It's Never Too Late to Keep Learning

What they don't teach you in school... An American story... Financial illiteracy... You're one of the smart ones... The world is not static... An opportunity to keep learning...

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Editor's note: I (Corey McLaughlin) am on the road, returning from services for a friend's passing. We'll return with more of our "regular" fare tomorrow, and we're keeping an eye on the markets and the economy...

Yesterday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggested more rate cuts from the central bank could come by the end of the year, but by the smaller 25-basis-point variety.

Today, workers began their threatened strike at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports... And Iran launched a missile attack on Israel in another escalation of the warring in the Middle East. Oil prices jumped around 5% on the news.

Friday brings the latest monthly "nonfarm payrolls" report and an updated U.S. unemployment rate. We'll explore these themes further in the coming days.

But for the bulk of today's edition, I want to reshare one of my favorite bigger-picture essays, which we originally published back in 2019 and have updated slightly for timeliness. The main idea – about the importance of financial education – actually came up with another friend earlier this week when we were talking about work.

As I hope you'll see, the topic is as relevant today as it was five years ago. And it's maybe more important, given everything we've seen in the economy and markets since then. Let me know what you think at feedback@stansberryresearch.com. Without further ado...

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The veteran Baltimore City cop started to talk about money...

We were sitting in the officer's makeshift office in West Baltimore's Pennsylvania Avenue Market. It's about a 10-minute drive from our Stansberry Research headquarters, but it might as well be an entire world away...

This is the part of Baltimore that was portrayed in the former HBO hit show The Wire... the blighted side. Most people would tell you not to come to this part of town at night, at least not without a police escort like I had...

Robberies, assaults, drugs, murders, shootings... Evan Anderson, then an 18-year Baltimore Police veteran, has seen all of it on a regular basis. For the fifth straight year, there had been more than 300 homicides in Baltimore... many in the district where he works. (The streak eventually ran nine years before the city recorded "just" 263 murders in 2023.)

In fact, as we talked – his now-standard-issue body camera pointed right at me – Anderson admitted people were probably dealing drugs on the street outside the building at that moment.

We were talking about something completely unrelated to regular Digest matters. But as so often happens, you'd be surprised at how much two ideas, or different worlds, are connected...

Across the country, a lot of folks try to offer solutions for the problems in low-income, high-crime areas like this one, Anderson said. They often suggest adding more (or fewer) cops or stiffer enforcement. But he went in a different direction with how to make things better...

'Schools don't teach people finance,' Anderson said...

"Most of us – not until we're adults, get credit, and mess up – we're not learning how to save or invest or anything like that," he said, alluding to his own experience in racking up consumer debt. "That's why a lot of people get in the situations they're in."

Finance should be a mandatory class in high school, according to Anderson. (I countered with middle school.) As he explained, maybe then people would find better ways to live, rather than taking a few bucks from a local drug dealer to go sell some products on the corner.

"We don't find out about finance and investing until we're already in trouble, then we go looking to learn, and you have so much ground to cover," he said. "My son is 16. I'm teaching him, breaking it down, that way he doesn't have to make the same mistakes I did."

This isn't just a Baltimore story, or even a low-income story. It's an American story...

Many Americans don't even know what "debt" or "interest" is. If you don't know what those terms mean, how would you know you should avoid it... much less, how to avoid it?

Regular Digest readers know we talk about debt a lot at Stansberry Research. In fact, we published an entire book about the country's astronomical levels of consumer, federal, and student-loan debt... which only a reset of our financial system – a so-called "debt jubilee" – will fix.

American household debt hit a record $17.8 trillion in the second quarter of 2024, according to the Federal Reserve... There were nearly 600 million credit-card accounts in the U.S. that same quarter... And inflation has been eating away at already-tight budgets.

Times are hard for a lot of people when it comes to money... and it likely doesn't shock many Digest readers that most of America is financially illiterate.

But the degree to which many Americans are "financially dumb" can still surprise you...

According to research a few years ago from the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, only 34% of 27,000 adult respondents to a nationwide survey could answer at least four of five basic financial literacy questions on topics such as mortgages, interest, inflation, and risk. That's down from 42% who could answer four of five correct in 2009.

In other words, we're not only already financially dumb as a population, but we're getting dumber.

It doesn't take a certified sleuth to tie our collective financial illiteracy to our growing mound of debt. This isn't just a pie-in-the-sky discussion in a vacuum...

It has gotten to the point where presidential candidates have wanted to wipe the slate clean... as if trillions of dollars in student loans were never approved.

Even the U.S. Treasury Department admits the role education plays in our collective debt nightmare...

In 2019, the Treasury Department recommended mandatory financial literacy classes to college students. You can read the 44-page report with the guidance right here.

In its recommendation, the department urged college kids to learn the basics of financial planning, and also pointed out that "the complex financial choices students must make are compounded by the fact that, for decades, the cost of college has been rising far faster than incomes."

For millennials – including those who finished college during the financial crisis and the younger end who graduated more recently – this idea comes too late.

A Wall Street Journal article about the country's largest generation was appropriately headlined "Playing Catch-Up in the Game of Life." Here's an excerpt...

American millennials are approaching middle age in worse financial shape than every living generation ahead of them...

Hobbled by the financial crisis and recession that struck as they began their working life, Americans born between 1981 and 1996 have failed to match every other generation of young adults born since the Great Depression. They have less wealth, less property, lower marriage rates and fewer children, according to new data that compare generations at similar ages.

Meanwhile, the Baby Boomers – our country's next-largest generation – are aging into retirement. By 2030, one in five Americans will be 65 or older.

That demographic shift will put unprecedented stress on health care and Social Security systems... the former of which is broken and the latter of which is going broke.

Now, if you're a regular Digest reader, we know you're one of the smart ones...

Our Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig touched on this in a classic Digest. It's well worth the read, if you haven't done so already. Doc wrote in part...

Think of all the time you've spent learning how to build your wealth...

Everything you learned to achieve what you have in your career... all the thought that has gone into spending wisely and saving as much as you can... and all the time you've spent learning how the world of finance works...

He continued...

Most people don't want to learn. I get it... Learning puts you face-to-face with something you don't know and makes you feel frustrated and inadequate.

We did it all the time as kids. But when we get to adulthood, we've got some sort of belief that we're supposed to already know everything. Not knowing something is seen as failure.

I can't imagine the opportunities – both financial and experiential – that get passed up by those folks who refuse to learn.

We see it in our financial-research business all the time... While we try to educate and explain in every issue, many readers just want a stock symbol they can go out and buy.

If you're in the select group of readers who actively pursue new knowledge... try to understand the markets... and have learned how to best manage your wealth... you deserve a pat on the back.

It's never too early or too late to learn – and keep learning...

The late Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's longtime partner at holding company Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B), once said, "Those who keep learning, will keep rising in life."

Munger also said, "Just because you like it does not mean that the world will necessarily give it to you."

In other words, nothing is guaranteed... but you must be in the game to have any chance at all.

Maybe a parent, guardian, or great mentor in your town turned you on to finance and taught you the basics of investing as a kid.

Or maybe you taught yourself about money... with lemonade stands... selling gum at school... or watching your grandfather write down stock tickers from the newspaper or television screen. Or maybe you worked your way through college.

I'm sure a good number of Digest readers might have their own fascinating stories about their investing origins. (We'd love to hear them at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.) And you've no doubt learned a lot of things since then.

But the world is not static...

Things change – and we must keep up with, or ahead of, the trends.

For a kid growing up in West Baltimore, that might mean learning the basics of savings, checking, and credit. For the child or grandchild in your life, that might mean learning about basic investment vehicles and the risk-reward ratio of going into debt to pay for college.

If you do nothing else with today's essay, perhaps let it inspire you to plant a seed about learning about money with a younger person in your life. Share this with them.

For experienced investors, "keeping up" can mean a lot of different things...

What can you do to make yourself a better investor? What can you learn that will take your investing to the next level?

Maybe you want to learn how to use trailing stops to protect your gains, or how to best allocate your portfolio... Maybe you want to better understand how high inflation changes the economy and markets as we've known them for the past several decades...

(By the way, I think we're seeing high inflation's influence again... We're thinking about inflation reigniting, as the Federal Reserve recently cut interest rates with the economy purportedly running at a 3% clip and the S&P 500 Index at an all-time high.)

An opportunity to keep learning...

Maybe – and I urge you to do this one – you want to be part of our annual Stansberry Conference. (While in-person tickets are now sold out, check out details here about our Livestream Pass for this year's event, which takes place from October 21 to 23 in Las Vegas.)

It's a terrific event, where our most popular editors like Doc, Dan Ferris, Eric Wade, and Greg Diamond – plus special invited guests – get together to share unique ideas on the markets, including actionable investment ideas you won't hear anywhere else.

This year, I'm particularly looking forward to hearing from Michael Lewis, the author of books like Moneyball, Liar's Poker, and Going Infinite, which tells the story of cryptocurrency exchange FTX's collapse and the enigmatic founder at its center, Sam Bankman-Fried.

Lewis is scheduled to sit down with Stansberry Research founder Porter Stansberry for an interview on the opening day of our conference.

That's just the start of a jam-packed three days, which will also feature former Texas Governor Rick Perry, two Pulitzer-Prize-winning writers, and my friend Howard Lindzon, the founder of Stocktwits and someone who taught me and many others so much about finance.

I know I learn new things every year, and I expect to again in a few weeks in Vegas.

Again, you can find more information on our speaker lineup and Livestream Pass here. New this year, our Livestream Pass allows you to interact with presenters and attendees like you're in the room... and tour a virtual exhibit hall.

Whatever you decide, just remember what I learned from the Baltimore Police veteran.

And remember Charlie Munger's quotes...

If you're always willing to keep learning, you'll keep rising in life.

New 52-week highs (as of 9/30/24): American Express (AXP), Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), Alpha Architect 1-3 Month Box Fund (BOXX), BWX Technologies (BWXT), Carlisle (CSL), CyberArk Software (CYBR), Western Asset Emerging Markets Debt Fund (EMD), Expeditors International of Washington (EXPD), Fidelity National Financial (FNF), Home Depot (HD), iShares Convertible Bond Fund (ICVT), iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense Fund (ITA), Lockheed Martin (LMT), Lynas Rare Earths (LYSDY), McDonald's (MCD), NYLI CBRE Global Infrastructure Megatrends Term Fund (MEGI), Meta Platforms (META), Mueller Industries (MLI), VanEck Morningstar Wide Moat Fund (MOAT), NVR (NVR), Oracle (ORCL), Invesco High Yield Equity Dividend Achievers Fund (PEY), RenaissanceRe (RNR), Revvity (RVTY), Sprouts Farmers Market (SFM), SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Value Fund (SPYV), ProShares Ultra S&P 500 (SSO), TransDigm (TDG), Toast (TOST), Trane Technologies (TT), and Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLU).

In today's mailbag, feedback on Dan Ferris' latest Friday essay... Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.

"Dan, Thank you for the reminder about Bob Farrell's rules. I often think about one of the last ones... 'bull markets are more fun than bear markets'. Maybe the 'public' is most interested in having fun? Haven't seen the reddit crowd making headlines in a bit.

"Thank you for your great insight!" – Subscriber Chris B.

All the best,

Corey McLaughlin
Bay Shore, New York
October 1, 2024