We Might Not Be Doomed Just Yet

A silver lining for the 2020 presidential race?... We might not be doomed just yet... Netflix finally admits the obvious... Why Dave Lashmet's bold cancer prediction is so shocking... Get this elite service at a 55% discount...

We'll begin with a glimmer of hope from the otherwise depressing 2020 U.S. presidential race...

As regular Digest readers know, the leading Democratic presidential candidates have campaigned on promises of wealth confiscation and redistribution that would make even infamous swindler Charles Ponzi blush.

Our colleague Dan Ferris noted the latest on this madness in last Thursday's Digest...

"Tax something and you'll get less of it," the old saying goes... But today at least two Democratic presidential candidates believe that if you can steal enough from the folks who earn the most, everything will go swimmingly for the rest of us.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren are stumping for the culture of larceny. Each claims to know precisely how much to steal from the wealthiest Americans...

On Sunday, Bloomberg reported about a new interactive website from a pair of professors at the University of California, Berkeley. If Sanders gets his way, they concluded that the 400 richest Americans, on average, would be taxed at an effective rate of 97.5%.

Not 97% or 98%, mind you... 97.5%. Yeah, that's the magic number that will make society work like a well-oiled machine.

Warren's tax plans would be slightly better... According to the two professors, her proposals would only promise to exact a mere 62% from the financially better off among us.

Unfortunately, we can't tell you that these folks have suddenly realized just how foolish and dangerous these schemes really are. If anything, it appears the Democratic Party is becoming more committed to these kinds of harebrained ideas every day.

However, we might not be doomed just yet...

If the latest polls are any indication, maybe – just maybe – some American voters are beginning to wise up. As the Wall Street Journal reported late last week...

Support for Medicare for All is showing signs of slipping as top-tier Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders struggle to sell the proposal without providing specifics on the financial costs for voters...

Fifty-one percent of Americans back the Medicare-for-All proposals, which is down 5 percentage points since April, according to a poll released Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Of course, as the Journal noted, this means roughly half the country apparently still believes there is such a thing as a "free lunch." But hey, progress is progress.

Switching gears, our colleague Bill McGilton made a bold prediction over the summer...

In short, Bill warned that online video-streaming leader Netflix (NFLX) – one of the best-performing stocks of the past decade – was now facing its first real test in the over-the-top ("OTT") media business. And most important, it was unlikely to go well...

Specifically, several companies – including entertainment giant Disney (DIS), consumer-electronics titan Apple (AAPL), pay-TV juggernaut Comcast's (CMCSA) subsidiary NBCUniversal, and wireless telecom AT&T (T), among others – have recently announced plans to launch their own video-streaming services.

Meanwhile, existing OTT services – most notably, Amazon's (AMZN) Prime Video service – have been increasing their offerings, too.

And all of these companies are planning to ramp up their efforts to create exclusive, original programming for their OTT services – the exact "blueprint" Netflix created with its House of Cards series.

In other words, these companies are no longer happy just licensing content to Netflix to earn a few extra bucks...

For the first time ever, they're now actively competing in this space. This is great news for consumers... However, it all but assures Netflix's business will suffer. As Bill explained in the July 17 Digest...

With all the newer and cheaper offerings entering this market in the near future, people are going to choose other OTT services over Netflix. And the incentive to go with the other services will only increase as more Big Media companies stop licensing their content to Netflix and distribute it directly through their own OTT services – like Disney+ is doing...

Moving forward, we can expect the OTT marketplace to be much more fragmented. And most consumers can't afford to buy all of these services. So they're going to have to make some tough choices.

No matter what they choose, one thing is clear: The future looks bleak for Netflix.

Bill's warning was prescient...

Just hours after he penned those words, Netflix dropped a bombshell. As our colleague Dan Ferris explained in the July 18 Digest the following day...

After market close yesterday, the company announced that its U.S. subscriber count declined for the first time in almost 10 years.

The company lost roughly 130,000 U.S. subscribers in the second quarter of the year, compared to the end of the first quarter. It added 2.7 million total paid subscribers worldwide, but that was much less than its 5 million forecast. And it was also only about half the 5.5 million global subscribers it added in the second quarter of 2018.

Unfortunately, the news hasn't gotten any better since then...

Last week, Netflix reported its third-quarter results. And while the company's earnings beat Wall Street analyst expectations, its guidance for the future set off alarms. As financial news network CNBC reported on Thursday...

Netflix has finally admitted to what we all knew. With the streaming wars kicking off in just a few weeks, Netflix faces serious competition for the first time since it started streaming more than a decade ago.

And that competition from the impending launches of Disney+ and Apple TV+, along with several others from major media brands like HBO and NBC, could have a negative impact on Netflix's subscriber growth.

Netflix disclosed these issues after its mixed earnings report Wednesday that showed a beat on earnings, but a miss on subscribers. The company also predicted it will add fewer subscribers in the fourth quarter of this year than it did a year ago.

Netflix shares initially rallied on Thursday before closing the week sharply lower. They've now fallen about 25% since Bill issued his warning in July.

Speaking of bold predictions, our colleague Dave Lashmet recently made one of his own...

As Dave explained in his must-read Digest on Friday, he now believes we're on the brink of the first real cure for cancer in history...

I've tracked cancer therapies for two decades. And even as recently as a few years ago, I didn't think we would see this type of incredible, potentially universal cure for cancer within my lifetime.

But suddenly... that's all changed. For the first time in my life, I'm ready to start talking about a "cure"...

"Cure" is a difficult word in cancer medicine... It has been used and abused for decades... For all that time, you could bank on the fact that anyone talking about a "cure" for cancer was at best misinformed... or worse, preying on scared and vulnerable people.

I've been adamant with my editors at Stansberry Research for years that we would not call the therapies I wrote about "cures." At my most optimistic, we could describe them as "pathways" to one day finding a cure.

But now, some of the most respected cancer doctors in the world are embracing the potential that a real cure is within reach.

Now, this would be big news coming from just about anyone...

But it's all the more impressive coming from Dave. In fact, I (Justin) must admit I was shocked when I learned he was going on record with this prediction.

You see, I've had the privilege of working closely with Dave for nearly a decade now. And when you get to know him like I have, a couple of things become abundantly clear...

He's one of the most genuine and thoughtful individuals you'll ever meet. And he's one of the most careful and deliberate researchers in our business. First and foremost, he's a scientist at heart... someone who holds facts and hard data above most anything else.

Dave's extremely conservative nature has sometimes led to disagreements between our editorial and marketing staff. But it also means that on the rare occasion when Dave does make a big prediction, you should be sure to pay attention.

We can't think of a bigger, more important prediction than this one – a universal cancer cure...

Which is why we're also making an offer unlike any other we've ever made in our 20-year history...

In short, to make sure as many folks as possible have the chance to benefit from Dave's new research on this subject, we're temporarily slashing the cost of his Stansberry Venture Technology service.

Access to this elite service typically costs $5,500 for a single year... And we've never offered it for less than $4,500. But for just a few more days, you won't pay even half what it normally costs to get access to all of Dave's research.

If you're interested, please don't delay. We've never done this before, and we'll likely never do it again. Click here for all the details on this special offer.

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A quiet day in the mailbag... Are you a subscriber to Stansberry Venture Technology? We'd love to hear what you think about Dave's cancer research. Drop us a line at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.

Regards,

Justin Brill
Baltimore, Maryland
October 22, 2019