Editor's note: Gabe Marshank has seen it all...

After spending two decades working for some of the greatest investors in the world, Gabe has served as Stansberry Research's "secret weapon" for the past few years. These days, helping the "smart money" is no longer his desire.

In today's Masters Series, we're doing something a little bit different. We're publishing a guest essay from Gabe that explains why he left Wall Street to help everyday investors get closer to financial independence... 

Why I Walked Away from Wall Street After 20 Years

By Gabe Marshank, editor, Market Maven

I spent two decades managing money at some of the biggest hedge funds in the world.

Omega Advisors... Pequot Capital... SAC Capital... Greenlight Capital.

I lived the highs and lows of hedge-fund life. One night, I was watching Rihanna at the famous Robin Hood Foundation charity in New York. The next, I was flying over the oilfields of North Dakota in a rickety, single-engine plane.

I helped generate nine-figure returns on trades – but I'd wake up at 2 a.m. to monitor the markets. I visited factories in Iowa and nightclubs in northeast China. Steve Cohen flew me to Las Vegas on his private jet.

But in 2017, I walked away. Not because I had to... because I wanted to.

My Wall Street story started in 1997, when I joined Omega Advisors. I had never taken a finance class before. I had just graduated from Yale as a political science major.

Lee Cooperman hired me after one of his analysts – my first boss – told him I had potential. (In Lee's words: "See how cheap we can get him.")

For the first 10 years of my Wall Street career, I was learning, building, and scraping. I wore every hat, sat on every call, built every model, and drank from the proverbial firehose. I directly worked for some of the best investors of all time, and each one taught me something different.

Eventually, I earned my seat at the table. I managed hundreds of millions in risk, led teams of analysts, and generated serious market-beating returns.

At SAC, I helped deliver the firm's biggest profit in its history at the time on a Texas utility named TXU. We bought it at $25 and rode it into the $70s for a nine-figure profit. Steve used the proceeds to buy the New York Mets.

Later, at Greenlight, I focused on global cyclicals and built contrarian theses with deep research. It meant taking 15 trips to China, flying over the oilfields in North Dakota, and leaving my then-girlfriend (and now-wife) on Valentine's Day to attend a solar conference in Dresden, Germany.

I was fully in it. And for a while, it was thrilling. But over the years, something changed...

Every day, I went home with hundreds of millions of dollars in risk. Since I covered international markets, some weeks I'd go five straight days without a chance to catch my breath.

When your profit and loss swings by millions every day, you stop thinking in dollars and start thinking in cortisol.

Add in kids, life, and the gnawing realization that your work mostly helps billionaires make more billions, and I had had enough.

I was winning. But it didn't feel like winning.

I started thinking about life in three words: learn, earn, and return. I had already learned, and I had certainly earned. But what was I returning?

Helping a billionaire buy a baseball team is fun. But it doesn't make the world a better place.

What if I could help 10,000 people make $10,000 instead of helping one billionaire make another $100 million?

That would feel like winning.

So in 2017, I left Wall Street and moved back to Berkeley, California, where the air is clearer and the pace is slower. I wanted space to think. I wanted to be a dad. And I wanted to invest without the noise.

No more 2:30 a.m. alarms to catch European markets. No more earnings calls with the same scripts. And no more trading stress measured in blood pressure spikes.

I still invest. But now, I do it on my terms.

I spend more time reading than reacting... more time teaching than trading... more time with my kids than with a Bloomberg terminal.

Eventually, I joined Stansberry Research. Not because I missed the action, but because I wanted to share what I learned with individual investors.

Wall Street taught me a lot, but it also hides a lot. Most retail investors don't get access to the tools, the thinking, and the nuance that drives institutional returns.

They're told to invest in index funds, sit still, and accept average.

But I've seen what's possible when you do the work, look deeper, and tune out the noise. And I want to share that with real people.

Not with fund managers... with people saving for retirement, paying off student loans, or hoping to buy a house – people like my parents.

So that's where I am today: Writing, teaching, and researching. I'm trying to help people think like investors, not gamblers.

I still do deep dives, follow contrarian threads, and build models. But these days, I do it with a different goal: Not to out-trade Wall Street... to out-think it.

That's my mission. And if I can help you get closer to financial independence – without the stress – it's all worth it because alpha is great... but impact is better.

Regards,

Gabe Marshank

Editor's note: Over the past few years, Gabe has quietly helped uncover 18 triple-digit winners by focusing on smaller, overlooked companies with powerful catalysts and limited downside.

He refined this strategy across 20 years at several elite hedge funds. Now, he's giving everyday investors the same edge as the "smart money."

On October 29, Gabe is stepping forward to reveal how he finds the kinds of stocks that can generate life-changing returns. Plus, he's sharing the name and ticker of an under-the-radar stock that he believes could rise 25X or more from today's levels. Learn more here...