Male:Broadcasting from Baltimore, Maryland and New York City, you're listening to the Stansberry Investor Hour.

Male:Tune in each Thursday on iTunes for the latest episode of the Stansberry Investor Hour. Sign up for the free show archive at investorhour.com. Here are the hosts of your show, Buck Sexton and Porter Stansberry.

Buck Sexton:Welcome, everybody, to the Stansberry Investor Hour. I'm Buck Sexton, and usually at this point I would say, "And your host, Porter Stansberry," but it turns out Porter is on vacation for the next couple of weeks. I aspire one day to be in the – in the Porter position where I decide to go fishing. And so I just go fishing. That sounds great to me. But Porter's going to be, uh, out – out of the, uh, mix for a couple of weeks here, then he'll be joining us certainly by – by August once again as a co-host of the Stansberry Investor Hour.

Uh, so there won't be quite as much – forget man-splaining. I think we need to come up with Porter-splaining 'cause there's definitely Buck-splain. I Buck-splain sometimes but there won't be any man – as much man-splaining this time. Uh, but not to worry, the big man himself will be back soon once he catches some, uh, prize-size fish and maybe he'll have a little, uh, get-together with Arianna Huffington to figure out the latest on the Uber crisis.

Uh, but today on the show, I'm going to give you, uh, some of my big thoughts, 30,000-foot view of what's happening, uh, in the country right now, mostly politics. Uh, some things that also touch on markets and economics, which I know are near and dear to all of you, our beloved Stansberry listeners, our extended Stansberry family. We're also going to be joined by a dear friend of mine who's a national security correspondent, award-winning reporter named Sara Carter. She is one of the few people who is out there doing, uh, original ground-breaking reporting that is pushing back against the various swamp media entities out there that are trying to hobble and take down the administration.

Sara just refuses to play from their sheet of music. So she's been doing her own reporting on what the truth is about Russia collusion, the truth about surveillance allegations from the time of the, uh, Obama administration, all of that and – and more. We've got Sara Carter joining us in just a little bit. Uh, so she'll give you her sense of what the latest is. She actually has some breaking stories from this week, uh, to talk to you about that you may not have heard – heard of before, including the possibility that there was retaliation from within the FBI. This is her – one of her latest reports, retaliation from within the FBI that led to the investigation of former National Security Advisor, uh, Michael Flynn.

So that's obviously a – a bombshell. She'll be joining to get into some of that. And, of course, because this is Stansberry Investor Hour, uh, we've got to get into, uh, some investment learning, too. And for that, we're going to be joined by Ben Morris who is from Stansberry Research. He's the, uh, Senior Analyst and Editor at DailyWealth Trader, which I'm sure many of you are familiar, uh, with, which is having a great year. We're going to find out why and what trading techniques he's been using to find such incredible success. We'll also get some reader feedback here.

Uh, and if you haven't already, by the way; I note this at the top of the show in case some of you, uh, bail out a minute or two early at the end. If you haven't already, please do subscribe to the Stansberry Investor Hour podcast in iTunes or on Google Play or SoundCloud. Look, however you find us, uh, that's – that's great. Please do leave us a comment as well. And that way you can help us reach more listeners. You know, the way they do these rankings of which – what podcast will pop up so we can expand the, uh, Stansberry family here, or Stansberry Investor Hour listeners.

The more comments, believe it or not, that – that are on some of these podcasts, the higher the rankings. I mean, the way iTunes does this is, uh, a bit of a black box. But anyway, um, that's helpful to all of us. Oh, and also, of course, don't forget to go to meltupbriefing.com where you can sign up for Dr. Steve Sjuggerud's free investor webinar airing Thursday, June 29th, at 8:00 PM Eastern time.

If you heard Steve talk last week about big opportunities in China and his thesis is really starting to play out with the MSCI decision. That's just one of his great calls. Hear the details on the webinar. Um, so – or the details in the webinar, rather just go to meltupbriefing.com. It's free for all Stansberry readers and podcast listeners, and you can make your reservation and save a seat at meltupbriefing.com. That's Thursday, June 29th, 8:00 PM. And, uh, you'll hear from Dr. Steve Sjuggerud. Um, so check that out for sure.

Now, onto what's happening, uh, right now. The biggest story is obviously the healthcare, uh, healthcare repeal and replace bill. I should just note from the beginning that even the most, uh, ardent advocates of this bill so far have – have been unable to convince me that you can call this a – a repeal. Um, this is – is not a repeal of Obamacare. It is making changes to the, uh, to the primary structures or some of the primary structures of Obamacare. It promises savings and this is where those of you who are – who are debt hawks might get a little excited on the Medicaid side of the equation. It promises to change how states do Medicaid and also have some pretty substantial Medicaid savings in – in – in the hundreds of billions stretching out to about, uh, 2026.

Now, I'm sure as I say that to you, a lot – a lot of you are also thinking in your head, "Well, hold on a second. If we have to wait until 2026 for the savings, what are the chances that you can actually count on that?" I mean, if the government is going to delay so much, what it's promising to do, there can be other administrations. Congress can change things around. You know, to state the blatant, uh, blatantly obvious, a lot can change between now and a decade from now in terms of how the government's spending money, how healthcare is, uh, how healthcare is – is enacted and what's going on with the healthcare bill.

So no matter what the Senate does, uh, you're going to have to get this through a conference between Senate republicans and senate – or – and House republicans. So there's going to be a lot of back-and-forth, and we'll see what the – the final bill looks like. But the important concept to keep in mind here, uh, I think is that we are now at a point where, uh, redistribution of wealth via the healthcare system has become a – a bipartisan article of faith.

Uh, no one will challenge the idea right now openly with the exception maybe of Senator Rand Paul, uh, maybe Senator Ted Cruz, Mike Lee out of Utah. Um, but no one is just straight up making the case other than Rand Paul, um, in – certainly in the Senate, and you're not hearing from anybody on the House side that your health – that insurance should be insurance. Um, because what you have right now is not insurance. When you're talking about your – your medical insurance and your premiums and – uh, what's baked into that is you are almost certainly subsidizing – well, you are subsidizing certainly those who are getting entirely free healthcare, which is what Medicaid is. Medicaid is healthcare welfare.

Uh, so you – you are subsidizing with your tax dollars, and in some cases, directly also with, uh, well, you can just say with your tax dollars because however they're using the funds from these, uh, various government schemes you're – you're still seeing the money ending up in – in the hands of people, or in this case healthcare paid for by people, uh, who are just getting it for free. Um, this is all now redistribution of wealth via government mandate. That's what's happening. Um, and you – you see this with the republican concession that they're going to get rid of the individual mandate, um, but they're going to have some penalty to try and coerce people. So you won't be absolutely forced under pain of a fine but if you don't maintain continuous coverage then they want to institute a six-month, uh, period where you're – where's there's a blackout so you can't get healthcare.

This is to prevent people from doing what everyone has known younger and healthier people would do all along in these schemes, which is to wait and then eventually try and get into the system when they become sick, which again is because it's not really about insurance. This is about shifting the costs of healthcare onto other people. And there's, uh, a root fallacy at the bottom of all this. And we – I'm sure many of you know exactly what I'm talking about. You deal with this yourself all the time. We've been led to believe that somehow we can pay $20.00 or $40.00 or whatever it is for a co-pay, and that's really a – that and – and premiums that our employer – because most of us still get employer-based insurance for our healthcare or vast majority of American people still do.

Um, but that's going to be sufficient and that's all that we have to – to deal with here. But what you're seeing is a shift away from even that model to a – a debate now where you have on the one side of it republicans who are saying, "Well, we're going to more efficiently redistribute that healthcare among different people and different entities," and on the other side, you have the Bernie Sanders of the world, uh, the democrats more and more openly stating that they just believe that there should be single payer because if – if we all agree that healthcare is a human right, and I'm not saying you agree but that's increasingly the way that the political, uh, discussion is going, if we agree that healthcare is, in fact, a – uh, a basic human right or there's some government responsibility to provide healthcare to people, uh, then it's just a function – or it's just a question of, uh, what you can demand and what you can force the government to give you. And it's just taking stuff from other people, right. That's the way that this whole thing works.

So I find the whole republican debate over healthcare right now pretty frustrating. I – I do think what they would – what they're planning to do is better than Obamacare. But, of course, Obamacare exchanges are failing. And so comparing yourself to a failed system is not exactly an – an inspiring, uh – not exactly an, an inspiring, uh, way to go about this. So I'm skeptical but hopeful, uh, that this will get much better and that they will find ways to over time increase the free market mechanisms because that's the way you encourage the better – the better delivery of actual healthcare. Uh, that's the way you encourage more – more doctors to actually – or more people to go to medical school and, um, you have the market incentives to make the coverage or make rather the care situation better because coverage alone – and this is where the politicians are all lying to you – coverage alone is – is not all that meaningful.

This is why Medicaid, again, health insurance for the poor, it's a form of welfare, doesn't have particularly good healthcare outcomes at all. In fact, the biggest study ever done on this, the most comprehensive one out of Oregon, showed that whether you have – whether you're covered under Medicaid or have no insurance whatsoever, your health expectations are the same, meaning that, uh, you're not expected to be any healthier if you have access to Medicaid. And that's because a lot of providers don't take it. The providers who do take it don't deliver particularly quality care. And it's just, again, a very expensive government program that's – that's poorly run, poorly administered, but it's politically very powerful, right, 'cause everyone should get healthcare now.

So that's my sense of the, uh, healthcare, uh, debate and discussion. Uh, I should also note that, um, finally we've started to see some cracks in the – in the façade of the elite media claiming that there is no – uh, there's no motivation with their Russia collusion investigations other than just getting to the truth, just telling you what's – what's really going on. I'm sure many of you are frustrated watching this play out day in and day out in the media, uh, where you have very serious issues, including, of course, tax reform looming just over the horizon and, uh, healthcare reform is supposed to be, uh, the first step or a precursor step to getting us to tax reform, which particularly on the corporate tax side could have enormous impact.

I know people believe it's already, uh, priced into the markets at some level. That optimism is already there because corporations will have more money to hire, more money to invest, and – and that's creating a – a generally positive business climate under this Trump administration. Uh, but you don't even have democrats and – and the left and the media aligned with them, uh, the democrat party and the elite media, you can use these terms more or less interchangeably I think. That's – that's fair to say. Uh, but you don't even have them making the case right now against corporate tax reform or – or against, uh, economic policies that the administration wants to pursue and has been discussing in the past.

They just make the case that Trump is some kind of Manchurian candidate for the Russians, that this is all, uh, that this is all, uh, that it's a ruse, that this is, uh, a – he's a false president. He's a pretender. Uh, he's illegitimate because of what went down before and during the election with regard to Russia – quote Russia hacking of the election, which is a very loaded and – and dishonest term. But I mentioned you finally saw a crack in this, uh, with CNN having to retract a story in its entirety that made – made connections between a close Trump associate and a Russian bank.

Uh, they pulled this and three CNN reporters resigned, I'm assuming resigned under pressure, which is, of course, a nice way of saying fired. Uh, so you had, uh, that story coming out. And also, uh, some undercover, uh, journalism, uh, that showed a – at least one CNN producer talking about how he thinks the Russia story is – is being hyped up for ratings and is largely, uh, is largely nonsense, um, or at least there's not enough to support it, uh, and they're going with it because of ratings. I – I think they're going with it in part because of ratings but also, uh, because of the agenda here.

There's no better way to slow down the administration than to allow for the, uh, propagation of a massive echo chamber dedicated to just Trump is illegitimate, Trump is a, uh, a Russian, uh, stooge. He's – he's a puppet of the Kremlin. Then you don't get to talk about corporate tax reform. Then you don't get to talk about, uh, anything that really matters to the people of – of this country. So – or at least that matters to people who aren't, uh, hard-line democrats who somehow view themselves as being in a position to, uh, nullify the results of the election, which I think is the ultimate goal here. I think that's really – at the end of the day, that's what they're hoping for. That's what they think they can accomplish by continuing on with this coverage.

Uh, one other thing that I – I think is of note, and we're going to be getting to our friend Sara Carter here to talk about some of that Russia collusion investigation and the media's role in all that in just a few minutes, and then, of course, we will also get to our friend Ben Morris who's the editor at DailyWealth Trader. He's the editor of DailyWealth Trader publication by Stansberry. Do some investor education there, which will be, of course, a critical part of what we get to do with you today on the show.

I thought this was also really noteworthy that Google has been slapped with a $2.7 billion fine over search results. Um, this is in the EU which obviously has different standards and practices for all this than we do here in the States. But the order says that Google has to treat rival comparison shopping services the same way in – in its search results. You know, currently, I – I think a lot of people don't even realize this. And given the power of these, uh, online entities in the marketplace, we really need to pay much closer attention. You've got Amazon just bought up Whole Foods and, uh, they're now gobbling up, I mean, these giant, uh, Internet companies are gobbling up other really large and established entities in all kinds of business sectors.

I mean, I know people that work in the retail side of things, um, at the corporate level and they're like, "Look, it feels like it's just a matter of time before we're acquired and streamlined," which means people get worried because they think that means far fewer jobs and there'll be a lot of cuts to places that are involved in the retail business now still have some brick-and-mortar stores. Those have been in trouble. Retail overall is – is in a lot of trouble these days as I'm sure you know, and 1 in 10 jobs in the country are, in fact, in retail. Uh, it's – it's a huge part of our economy and, uh, there are very serious arguments that those jobs are not – it's not even just that they're not going to come back. Uh, they're not being transferred over into any – there's nowhere particularly obvious for those jobs, those people and those jobs to go, uh, because they're not being replaced with an industry that is also labor-intensive. They're being replaced with automation and technology.

Um, not the first time this has happened historically, but people are saying, "This time because of the Internet it's different". So we will have to see if that's true. But back to Google and, uh, the search results. Uh, this – this is a – a part of our day-to-day lives and I think a lot of folks don't even really spend much time considering. Google – we – we have this notion that Google almost operates like a public utility, that you go online, "Oh, I'm just going to Google something." But, of course, at the top of the search results in a vast majority of – of, uh, what people look at is on that first page of search results and search or SEO, search engine optimization, is a critical part of many different, uh, business models now.

Certainly in the news business it's essential. It's also really important honestly for any business these days because people want to find you online. And if I want to go buy, uh, I don't know. If I want – I want to go buy overalls and I type in overalls into Google, it's very likely that whatever is on the first page is what I'm going to be looking at and clicking on, and I might make my purchase, of course, right then and there. Unlikely I'll go to the second page. The third page is like no man's land. Very rarely does anyone go there. Uh, but Google has the ability also to have sponsored results which pop up at the top of the page and so they're paying or people pay them rather to be on that first page and they have a lot of control over what's going where.

We're led to believe that this is all through some kind of an algorithm and the algorithm is this neutral arbiter of what is true and good and just on the Internet. That's not reality unfortunately. Algorithms are programmed by people, and people have their own incentives and interests. And whether we're talking about Google or Facebook or any number of huge online entities, they are – they're doing this for their own profit, and I think also we'll see more and more they're doing this with their own, uh, political motivations that work, depending on the subject matter.

So this, uh, this $2.7 billion fine, which I know Google has $2.7 billion in the couch cushions, but that's the beginning of I think a recognition that these search – uh, search engine giants, well, these Internet giants I should say 'cause Google really is the search engine people use these days, Yahoo I suppose being number two. But it's a distant number two. They have such a sway over the market and – and they really – companies live and die by search results these days. So, eh, expect more regulation and – and a lot more, uh, fighting over, uh, how all this goes.

Indeed we've got Sara Carter on the line now. She is the National Security Correspondent for Circa News. She has been breaking stories left and right on surveillance, on Russia collusion investigation, what's real, what's not. She's been doing fantastic work and, uh, she's also a dear friend. Sara, thank you so much for joining us here on the Stansberry Investor Hour.

Sara Carter:It's great to be with you, Buck, thanks so much.

Buck Sexton:So everyone wants to hear about your latest, and then, uh, we can speak more broadly about, uh, Russia collusion investigations and – and where you think all this is – uh, where has it been and where it's all going. But – but first, tell us about your – your latest breaking stories here.

Sara Carter:Well, you know, it's – it's been a long journey, right. It's been a long journey. And it – it all started out with, uh, in the very beginning actually with the leak on, uh, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn when he was the National Security Advisor for President Trump, that very short stint, uh, he did with him. And the leaking of his name in a conversation with Ambassador Kislyak from Russia. So I'm not going to fill you in on all those little details that led me up to this story, but it all started with that. And the story that we just broke today is, um, you know, did the FBI retaliate against Michael Flynn, uh, during the launch of the – of the Russia probe.

And, uh, what was so fascinating to me is that, you know, from the very beginning, of course like many [inaudible due to signal loss] and people that would talk about what happened during, you know, the Russia investigation, particularly with the FBI. And there was a lot of angst and animosity against, uh, Comey and particularly even more so against, uh, now-acting Deputy Director, you know, Andrew McCabe. Uh, and so one of the things I started to do was we're not going to just look and listen to hearsay or anonymous sources 'cause everybody has their own opinion about things. I wanted to find documents.

So John Solomon and I went on a hunt looking for documents that would kind of back the supporting agent's case, people that were involved in the investigation. And what we discovered was that lo and behold, uh, Michael Flynn and McCabe had it out several years ago, um, basically over, uh, Supervisory Special Agent Robin Grit. She was and is still considered by many to be one of the premier counterterrorism experts of the United States. She was at the top of the hostage rescue team. She work, um, on the Robert Levinson case in Iran. She's worked on numerous other cases, including Richard Perle. So she is considered one of the premier terrorism experts.

But she actually, uh, butted heads with FBI Director – now FBI Director Andrew McCabe and, uh, back then. And she filed a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the FBI. McCabe and others went after her. Uh, Michael Flynn came to her defense and so did many other people like Admiral Losey, who was then Head of Naval Warfare group. And, uh, and – and so she had a slew of people backing her up.

She ended up leaving the FBI. Believe it or not, she ended up working at Macy's for a few years at the – at the makeup counter at Macy's because she couldn't get a job because she felt that McCabe and others had basically put the kibosh on her, uh, getting another job. And so her case is still, um, existing. She has a case, an EEOC case against, um, against the FBI. Now she's – now she's back working, um, in another capacity as a – as an expert in terrorism. But when we started to uncover these documents, we realized that Michael Flynn's intervention on her behalf really rubbed McCabe the wrong way. He went after him.

In fact, the FBI went so far as to try to stop his actual testimony that he was giving on behalf of Robin Grit, and at the time, he was Head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. And, uh, he wrote this commendable letter, uh, for her on his letterhead and it appears by all the people that we've spoken to, everybody that we know that this is when Andrew McCabe really had it out for Michael Flynn. And fast-forward, we have Andy McCabe who's in charge of the Russia investigation. Um, we're also breaking a number of stories regarding, um, his role, uh, with that in the upcoming weeks. But we have Andrew McCabe, and now he sees Michael Flynn in his line of sight.

And what a lot of the anonymous sources said and people that talked to us that were very tied into these investigations, they said that he had it out for him. And – and it went back to this. And we were able to document this with actual facts, with, uh, with testimony given, um, on behalf of Grit and others. In fact, we interview Grit. Uh, she hadn't done an interview in quite a while. Uh, we also spoke with Admiral Losey who backed everything he said about her. And what we can see is a very politicized, uh, bureaucratic – some people have it called it the swamp, you know, at work her in Washington, D.C.

Buck Sexton:We're speaking to Sara Carter. She is National Security Correspondent for Circa News. Uh, Sara, I know you've been on Sean Hannity Show a lot, uh, both radio and TV, with the stories that you and John – and John Solomon have been – have been breaking. Um, tell us a bit about what your role has been in – in bringing to light, uh, the possibility, uh, the allegations of surveillance done for political reasons, uh, while President Obama was still in office.

Sara Carter:Well, I – I feel grateful that, um, that I could get these stories out there to the American public because I feel they are vitally important to our liberties, to our Fourth Amendment rights, um, and – and to our country, to the foundation of our country. You know, the stories, once again, are based on documented fact. Uh, we were able to, uh, obtain documents, and you know, they were pretty much buried on the Internet. Nobody even paid attention to them. But from the FISC Court, which is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which openly chided the Obama Administration for basically illegal surveillance, then one of them, going right back to the FBI, let's start with that, I mean that the FBI was illegally sharing, you know, our espionage data on Americans with unauthorized actors, with third parties, forbidden parties, contractors.

Um, there was a number of hundreds of cases of warrantless surveillance, um, where the FBI was basically able to glean information from people that, uh, you would've thought was protected, uh, under your Fourth Amendment rights. For example, Buck, let me – let me give you a couple of examples. Um, private conversations between your attorney and you. There were cases where the FBI went in and they actually were able to obtain and – you know, and – and listen in and get communications, um, between private, you know, privileged client-attorney relations, which you would've thought would've been completely secured.

Priests; priests were also there. And when – and another interesting factor, and we saw this under the Obama Administration, journalists, that journalists, um, there was also, um, like a loophole that allowed the FBI under certain conditions, uh, to with – with no warrant to look at communications that journalists had with their sources. This was incredible to me because you – here, you have the FISC Court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which pretty much says yes to everything that comes across their desk for a warrant. It's – it's – it – they – they have to fill out 80 pages worth of paperwork. This is a very intense thing when you're trying to get a warrant to surveil someone.

But what – what happened was the FISC Court actually couldn't do everything. So they kind of gave oversight to the agencies them [inaudible due to signal loss] what they came back with was complete disregard for the rules. They said, um, the – there was inadequate training and there was, uh, deficient oversight, sharing spy data with forbidden parties, uh, you know – and remember, James Comey testified. He testified to lawmakers and told them that use sensitive espionage data that was gathered about Americans without a warrant, they only used it _____ and check. And what the FISC Court found out was that that was not the case at all. We were also able to uncover, which I thought was absolutely fascinating, that Obama laxed the laws on National Security Agency – on the National Security Agency for searches, that they were actually searching so much more than we ever thought.

So from 2011 until the time of the election, those searches increased by over 350 percent. And that would be overseas searches, right, on Americans talking to foreigners overseas. And so those unmaskings also increased, particularly from November through December. So not only did we see searches on upstream Internet data, on Americans inside the NSA, you know, increasing, but we also saw unmasking of Americans increase exponentially, um, and very curiously from November, uh, through December after the election, so after President Trump had won.

And that led to other stories where we discovered that John Brennan, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and others within the administration were unmasking Americans unlike that – unlike anything we had ever seen in the past. And I think those stories were eye-opening. They revealed what was happening inside the United States and in the bureaucracy, and they raised – they raised a lot of questions. They raised the questions of, "Are we politicizing? Has our intelligence community been politicized? Are people within the United States –"

Buck Sexton:What do you say, Sara? What – what do you say to people when they ask you if there is a – a deep state, uh, whether small or large, but it – if there is a – a deep state faction that is trying to oppose the president of the United States, his agenda, and his administration?

Sara Carter:I think there is enough evidence to support that there are people within the bureaucracy, people within the previous administration that were politicizing intelligence, that were seeking this intelligence. Remember, a lot of this is classified, Buck, so for – for us to get our hands on those exact transcripts of conversations is – is very impossible. So we – we tried to do our best to tell the stories without violating any of those classified norms, you know, without breaking the law. But what we know based on our research, both John Solomon and I, you know, is that it appears – it appears based on all the evidence that, yes, there were people using intelligence and have used the intelligence that they intercepted that we entrusted our agencies with so that they could capture terrorists, not politicians.

And what we've seen is that there was, in a sense, this political espionage. Those leaks were definitely political. They – they had a purpose. Um, in fact, people were willing and Michael Flynn is one example of that, the leaking of his name in that conversation with Ambassador Kislyak, I mean, that is a felony. What happened there was a felony. And I can tell you this. There were very few people that had access to those transcripts, those exact transcripts between Kislyak and Flynn. And that would've been people within the FBI and at the DOJ. But it was a very small number, and what I can say is it was under 10 people. So if they really wanted to find out who leaked it I'm sure they could.

Buck Sexton:Sara Carter is a National Correspondent for Circa News. Sara, where can people go to follow your – your latest reporting and – and everything that you're working on right now? This is critical work.

Sara Carter:I would love for people to come visit us at circa.com or you can follow me on Twitter @saracarterDC. That's S-A-R-A-C-A-R-T-E-R-D-C.

Buck Sexton:Sara, always great to have you, uh, joining me anywhere. Thank you so much for the first time here on Stansberry Investor Hour. We appreciate it.

Sara Carter:Thank you so much, Buck. I'll – I'll be happy to come back.

Buck Sexton:Great. Talk to you soon, Sara. Well, for those of you who had had questions before about, uh, deep state and surveillance and everything that's going on with the administration, I hope Sara was, uh, able to shed some – some light on that with – with her reporting and – and her commentary there. But we – we are these Stansberry Investor Hour podcast. Of course, we've got to do some [laughs] uh, some investor education as part of this if you're going to give us your time here.

Uh, politics, of course, is necessary to understand the big picture and – and so is national security. But let's get into the nitty-gritty of what's going on here, uh, with the markets. We're joined by Ben Morris. He is the, uh, Editor of DailyWealth Trader. Uh, Ben, great to get a chance to chat with you, sir.

Ben Morris:Yeah, good talking to you, Buck.

Buck Sexton:So, uh, you – you have – before we – we get into, uh, some of your – your analysis here, you have quite an interesting story. You, uh, you were with Stansberry. Obviously you're part of the Stansberry family. Uh, but you didn't have a typical path for a research analyst. How – how did you end up as a part of Stansberry?

Ben Morris:Yeah. So, uh, I was living down in Costa Rica in – in 2008 when the market crashed. And I was selling real estate down there and had some money in savings, and basically saw the value of that savings drop in half. It was in stocks and that was a wakeup call for me. And I started getting serious about investing. I came across an ad for, uh, one of Stansberry Research – our newsletters. It was Steve Sjuggerud's True Wealth. And so I subscribed. And, uh, that started the journey. I was a reader for a few years and basically the market for real estate in Costa Rica dropped off. Uh, North Americans were not buying, and I decided to come back to the States. And I thought Stansberry would be a good place to work.

Buck Sexton:So you're somebody that was first – first a reader. Now, you're an analyst for them. Tell us a bit about DailyWealth Trader. What exactly is this service trying to accomplish for its reader?

Ben Morris:Yeah. So my trading and investing philosophy is – we'll, there's – there's an old market saying. It says, "Take care of the downside and the upside will take care of itself." My best advice to all readers and listeners is to take care of the downside. So what that means is don't blow your portfolio up. It's easy to say but there are a lot of little things that people do that get them in trouble. To me, in DailyWealth Trader is helping readers, um, not blow their portfolios up.

Buck Sexton:This is the risk management part of the equation? I mean, how – how – how are – how are some – what are some ways to do that? What are some principles to keep in mind so as you say you don't blow up your portfolio?

Ben Morris:Yeah. So on the big picture, you have things like asset management where you just – or asset allocation where you make sure you have some money in stocks, bonds, real estate, gold and silver, some cash. Make sure that you aren't tied to just the stock market, for example. On the smaller side, on – on just stocks or just bonds, you think, "Okay, well you don't want to have too much money in any one position." That's position sizing. And also stop-losses. So if a position goes against you, you get out and you preserve your capital.

So that's the basics of risk management. There are a lot of nuances, which we can talk about a little bit later. But, of course, we're also looking to make money in DailyWealth Trader. So I use a variety of strategies. We usually recommend one or two trades each week. And we buy stocks. We sell stocks short. And we also, uh, sell options.

Buck Sexton:Can you explain to me a bit about the process of selling an option for those who might want to follow that advice specifically?

Ben Morris:Sure. I'll use an analogy. Normally, we sell put options. So let's say you're looking to buy a car, and as you know, car dealers are in trouble right now, slowing demand, a lot of borrowers are defaulting. So let's say you're looking around and you find a car for $20,000.00 that you like. You talk to the dealer, try and negotiate, and basically you just decide to keep shopping. He's not coming down too much. But what he is willing to do is offer you $500.00 if you would agree to buy that $20,000.00 car for $19,000.00 in two months. If you take him up on that, you get $500.00 and basically you sold him a put option.

What the dealer gets out of that is the guarantee that if he can't get his car off the lot you'll buy it from him at a lower price but still buy it from him in a couple of months. What you get out of it is the $500.00. Potentially, you get to buy the car at a discount, too. It's the same thing with stocks. If you find a stock that you like, you can put in an offer in, or essentially sell a put option to buy a stock at a lower price and get paid cash upfront for doing that. And so if you're willing to own the stock, it's a great way to earn some cash and either get the stock or not, but either way you're making money.

Buck Sexton:Okay, Ben. Can you also tell me a bit about – tell our listeners here more about what a pairs trade is and – and why you're so pro-pairs trade, why you like them so much right now?

Ben Morris:Selling options is a big part of what we do in DailyWealth Trader. We do a lot of other strategies. Um, pairs trading is one of them. And essentially why I like them so much right now is that there's – we've – we've been in a bull market for eight years. Stocks have gone up more than 250 percent. And people are nervous about when the next bear market will be. They have been for a long time. But as Steve Sjuggerud often says, "Bull markets don't die of old age." So it could keep going. We could see another year or two years, even three years of higher stock prices. But we could also see stocks turn lower at any time.

What a pairs trade does is it eliminates the need to worry about what's coming in stocks. You buy one stock. You sell another stock. And so you profit as long as the stock you buy outperforms the stock you sell short. So for – uh, for listeners who don't know, selling short is betting that a stock goes down. So you bet one stock goes up. Let's say you put $5,000.00 into that. And then you sell a stock short. You can put $5,000.00 into that. And this way, it doesn't really matter what the markets do. Stocks are correlated to the market, so if the market goes up or down, your stocks will likely go up or down. If the stock that you buy goes up, you make money there. If the stock that you sell short goes down, you make money there. But even if both rise or both fall, you make money as long as the one you bought does better than the one you sold short.

So you eliminate all stock – stock market risk. I have a couple of examples that might help clarify. For example, earlier this year, we recommended a pairs trade where you buy Amazon stock and sold a retail fund. So what this trade does is if Amazon goes up, you make money. If it goes down, you can still make money as long as the general retail sector falls more. Essentially, if the stock market falls, retail falls, Amazon falls, you still have a chance to make money. That's not true with most trading strategies.

Another example, we recommended buying Argentine stocks and selling a fund of emerging markets. Anyone that's invested in emerging markets knows that they're typically pretty volatile. They can see pretty big swings. We liked Argentina because the new president as of about a year-and-a-half ago I think, Mario Macri, came in and started making changes to the way the country operates, more business-friendly and investor-friendly changes in the country. And so by buying Argentine stocks and selling emerging markets short, we were only betting that Argentina would outperform the rest of the emerging markets. And they have. Argentina's – they've both gone up, but Argentina's done much better. So readers of DailyWealth Trader have made money on that trade.

Buck Sexton:I heard you have a new strategy at DailyWealth Trader by the way. Can you explain that for our listeners? I mean, this is in an area I know where a lot of people make position-sizing mistakes.

Ben Morris:Yeah. So this also comes back to being in a bull market that has been going on for a long time. A lot of people don't want to put a lot of money at risk. They're – they're worried that the next bear market is right around the corner. And if they take big positions or if they put too much money in, they're worried that they're going to take big losses. And that's understandable. It's happened in the past. It can happen again. What we recommend in DailyWealth Trader is using position sizes based on your strategy, your exit strategy.

For example, we use what are called stop-losses, which a lot of listeners may know about already. But you could say if a stock falls 10 percent, you get out when it falls 10 percent. Or if it falls 20 percent, maybe that's your exit point. You want to make sure you have a point where you're out of the trade if it goes against you. So what we're doing in DailyWealth Trader with a lot of our positions is when we buy a stock if we're using a stop of 10 percent or less, meaning we'll sell if it falls 10 percent or less, we'll buy a full position.

If we're using a stop of 20 percent, which we might decide to use for a stock that may be more volatile, we'll take a half-position at first. And that way even if you stop out on that half-position, you're really only risking 10 percent of a full position. So you're reducing risk there. And then if the stock goes up, you can add to that half-position but still never risk more than 10 percent of what you would put into a full investment. And the same thing goes for positions where we would use wider stops. We would, uh, maybe take a – a one-third position when we use a stop of up to about 30 percent.

You get rid of the nerves that you may have for entering a position because you keep your risk of loss very low from the start. Uh, and you only add to your position as you profit. And so your upside is very large but you keep your risk very low.

Buck Sexton:So you – you have a three-to-one risk – reward-to-risk formula, right?

Ben Morris:Yeah, that's right. Um, that's generally what we look for when we're buying stocks. We look for three times our upside is our downside risk. So if we're using a 10 percent stop, we want to make sure we have a realistic shot at at least 30 percent gains. If we're going to risk 25 percent, we're going to make sure we have at least 75 percent upside on the trade. Uh, so basically if you're – if you're trading, you're not going to get them all right. But when you get, say 50 percent right, if you have a three-to-one risk-reward – or reward-to-risk ratio when you place trades, you're going to do all right over time.

Buck Sexton:How have the results been so far in 2017 for DailyWealth Trader, your publication within Stansberry? I mean, can you give us some specifics about how DailyWealth Trader has been doing?

Ben Morris:Sure. Yeah. I – I pulled the, uh, stats yesterday. And so far in 2017, we've made 39 recommendations; 25 were winners, 14 are losers. Um, those – those include open positions also. So these aren't trades we've closed out but all positions that we've recommended this year. That's a 64 percent win rate so far. The average return has been 4.7 percent in about two months. So for listeners that are familiar with annualize returns, that's about 27 percent annualized. So if you make 4.7 percent every couple of months, you're getting close to 27 percent a year.

Specifically, our average winner has – is up or has closed for 10.2 percent return. And our average loser has been negative 5.1 percent return. So our winners have been double the size of our losers with 64 percent win rate. That's, uh, that's a pretty good record so far this year. We're happy with it. A couple of big winners.

Buck Sexton:Great.

Ben Morris:Yeah, a couple big winners. We – we recommended National Beverage, ticker symbol FIZZ, FIZZ. They sell LaCroix, the sugar-free carbonated water. We're up 79 percent on that. We recommended buying Greek stocks. We're up 28 percent on that. And we closed out a short oil trade, uh, betting on oil declining for a quick 25 percent gain.

Buck Sexton:Well, for a free – uh, risk-free trial to Ben's research with DailyWealth Trader, everyone, go to www.investorhour.com and sign up for one of our weekly, uh, updates. Uh, for the next couple of weeks, we'll include a link in the update to find Ben's work. So, again, go to investorhour.com and you can get a risk-free trial to, uh, DailyWealth Trader. And Ben Morris of DailyWealth Trader, the Editor of DailyWealth Trader, great to have you on the, uh, Investor Hour, sir. Thank you so much for joining us.

Ben Morris:Yeah, thank you, Buck.

Buck Sexton:So, uh, now is where, uh, folks, uh, Stansberry folks, family, I wanted to get into the mailbag, um, and a bit of our – our last calls here. Um, number one, we've got Feisal saying, "Please look into uploading the Investor Hour radio show onto YouTube, much like Porter's previous radio show. It permits me to save episodes and to modify the speed unlike on the other mediums being used. Great work. Keep it up."

Uh, Feisal, first of all, thank you so much for writing us, uh, for the Stansberry Investor Hour. You can find all the episodes on YouTube by going to YouTube and searching Stansberry Investor Hour. Uh, there are – there are other Stansberry channels so be, uh, sure to search the whole title to land on the podcast page. And by the way, we have, uh, some big plans for the Stansberry Investor Hour and perhaps even some video, uh, component of it coming – coming soon. Uh, but we'll – we'll be waiting on that until, uh, our – our friend, our fearless leader, Mr. Stansberry himself, Porter, uh, gets back from his much-needed respite. I hope right now Porter is pulling an – an obscenely huge sailfish onto a boat, uh, and maybe, you know, enjoying a single malt although probably not simultaneously. But I hope he's having a great time. And we look forward to having Porter back.

Number two in the mailbox here, "Dear Porter and Buck. No problem with the man-splaining. Nice counterpoint to what I get at home from my feminist wife." Just always remember you can man-splain all you want all day, but when you get home and the Mrs. is there, she's always right. There is no man-splaining. Uh, this is what I've been told by people who are married. I'm not married, but that's what they tell me and it sounds like good advice. Uh, that was from Rick.

And we've also got Raymond. He says, "Hey, fellas. If something is a micro aggression then you've got to be looking real close to even see it, probably too close to see even the real picture. Keep bringing reason to the forefront and thank you for all you do." Well, thank you, sir. Thank you, Raymond, and also everyone else writing in and listening. Um, if you've got a question, by the way, or you've got some thoughts for the show, some topics, we'd love to hear from our – our Stansberry subscribers or anybody out there about what they'd really like us to tackle here on the show.

I've got some ideas already percolating here that we're looking to do in the weeks ahead. Um, I'm thinking we might get into, uh, I – I want to do a deep dive on Bitcoin at some point. I find that fascinating. Also, automation and how it's going to affect a whole variety of sectors and, of course, the impact that can have on the markets, as well as algorithmic trading and the major changes that will be coming to the financial services industry and – and the whole financial sector along with it. So those are some of our ideas that I think we'll be, uh, hitting later on, uh, if not this month certainly this – this summer.

Uh, but if you have any ideas for us, any topics, anything you want to hit, feedback@investorhour.com. Again, that's feedback@investorhour.com. And if we use your question on the show, we'll send you some Stansberry research swag. Oh yeah. You want to check that out for sure. So please do, uh, stay up-to-date and contact us. Keep in touch. Sign up at, uh, investorhour.com for the free weekly show update. You get access to transcripts, links to past episodes, and special content for listeners posted on the Stansberry Research website. And we'll also tell you how to get a trial to Ben Morris' research with DailyWealth Trader.

I want to again thank you all for joining here for the, uh, Stansberry Investor Hour.

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As always, it has been, uh, fun and illuminating. Uh, until next time my friends. Stay with it. We'll talk to you soon.

Male:Thank you for listening to the Stansberry Investor Hour. To access today's note and receive notice of upcoming episodes, go to investorhour.com and enter your e-mail. Have a question for Porter and Buck? Send them an e-mail at feedback@investorhour.com. If we use your question on air, we'll send you one of our studio mugs. This broadcast is providing for entertainment purposes only and should not be considered personalized investment advice. Trading stocks and all other financial instruments involves risk. You should not make any investment decision based solely on what you hear. Stansberry Investor Hour is produced by Stansberry Research and is copyrighted by the Stansberry Radio Network.