The Trade That Bought the New York Mets' Outfield

A guest essay from our 'secret weapon'... Gabe Marshank's career-defining trade... Making $100 million... It's not complexity that builds real wealth... Tomorrow at 1 p.m.: The hedge-fund strategy targeting 500% gains...

Editor's note: Today, we're handing the Digest over to Stansberry Research senior analyst Gabe Marshank... for a few reasons.

First, because while Gabe has done great work for us in recent years, he has spent a lot of time behind the scenes. That has made him something of a "secret weapon" around our offices...

Gabe had a two-decade professional investing career managing hundreds of millions of dollars for some of Wall Street's most respected investors, like SAC Capital Advisors' Steve Cohen, Leon Cooperman at Omega Advisors, and Greenlight Capital's David Einhorn.

But lately, Gabe has turned to helping everyday investors make money... as he told attendees at our Stansberry Conference last week. In the Stansberry Research publications Gabe works on, he and his colleagues have identified at least 18 ideas that soared by at least triple digits after they were recommended.

And now, he's laying out his highest-conviction investing idea to anyone who will listen... It's one he believes could be like the type of trade he discusses in today's essay... and the kind of opportunity that can lead to 25-fold returns.

As I (Corey McLaughlin) mentioned yesterday, Gabe has been putting the finishing touches on a brand-new presentation – and it will go live at 1 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow. You can get more details here and sign up for it now.

It's free to attend, and he'll be giving away – on camera – the name and ticker of his current highest-conviction idea.

In the meantime, in lieu of our regular Digest fare today, read on to learn more about Gabe's approach, what he says goes into making a life-changing trade, and how one he made for Steve Cohen helped his boss buy baseball's New York Mets...

In investing, most good ideas generate modest wins...

But every once in a while, one trade defines a career.

For me (Gabe Marshank), that trade was Texas utility company TXU.

But before I tell you about the nine-figure return, the Vegas bachelor party, or how we bought Steve Cohen part of the New York Mets' outfield – you need to understand how I ended up at Cohen's SAC Capital Advisors in the first place...

It was 2001. I was working at Pequot Capital, covering "old economy" stocks while my peers rode the dot-com wave. My boss offered me a role based out of London covering international tech, media, and telecom... right as the bubble was bursting. The job was cushy, the expat life even more so, but I felt underutilized.

That's when my buddy Matt gave me a call.

Matt and I played poker together regularly. He was brilliant, intense, and barely out of college, but he was already managing serious money for Cohen at SAC Capital. Matt pitched me hard. "Come back to New York," he told me. "Come build something."

I did. And it changed my life.

Matt and I became partners. We worked on his portfolio, but I watched him pitch his stocks to Steve relentlessly, showing him where we thought the market was wrong. One day, Matt told Steve, "You need a team of analysts that work just for you. A personal bench."

That conversation led to a new internal team, of which I became one of the first members.

That's how I ended up pitching TXU directly to Steve...

In 2004, TXU looked like a disaster. It was a Texas-based utility weighed down by debt and bad press. But my analyst Jamie spotted something others didn't: new CEO John Wilder.

Wilder had just come over from utility company Entergy (ETR), where he had been chief financial officer, and Jamie was convinced he was the real deal. We watched closely as Wilder started cleaning house, selling assets, fixing the balance sheet, and boosting earnings power.

Wall Street didn't care. Analysts thought TXU was dead money.

But we didn't. The stock was trading at $25 a share when we started buying in 2004. We believed it could earn $7 a share by 2007. That became our internal rallying cry: "7 in '07."

As the company executed, earnings improved. The Street began to notice. But we were paying closer attention. Its first quarterly earnings report after we established a position was a blowout.

The stock was up in pre-market trading, but we thought the move wasn't nearly enough. We bought as much stock as we could under $32. It closed that day at $35.

Over the next three years, the stock kept climbing. Not only did Wilder get the company out of its financial bind, but the operations started generating enough cash to establish a massive share repurchase program. It seemed like the stock went up every single day.

Finally, in 2007, private-equity giant KKR (KKR) acquired TXU in the largest leveraged buyout in U.S. history at the time. The deal valued the stock in the $70s.

We had tripled our money in three years...

That single idea generated a nine-figure return. At the time, it was the most profitable trade in SAC history.

Steve Cohen, characteristically understated, used some of the profits to help buy Major League Baseball's New York Mets.

I used to joke that I bought him his outfield.

But the truth is, the TXU trade worked because we did the work.

We didn't just listen to earnings calls or read sell-side notes. We made our own assumptions, starting from scratch. We rebuilt the model, tracked commodity price sensitivity, and dug into the company's hedging program. We studied power plant utilization, and we questioned every input and assumption.

Wall Street saw a levered utility. We saw a home run setup.

There was nothing flashy about TXU. It wasn't a sexy tech stock. It was a beaten-up power company in Texas. But it had what great trades need: an asymmetric risk-versus-reward payoff, and a catalyst (in this case, Wilder).

That trade taught me everything about conviction.

It also taught me something about Steve Cohen...

Steve didn't just want ideas. He wanted to know how much you believed in them. He wanted to see the research, the edge, and the timing. But most of all, he wanted to see conviction. That's how he knew how to size a trade.

Steve was the ultimate capital allocator. And when he believed in you, he went big.

He also knew how to reward success...

In 2007, ahead of my wedding, Steve got word that I was headed to Las Vegas with my coworkers for my bachelor party. He offered to fly us out there on his private jet. He said his parents lived there and it was a good excuse to see them and have some fun with his younger colleagues.

So off we went – a crew of analysts on Steve's jet, gambling in Vegas, brushing shoulders with boxing legend Floyd Mayweather, and drinking cocktails in clubs next to Canadian rock band Nickelback.

At the blackjack table, I watched as Steve split a pair of eights, doubled down on one, and lost on all three hands.

The dealer winced. "Tough beat," he said. "I'm sorry. That $300 has to hurt."

We looked at each other and laughed. TXU had made SAC Capital more than $100 million in profits.

The big lesson for investors?...

Great trades rarely start as obvious trades.

TXU didn't have a clean narrative. It had a messy past and a misunderstood turnaround. But we ignored the noise and focused on the numbers.

Because great investing is about seeing what the market doesn't... Then betting big when your research and thesis align.

It's also about patience. We held TXU for years, through volatility and doubts. Because we had done the work, we knew what we owned, and we maintained conviction the whole way.

Today, too many investors chase momentum or consensus. They want instant gratification. But alpha (beating a benchmark) doesn't come easy. It comes from deep research, creative thinking, and the nerve to hold when things get uncomfortable.

TXU was a test of process and patience... and a masterclass in what happens when you're right.

So next time you're looking at a stock that seems too boring to bother with, ask yourself: "What am I seeing that others aren't?"

Because that's where the real opportunities live.

Sometimes, they even get you a seat on a private jet to Vegas.

Gabe also joined Dan Ferris and me (Corey) on this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, where he shared more stories, insight into his background, how he plans to help everyday investors, and the opportunities he's interested in today. Check it out...

Watch the entire episode on our YouTube page, listen on our website, or check it out wherever you get your podcasts.

And be sure to register for Gabe's free event tomorrow. As I mentioned earlier, he'll be sharing the name of his highest-conviction investing idea right now – and it's not just some "freebie." It's a core position in a brand-new hedge-fund-style model portfolio, targeting a minimum of 300% to 500% upside on every single position.

Click here for more detail and to sign up now to make sure you don't miss anything. 

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In today's mail, more feedback on a possible future filled with robots and AI, which we've received a lot of feedback about since writing about it last week in Las Vegas... Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.

"I've heard so many concerns about jobs and income in a robot/AI dominated world. The usual quip is to call on governments to make sure they regulate the producers and subsidize the people who lose their jobs as a result (universal basic income is often floated as a 'solution'). What all of these people fail to recognize is that this is the same process which has played out over thousands of years. There has never been a society which has been hurt by its technological advancement. Society is only harmed by bad ideas; the most harmful among them... 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'

"Perhaps, instead of worrying about jobs, people can concentrate upon how to better deliver value to others. Within a free society, success is best measured by one's value creation through the free trade of products and services. As existential needs are continuously more easily met through technological advancement, the wants of people are held in greater value to trade. Who would have imagined 10 years ago that one could make a living doing podcasts and/or sending out emails? Values (what people want/need) will ebb and flow with the times and it is up to the producers and businessmen to identify such trends and deliver them.

"For those worrying about robots and AI, I can only respond that they aren't being creative enough." – Subscriber Bret R.

Regards,

Gabe Marshank
Berkeley, California
October 28, 2025