Editor's note: If your financial house is in order, you're ready to invest in the markets...

But do you stand a chance in 2021 with so many investment giants lurking around?

The short answer is yes...

As our Director of Research Austin Root explains in today's Masters Series – which first appeared in the February 1 edition of our free DailyWealth e-letter – you absolutely do stand a chance. And he believes one strategy plays to your advantages over the big guys...

Beat the Investment Giants With This 'Moonshot' Strategy

By Austin Root, director of research, Stansberry Research

Can individual investors compete with the big guys?

Legendary value investor Benjamin Graham thought so. In fact, he argued you could beat them...

I am convinced that an individual investor with sound principles, and soundly advised, can do distinctly better over the long pull than a large institution.

That quote was from 46 years ago. A lot has changed since then that seems to favor the institutions over Mom and Pop... For one thing, financial markets are dominated more and more by just a handful of huge firms.

And yet, I agree with Graham. No one is better positioned to beat the returns of these investment giants over the long run than you.

Let me show you what I mean...

At the end of 2018, the world's three largest investment managers – Blackrock, Vanguard, and Charles Schwab – managed more than $15 trillion combined. By comparison, the entire U.S. stock market was worth $30 trillion at the time.

Ten years earlier, those three firms managed about one-fifth of today's amount, or just $3 trillion. (The S&P 500 Index went up about 178% between then and 2018, meaning that most of the asset managers' growth came from market share gains.)

The thought of going up against all that capital is daunting. And individual investors may feel that the investment game is stacked against them for other reasons, too.

Institutions employ scores of analysts and economists to crunch numbers. They use vast amounts of quantitative computing power and proprietary trading algorithms. They have access to investments you probably don't, such as IPO shares before they trade or high-frequency trading strategies.

But consider your advantages...

You don't report to or cater to outside investors.

You won't end up over­-diversified like most institutions, with countless strategies and portfolios watering down your returns.

And you won't invest too much in passive strategies, which typically buy whatever stocks make up the biggest percentage of some index – whether they're good businesses or not.

You also won't move the price of a stock much when you're entering or exiting a position like the big guys do. (A friend of mine who's a portfolio manager at Capital Group – a firm with roughly $2 trillion in assets – once admitted that his company needs to bake in a 10% price decline to any major investment when it decides to exit. You won't have that loss to overcome.)

But most important... you get to harness the real secret to beating the big guys. It's so simple. And yet it's a strategy that the big institutions can't – and won't – follow.

The best way to produce truly life-changing gains is to invest early and stay invested for the long term.

And here at Stansberry Research, we believe one strategy can help you capitalize on all these advantages...

In December 2018, we built the first American Moonshots portfolio to help find the small, high-quality, high-growth companies that could turn a modest investment into a huge nest egg.

These are the tiny stocks that fly under the radar. As a rule, big money managers can't move their vast investment funds into small companies with "moonshot" potential... And they can't stick around long enough to watch them grow.

Those are just a few reasons these opportunities are essentially "off the table" for the big guys. And that's great news for individual investors.

Small-cap stocks tend to be more volatile in the short term. But they materially outperform larger companies over the long term...

For example, over the past 25 years, the S&P 500 has produced a return of around 860%, assuming reinvested dividends. Meanwhile, the S&P Small Cap 600 Index is up roughly 1,100% in the same period.

By getting into the quality companies before they experience huge growth, you have a real edge over the institutional investors... and a chance at incredible upside.

Now more than ever, we are confident there are life-changing moonshots out there for the taking. For Graham's "soundly advised" individual investor who employs "sound principles," we see big gains ahead.

Good investing,

Austin Root

Editor's note: Unless you own a crystal ball, you'll never find a "perfect" stock or sector. But Austin has come close with his American Moonshots publication in the past few years...

The stocks in Austin's Moonshots portfolio were up an average of 112% earlier this month. You would've more than doubled your money with his advice. And that's just the average... Five positions are up anywhere from 275% to about 430% since he recommended them.

So how exactly does Austin do it?

Find out for yourself by watching his recent interview with our publisher, Brett Aitken. He'll also tell you what happened when he pitched a stock idea to Warren Buffett... and show you the only common trait shared by the top stocks of the past 30 years. Get started right here.