he dismissed valuation "bubbles" as "a Boomer term.")

Whether you agree with Rogozinski or not, the important point we want to make today is simple... At the Stansberry Conference, you'll hear many different viewpoints on the markets.

In his wide-ranging presentation, Rogozinski also touched on non-fungible tokens, his efforts to create a next-generation exchange-traded fund via the blockchain, and how the people behind the GameStop and AMC stock-buying events are "real sophisticated people."

In the afternoon session, our colleague Thomas Carroll detailed how you can manage your 'No. 1 asset'...

By that, he's referring to your health.

Tom is the editor of our Cannabis Capitalist newsletter. But regular readers know that his background extends much further than that...

Over the course of his lengthy career, Tom has worked in health care finance in a range of roles across the industry. He's now our in-house health care expert.

In other words, Tom is perfectly positioned to speak about the American health care system and how you as consumers interact with it. He describes your health as "an asset that needs to be managed like any other."

Tom started off by explaining that when it comes to your own health, you must be your own advocate... You can't expect your doctor, hospital, or anyone else to look out for your most important asset. To put it simply, he noted...

Being a better health care consumer can save your life.

Tom then shared a series of ways to make yourself a better consumer of health care...

First, he highlighted the primacy of hospitals in the cost structure of health care...

Although the high price of pharmaceuticals gets a lot of bad press, hospitals actually accounted for a much larger portion of health care costs last year – 51% to 11%. And from 2010 to 2020, hospital costs rose 5.4% per year, compared to just 2.2% per year for drugs. By comparison, inflation during that decade averaged 1.7% per year.

Knowing where your health care dollars go will make you a smarter consumer.

Even worse, not only are hospitals a cost problem, they're also a health problem...

In short, if you want to stay healthy, Tom recommended staying away from hospitals... They're "disgusting, germ-filled, and inefficient," he said. He cited a 2018 study that found that 1.7 million people in the U.S. get infected in hospitals every year – and 99,000 of these folks die. That's an incredible 6% mortality rate.

Of course, it should go without saying that if you're suffering serious medical issues – chest pain or breathing trouble, for example – you should go to the hospital. But Thomas' point is to try to avoid acute care hospitals if you can.

And what about health care costs in retirement?

While Medicare is a great program, on average, it will cover only 60% to 70% of your total health care costs. And you'll still have to pay for prescriptions.

So Tom suggested an alternative that can be very good for the right retiree – something called Medicare Advantage ("MA").

This is the private sector packaging your Medicare in a more effective way – it's cheaper, offers more benefits, and is easier to use. "Young" retirees just out of the workforce find it similar to employer-sponsored health care. It does have its limitations, though.

MA is not for everyone... If you're a well-off retiree and money is not tight, traditional Medicare will be fine for you.

Finally, Tom said, 'Don't hate your HMO... Invest in it!'...

HMO stands for "health maintenance organization" – your health insurer.

Tom explained that health insurers have a built-in price inflator... American health care inflation averaged 10% from 1966 to 2016.

In the end, like Brett did with Chinese tech stocks, Tom recommended four health care stocks that should benefit from what's happening in the industry. He believes that health care, which accounts for nearly 20% of the U.S. economy, is full of opportunity – though it requires a lot of expertise.

Again, we can't give away any of the specifics in fairness to conference attendees. But as you can see, anyone can take advantage of these major trends. And of course, you can still get access to these specific names and dozens of others that were discussed this week...

Even though we're flying back to Baltimore in the morning, it's still not too late to get in on the action...

In short, we're offering a special deal on an online "All Access Pass" for the next few days.

When you sign up, you'll have much more time to watch (and rewatch) the presentations from this year's event... The high-quality video replays will remain in our event archive for you to view at your leisure for the next 60 days.

Plus, we'll soon include summaries and full transcripts of the presentations... That way, you can easily follow along without needing to worry about taking your own notes or missing something important. You'll already have everything you need right at your fingertips.

Even better, your purchase comes with a special bonus gift that's valued at $500.

But don't delay... This offer won't be available much longer. We've heard from the folks who put together the conference that they're planning to pull it offline as soon as this week.

New 52-week highs (as of 10/26/2021): Automatic Data Processing (ADP), Bath & Body Works (BBWI), CBOE Global Markets (CBOE), CoStar (CSGP), Cintas (CTAS), Freehold Royalties (FRU.TO), Intuit (INTU), Novo Nordisk (NVO), S&P Global (SPGI), ProShares Ultra S&P 500 Fund (SSO), ProShares Ultra Semiconductors Fund (USD), ProShares Ultra Financials Fund (UYG), and Vanguard S&P 500 Fund (VOO).

The mailbag is quiet today. Who was your favorite presenter from the 2021 Stansberry Conference? Why did you like that presentation? We'd love to hear your thoughts, comments, and observations about the conference at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.

Good investing,

Kim Iskyan and Dean Jones Jr.
Las Vegas, Nevada
October 27, 2021