The most shocking advice you'll ever get...

The most shocking advice you'll ever get... How to protect yourself from the financial crisis that's about to crush America... Why Ron Paul is warning Americans today... Stocks that can survive anything and will still make you rich... The one stock everyone should own today (yes, I really name it)...

Since 2006, I've been writing these Friday Digests with one thought foremost in my mind: Across the breadth and depth of what we publish and the landscape of the world's economic environment, what would I most want you to tell me, were our roles reversed.

Today's Friday Digest will prove to be no exception to this rule...

I genuinely believe that if you're willing to read carefully and think about the ideas I discuss below, today's essay will change most of your financial lives forever.

Today, I'm going to show you a single security that you can buy (at a very attractive, safe price) that I'm 100% convinced will offer you complete security, no matter how bad things get economically. In my opinion, this company is 100% certain to double your money over the next four to six years. No, I can't promise you'll get rich overnight. But I can promise you will make a killing in this stock over a reasonable time frame.

Here's the irony, though... The information about which stock to buy is the least valuable piece of information I'm sharing with you today. What you'll find below is a secret way to measure the quality of different businesses. This makes perfect sense, but it has been almost completely forgotten on Wall Street. It's a way to approach the market and your investments that will always work and will make you vast amounts of wealth. Why isn't this method taught anywhere else? Because it works... and few people have any reason to share a golden goose.

But first, I want to share something that someone said about me a few days ago. Don't skip this part. It's important...

I've received similar endorsements from many well-regarded financial experts over the years. And I must admit, comments like these mean a lot to me. When someone like billionaire investor Jim Rogers or master speculator Doug Casey or renowned humorist P.J. O'Rourke or brilliant hedge-fund manager Erez Kalir tells you that you're a good analyst or that you've written something particularly insightful or novel... well... it's motivating.

This kind of recognition is my primary motivator today. That may sound shallow or strange, but it's the truth. I've built a well-known and profitable financial-research company. I've earned the trust (and the business) of hundreds of thousands of investors around the world. I'm humbled by that responsibility and take it seriously. But what keeps me working 10- or 12-hour days (I'm writing this at 11:30 p.m. on Thursday night) is the desire to earn the respect of my peers. I wonder how many of you understand that motivation. (I'd love to hear from you about it: feedback@stansberryresearch.com.)

But the endorsement above doesn't come from a hedge-fund manager or a financial analyst. Those words belong to former congressman Ron Paul. Dr. Paul is a genuine American hero, a man who spent 22 years of his life actively working inside Congress to salvage our country's finances and protect the liberty of his fellow citizens.

You may not agree with Dr. Paul's politics. You might not want to see less government intrusion into our lives. Maybe you believe a powerful central government is necessary to protect our country. Or maybe you believe that a powerful central government is necessary for to achieve social justice... and "spread the wealth around."

That's fine. Political opinions are like noses. Everyone has one. But I'm not asking you to listen to and agree with Ron Paul's politics. What I'm asking you to do is to listen to what Ron Paul is saying about our government's finances and the risks the Federal Reserve is taking by printing trillions and trillions of dollars. Dr. Paul spent decades on the House Committee on Financial Services. Nobody knows more about how much money our government really owes... or what Congress is prepared to do to protect its power to spend vastly beyond its means.

Ron Paul agreed to write the foreword to the latest edition of my new book, America 2020. Perhaps you've already seen it. If you haven't, I'd urge you to get a copy today. (Subscribers to my Investment Advisory already have access to an electronic version through the special reports section of the Investment Advisory website.) Read what Dr. Paul says in the opening pages. This book is a survival guide for the coming crisis. It will not only help you survive the crisis... It will help you master the financial forces in our economy today, allowing you to profit from the challenges facing us. As Dr. Paul says about this book...

America 2020 isn't a normal book about "big picture" economics or general investment strategies. It's a blueprint for the financial future. It is full of direct, specific, actionable advice – like how to get real, hold-in-your-hand silver for less than $3 (page 57). This is the absolute best way to buy silver in the world. And it's important to remember that silver is the ultimate currency in a real financial crisis – in some ways even better than gold.

There's detailed information on the world's three safest currencies. You can buy them right here in America, without ever leaving home, without ever opening an "offshore" account or anything like that (page 109).

There's also a complete section on the secret paper "currency" used by the world's wealthiest people. This has nothing to do with the U.S. dollar, the euro, the Swiss franc, or any other traditional currency. It also has nothing to do with gold, silver, or any precious metals. These certificates are among the most lucrative investments in the world. They allow you to completely separate as much money as you want from the U.S. banking system (page 118).

But it's not all "end of the world" advice. It's simple, safe, practical information you can use today to have a better financial life... like the No. 1 way to generate reliable income in America over the next decade. Forget bonds, CDs, or other risky investments that won't keep up with inflation. This is the safest way to get all the income you need for retirement (page 255).

There's way more stuff in America 2020 than I can even hint at today. You should know it's all of my best advice for how to protect yourself and prosper in the years ahead. You should know that it was good enough to earn Ron Paul's endorsement, motivating him to write the foreword to the book.

In fact, I recently had the great honor of sitting down with Dr. Paul to talk about his views of where our country's finances are headed. It was a huge privilege... and all of our subscribers should take the few minutes to watch it. You can view that video – and learn how to get a copy of my book – right here.

Now... The book includes one strategy that I believe will surprise a lot of people. I worry that this advice will prove to be so shocking that it might cause people to doubt the other strategies I've written about. Unlike just about everyone else who is gravely concerned about the future of our country, I believe one of the best ways you can protect yourself from what's coming is to buy stocks.

That's right. I think you should buy stocks, especially if you're still working and trying to save for a retirement that's still a decade or more away. If you don't learn to buy the right stocks in the right way with a substantial portion of your savings, I'm convinced you're going to end up with a much lower standard of living over the next decade.

The reason why is simple: By printing massive quantities of money and facilitating another huge financial bubble (this time centered in fixed-income securities, like bonds), the Fed is setting us up for another, even bigger financial crisis. So how can you protect yourself by buying stocks?

Take a moment and look down at the bottom of today's Digest, where we list the "Top 10" best-performing current stock recommendations. These are all stocks that were recommended in our newsletters. (Note: we don't include Dave Lashmet's small-cap Stansberry Venture picks because they are tiny stocks. We keep their names strictly private, even though two of them have gone up more than 100% in just the last four months.) You'll notice the only stock I currently have in the Top 10 is candy maker Hershey.

If you look carefully, you'll see that not only have we made more than 175% on our investment, but more important, we made this recommendation to subscribers at the tail end of 2007... after the worst bear market most of us have ever lived through was underway.

Between November 2007 and March 2009, the U.S. stock market (as measured by the S&P 500) fell nearly than 60%. In other words, we recommended buying Hershey at the worst time imaginable – by conventional wisdom – in your entire investing career (unless you invested through the 1932 bear market). Even so, over the course of the next seven years, we earned almost 200% on our money.

This wasn't an accident. If you go back and read my original December 2007 recommendation of Hershey (which we've "unlocked" for you here) and my reiteration of that recommendation in January 2009 (when it was even more attractive), you'll see that I explained – in great detail – why Hershey is a special kind of business.

Hershey will make money for its shareholders no matter what happens with the stock market or its share price (in the short term). We call these companies "capital efficient" because they're able to return a large amount of their profits to shareholders without requiring much capital to maintain its business. But that's not the only factor that matters for successful investing in a time of crisis.

What's so special about Hershey? First, it makes a low-cost, high-margin product. Because almost every American can afford its product, Hershey is able to make outrageous profits selling its chocolate bars.

Most important, it's able to raise prices no matter what the economic environment. In the mid-2000s, gross margins (the amount of money Hershey makes upfront on each sale) were in the mid-30% range. Those margins grew during the financial crisis and have now reached a huge 45%.

For every dollar of candy that Hershey sells, it's keeping nearly half of that revenue in gross profit. Few businesses offer investors both low prices (high sales volume) and extremely rich gross margins. These businesses tend to be extremely resilient to economic downturns because they have the ability to raise prices without affecting demand for their products. They're like a "get out of jail free" card for investors during tough times.

The second thing that makes Hershey special is how well it's managed. There are some unique reasons for this in Hershey's case, including a controlling investor (the Milton Hershey Trust) that is legally not allowed to sell. Costs are kept under tight control. As a result, the company's operating profit margin is in excess of 20%.

This is a critical threshold. Companies that are able to earn profit margins this wide will almost inevitably produce a ton of cash. What happens with that cash depends on the nature of the business and the quality of the company's management. In Hershey's case, over the last 10 years, it has returned $6.4 billion to investors via both share buybacks and cash dividends.

Remember that Hershey's market capitalization – the value of all of its outstanding shares – at the time of our recommendation was only around $10 billion. Thus, shareholders who bought 10 years ago have already received 64% of their initial investment in direct payments from Hershey's management. With those kinds of cash returns and the recession-resistant nature of its business, it doesn't matter what happens to the company's share price in the short term.

Other investors miss the opportunity in Hershey for two important reasons. First, most investors pay far too much for growth and not nearly enough for a solid business that throws off a ton of cash. In the mid-2000s, Hershey wasn't growing much. As a result, Hershey's share price fell to a low level when measured against the amount of cash it was producing. We like to evaluate capital-efficient businesses on the basis of the cash they generate from operations, before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization – a measure of profits known by its acronym "EBITDA." While measuring profits by EBITDA might not be a good idea with most companies, it works well to evaluate capital-efficient companies because they require so little capital investment to grow, hence why we call them "capital efficient."

Just think of it this way... How often does Hershey have to build a new factory or invent a new chocolate bar? Almost never. As a result, its cash accounting tends to project a much more realistic picture of its actual results than its official earnings number does.

So while Wall Street continues to see Hershey as a company that earned almost $900 million last year, we know it actually produced $1.6 billion in cash – a dramatic difference. And because so little of that cash will be spent on capital investments, a lot of it – in some years, all of it – can be returned to shareholders. It's this rare and special quality that we're looking for...

With capital-efficient companies, you can enjoy the same kind of capital appreciation you find in most stocks (especially when you buy them at low prices, like around 10 times cash earnings)... but you'll also enjoy the stability and the additional returns generated by huge payouts and buybacks. That's the magic. That's what explains the exceptional, world-beating performance of this stock – even in the midst of a complete financial collapse.

How can you find more stocks like this? Easy. My research team and I have recommended many of them in my Investment Advisory, including a new recommendation from January that I believe will prove to be our best long-term recommendation since Hershey.

We also publish a once-a-month update on all of the most capital-efficient stocks in the market as part of our Stansberry Data supplemental service (called the Capital Efficiency Monitor). This, of course, is available to lifetime subscribers of my Investment Advisory.

What if you want to look for these kinds of businesses on your own? Here's where to start: Look at the amount of cash a firm is able to generate on net tangible assets. Hershey operates its business on a sliver of capital. Remember, it doesn't have to build facilities all over the world because chocolate doesn't spoil easily.

Hershey only employs around $2.5 billion on net tangible assets. It's able to earn more than 60% a year in cash profits using these assets. That's a remarkable figure. It gives you a much more accurate measurement of the quality of this business than the official return on equity that's generated using GAAP accounting rules.

GAAP, by the way, stands for "generally accepted accounting principles." Don't roll your eyes... A critically important secret lies behind the jargon.

What GAAP accounting attempts to do is to determine how much a company earns in any given year. This system of accounting was built to serve the railroads in the 1800s and the early 1900s. Specifically, most of its conventions were designed by the Pennsylvania Railroad, which, in its heyday, represented the largest accumulation of capital in human history. The dominant concern of the accounting system was keeping track of these assets, understanding how much capital would be needed to maintain the assets, and understanding the rate at which these assets deteriorated. Think of GAAP accounting as the perfect way to manage a railroad.

The market tends to price most operating businesses on the basis of their official return on equity, which is determined using GAAP accounting to define what earnings were in a given year. The problem (and the opportunity for us) is that GAAP doesn't do much to help investors understand the real economics of firms that have few tangible assets.

Therefore, GAAP almost always understates the real economic earnings of these firms. Over time, these annual understatements compound into huge differences that are critical to investors wise enough to spot the discrepancies.

Take a royalty company like Royal Gold or a beverage company like Coca-Cola, whose primary assets are intangible brands. There are no meaningful depreciation charges against these kinds of assets. High-quality brands are far more likely to appreciate on an annual basis than they are to depreciate.

But under GAAP, the value of a company's intangible assets (categorized as "goodwill") is never revised higher. Likewise, few capital investments are required for the maintenance of intangible assets. Coke doesn't need to build a new physical structure to enhance the value of its trademark. In these kinds of businesses, GAAP accounting tends to woefully understate the real, long-term economics.

You'll notice that capital-efficient firms always report far more cash earnings than net income – the official GAAP accounting earnings number. That occurs because the size of the depreciation charges (which count against official net income earnings) are exaggerated in firms that have long-lived assets or, like McDonald's, that receive most of their income from intangible brands and from royalty streams.

Now... looking again at the Stansberry Research Top 10 at the bottom of today's Digest... can you find a similar business that's capital efficient... that sells a high-margin product at a low price point... that is all but immune to recessions or economic troubles? I see two of them: fast-food titan McDonald's and tobacco giant Altria. Only one of these two stocks is currently trading for just more than 10 times cash earnings (EBITDA)... McDonald's.

Few investors realize what a great business McDonald's really is because most investors focus on GAAP accounting. Consider this... McDonald's current GAAP account price-to-earnings ratio is 20. That's pretty expensive. It's almost twice as expensive as we view the price of the company – 11 times EBITDA.

But the stock is cheap (no matter what GAAP accounting claims) because McDonald's has been suffering from a bad CEO for several years (who was recently replaced). Because of this, McDonald's has seen revenues slow and even shrink slightly. And Wall Street worships growth above all else.

How does McDonald's perform on our capital-efficiency tests? Last year, its gross margins were almost 40% and its operating margins were an incredible 28% on sales of nearly $28 billion. And that was a "bad" year.

Although GAAP accounting only credits McDonald's with earning $4.7 billion, the company actually produced 42% more cash from operations and was able to return more than $6 billion to its shareholders.

What about our quick test of quality and capital efficiency – the cash return on tangible net assets? McDonald's earned 66% on its tangible assets last year... about the same as Hershey. The secret to McDonald's is that it is primarily a franchiser. McDonald's doesn't own or run most of its locations. It simply collects royalties. That's the kind of business you want to be in.

Incredibly, over the last three years (all of which came during the previous CEO's reign), McDonald's was able to return more than $15 billion to its investors via dividends and share buybacks... without growing. Even at this reduced pace, McDonald's shareholders will receive capital returns (via dividends and buybacks) equal to the entire value of the company today in about 17 years.

Of course, it won't actually take that long. The new management team will reboot the company's franchise. Perhaps it will buy growing burger chain Shake Shack, similar to its previous stake in burrito chain Chipotle. Or maybe it will create some new product or promotion that takes off. Brands like McDonald's don't just go away. They come back. There's a big growth spurt at least once a decade. And when that happens, these cash distributions will soar.

My prediction is that over the next decade, McDonald's shareholders will receive returns of capital worth at least $100 billion – more than the entire business is worth today. If you're a shareholder, do you have to worry about what the stock price will do tomorrow or next week? Nope. You're going to get paid no matter what happens. And even after you've been paid back more than 100% of what you put up to buy the business, you'll still own a piece of the company, which by then will surely be worth a lot more.

So far, investors who bought McDonald's way back in 2006 – again just before the worst financial Armageddon of our lifetimes – have already made nearly 200% on their money. I'm confident that based on McDonald's current share price, similar (or even superior) returns are currently available to any investor wise enough and patient enough to buy McDonald's stock today.

There's essentially no risk to this investment at this price given McDonald's brand, locations, price point, margins, and capital efficiency. So... if you're looking to protect your wealth during a financial crisis (you should be), look no further than the oldest recommendations still sitting in our Top 10 list. These types of companies are a great way to get rich, no matter what happens to the economy or to the stock market.

New 52-week highs (as of 4/9/15): AllianceBernstein (AB), Aflac (AFL), Brookfield Asset Management (BAM), Global X China Financials Fund (CHIX), Energy Transfer Equity (ETE), iShares China Large-Cap Fund (FXI), Prestige Brands Holdings (PBH), Constellation Brands (STZ), Guggenheim China Real Estate Fund (TAO), and ProShares Ultra FTSE China 50 Fund (XPP).

A question about our business model and whether we're anything like an insurance company in today's mailbag. We're sure the mailbag will be bursting at the seams over the weekend with today's news. Don't be shy. Tell us how you really feel at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.

"I've wondered how you could make so many offers of expensive publications (e.g., Stansberry Venture) with a 6 month (or whatever) money-back guarantee. I think I figured it out. Like the insurance companies you recommend, I think you must benefit from the 'float.' This is not an accusation or even a criticism. So long as you really honor the guarantee (and I know from personal experience that you do), I see nothing wrong with this. As Ollie North once said, it's 'a neat idea.' And I suppose a number of folks even continue their subscriptions, which is even better." – Paid-up subscriber Gary Burfoot

Porter comment: I wish. No, there's no investable float in our business. Our obligations (refunds) are very short term in nature and the size of these obligations varies tremendously.

On the other hand, there are benefits to selling a subscription upfront and then fulfilling it. The subscription model greatly diminishes the amount of working capital our business requires because our customers pay upfront.

Sounds great, but it's actually a double-edged sword. Most customers are unwilling to engage in subscription-based relationships. We know our response rates would greatly increase if were allowed to simply sell our products directly, at a fixed price, without the follow-on subscription burden. So why do we only sell newsletters via subscriptions? Because SEC regulations require the subscription model. Without the subscription, in the eyes of the federales, we wouldn't be "bona fide" publishers.

Regards,

Porter Stansberry

Baltimore, Maryland

April 10, 2015