One Last Look at 2025
Editor's note: This week, we're wrapping up our 2025 Stansberry Research "Report Card" series.
As I've stated, this is the most important (and often controversial) thing we publish each year... a full accounting of our performance.
One of our guiding tenets at Stansberry Research is to provide you with all the information we would want if our roles were reversed.
To us, that means full accountability for and transparency on our performance, which is why we do this every year.
We give you the average returns for all our services' recommendations... the annualized returns for those picks... the win rate... and a relevant benchmark. Then we assign each service a letter grade.
Not every service gets an A. Not every service has a good year. But by sharing the performance and some extra "color commentary" to help explain it, you'll have a better idea of how our services work and how to use them.
Today, I'm sharing our fourth and final installment.
In Part I, I reviewed our portfolio products. In Part II, I looked at our general investing services. And in Part III, I covered our newsletters that focus on trading, as opposed to investing.
Now, it's time to look at our more advanced, specialized services for investors...
Wrapping Up Our 2025 Report Card
The year 2025 feels like so long ago.
So far, 2026 has been shocking. First, markets came to believe that AI would replace existing software tools, and software stocks crashed.
Then the stocks of data companies like S&P Global (SPGI) and FactSet Research Systems (FDS) followed suit.
Now commercial real estate stocks are crashing... since you don't need offices if AI has replaced all the human workers.
And so are trucking and transportation stocks... following reports that a penny stock's little-used AI tool might make shipping more efficient. Here's the Wall Street Journal...
The sell-off appears to have been sparked by a news release from a Florida firm called Algorhythm Holdings, which said its SemiCab unit had boosted customers' freight volumes more than 300% "without a corresponding increase in operational headcount."
Prior to August, the company's main business was selling karaoke machines, according to securities filings. It said it sold the karaoke business in August and changed its name to Algorhythm, from The Singing Machine Company.
While the airlines, railroads and trucking firm stocks tanked Thursday, Algorhythm's own shares rose 30% to trade at about $1.08.
Is this AI crash overblown or an opportunity in disguise? That's a topic for another time.
But it's a fact that stocks are priced based on their future earnings.
But allow me one more Digest to talk about the past...
I (Stansberry Research Publisher Matt Weinschenk) have spent much of the month reviewing our publications' performance and sharing my assessment with you.
While 2025 feels like the distant past, it's important to have an honest appraisal of your results. A tight feedback loop is the key to improvement.
And we're constantly working to improve our performance for you.
Today, in the final part of our annual Report Card, I'll cover the last seven of our newsletters.
These are our specialized services. They focus on particular strategies or sectors like bonds, crypto, or health care.
On Friday, I reviewed our specialized trading services... those that had an average holding period of one year or less.
Today, I'm reviewing our longer-term specialized services. Accordingly, I'll judge them over the past five years.
The results here range widely, from newsletters that trounced their benchmark to some that have struggled.
I'm happy to report they've all recorded gains. Subscribers wouldn't have lost money following all the advice in any of these newsletters.
But in a bull market, not losing money isn't good enough. You have to do even better.
On to the grades...
Stansberry's Credit Opportunities: A+
As I covered last week, I may not have believed Greg Diamond's Ten Stock Trader performance if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes...
The same applies to Stansberry's Credit Opportunities.
In this newsletter, Mike DiBiase and Bill McGilton root out individual bonds for readers like you to buy.
Almost nobody does this. Bonds are the realm of professionals. Individuals like you typically use bond funds to get exposure. But virtually no one picks up the phone (yes, sometimes the phone!) and places an order for a bond.
You should.
Bonds can give you stock-like returns without the risk – if you know how to choose them.
Mike detailed his strategy in a December Digest issue, and you can read it here if you'd like a refresher. Here's the basic outline...
A bond is a form of debt. A government or company can sell a bond, typically for $1,000, that promises a fixed interest rate. At the bond's maturity date, the bondholder gets back the full $1,000 "par value" as well.
That's a sleepy investment. But Mike looks at bonds that trade for less than their par value. In other words, if investors become uncertain that they'll get paid as promised, they'll unload the bond for less than $1,000.
These are known as "distressed" bonds. But the name is a bit of a misnomer. Investors in distressed corporate bonds can find plenty of high-quality businesses that'll pay their interest and repay the principal.
For instance, in late 2023, Mike and Bill recommended the bonds of Tegna (TGNA)... a company that operates local broadcasting stations. The bonds traded for $835 – well below their $1,000 par value – and yielded close to 8.6%.
Mike and Bill reasoned that political advertising in election season would juice the company's sales... improving the company's credit and raising the bond price.
It played out exactly that way. Readers sold their bonds for $945 in 2025 and collected $75 of interest along the way. That's a 23% return over two years.
Investing in distressed bonds may sound complicated. But compared with trading stocks, you know more about your potential returns and losses, and there are fewer surprises. As long as a company can meet its debt obligations, you know what a bond is worth.
With careful analysis and a diverse portfolio, Stansberry's Credit Opportunities has delivered an 11.7% annualized return over five years of recommendations, nearly double the S&P 500 Index.
And most appealing, it has a nearly 80% win rate on closed positions. That peace of mind is hard to find in stock investing, and it earns Stansberry's Credit Opportunities an A+.
Stansberry Venture Technology: A+
I've probably read a hundred books on investing. None has told me that the secret to finding good stocks was by modeling protein structures. But here we are...
Dave Lashmet's elite research service, Stansberry Venture Technology, goes deeper than any investment advisory on the planet.
Dave and his on-staff scientist, Erica Saint Clair, don't just run the valuation numbers on a promising stock. They evaluate which scientific breakthroughs will work and which won't... and, in turn, which ones will drive stock prices higher.
Erica in particular does novel work to model protein structures to get an edge. Here's an image she and Dave published recently...
That research points them to a revolutionary treatment for muscular dystrophy.
And it works. Look at the returns. Venture Technology has produced a 51% average return in its recommendations over the last five years.
It's not a lucky stretch. Since the service's inception in 2014, its average gain has been 49.3%.
And don't think this is just biotechnology, either. It's anything that's "hard tech" (so not software and other web tools).
But Dave has bent my ear on orbital mechanics, hypersonic missiles, geothermal energy, semiconductor manufacturing, and more.
And the profits come from everywhere.
In particular, Dave has been on top of the space race, with open gains of 314% in Planet Labs (PL), 231% in Globalstar (GSAT), and 117% in MDA Space (MDA.TO).
If you love reading about cutting-edge science, or profiting from it, you can't find another service with the depth (or returns) of Venture Technology anywhere in the world. And its gains earn it an A+ in this year's Report Card.
Income Intelligence: B
Full disclosure... I work very closely on this publication with its editor, Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig. But I consulted with several others at our company to try and keep my bias out of this grade.
Income Intelligence is designed to find safe and growing income via dividend-paying stocks.
We've trailed the benchmark – the Vanguard Wellington Fund – over the past five years. But here are two reasons that doesn't trouble me...
One, we don't manage the portfolio to chase the benchmark. Our primary goal is to provide value to our subscribers. And sometimes that limits performance.
In the past five years, Income Intelligence has recommended super safe bond funds that we knew for certain would provide only Treasury-like returns. We recommended another zero-risk fund that provides Treasury-like returns with a clever mechanism to offset taxes.
These income tools drag down our average returns... But they are valuable strategies we want our subscribers to know about.
Here's the second point... Since its inception 12 years ago, Income Intelligence has beaten its benchmark with an average gain of 11.8% versus one of 8.6%.
The win rate over the past five years is just 49%. That's pulled down a bit by a rough bear market in 2022. Since inception, the win rate is more than 57%.
Overall, on the five-year returns we're considering for this year's Report Card, I'll hand Income Intelligence a B. We'll look for potential lower interest rates to help boost its bond-like holdings in 2026.
Crypto Capital: C
It's tough to beat bitcoin. Yes, it's struggling right now, but over the five-year window we're viewing, bitcoin rose from $30,000 to $87,000.
And as our resident crypto expert, Crypto Capital editor Eric Wade elected to choose bitcoin as his benchmark.
To be clear, Eric's a very special sort of crypto investor. He's not out there trading the nonsense "meme" coins that surge and collapse.
Instead, he evaluates real, valuable blockchain projects that stand to become incredible technologies. For instance, in April, Eric recommended a project working to provide decentralized cloud computing to compete with Amazon Web Services and others. The token shot up 100% in a few months.
If you want to make money, Crypto Capital has done a phenomenal job. The average holding has risen by 56%.
But you'd have done even better just holding bitcoin itself.
That's something the entire crypto industry has struggled with. The "altcoins" have all underperformed bitcoin, crypto's main attraction.
But we've seen this happen before. And there's a cycle to the industry. Eric believes an "altcoin" season lies ahead, when quality alternatives to bitcoin will catch up to its performance.
For now, Eric's readers have made plenty of gains over the last five years. But there's always room for improvement. I've given Crypto Capital a C.
Stansberry Venture Value: C
Small-cap stocks have brutally underperformed the market.
Since the bottom of the pandemic-induced crash in 2020, the largest stocks (as measured by the Russell 1000 Index) have outperformed smaller names (as measured by the Russell 2000 Index) by a gap of 167% to 132%.
And this isn't the usual state of things. Normally, small caps outperform because smaller companies tend to have faster growth potential... or because they are mispriced by the market.
Franklin Templeton Investments describes it as the "long, dark winter of small-cap underperformance."
And it's possibly even a worse time for small-cap value investing. And that's the precise niche of Stansberry Venture Value.
Rather than speculate on future growth, a value investor tries to identify the true, intrinsic value of shares today, then hopes to find an opportunity where others have missed it. This allows you to buy at a better price than you would otherwise get.
But growth has been doing better than value for years as well.
Venture Value editor Bryan Beach is a former CPA who has worked on the inside of public companies, filing their earnings reports.
He knows how the game is played. And that allows him to spot value in tiny companies that others overlook.
It still works.
In March, Bryan recommended Forum Energy Technologies (FET), which makes equipment for oil drilling.
At the time of his recommendation, Forum Energy had a market cap of $217 million. For some perspective... that means Forum was nearly 10,000 times smaller than a megacap like Amazon (AMZN).
By December, Forum's shares had already doubled.
Bryan also recommended Eventbrite (EB), a $400 million company that handles event planning and ticket sales, in April. Again, shares doubled by December.
I'll admit, the five-year returns here are not impressive. Measured against the S&P SmallCap 600 Index, Venture Value trailed its benchmark.
Venture Value may have turned the corner, though. For 2025, Bryan's average return was 19.5%, versus 7.7% for the benchmark. If he can keep up this outperformance, weaker returns a few years back will fade into the rearview.
It has been a long wait for patient fans of small-cap value. But the turning point may be here. For now, Stansberry Venture Value earned a C in this year's Report Card.
Prosperity Investor: D
Much like small caps, health care struggled during the period we're evaluating.
Until a surge in the second half of 2025, it had been roughly flat for four years.
Prosperity Investor, from Doc Eifrig and John Engel, launched in 2022 to take advantage of the incredible advances in medicine and capture the profit potential for our readers.
And the advances are happening. Big changes have happened thanks to weight-loss drugs, advances in medical devices, and progress in science-related robotics.
It's all happening how we'd expect.
But health care stocks have not come along. Biotech stocks hovered in place for years. The health care sector got disrupted by funding cuts from President Donald Trump and policy uncertainty from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In one particular case, Prosperity Investor held shares of orthodontics maker Align Technology (ALGN). Since the company manufactured its clear braces in Mexico, Trump's tariffs sent shares plummeting.
Or take Bruker (BRKR). It makes lab equipment for diagnostics. When the U.S. Department of Commerce put restrictions on exports of certain biotech equipment due to national-security concerns, shares fell dramatically.
When the rules change overnight, it's tough to invest.
Even so, we're measuring Prosperity Investor against the State Street Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLV). This benchmark has also struggled in the time since we launched this newsletter. But Prosperity Investor has fared even worse. We need to see better performance.
What's encouraging is that health care and biotech stocks posted a healthy gain in the second half of 2025.
After such a long period of underperformance, the sector could catch up very rapidly. So this will be Prosperity Investor's opportunity to prove itself in a health care bull market. This year, though, it gets a D.
Extreme Value: A-
Warren Buffett is retiring from the game. And everyone is obsessed with AI companies that lose billions per month.
But don't let anyone tell you that value investing is dead.
Dan Ferris and Mike Barrett prove that in Extreme Value.
Yes, the results hew close to its benchmark, the S&P 500.
But unlike the S&P 500, Extreme Value makes these gains without the risk of richly valued tech giants.
Start with the win rate at 72%. But then go on to see how Dan makes his gains...
He closed 2025 with open gains of 173% in Costco Wholesale (COST), 127% in Royal Gold (RGLD), and 150% in Uranium Energy (UEC). And he booked 50% gains in cereal maker Kellanova (K) and 63% in industrial firm Parker-Hannifin (PH).
Perhaps my favorite was his 375% gain in grocery chain Sprouts Farmers Market (SFM).
Why take big risks in the market when you can earn such serious returns from value investments... companies trading at valuations that look reasonable relative to their current business, not some far-off promised future?
Dan killed it in 2025. He posted a 21.1% average annualized gain, versus 4.5% for the S&P 500, and he didn't have a single losing position.
Since Extreme Value slightly trailed its benchmark over the past five years, we've given it an A- in this year's Report Card. But Dan's subscribers should have no complaints about the gains they've made – and the risks they've avoided.
Dan has been running Extreme Value for 24 years. Over the full life of the service, he has beaten the benchmark by more than 2% and posted a win rate of 58.7%.
That's how you build wealth over time without chasing high-risk stocks.
Also in this category would be Gabe Marshank's new service, Market Maven.
Gabe has also contributed to successful recommendations in Stansberry's Investment Advisory and Commodity Supercycles.
But Gabe launched Market Maven at the end of October.
While Gabe brings decades of incredible experience, we've only got about two months of Maven performance to judge.
He made several bets on quantum computing, which have struggled after the sector got a bit overheated... But his insights into energy, commodities, and even biotechnology more than made up for it.
Gabe's average gain is currently more than 6 times his benchmark... albeit from a small sample size and a short time frame.
I won't assign Maven an official Report Card grade for 2025. But to stick to the language of the schoolhouse, our newest student shows great promise and has set high expectations for next year.
And that wraps up our 2025 Report Card...
I've appreciated the feedback we've gotten from subscribers on the first three parts of the Report Card. Please keep your comments coming: feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
Thank you for placing your trust in Stansberry Research. It goes without saying that we would not exist without our dedicated readers.
I also thank you for your patience and your understanding that not every investment goes straight up.
But we'll keep sharing the best information and insights that we can. And we'll check in next year with another assessment of how well we've done.
New Research in The Stansberry Investor Suite...
2025 was a crazy year. And so far, 2026 looks to be even crazier...
There's a lot going on. AI stocks are (still) soaring, while software stocks are crashing. Gold and silver are in the midst of a wild ride. The Federal Reserve chairmanship is turning over. The latest jobs report just surprised to the upside. Then there's everything going on in the housing market.
With so many potential investment drivers happening at once, how do you design a single portfolio that'll take advantage of them all?
The answer lies with The N.E.W. System.
The N.E.W. System's AI-driven algorithm carefully crafts a portfolio that's not only filled with the best-of-the-best stocks... but is also highly diversified across different sectors and industries.
This month, editor Whitney Tilson and senior analyst Alan Gula dive into one specific megatrend that has been a shining light lately... aerospace and defense.
These stocks are soaring today. Lockheed Martin (LMT) and RTX (RTX), for instance, are already up double digits year to date. And Elon Musk's SpaceX is headed for a $1.5 trillion initial public offering.
A lot of companies stand to benefit from investments in this corner of the market.
But this is a speculative area... so how do you know what companies will survive and which will fail?
One N.E.W. System holding, which has been in the portfolio since the beginning, is in a stellar position to benefit.
It's a high-quality space and defense contractor – one that's received an "A+" from the Stansberry Score.
It makes rocket motors, satellites, and other vital equipment for the space boom. It holds several government contracts all over the world. And it stands to be a big beneficiary of the Golden Dome project... an ambitious plan to build a missile defense system that protects the United States.
(So far, Congress has approved a $24 billion "down payment" for the project. But the entire thing could cost up to $3.6 trillion.)
Stansberry Investor Suite subscribers can read the entire report here.
If you don't already subscribe to The Stansberry Investor Suite – and want to learn more about our special package of research – click here.
Until next week,
Matt Weinschenk
Publisher and Director of Research
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