Leaving Las Vegas

Party's over... Recapping our Stansberry Research conference... A few more recession takes... This bankruptcy cycle is just beginning... What's brewing in commodities... A lot of words about books... Video replays coming soon...

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We're headed back home...

Just like that, our biggest event of the year is done. Our annual Stansberry Conference and Alliance Meeting is in the books, as we wrapped up three jam-packed days of presentations and events at the Encore at Wynn in Las Vegas.

If you missed any of our live coverage, check it out...

We started with hearing from Stansberry Research founder Porter Stansberry, the lighting-rod former pro cyclist Lance Armstrong, and Morgan Housel, and ended yesterday with Alliance Day, featuring exclusive stock picks from our editors.

I (Corey McLaughlin) shared highlights of each day (here are the Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3 reports). But there was so much going on, that we couldn't share everything live... So, today, as I fly back east to Baltimore, I want to empty some more of my notebook...

A few other recession takes...

We couldn't escape the debate about recession. Is one coming or not? I wrote a little bit about the topic yesterday... but we heard plenty more about it during the past three days.

Here are a few more takes, starting with Danielle DiMartino Booth, a former Federal Reserve employee and the founder of Quill Intelligence...

DiMartino Booth shared a boatload of data showing the impact of pandemic stimulus programs ending, the state of the U.S. consumer (in the form of a rising spike in Google searches for "can't pay my credit card"), and new jobless claims rising in more than 70% of states.

She calls it a "slow build" of economic stress and says a bankruptcy cycle is in its "infancy."

DiMartino Booth noted on Tuesday, the day after pharmacy Rite Aid said it would file for bankruptcy, that 11 companies with $50 million or more in liabilities have already filed this month alone...

This is what quantitative tightening does. You're depleting liquidity from the system. You're tightening lending standards...

Similarly, our Stansberry's Credit Opportunities editor Mike DiBiase thinks we're in the eye of a financial hurricane... Mike says he expects the second half of the storm to strike in 2024 as the effects of persistently restrictive interest rates and dwindling money supply hit the economy.

As he said on stage yesterday...

I believe there will be no soft landing. "Higher for longer" is the Fed's new mantra, and that changes the game. I think a recession is all but guaranteed... Every single recession indicator is saying the same thing...

On top of that, we've got record debt at the corporate level, and the individual level, and the federal level. We've got credit tightening at the highest level since the financial crisis, and we've got a new world of higher interest rates. I don't think the markets have fully digested that reality yet.

The better news is, as Mike said, this next "credit crisis" will be a great opportunity to buy the kind of corporate bonds that he recommends in Credit Opportunities. We're not quite there yet, though... So on Alliance Day yesterday, he offered a pair of cheap retail stocks that have a track record of thriving during recessions and have minimal debt issues.

Yesterday, Gold Stock Analyst editor John Doody also said "you probably should" assume a recession is coming and prepare your portfolio as such. He recommended a gold stock that Mr. Market is mispricing, which he said could double – even in a recession.

What's brewing in commodities...

On this topic, Rick Rule – the veteran investor, founder and CEO of Rule Investment Media, and longtime friend of many of our editors – delivered his typical wisdom on the natural-resources space...

We have been through, as a species, 40 years of a magnificent economic climate. But for four decades, really since the middle of the 1980s, we have invested insufficiently in developing capital and sustaining capital around natural resources.

We've underinvested in oil and gas, copper, and agricultural materials. That worked because we invested so much in the '60s and '70s that we lived off the fat, the surplus, that we made 40 years ago.

But if you look around the world at the big oil fields and coal mines that we live off of, they look like me: 70 years of age, well past their prime.

He ran through the names of several copper mines that are decades old and have seen little investment.

Overall, Rule said that commodity supply is tight and that in five years, the economy will have shortages of key resources. He sees this as an opportunity over the long run in commodities.

Books!...

One of my simple pleasures about our conference is the free books that we give away, particularly from guest speakers... The Money Game by "Adam Smith" is an all-time favorite.

This year, copies of Ben Mezrich's Dumb Money and Meb Faber's compilation of the world's top investment strategies, Global Asset Allocation, were up for grabs... So were investing classics, like Edwin Lefèvre's Reminiscences of a Stock Operator and Tony Robbins' Money: Master the Game. I've got a lot of reading to do when I get back home.

On a related note, our Stansberry Innovations Report, Crypto Capital, and Crypto Cashflow editor Eric Wade has written a book, America vs. Americans, that's due out in February and available for preorder now. Here's an Amazon link.

In the book, Eric will present the concept of "American Laborism," a revolutionary new economic system, where the greatest commodity isn't cash, it's work. Why? Because capitalism is broken, he says...

After all, the U.S. economy infamously features the largest wealth gap in American history, a failing Social Security system, a weak currency, and a looming threat of artificial intelligence destroying our workforce.

As Eric suggests, we need a new system – one built around people rather than capital. He says it would be a system that values each person's unique contribution, ingenuity, and hard work – their labor. Under this system, the greatest commodity isn't cash... It's work. And this system involves Americans at every level of society and government working together.

If you're interested, preorder Eric's forthcoming book.

Oh, and a book about Twitter...

During his presentation on Tuesday morning, Mezrich, the author of Dumb Money, talked about his new book coming out next month: Breaking Twitter. It's about the first six weeks after Elon Musk took over the social media company and "destroyed both the company and himself," Mezrich said...

My book is somewhat the antidote to Walter Isaacson's book Elon. I believe that not only did Elon break Twitter, but Twitter broke Elon. The Elon who was before Twitter was beloved by everyone, was considered the greatest genius of our time... people compared him to Einstein.

I think what happened was Twitter was a misadventure that he went into for the right reasons. He really believed that he was going to save humanity by giving us freedom of speech and he discovered that freedom of speech is much trickier than he thought it was... Elon went through a devasting period in the first couple of weeks at Twitter when he started to realize that people didn't love him anymore.

It's a story that hasn't been told yet. There's going to be fireworks. I promise everyone will find something to hate about that book. It's right down the middle.

Mezrich said he has spoken with Musk but he didn't want to sit for an interview for the book. That doesn't worry Mezrich. Mark Zuckerberg didn't talk to him for his book about Facebook that became the movie The Social Network.

He also drew a contrast between Breaking Twitter and recent books by Isaacson on Musk and Michael Lewis on Sam Bankman-Fried, which has drawn criticism as being too favorable to the alleged crypto fraudster and FTX founder...

Both of them spent an enormous amount of time with the main character and both of them wrote books in which they kind of fell in love with the main character... The least credible person you can talk to when writing a biography is the main character. Because that person only wants to tell you the story they want you to hear, and if they're a billionaire, it's very hard not to drink the Kool-Aid. I've done it myself.

When you go into their world, and spend three months with somebody who has private jets and yachts, it's very hard not to say, "This is a good guy." Michael Lewis is a genius, but I think he fell for SBF. And I do not think Walter would have written that book today... and Elon wanted Walter to write it as part of his resuscitation of his reputation.

In the end, he thinks his forthcoming book on Musk's early days at Twitter will be a truer account without having spent a ton of time with the billionaire.

You might be wondering why I'm bringing all this "inside baseball" up about writing nonfiction books...

I do it mainly as a reminder to always consider the sources when consuming media, research, or any information. Discernment is one of those skills that can be applied in any industry and walk of life, including investing.

Everyone's favorite non-investing topic...

I couldn't do justice to our conference without mentioning something everybody has been talking about here in Vegas – and it has nothing to do with the conference itself.

It's called Sphere, an 18,000-seat auditorium that opened a few weeks ago and looks like no other place you've attended a concert. In addition to providing an immersive video experience inside, Sphere can also project images on its exterior.

Here's a picture of the outside from one of our copywriters, Andrew McCord...

We also have some images of what last night's U2 show looked like inside... courtesy of Whitney Tilson, the founder of our corporate affiliate Empire Financial Research. He attended the show with colleague Enrique Abeyta after their stay at the Stansberry Conference wrapped up.

As Whitney shared in his free newsletter today...

Both the concert and the venue were spectacular!

Whitney also shared video clips from the show, some information about the company that owns the venue, and highlights from his presentation yesterday... which covered his view on the economy and three buy recommendations right now. Check them out here.

Last but not least, keep an eye out for our video replays soon...

For Stansberry Alliance members, if you weren't in Las Vegas in person or missed any of the presentations, you will be able to check out all our video replays and transcripts soon. Stay tuned to your inbox for more details.

This includes your exclusive Alliance Day sessions, which featured probably two dozen stock recommendations from our team, including names intended to provide "quality growth" or to be "recession proof" investments. So if you missed any of those, catch the replays.

And for all readers and subscribers, if you are interested in getting access to the first two days of our conference, click here to find out more and to register to get notified immediately when the videos and transcripts become available.

With that, I'm going to try to nod off on the plane home.

New 52-week highs (as of 10/18/23): CBOE Global Markets (CBOE), Costco Wholesale (COST), Enterprise Products Partners (EPD), Diamondback Energy (FANG), Liberty Energy (LBRT), RenaissanceRe (RNR), and Shell (SHEL).

In today's mailbag, feedback on our Stansberry Research conference... Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.

"What a day I spent at the computer today watching the show in Vegas. I'm always impressed by the depth and breadth of the knowledge the Stansberry team brings to the table.

"I laughed. I shook my head. I scribbled notes as fast as I could. I bought two stocks (after all, it was a down day and Bryan [Beach] quoted the Peter Lynch saying about liking $20 stocks and loving $10 ones). I even tweeted out the Brown quote, 'Unfortunately, the Fed can't print houses.' (It's a good thing. The houses would fall down on the first windy day!)

"I'm tired, but better informed and even encouraged. Thank you to the team and to those behind-the-scenes members who make it all happen." – Subscriber Jacqueline G.

All the best,

Corey McLaughlin
Las Vegas, Nevada
October 19, 2023