Porter Stansberry has gone all-in these days — he retired from Stansberry Research a couple years ago (though he’s still a large owner of Marketwise (MKTW), Stansberry’s parent company that went public through a SPAC merger), and earlier this year he launched a little Substack subscription with a few of his old friends, called The Big Secret on Wall Street (This Week), without a ton of attention… but now he’s buying attention again. His new company, Porter & Co., is now pushing out some more aggressive marketing material that looks a lot more like what Porter did at Stansberry Research, and seems to have freed itself from Substack, with a more professional look… and I imagine he has gotten access to some of the big mailing lists either at his old firm or from other colleagues, because we’re seeing his new “Two Men Destroying America” ad a LOT.
He’s still selling “founding memberships” to his new letter, and it’s still called The Big Secret on Wall Street (This Week). As has been the case for most of this year, he’s selling it for $1,000/yr.
But the big spiel is much more in line with Porter’s more bombastic commentaries from the past — he probably gathered the most eyeballs of his career with his “End of America” story about a decade ago, when the key moment of collapse would be the end of the US Dollar as the global reserve currency, and then with his American Jubilee pitch about five years ago, all about massive debt forgiveness in the US causing hyperinflation and, again, destroying the dollar.
Those were warnings about the world going to hell in a handbasket because of monetary policy and political fools, leading to political unrest and a crashing dollar and mass unemployment and riots in the streets. I’m sure he’ll claim that some of that happened, in retrospect, saying the George Floyd/BLM protests or the January 6 invasion at the Capital qualify as “riots in the streets,” and he may be right about the general direction of society, though that doesn’t mean he’ll be right about which investments will profit from that trajectory. We’ve lived through 14 years now of wildly unpredictable and unprecedented financial events, and I confess that to me, predicting the future from here seems to still be as impossible as ever.
Still, we remain curious about what he’s pitching — so let’s dig in, shall we?
The “Two Men Destroying America” bit is really just a bit of piling-on to go with the recent backlash against “ESG” investing — here’s how Porter introduces that idea… with a tried-and-true strategy that newsletters have used to build massive subscribe bases since the 1970s…
“The Two Men Destroying America
“The untold, true story of how two men from New York have engineered a “reset” of not just your personal wealth, but the entire US economic system….
“I don’t know about you…
“But I barely recognize our country anymore…
“Just a few years ago, you would’ve been laughed out of the room for suggesting men and women are biologically identical.
“Today?
“Refusal to accept this absurd notion will bring the lynch mob to your door.
“You will be ‘canceled’ and branded a ‘bigot’…
“The same is true if you dare to question structural racism, climate change, sexual inequality… or any other political dogma.”
Whether or not you agree with Porter on that stuff, you can certainly see that this pushback against the latest social trends is right in line with the polarized political culture — and that makes for great marketing. If you get a reader to nod along with what you’re saying, or to identify you as speaking for their unease about the government or their objections to social changes, you’re halfway to getting them to pull out their credit card — that’s how it has always been in newsletterland, particularly for the Agora-affiliated folks who grew out of Bill Bonner’s company in Baltimore starting in the late 1970s. It’s no coincidence that the core of newsletter customers and the marketing target for most (not all) investment newsletters is “white guys near retirement age” — those are the folks who are generally most likely to be active investors, and also most likely to be politically conservative and grumpy about social change.
I don’t care what your politics are, of course, that’s your business — I’m just pointing out that when politics and polarizing social issues come up in an ad, it’s there for a reason. It’s designed to get you to nod along and say, “yeah, that’ guy’s on my side! Finally somebody gets it. Marge, where’s the good credit card!?” It happens on the other side of the political divide as well, of course, though it’s more likely to be in political fundraising or issue-based fundraising that you’ll see left-wing posturing that’s similar, you won’t generally see it in the world of investment newsletters — mostly, I expect, because the newsletter publishers know, from 50 years of testing, exactly who their audience is and how to sell to them.
And Porter goes on to say that this is all part of an orchestrated scheme, run by two shadowy figures — again, he knows that conspiracies and the belief in an organized cabal that’s ruining your country are key marketing tropes for his audience, and highlighting the extremes of what people want to hear results in subscription signups. Here’s that bit…
“You see, our country is not being turned upside down by accident.
“The politicization of everything is part of a plot to “reset” not just your personal wealth… but the entire US economic system.
“It’s a plan that’s been meticulously engineered by two of the world’s most powerful men over the last 20 years.
“Two unelected billionaires who exist outside the checks and balances of Washington D.C… yet wield far more power than any politician or political party.
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just click here...“They are the proverbial power behind the throne and have been pulling the puppet strings through both Republican and Democrat tenures.”
Those two men are Michael Bloomberg, who created the ubiquitous Bloomberg data service that all of Wall Street relies on, and is either a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat if you’re trying to figure out ideologies and keep score, and Larry Fink, who runs the world’s largest asset management company (BlackRock) and has supported Democratic candidates in the past, and has been criticized for using BlackRock’s influence to push for things like green energy or other ESG reforms (largely because of massive index fund positions, BlackRock has the biggest voting stake in many of the companies in the world… Porter says he has “practically every Fortune 500 CEO wrapped around his little finger.”)
Stansberry’s basic thesis here is that “stakeholder capitalism” or “ESG investing” are going to create a socialist society and take power away from the owners of capital… and he thinks that’s what Larry Fink and Michael Bloomberg are intentionally doing, using BlackRock’s heft to push ESG priorities onto companies, and, in Bloomberg’s case spreading “propaganda” on some ESG issues, especially climate change, and that his influence is growing because he invested in growing Bloomberg News dramatically over the past decade.
So what does he think investors should do about this? Let’s get to that part of the spiel…
“Today, I’ll show you what I’m personally doing to protect and grow my wealth during the dark days ahead.
“(And why this plan to destroy America has opened the doors to potentially one of the greatest opportunities I’ve ever found in my 25-year career.)”
And since the most direct target for many ESG investors has been the energy industry, with a fair amount of activism and political objection to increasing oil production or building more pipelines, and with activist investors targeting firms like ExxonMobil, Porter jumps directly to that sector.
“… every single industry depends on the energy sector.
“Travel, transportation, healthcare, education, manufacturing, medicine, engineering, agriculture, construction…
“NONE of them function without the energy sector….
“And as our economy grows…
“We need more and more energy than ever…
“Right now as a direct result of the ESG and stakeholder capitalism crusade from Larry Fink and Mike Bloomberg…
“Energy costs and demands are spiraling out of control all around the world.”
And the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which highlighted Europe’s dependence on Russian natural gas and created an energy crisis in much of Europe and higher natural gas prices everywhere, has, perhaps, brought things to a head and provided what Porter seems to see as a potential backlash against ESG, which in turn will lead to profits. Here’s the little section where he expounds that logic:
“Our energy complex can be mobilized to dramatically increase production and help reduce the prices and provide energy security for our allies.
“Construction can begin on vast new natural gas export capabilities. And we can ship gas across the Atlantic and power the electric grids from London to Istanbul.
“Along the way, investors in natural gas production and infrastructure will make a fortune – which is part of why I’ve written this report.
“There’s only one catch…
“None of these things will happen until the Biden administration changes its tune and realizes that radicals like Larry Fink and Mike Bloomberg are destroying America’s economy.
“And with millions of Americans already suffering from historic inflation, rising interest rates, plunging stocks, and a recession…
“Biden and the Democrats’ only hope of maintaining power is to change course on fossil fuel investment and infrastructure.
“Producing more fossil fuel energy is the only way to provide for a growing economy, an increasing standard of living, and an increasing population.
“They can’t use coal or gasoline though because the progressives – led by people like Fink and Bloomberg – have spent decades decrying them.
“The ultimate solution?
“America’s vast natural gas resources.”
That’s a pretty specific prediction, that the backlash against ESG trends will be to say, yes, we’re going to keep pressuring oil and coal… but we’ll embrace natural gas. I actually agree that it makes sense, I do think that natural gas is the most logical “bridge” fuel to get us to a “greener” future over the next 20 years, but it’s hard to be all that confident that the world will settle on that particular logical path. Particularly because so many politicians benefit from taking extreme positions and dividing people (hmm… just like newsletter publishers benefit from extreme positions… whaddya know, marketing is ubiquitous — if your currency is votes or eyeballs or attention, you know that saying extreme or controversial things generates the biggest reward. The biggest fear a marketer has is not being hated, it’s being ignored).
And there, finally, we get past the “society is falling apart” stuff that indulges our most pessimistic inner Grinches, and get into the investment recommendations he’s teasing.
Which means this is about to sound very familiar… I expect Porter is probably pitching some of the same ideas that he touted, with a smaller marketing budget, earlier in the year… he sums up the big picture idea here:
“Over the next six to 12 months, it will become clear that the best, the safest, and the cleanest way to grow the world’s economy is by using America’s natural gas.
“These changes are inevitable.
“Why? Because there’s no other way to ensure the reliability and the affordability of electricity, around the world.
“And right now, only a handful of companies are holding the right cards.
“That means, the number one way to protect yourself from “stakeholder” capitalism, America’s descent into socialism, and the recession is to…
“… invest in the most important and best positioned U.S. oil and gas companies.”
And he makes the point that he’s not the only one who sees opportunity in energy stocks…
“The world’s best investor – Warren Buffett – has been making investments in oil and gas like never before.
“His firm, Berkshire Hathaway, has increased its stake in Occidental Petroleum to 27%….
“When history’s most successful investor makes his biggest stock bet over a 12-month period – you know it’s time to act…
“You see, Warren knows the supply and demand characteristics in U.S. oil and natural gas haven’t been this favorable since the 1970s.”
Which leads us to a confirmation that Porter is re-pitching the idea he first told us about early in the Summer — the ‘Gods of Gas’. Here’s how he talks that up:
“This is the story of three brothers who became America’s largest producers of natural gas and how what they’re doing next will make billions and transform the global market for energy. …
“Before the end of this year, the first international end-to-end production and distribution deal for American shale gas will be struck by a leading ‘fracker’ – a small, independent, oil and gas firm whose production is centered on the largest natural gas reserve in the world, the Marcellus Shale.
“This Pittsburgh company, launched just over a decade ago, will soon become the first super-major energy company to emerge from America’s shale resources.
“This firm (which I’ll bet you’ve never heard of) has suddenly – virtually overnight – become the largest producer of U.S. natural gas.
“It’ll soon be the world’s biggest and most important energy company. ”
He drops some specifics, which continue to match the story he was selling a few months ago:
“In 2019 the company was producing $250 million in free cash flow – profits that can be distributed to owners.
“Then, in 2020, the company virtually doubled to $495 million in cash flow. And in 2021, free cash flow grew 22% to $607 million.
“But the real growth is still coming…
“In the first half of 2022, the company returned $1.3 billion in capital to investors. And it raised its free cash flow estimate for the full year by 50% to $2.35 billion.”
And they recently made another acquisition…
“In early September the ‘Gods of Gas’ announced another incredible deal to acquire about 15% more production, 11 years’ worth of additional reserves and miles and miles of valuable pipelines. “
And Porter’s forecast:
“We expect the company to produce more free cash flow over the next four years – $5 billion a year – than the value of the entire company today.”
So I’ll just cut us off there — we’re getting into things that have already been covered in this space, so we can skip ahead a few steps.
The primary teaser pitch Porter spins is still for the US gas giant EQT (EQT), the “Gods of Gas” company that has massive reserves in Appalachia and the Marcellus Shale and is pushing for more gas transport and export capacity to be built, and he also again pitches “The Next LNG Giant,” which is still Tellurian (TELL), Charif Souki’s attempt to replicate the liquefied natural gas (LNG) export giant he built at Cheniere, though with the added bonus of producing some of his own natural gas in the Haynesville Shale to feed the Driftwood LNG Export project in Louisiana.
There’s been some news from both companies since last quarter, but nothing huge — EQT reported its quarterly earnings, with some very good growth, and made an acquisition that looks pretty appealing (adding more producing reserves, and some more pipeline capacity in Appalachia), but the results were in line with expectations. Here’s what I noted on that in the Friday File in October:
“The big driver of year-over-year growth has been the 50% jump in natural gas prices in the US — and because EQT has been good at keeping costs under control, that increase in prices doesn’t just trickle through the income statement, it gushes… production was more or less stable year over year (down about 1.5%), but their adjusted net income grew by 10X and their free cash flow by about 5X. They expect to finish out 2022 with about $2 billion in free cash flow, so that means they’re trading at about 7.5X free cash flow. Analyst estimates remain above $10 for 2023 earnings per share, so at $40 you’re paying a nice, low multiple… the primary risk is that if natural gas prices fall meaningfully from here, EQT will also probably fall. The relationship is not tight or instant, partly because EQT has become much more efficient in recent years and has done some hedging of natural gas prices, but it is quite clear.
“I like what the company is doing recenty, buying up both future production at a reasonable price and reducing their future costs by buying another transmission network, and they’re being very cautious with their spending as they keep just a few drilling and completion crews operating to maintain a steady state of production… they’ve even got their landlord in Pittsburgh worried that they might not renew their headquarters lease when it expires in a couple years, and that landlord wrote down the value of the building by about a third this quarter, which probably means EQT can cut overhead costs there, too… in the end, however, those are efficiencies and smart moves that can help the bottom line, but it’s still a commodity bet. They can stay profitable if gas prices fall a bit, but to become a huge success story, as Porter Stansberry keeps promoting, they’d have to see rising natural gas prices over the long term. I still think it’s worth a bet, given their operational success and cost controls and their strong free cash flow, but don’t forget that it is a bet. If gas prices return to where they were five or six years ago, roughly half of the current levels, EQT’s stock price will very likely drop in a meaningful way.”
There has been a little weakness in the share price in recent weeks — with seemingly three things causing that weakness: a relatively mild heating season in both the US and Europe that has (so far) kept natural gas prices from going bonkers; some analyst downgrades; and the possibility of some regulatory pushback on their latest acquisition. Mostly, I think, it’s just a continuing reaction to natural gas prices — here’s how the EQT share price has matched the ups and downs of natural gas prices over the past six months (using the standard Henry Hub price):
We’ll see if EQT continues to drift lower, with gas prices generally weak — or, indeed, if the winter gets really cold, gas demand “heats” up, and both soar higher. Right now, EQT is inexpensive… but so are its peers, it’s an inexpensive sector. The second-biggest producer in the Marcellus, Range Resources (RRC), trades at about 6X free cash flow… and so does EQT. I agree that EQT is more interesting, with a good focus on cost containment and a lot of advocacy for increasing LNG export capacity, but the distinction is not dramatic — both will rise and fall with natural gas prices, most of the time.
That’s been Porter’s most talked-up stock this year, but he now says that his second one is maybe his best idea… here’s how he describes it in the latest ad:
“[EQT] is a great investment – as good as an investment as I have ever found in my 25-year career.
“I want to tell you about another opportunity that has been unleashed by the energy crisis wrought by stakeholder capitalism and ESG.
“It has even more upside than THE GODS OF GAS because it’s only beginning to assemble its acreage and build its pipelines and LNG facilities.
“The best part?
“Its founder is the man who started the entire LNG boom in the United States…
“Building the first independent (non-major oil company) LNG export facility in 2010-2014, a stock that has gone from around $5 to over $150, a return of ~2,900%.
“Now he’s about to do it again… …
“THE EMERGING LNG GIANT”
So yep, that’s still Tellurian (TELL)… what’s up with them now?
Well, they’re producing a lot more natural gas than they were a year ago — but nobody’s really buying Tellurian because of their production in the Haynesville Shale, they’re buying Tellurian because of the Driftwood LNG Project, which hopes to profit directly from the recently massive differential between US natural gas prices and imported LNG prices in Europe… and that means investors are buying into something that requires billions of dollars in capital, since they’ve barely started to build the project and need to raise a lot of the money, at a time when borrowing is more expensive and more uncertain than it was even a few months ago.
Tellurian’s recent challenge was that they had to pull a billion-dollar bond offering, presumably due to lack of interest, and they have also lost a couple of their long-term purchase agreement customers — I imagine they can find other customers, and they will probably, eventually, figure out how to finance the project, but, as I noted when writing about this story in September and October for previous pitches from both Porter and Whitney Tilson, I still think it’s pretty high risk (even the Wall Street Journal highlighted that risk a couple weeks ago, so this is no longer “surprise” news). The payoff is enormous if it works out, but in cash flow terms that payoff is also several years away, since the facility will take a long time and a lot of borrowed money to build… so even if the project proceeds on their optimistic schedule, shipping out LNG by 2026, which seems less likely as each day passes without them raising a ton of money, we still don’t know what the world will be like four years from now. If we’ve all made nice with Russia by then, and all is forgiven and forgotten, well, the price of natural gas in Europe or Japan might not be as high as Tellurian is hoping.
Maybe worth a bet, but far more volatile and uncertain than EQT — I’d think of the shares here as being more like a five-year levered option on LNG exports, and it’s not completely clear how much that leverage will cost (either through dilutive share offerings at low prices, some kind of strategic deal, or relatively expensive bond financing). If there’s a big surge to come in the share price at Tellurian sometime soon, it will probably be because they make some kind of financing deal for the Driftwood Project that delights investors — and they have enough cash for the early stages of the work that are happening right now, so they can probably afford to be at least a little bit patient. Given their struggles in finding financing, this is becoming a pretty contrarian bet — which feels good when it works out, but we should remember that “contrarian” means “everyone else disagrees with you.” Sometimes everyone else is right.
Porter also includes a “special bonus” in this spiel… and, you guessed it, that’s also the same company he was touting last time around. He’s calling this one “Energy Royalties.”
The basic argument for royalty companies is that they are passive top-line participants — they get a share of everything that is produced from a particular field (or mine, or whatever), and they don’t have to worry about whether production costs go up or the developer lied about how much it would cost to build the mine. Their exposure is mostly just to how much oil (or gold, or whatever) is produced, and what the market price is for that commodity — they still can’t control market prices, and they are passive participants so they don’t get to decide how much production happens, but they at least know that they have essentially no operating costs or carrying costs on the royalties, they just sit back and collect their share. And when commodity prices rise, like they did this year, they collect more money per barrel of oil produced… and the total production also often grows, increasing the size of the pie and therefore making their slice larger, since higher prices drive producers to want to produce more.
Every deal is a little different, and every royalty company has a slightly different strategy and a different portfolio of assets, but that’s the basic idea. Royalty companies tend to be relatively expensive, compared to operating companies, but they’re still pretty easy to love.
Which one does Porter like? More clues in this bit from the ad:
“… this royalty company provides all the upside from higher energy prices, with only a fraction of the downside compared with traditional oil explorers and producers.
“And without needing to recycle earnings back into expensive equipment and other operating costs, that cash flows right back to investors.
“That’s how this Energy Royalties company pays out a current distribution of $3.24 annualized, or a yield of nearly 11%.”
That’s the only real clue he drops this time, but it’s enough for us to confirm that this is the same investment he was pitching back in early November, Viper Energy Partners (VNOM). This is what I said about them at the time, there hasn’t been any real news since I covered the previous Porter pitch on November 10:
Viper is indeed a major owner of royalty interests in the Permian Basin, spun out of Diamondback energy back in 2014. They have been pretty consistent producers, and have had excellent cash flow of late, though I should note that the timing here is somewhat unfortunate — just before Porter’s pitch was circulating, Viper announced its earnings and a much lower dividend than expected, and the shares dropped about 10%.
As of the second quarter of 2022, when they were enjoying windfall oil and gas prices, the distribution was 81 cents per share, so that matches the “$3.24 annualized” and would have been nearly a 10% yield… but the dividend announced in November for payment this quarter was 49 cents, which would annualize to $1.96 and, at the newly-lowered share price of about $31 now, a distribution yield of only about 6%.
That’s the challenge of a variable dividend — even if they tell us it can change, we tend to think that means it only goes up, particularly for a stock like VNOM which has raised the distribution steadily over the last couple years. Many of us are accustomed to thinking of dividends as being somehow sacrosanct, so we tend to get too confident about the future payouts, and eat our chickens before they’re hatched.
VNOM is still generating a rising amount of cash flow, their guidance for production over the next couple quarters was roughly in line with what their operator produced on their royalty lands this past quarter, and they have more cash available for distribution than they’re distributing… but this quarter, they spent more of that on unit repurchases (buying back about 1% of their shares in the quarter) than on cash distributions. They’ve committed to spending 75% of “cash available for distribution” on returning capital to shareholders, and the math probably works out just fine to make the buybacks seem reasonable… but usually buyers of publicly traded partnerships like VNOM want high current cash income, and the immediate reaction of shareholders seemed to be that they liked the higher cash distribution and were perhaps less enthused about higher share buybacks.
To be fair, it was not a violent reaction — we’re a month past that announcement now, and the stock is only down about 13% from the early November highs, so shareholders must have bought into the prospects or expected the reduction to some degree. For most income investments, a 40% cut to the dividend would have brought a much bigger share price drop than the ~10% haircut VNOM received on the news.
There should be some visibility in the company, because they’re controlled by their operator, Diamondback Energy, so they’re not entirely passive or in the dark — they know what Diamondback is likely to be doing in terms of investing in new production — but that relationship means that they are also effectively dependent on just one operator, which is unusual for a royalty company and means you don’t get any benefit of diversification in the unlikely event that Diamondback (FANG) does something stupid or fraudulent and stops producing.
Viper is a partnership, not a corporation, so the tax consequences are a little different than some shareholders are accustomed to — they refer to units and distributions instead of shares and dividends, and they usually distribute much more than they are legally required to distribute (like REITs, MLPs get to pass through their tax obligation to unitholders as long as they also distribute most of their earnings… but they typically distribute a lot more than they earn, since depreciation/depletion charges are big for energy companies). It works out nicely in the end, because often the distribution is more than half tax-deferred, which is nice (it’s effectively return of capital that reduces your cost basis, so you don’t owe on that capital gain until you sell)… but they also require some additional tax reporting, which can be a (small) headache.
And they’re pretty good at communicating their detailed operations to shareholders (sorry, unitholders), so you can check out Viper’s latest investor presentation if you’d like to see more detail on how it all works. It’s a relatively interesting company, but there are a lot of oil and gas royalty firms that have similar or higher income yields and also offer meaningful exposure to appealing areas like the Permian Basin — if you want to sniff around for comparison, and maybe get some context, other names that come up somewhat regularly are Sabine Royalty (SBR), Permian Basin Royalty Trust (PBT), San Juan Basin Royalty Trust (SJT), Mesa Royalty Trust (MTR), Dorchester Minerals (DMLP), Freehold Royalties (FRU.TO, FRHLF), and Black Stone Minerals (BSM), and there are plenty of others as well.
If you don’t necessarily need to maximize your income yield or care much about volatility, then it could also be that the operator, Diamondback Energy (FANG) could be interesting — here’s the total return chart for the two in the eight years since FANG (purple) spun out VNOM (orange).
In case you’re curious, Diamondback also has a high dividend right now… and also lowered that dividend this quarter (this quarter’s payout is $2.26, down from $3.05… but it was also much lower a year ago, down at just 50 cents). FANG is now down about 18% in the past month, and is trading at a forward PE of about 5.5, so by that metric they’re among the cheaper oil companies out there right now (that’s slightly cheaper than Buffett’s recent fave Occidental Petroleum)… with analysts expecting next year’s earnings to be similar to this year. If they keep paying at the same level as they announced this quarter, $2.26 per share, that would annualize out to $10.04, for a yield of about 7.5%… pretty similar to VNOM, but the dividend is likely to be a lot more volatile. I haven’t looked into Diamondback’s financials beyond noticing that similar yield.
So what do you think? Ready for a backlash against ESG that will boost some of these energy companies again? Think President Biden will put his political capital behind a push for more LNG exports, benefitting Tellurian and EQT and others? Let us know with a comment below… thanks for reading!
P.S. Porter’s new publication is now about six months old, so it would be interesting to hear from any early subscribers — how does it compare to his old stuff at Stansberry Research? Worth the money? Fun or infuriating? If you’ve subscribed, please share your thoughts on our reviews page for The Big Secret here. Thank you!
Among the companies mentioned above, I own shares of and/or call options on EQT and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. I will not trade in any covered stock for at least three days after publication, per Stock Gumshoe’s trading rules.
Stansberry knows his way around Wall St but he’s 99% circus barker. He’s full of baloney. 4-5 years ago he was extolling the virtues of his family life and love for his wife. Well that all went up in smoke. IMO he has one goal-to be a billionaire like his idol-Bill Bonner. The founder of Agora. One huge incestuous operation that does make lots of money.
Circus barker for sure!, can’t believe anyone falls for this stuff.
Yeah, I cancelled all of my paid Stansberry – related subscriptions because IMO the extreme politics doesn’t belong in investment analysis. Whether you agree with it or not, as Travis says, it’s “red meat”, and not serious, and that’s a little insulting to paid subscribers. Also, my email address was sold to even more politically extreme “financial newsletters”.
These newsletters seem to how carnival barkers make a buck if they’re not entertaining enough to get an afternoon gig on CNBC.
I USED TO SUBSCRIBE TO STANBERRY–THAN IT HIT ME–90% OF EVERYTHING I RECIEVED FROM THEM WAS JUST ANOTHER CARROT SLES PITCH FOR NE OF THEIR BUDDIES. GOT TIRED OF THEM
As a self professed “White guy near retirement” I’ve followed and subscribed to some of Porter’s offerings over the last 20 years. I’d like to think my level of success has given me at least a little confidence in reading people and the data they offer.
I can tell you that I’ve always enjoyed Porter over all of the other analysts in his company as well as his straight, no BS approach to what’s going on in this crazy world. It’s hard to imagine that someone with his perceived wealth needs to be a circus barker.
Regardless, I’ve gladly subscribed to his newest offering even though Travis once again nailed all three offerings correctly. (Thanks Travis…you really never miss) because I’m a fan of Porter and want to associate and be around people who aren’t afraid to shoot straight.
We will see if it is all marketing or the beginning of some good things to come., Either way, I think Porter deserves a fair shake in these comments. Of course, Travis is always fair and honest in his assessment.
Anyway, my two cents. Thanks!
A lot of newsletter writers are much more rational and evenhanded in their actual publications than you would guess from their marketing materials, that’s for sure.
The real NatGas “sleeper” is Southwestern Energy ( SWN). Sooner or later it’ll get picked off by XOM or one of the other Majors wanting to find gas with their chequebook instead of their drill bit.
Thanks for that LT. Very interesting. Congrats Travis!!! Over 20K subscribers. A million $ a year +. I’ve tried to put people on to you and like to think I helped. God knows you’ve helped me. Keep up the great work.
i think Porter is more right than wrong, and he’s somewhat of a recovering liberal at this point, The Great Reset is real, its global and doesn’t care about us peons in the US or even John- I will save the environment one private jet flight at a time- Kerry. Biden seems to think he will have a seat at the global table too as some cataclysmic thing like the collapse of the dollar from extended recession, or the aggression of the CCP finally over taking us. The LNG export idea holds a lot of water, imo, but maybe the only feasible answer to affordable utilities in the US, will turn out to be ESG and windmills. probably some good stock deals there, and some old shares of fink’s black rock are bound to go up
You’ve got to be kidding…He’s About as far Off and far Right as you can get. Doom and Gloom King…some on the right will buy in. The smart ones won’t. Liberal , He’s not. That’s why he is wrong most of the time. Sending $$ to somebody who can’t get most things correct is Not a good idea. Gumshoe over Porter , ANYDAY!
Porter Stansberry: commenced his operations in 1999 from the kitchen table on a borrowed computer. His ingenuity, business acumen and shredness resulted in the growth of the financial and investment research publishing empire. At one time the company had more than 1 million paid subscribers. I started with the flagship newsletter “Stansberry’s Investment Advisory” and later on, subscribed to 3 other newsletters for life-time on low prices. Net Worth: 2 mansions in America, 1 in Argentina and a luxury yacht. And very fat bank balances.About 15 years ago, he wrote in the daily digest that when in Argentina, he enjoyed their beef I immediately commented, red meat was health-hazard and he should discontinue. He or his minions did not have the courtesy to acknowledge. 6-7 years ago, he had a heart attack and was hospitalized. His wife nursed him back to good health and he withdrew from running the empire. He is 49 years old. Once he was not at the helm of affairs, the quality of investment letters started falling. I look forward to their recommendations, whether any stock can be sold short. Sales Pitch: In the nascent years it was 4-5 times a year. Now the frequency is unbearable.
Stansberry was brought into Agora in the late 90s being part of a failing newsletter they bought up for the subscriber names. He whetted his skills to bait honey traps under Bonner and Ford. His wife dumped his ass like a hot potato before the Unsolved Mysteries episode aired in 2020. Every Agora subsidiary was slammed by the FTC in 2021, including his company. He’s now trying to regroup outside the Agora umbrella by wiggling out from under the FTC’s scrutiny. Agora has crashed and burned after no longer being able to market lies.
Let’s tone it down a notch. Stansberry Research was not named at all in the original lawsuit. And, the thing it was mentioned in, was regarding over zealous marketing, not lying or misinformation. Something TINA.org refers to as ‘dark patterns’. While I don’t like them and have wasted many minutes researching only to find out I am beginning to watch the same material I already watched, I do not believe this is cause for alarm from that particular group. I do believe their analysts do a good job of providing quality research of companies and stock advice. As individual investors though, we have a duty to choose our investing style and follow analysts who fit that style. And, at the end of the day, every decision we make is OUR decision. The analysts job is to turn you on to a viable investment. Your job is to continue that research and decide if it fits your portfolio goals.
Stansberry Research is a stipulating party in the court order, as is ***every*** other Agora entity. It was the deliberate falsity of unsupported marketing claims (“Congressional Chex”, “Himalayan Silk”) and deliberately deceptive refund practices that were the central issue of the FTC suit. Luck of the draw that it hit Agora Financial, because almost identical misrepresentations had been made by every other Agora unit for a decade+, including Stansberry. (Their marketing is like passing down a sweater to younger siblings.)
I stopped following stansberry after that episode on Netflix
OK, #chris1019, you got me – what episode on Netflix?
I would also like to know what you are referring to in regard to Netflix
Netflix has some kind of “unsolved mystery” story about one of Porter’s friends (and employees) dying, I haven’t watched it. The Sun’s take is here: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-ci-cr-rey-rivera-netflix-inaccuracies-20200805-zxmiq4ppp5euxhbcm23ksgezva-story.html
I stopped reading when this author suggested “white guys near retirement age” are the focus of newsletters. He claimed whites are more conservative.
Apparently this author does not know blacks have more conservative values than whites. They are strongly pro life. They strongly believe marriage is one man and one woman. They strongly believe a boy cannot turn into a girl and attempts to do so are abusive to children.
I agree with many of Porters statements about the left wing lunacy in our country and they are non science, irrational, fear mongering, race dividing, extremists.
But I do not subscribe to any of Stansbury’s newsletters because it has not been proven to me that their investments are any better than any other investment firms. I think Louie Navellier and Eric Fry are better, currently anyway.
I’m not passing judgement, but historically white men in their 50s-70s are likely to be conservative, especially fiscally conservative, and they’re the target market for financial newsletters because they’re also likely to be interested in the stock market (the ones who are relatively affluent, at least), which is part of the reason that many investment newsletters use aggressive political statements to establish rapport with their target market.
It’s a statement about marketing, not an attack on anyone’s values.
After my Due Diligence of EQT, last September, I am DCAveraging this stock for my portfolio’s Long-Term prospect(20 years). * Buy and Hold a fixed $ amount quarterly for 80 quarters…
Now THAT is a long-term plan. Hope it works out for you!
I am emerging from beneath the rock I seem to have been hiding under, and have another question: what is ESG investing and have I been indulging in it without knowing???
Any enlightenment from the Gummunity would be appreciated.
It’s an attempt to codify and index the idea of investing with an eye on environmental impact, social considerations and corporate governance policies. The precise measures are in the eye of the beholder, especially once you get into the details — plenty of alternative energy companies have terrible corporate governance, plenty of socially responsible companies treat their employees terribly, etc.
Muchas gracias Travis. I am enlightened.
Some of you with long memories might remember that Porter used to claim that solar cells violated the laws of thermodynamics and couldn’t work. Duh!
As a UK resident, I didn’t realise that critical race theory was so real, I didn’t realise Bill Bonner was actually of commercial relevance, I heard of him when he wrote articles in a UK magazine MoneyWeek. The big eye opener is the size of the US newsletter market. Things are truly on a different scale across the pond.
On EQT, I actually have a good sized position in it and will make 40% selling slightly OTM calls this year.
Does anyone have an idea about the future of EVgo? Is it going to go up, down, sideways or fall off the planet ( 0.00)?
Right now it’s going down for sure
I think Porter has taken ”analysis” down the tubes in his video. In just a few pages you have shown what a house of cards and Trumpian bull hockey (basically histrionics with no evidence, but plenty of innuendo) he is pitching. I appreciate your take on his ideas, but the hyperbolic fear mongering of Porter is beyond disreputable and shameful. The situation in Ukraine may sustain EQT as you say, but a potential 50% reset calls for being measured in taking advantage of the constrained European market. Long term, oil companies have seen the writing on the wall by not increasing refining capacity in decades. We are pumping more oil than ever and supplies of fuel anre more than andequate to meet current demand. It is clear that electric vehicles and decentralized generation (unless fusion can be scaled way up) is the future of energy. Many power/fossil fuel company CEOs see it and are struggling to make the best of this shift occurring now. Investors need your even handed analyses not Porters fear mongering (remember hoarding your Pennie’s preceding Y2K fears). You would have done better investing in Euros at 50 cents US per Euro when the currency was introduced. Porter needs to focus on real analysis not his pitches.
I don’t usually watch these “next big idea” videos but this time I slipped and it’s time I won’t get back. He spends the first half telling us how the world is doomed, giving numerous reasons for NOT investing as stakeholders and there grandmothers will rule the world. Then outlines 3 opportunities for investing without telling us why these will be immune from the coming cataclysm. Who falls for this rubbish?
Taking these kinds of advertising pitches literally will definitely give you a headache.
As a victim of some of these newsletters, I am happy to be a subscriber here. I think a little measured knowledge of these topics and common sense helps immunize us from being victimized by some of these vultures. Last week I read Porter Stansberry’s ridiculous “Emergency Message” and prediction that a national energy blackout was going to begin in Boston and envelop the country this winter because of ESG policy.
I am happy this destructive person puts his head on the chopping block by making such a blatant prediction. So, I am waiting, but not in suspense. I simply hope the light shines and the facts speak for themselves. I am not impressed by the millions he wrangled from unsuspecting and trusting people he pitched his ads to. Dear old Bernie M and FTX made lots, too.
Unfortunately, Stansberry is right that LNG is the best hope for a bridge to a cleaner energy future. While LNG is probably half and destructive as burning coal for energy, I am not sure it will get us there. Probably the only hope there is will be the advent of fusion nuclear energy. It is probably a decade away, but that really cold change tings. So, we will see if human infrastructure can survive the the transition to a sustainable future.
I still am a slight victim of Stansberry. I think Matt McCall is probably the best one out there and I am very happy to hear his bi weekly podcasts and do subscribe to his into portfolio. He really is good and speaks a lot of good sense.
So, these are the only two publications worth my being a subscriber.
Spot on. Certainly describes suckers like me!!
Politics has no place in the free market . Less government is the solution to growing our markets in energy and all else .
unfortunately Thomas, everything- gender, money, water, gas, safety, entertainment, etc. has been politicized. Being politically up to date, or taking a side, appears to be something some would advise against. If all this politicization had not been occurring- just like the continuous dwindling of the buying power of the dollar, we may be irrational in thinking anything close to a “free market” exists anymore. Watching Washington DC mismanage the US and to some degree the world economy, should make anyone “conservative” in terms of losing what you think you’ve put some effort into accumulating. Whats a liberal investor to do?
Thomas,
That one is known as the “Laissez-faire” school of economic thought. It is one of several.
The primary downside of that system, is that it lets monopolies form up, which squeeze out the little guy, and then raise prices. In the end, it creates too much concentration-of-power in the “corner office” instead of in the Gov’t offices.