Editor's note: Today, we're sharing a special essay adapted from the Stansberry Digest. In it, our publisher Brett Aitken reveals an important decision he made before he came to work for Stansberry Research. Read on to learn the details, including how our core philosophy helped us churn out Buffett-like gains... and why you should invest in stocks you'd want to own forever.
Porter Stansberry – our company's founder – has instilled the fundamental ideal at our firm that we provide the information to our subscribers that we would want if our roles were reversed. He's my boss. And I try to follow his lead...
But that's not what most people think they want. Most people only want the hottest tip – a stock that will make them rich by next Tuesday.
Serious investors know that chasing the latest market fad is a fool's errand...
Instead, they follow time-tested strategies for growing and protecting wealth. They look for opportunities to buy valuable assets when they're cheap and ignored by the investing crowd. They know how to evaluate macro trends in the markets and the broader economy... and how to deploy their capital to take advantage.
These are the kind of serious investing ideas we strive to bring to our subscribers, month after month.
And it's why I'm writing to you today. I want to explain a key pillar of our investing philosophy, and why you should invest not just for next Tuesday... but for life.
Legendary investor Warren Buffett is the third-richest man on the planet...
Through the years, he has said numerous times that his favorite holding period is forever.
The best investments take time. Buffett knows that patience is critical to his success... He buys great companies – like credit-card giant American Express (AXP) or soft-drink behemoth Coca-Cola (KO). And then he simply waits...
Buffett has compounded the market value of his holding company Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) an average of almost 21% every year from 1965 through 2018 (his most recent available results).
But he doesn't hit a home run every year for his Berkshire shareholders... In the late 1990s, the company's shares fell by almost half. And it ran into trouble again during the global financial crisis. In 2015, the market shaved almost 15% off the company's share price.
However, investors who have stuck with Buffett over all these years have made a fortune. Over the past three decades, the stock is up almost 3,900%. By comparison, the broad stock market is up one-fifth of that over the same span.
Like Buffett, we want to buy the best businesses we can hold forever...
We also aim to help our subscribers with more than just stock recommendations. We want to educate you to become better investors... We want to show you different strategies, how to properly manage risk, how to effectively use trailing stops, and how to make the right portfolio allocations through position sizing.
Like Buffett, we know it takes time to become better investors and accumulate serious wealth through the markets.
And we have the results to prove it...
For the 10-year period ending December 31, 2018, Porter's average annualized gain in his flagship publication, Stansberry's Investment Advisory, was 13%. In Steve Sjuggerud's True Wealth newsletter, the average annualized gain was about 12% over the same time frame.
Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig's Retirement Millionaire had an average annualized gain of roughly 14% over the past decade. And Dan Ferris' average annualized gain in Extreme Value came in at more than 14% in that span.
These are outstanding results that most investors would kill to have... Heck, most hedge-fund managers don't realize those kinds of consistent results.
For reference, shares of Berkshire saw about a 12% average annualized gain over this same span. That means these four Stansberry editors were in line with Buffett's performance... or did even better.
For these reasons, we invite subscribers to consider a lifetime subscription to these services...
You see, we can only do so much for you in a single year. Sure, we make plenty of recommendations. And one or two could soar to help you realize huge gains. But we can do so much more for our subscribers over a longer period.
If you're a new reader, you may think I'm pitching you. And sure, we're here to make a profit.
But you should know that I was a Stansberry Alliance member before coming to work here in 2012.
I first signed up for Steve's True Wealth newsletter back in 2005. A week later, I signed up for Stansberry's Investment Advisory.
By 2009, I was reading a handful of publications and loved the content. I could see the value in following these guys over the long term. So that's when I joined the Alliance.
If you're not familiar, Alliance members receive just about everything we publish, plus everything new we'll publish in the future, for life. You only pay for membership once. And we've launched two dozen or so products since I signed up... so the value only increases over time.
I'm confident that most of our Alliance subscribers would agree with me that we can – and do – help our subscribers become better investors... if they just let us.
So ask yourself what would have happened if you simply put your money in the benchmark and never touched it again. Did your investments do better, or worse? This is one good way to measure your results over time – to see if you're on the right path to building lasting wealth.
But if you take only one thing away from today's essay, remember this... Investing is about much more than the latest hot stock tip. It's about looking past next Tuesday, to the stocks you want to own forever.
Good investing,
Brett Aitken
Editor's note: We're doing something special for our readers... For the next three days, you have one last chance to become an Alliance member – and to start getting just about everything we publish, for life – before we raise the one-time entry price in 2020. We're kicking things off this morning with a broadcast from Porter, Steve, and Doc at 9:30 a.m., so join us if you can... Get all the details here.
Further Reading
"Bear markets seem so obvious after the facts," Austin Root says. But the truth is, timing the market is nearly impossible. Instead, it's best to be disciplined and learn to follow some of the brightest minds in investing... Learn more here: The Fifth Investment Truth in Our "Market Maven" Tool Kit.
"If investing were easy, everybody would be rich," Doc Eifrig writes. But just because investing is hard doesn't mean we have to make it even harder. Being aware of some common traps can help you avoid making these easy mistakes... Read more here.
Most investors make poor decisions with little knowledge about where they're putting their money. But two simple rules can help you make sure you aren't like most investors...
A BULLISH NOTE FROM THIS ECONOMIC BELLWETHER
Today's chart tells us the economy is doing well...
As regular readers know, we use various sectors as real-world economic bellwethers. When we see that folks are buying more than the basic necessities – splurging on landscaping services or luxury hotels – it's a sign consumers aren't hurting for cash. Today's company paints the same picture...
Best Buy (BBY) is a $22 billion electronics retailer. Most of its customers turn to it for luxuries more than absolute necessities... heading to Best Buy when they're ready to upgrade their tablets, headphones, and home appliances. Those products were among the company's leading growth drivers in the most recent quarter, helping push total sales to nearly $9.8 billion... and beating Wall Street's expectations.
BBY shares have jumped nearly 70% over the past year, and they just hit new all-time highs. When consumers are snapping up electronics, it tells us the economy is doing well...
