An Inside Look at Stansberry Research's Past... and Future

A special 'peek behind the curtain'... What Porter's 'most proud' of... An inside look at Stansberry Research's past – and future... Our editors weigh in on the 20th anniversary... Why now is an ideal time to be an individual investor... The Stansberry Terminal is here...

By now, you've probably heard that we're celebrating our 20th anniversary...

And to mark the occasion, we've put together this special "peek behind the curtain" video...

In it, Porter and Stansberry Research editors Dr. Steve Sjuggerud, Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig, Dan Ferris, and Dave Lashmet – who've all been around the company since its early years – and our director of research Austin Root take a walk down memory lane...

They discuss Stansberry Research's humble origins in Baltimore... share some of their best (and worst) memories of the past two decades... talk about how they built the company into a world-class destination for financial information... and look ahead to what's next.

If you haven't already watched their message, we encourage you to make time to do so this weekend. It's wide-ranging, entertaining, and informative... and it gives you a real sense of the hard work that went into starting, sustaining, and growing the business all these years.

Along the way, you'll learn about the right time to "buy goats"... and a "strange dream" that got Steve into this whole financial-newsletter thing.

'Fantastic investing ideas written in plain English'...

That's how Porter describes our business in the video.

It's a simple concept, but it's a lot harder to execute than you might think...

The financial industry is filled with content that, well, frankly, just doesn't make sense or seems fishy. Or even when it includes great information, it can be hard for "regular folks" to understand.

Just this week, a Financial Times headline said: "Investment companies struggle to inform clients, study finds." From the article...

Governments around the world are encouraging their citizens to invest more, but much of the written material produced by asset managers for clients is too complex for the audience it is designed to help.

Porter and Steve didn't need a research study in the late 1990s... when they looked at the financial-newsletter offerings at the time and knew they could do it better.

They decided to follow a simple, straightforward approach. To this day, it's what our analysts and editors aim to do with everything we write. It's a recognizable phrase for regular Digest readers...

The No. 1 thing is to give other people the information we'd want if our roles were reversed.

This principle not only leads to great ideas and information that helps our subscribers, but it also allows our editors, writers, analysts, marketers, IT folks – basically, everybody at the company – to think independently with our subscribers in mind.

It also helps us make sure we know what we're talking about in everything we write. When you speak in plain English, it's almost impossible to hide behind empty words.

Yet somehow, this approach was an 'unconventional' idea – and still is today, as the Financial Times article shows...

Porter hit on this point in his February 15 Digest. As he wrote at the time...

Every year, I've tried to make the information we provide just a little better, just a little more comprehensive, just a little more useful, and just a little more insightful than the year before.

While this formula has proven to work, when I suggested this model in the mid-1990s to older, far more established publishers in the financial-newsletter business, most folks laughed... One well-known writer (with one of the biggest newsletters in the world) told me conspiratorially, "Porter, I'm not interested in a fair game."

You see, back then virtually all newsletters were fronts for stock promotion or loss leaders for money managers. The New York Times wrote a wonderful article back in 1995 that accurately described the state of the industry back then – "compromising," the writer called it.

In short, our success in this industry couldn't have been more unlikely...

Yet here we are.

What started with Porter and his borrowed laptop in a third-floor apartment in a rough Baltimore neighborhood is now a global investment-research firm housed just a few blocks away in a five-story building, complete with a lobby filled with several pieces of fine art.

We have more than 30 analysts on staff, more than 200 employees, and hundreds of thousands of loyal readers like you... And in Porter's words, he's "most proud" of our roughly 80,000 lifetime subscribers – especially our Stansberry Alliance members, who receive everything we publish at Stansberry Research.

Twenty years later, here's what one of our 'original' editors is saying about the milestone...

As regular readers know – or if you read last Saturday's Masters Series essay – Porter and Steve have known each other a long time... They were childhood friends. Here's a picture from their Florida days, alongside future surfing superstar Kelly Slater...

That picture appeared in Tuesday's edition of Steve's free daily e-letter, DailyWealth. In that essay, Steve also explained how and why he got into the newsletter business...

I'd just quit my job as the vice president of a global mutual fund. I distinctly remember going over to my girlfriend's apartment complex and telling her what I'd just done.

I told her I wanted to do something else. And then, right there on the pool deck, I laid out a half dozen investment newsletters from other analysts.

"I can do better than these, I think," I told her.

"What do you mean, better?" she asked. I didn't really know. "Can you make money doing this?" I didn't really know. "Well, how do you get readers?" Once again, I didn't really know.

It wasn't a thought-out plan... I just thought that I could help a lot of people do a lot better with their own money.

Last week, in his free Health & Wealth Bulletin e-letter, Doc also reflected on his start at the company...

Porter and Doc connected through a friend and family member in the early 2000s. And in short, Doc – who had just graduated medical school at the time – turned down Porter the first time he offered him a job...

But after a few years, Doc started writing a health letter every other Sunday for our company's earliest Alliance members. Porter paid Doc $1.25 a word, more than he was making in his medical residency. "I loved it," Doc wrote – storytelling and helping people.

In 2007, after Doc had become an ophthalmologist and was graduating from his residency, Porter again offered Doc a job as an analyst. In his Health & Wealth Bulletin essay, Doc recalled that the second time around, "Porter said something that changed my mind"...

Doc, you'll be a glorified women's shoe salesman if you become an eye surgeon. You'll do quality work, but only for one person at a time.

With the power of the pen, you can reach more people and do a whole lot more than you're doing now.

There's really very few important things in life that "health and wealth" doesn't cover... and Doc and his team are constantly providing subscribers with knowledge you won't find anywhere else. If you want to read that wisdom – for free every weekday – be sure to join the nearly 100,000 subscribers of Doc's free Health & Wealth Bulletin.

Enough about the past. Now, let's look ahead to the future...

In many ways, it's never been better to be an individual investor than right now.

I can think of two big reasons...

First, the major discount brokerages have cut commission fees to zero. "The Race to Zero" that we originally wrote about in the March 6, 2017 Digest has ended in a tie of sorts.

Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, E-Trade, and Ally Invest all cut equity commissions to zero the week of October 1. Fidelity Investments joined the party on October 10, and Bank of America's Merrill Edge extended free trading to all members of its loyalty program on October 21.

Second, more information on companies, industries, and investing strategies exists than ever before. And more important, it's more easily accessible than ever before, too...

This is where we fit in...

In today's era of smartphones, Twitter, and other "available at our fingertips" sources, it's easy to feel "information overload." But to this point, I'm reminded of a quote attributed to Clay Shirky, an American writer and expert on Internet technologies...

There's no such thing as information overload. There's only filter failure.

Thank you to all the regular readers who have trusted us to be your "filter" over the past 20 years. We're humbled that you allow us to bring you fully vetted and independently researched ideas... that have hopefully been explained in the simplest language possible.

And to celebrate our 20th anniversary, we're making a couple of major announcements...

I can reveal the first one to you right here...

We're now offering charter access to the Stansberry Terminal.

Our Terminal is a massive project. We've invested more than $5 million into developing the product over the past three years... And now, it's ready to be unveiled to the world.

No other financial-publishing company has anything like it...

It's our own version of the Bloomberg terminal – the computers that provide comprehensive market data and pricing to institutional investors who can afford to spend roughly $25,000 per year for access. As Porter explained in the December 15, 2017 Digest...

I'm moving Stansberry Research out of the newsletter business and into the financial-terminal business...

We're going to compete with Bloomberg – and we're going to win. We're going to do three things much better than Bloomberg does today...

Those three things were price, technology, and portfolio management.

And now, I'm happy to report that we've accomplished all three...

First, access to the Stansberry Terminal will be much more affordable for everyday investors. It'll be just a tiny fraction of the cost for access to the Bloomberg terminal.

Second, the Stansberry Terminal is a cloud-based software platform. It's a place where you can easily access everything you need as an investor, including fundamental data on companies, news, charts, analytics, indicators, monitors, alerts, chat rooms, and of course... our content.

Because it's cloud-based, you don't need any extra hardware to use it, like you do with a Bloomberg terminal. Once people start using the Stansberry Terminal to access our content – whether through the website or the mobile app – we don't believe they'll want to consume it any other way.

And finally, the Stansberry Terminal includes an alerts manager that will send you real-time notifications for volatility, price, and more. So you'll no longer need to spend valuable time tracking the day-to-day movements of the various positions in your portfolio.

Unfortunately, that's about all I can say here today. But it wasn't the only news that Porter and the rest of our team revealed during their recent gathering at our headquarters.

We urge you to check out the video of their message for another major announcement...

In short, it's yet another way to dramatically upgrade the way you experience our research. Watch the video and get all the details about this limited-time opportunity right here.

New 52-week highs (as of 10/31/19): Celgene (CELG), Equinox Gold (EQX), Hannon Armstrong Sustainable Infrastructure Capital (HASI), Nuveen Preferred Securities Income Fund (JPS), Masco (MAS), Flutter Entertainment (PDYPY), Polymetal International (LSE: POLY), ResMed (RMD), Sandstorm Gold (SAND), and Sysco (SYY).

A quiet day in the mailbag. We would love to hear about the most valuable advice you've received from us through the years. Share your success stories with us this weekend at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.

Regards,

Corey McLaughlin
Baltimore, Maryland
November 1, 2019