Worrying about winning... An extreme example... Calling tops is not a skill... The key to making big gains... The shining star of global markets... 'Breakdown of the monetary order'... Nobody knows when to sell...
Editor's note: We're publishing Part II of our annual Stansberry Research Report Card tomorrow, so regular Friday essayist Dan Ferris is writing today's Digest. Enjoy...
Good investors worry a lot about losing...
That's a blunt way of saying that recognizing, understanding, and controlling risk are important skills every investor must learn. Without them, actively managing your own portfolio is more likely to create heartbreaking losses than satisfying gains.
The first and most important goal of these skills is avoiding catastrophic loss (which we alluded to last week).
In addition to cutting losses quickly, most experienced investors don't enter a new position without intimately understanding the downside risks. Every new trade is like an underwriting exercise, where the trader is willing to bear a certain amount of risk in hopes of receiving adequate compensation.
But I (Dan Ferris) don't want to talk about how you ought to handle losing today. I want to talk about something many investors spend little – if any – time worrying about.
Winning.
I can almost hear you thinking, "Worrying about winning? What is there to worry about?"
In short, the worry is the same whether you're winning or losing. You must preserve the wealth you have today so you can build on it tomorrow.
The meme-stock craze provides an extreme example...
In 2021, investors poured into video-game retailer GameStop (GME) after a clever analyst concluded it was undervalued.
On January 27, 2021, GME hit an all-time high closing price of $86.88 per share. That was more than 6,500% above its August 27, 2020 closing price of $1.31. A move like that would turn every $1,000 invested into more than $66,000. That virtually never happens in five months. If it happens at all, it normally takes decades.
A $65,000 profit on a $1,000 bet is a huge gain for anyone who "YOLOed" into a position.
But how many meme-stock buyers overstayed their welcome and didn't sell immediately? You see, the losses arrived about as quickly as the gains.
Just 15 days later, the stock had plummeted nearly 90% to $10.17. If you bought it for $1.31 and sold it for $10.17, you still wound up with more than $7,700 from a $1,000 investment. That's a fantastic result for just five months, but it's also demoralizing to watch the bulk of your gains quickly disappear without knowing what to do.
And markets tend to attract the most participants at the peak of a manic bull run.
I'd wager many folks bought GME at or near its all-time high and hung on too long, losing a ton of money.
Now, there's no trading strategy to call the top of a bull market. The top will come and go, and we won't know until it's long past.
I'm simply pointing out that huge speculative bull runs are often fleeting... and the big gains are rarely captured by many, if any. The market is a fickle beast that will steal your gains away as quickly as you made them if you don't take action.
So instead of focusing on maximizing gains, you need to avoid losing most of those gains.
Minimizing losses can be crafted into a repeatable, effective strategy. And there are time-honored methods for doing that.
Limiting risk and avoiding losses is the key to making big gains...
It's an example of "via negativa," Latin for "the negative way." It's an idea I've mentioned before, which is best explained in Nassim Taleb's 2012 book, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder:
[I]n practice it is the negative that's used by the pros, those selected by evolution: chess grandmasters usually win by not losing; people become rich by not going bust (particularly when others do); religions are mostly about interdicts; the learning of life is about what to avoid.
In short, making money trading isn't so much about knowing how to win as learning how not to lose.
Yet, the desire for fast profits (really the fear of missing out on gains) reins in a bull market, especially during manic runs like we've seen in several assets in recent weeks. Folks who give in to greed and the fear of missing out often wind up watching gains turn into losses... and then small losses turn into catastrophic losses.
Those who fear losing what they've made and have a good trading plan will capture meaningful gains and never blow up their accounts with big losses. They embrace via negativa and learn to focus on what to avoid (like the "pros" Taleb cites).
Now let's apply this thinking to the current shining star of financial markets...
Silver is on a breathtaking run. As I write, it's trading near new all-time highs of more than $121 an ounce. It's up more than 55% since January 1 and more than 250% over the past year.
As you can see in the chart below, silver started its bull run around October 2025, then went ballistic at the start of the year. My Ferris Report subscribers are up about 415% on the iShares Silver Trust (SLV). And Extreme Value subscribers are up more than 500% on our Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV) recommendation.
A moment ago, I told you to generally handle gains the same way you handle losses: by preserving what you have so you can compound your wealth in the future.
The basic mechanism most of us at Stansberry Research use to protect our gains is trailing stops. Whether it's silver stocks, exchanged-traded funds ("ETFs"), or trusts, a trailing stop establishes the maximum loss you're willing to tolerate from the highest price achieved during your holding period.
For example, if silver hits $200 and you use a 25% trailing stop, you'll sell your position if the price falls below $150 an ounce. If you bought well below current prices, you'd preserve a large profit. If silver goes to $1,000, you would sell at $750, and so on. For publicly traded metals funds, trailing stops are sufficient.
For example, in The Ferris Report, I won't recommend selling SLV until it closes 35% or more below its high closing price. I established that 35% trailing stop when I initiated the recommendation roughly three years ago. In other words, I established the maximum loss I was willing to tolerate even before making the recommendation.
Experienced speculators – especially those who trade the smallest-cap mining stocks – often use another risk-control method. When a position doubles, they sell half, preserving their initial investment while maintaining the potential for further upside.
Small mining stocks are more explosive and can rise and fall more in a single session than you'd ever believe, so you can use the "sell half on a double" idea to great effect.
Suppose you didn't sell at a 100% gain and are now holding a fast 300% gain in a small, speculative mining stock. If you think there's more upside, you might sell one-third of the position to preserve your initial investment and maintain plenty of exposure to further upside. You can tailor the amount you sell to your own risk tolerance and desire to remain exposed to further upside potential.
All great traders learn to determine their maximum loss tolerance for every trade. Your own risk tolerance might differ from mine. If it's lower, you'll use a tighter stop, and if it's higher, you'll use a wider one.
So far, I've focused on silver as a trade...
I have a good reason for doing so. As I pointed out earlier, its price has recently gone ballistic. And ballistic price movements don't tend to resolve by going sideways. They plummet.
GameStop's 6,500% rise (which ended with a 700% surge over four trading days), was followed by a 74% drop over the following four trading days.
So who could blame anybody for wanting to take some silver profits off the table here? Not me. Silver is essentially behaving almost as wildly as a meme stock right now. You should think about the circumstances where you would exit a silver position, if you haven't already.
It's up to you to decide if you'll take your initial stake off the table now or employ a trailing stop on the position − and how much you'll sell if your stop is hit.
Now, there are fundamental reasons to keep holding physical silver. Its structural supply deficit has been years in the making and will not be easily made up. The same is true of copper, uranium, and other critical materials that our modern high standard of living can't exist without.
Meanwhile, billionaire hedge-fund mogul Ray Dalio has suggested that we are living through the "breakdown of the monetary order." If that's true, then silver and gold are essential holdings, regardless of any short-term market volatility.
This brings me to my final point about silver...
I suspect many readers view their physical silver as a long-term, forever holding. They own silver for its monetary characteristics, essentially for the same reason they own physical gold.
If you own silver because you thought it would go up and then you would sell it, that's a trade... and you should have already established when and why you'll sell.
But if you own silver because you believe it will help you through a potential monetary crisis, that's a completely different strategy.
If Dalio is right, silver's and gold's recent epic rallies are signaling the monetary crisis is here. That's why I own physical metal in addition to a silver bullion ETF.
As adamant as I am about having plans to sell trades, I've never made any plans to sell my physical silver. I'll keep it for as long as I can. Maybe one day when I think I don't have much longer to live, I'll divvy it up among the grandkids. Or maybe I'll sell it or donate it.
The best news I have for you this week is this…
There's no wrong time to sell a big winner...
There's no "perfect" time to sell. You can only determine when you're willing to sell.
Fortunately, you will never lose money taking profits, especially on huge winners. But you do have to accept that when you sell, while you're no longer exposed to downside potential... you're also no longer exposed to upside potential.
So if the asset's price keeps soaring, you'll have to make a new decision about whether to reenter or accept that you've taken your profits and it's time to move on to something else.
Selling isn't a prediction. It's a risk-management decision. As long as you understand that, you won't get sucked into poor decisions.
In sum, how to handle a big winner is a good problem to have... and it's one that a lot of folks have right now.
New 52-week highs (as of 1/28/26): Agnico Eagle Mines (AEM), First Majestic Silver (AG), Applied Materials (AMAT), Barrick Mining (B), BHP (BHP), BP (BP), Century Aluminum (CENX), Chevron (CVX), iMGP DBi Managed Futures Strategy Fund (DBMF), iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ex China Fund (EMXC), EnerSys (ENS), Equinox Gold (EQX), Ero Copper (ERO), iShares MSCI South Korea Fund (EWY), Cambria Emerging Shareholder Yield Fund (EYLD), Freeport-McMoRan (FCX), Comfort Systems USA (FIX), Franco-Nevada (FNV), Freehold Royalties (FRU.TO), VanEck Gold Miners Fund (GDX), VanEck Junior Gold Miners Fund (GDXJ), SPDR Gold Shares (GLD), Alphabet (GOOGL), Hawaiian Electric Industries (HE), iShares Convertible Bond Fund (ICVT), KraneShares MSCI Emerging Markets ex China Index Fund (KEMX), Kinross Gold (KGC), Kinder Morgan (KMI), Lockheed Martin (LMT), Mueller Industries (MLI), Newmont (NEM), OR Royalties (OR), Ormat Technologies (ORA), Pan American Silver (PAAS), abrdn Physical Palladium Shares Fund (PALL), Sprott Physical Gold Trust (PHYS), Sprott Physical Silver Trust (PSLV), Royal Gold (RGLD), Sibanye Stillwater (SBSW), Sprott (SII), Skeena Resources (SKE), iShares Silver Trust (SLV), Solstice Advanced Materials (SOLS), SSR Mining (SSRM), Torex Gold Resources (TORXF), Sprott Physical Uranium Trust (U-U.TO), Uranium Energy (UEC), UGI (UGI), ProShares Ultra Gold (UGL), Global X Uranium Fund (URA), Vale (VALE), Telefônica Brasil (VIV), Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM), State Street Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLE), ExxonMobil (XOM), and Zoom Communications (ZM).
In today's mailbag, a question about the 52-week highs list that we include in our daily e-mails... Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
"Corey/Nick, I hate to keep badgering on you guys, but CAT continues to make new all-time highs and it never makes your 52-week high list. Why is that?" – Stansberry Alliance member John M.
Corey McLaughlin comment: Thanks, John. Not badgering! It's a quick answer: The 52-week high list at the bottom of our e-mails only includes stocks making new yearly highs that are also open Stansberry Research recommendations.
Currently, none of our editors have recommended a position in Caterpillar (CAT), though if you're interested, Ten Stock Trader editor Greg Diamond regularly tracks the stock and trades it fairly frequently in his advisory. (Subscribers can find his past updates on the stock after clicking the "research" tab on our redesigned website.)
While we're on the subject of our 52-week high list (which has been very long on many days lately), one more note that I think is important...
The list pulls from open recommendations from our editors' publications, which should be celebrated. But it doesn't represent buy recommendations or mean that you should blindly buy any or all of the stocks on the list. It's possible, and likely, that prices on a recommendation have risen to a level where they're above our editors' buy-up-to advice, based on their research and analysis or strategy.
As always, follow our editors' instructions on prices and other notes like position sizing and stop losses in our paid publications.
Good investing,
Dan Ferris
Medford, Oregon
January 29, 2026
