Here's Why the 'Full Puking' Still Lies Ahead

My 'Hans Gruber' moment... An eccentric tag team of venture capital and vision... Long on hype, short on substance... A 'soulless experience'... The top in the global financial markets isn't here yet... Here's why the 'full puking' still lies ahead... [Stansberry Research Logo] Delivering World-Class Financial Research Since 1999 [Stansberry Digest] My 'Hans Gruber' moment... An eccentric tag team of venture capital and vision... Long on hype, short on substance... A 'soulless experience'... The top in the global financial markets isn't here yet... Here's why the 'full puking' still lies ahead... --------------------------------------------------------------- I (Dan Ferris) feel like Hans Gruber, the head villain in the action thriller Die Hard... The 1988 movie was incredibly popular. It's considered one of the best action films ever made. So you've probably seen it. However, if you haven't, let me catch you up quickly... Gruber led a team of thieves posing as terrorists. They took over the top floors of a high-rise building in Los Angeles during a fictional company's Christmas party, holding the partygoers hostage. Then, Gruber contacted authorities and made a list of demands. Meanwhile, his team pursued their real purpose of trying to steal a fortune in bearer bonds locked in a large safe. But the bad guys hit a snag... You see, the safe had a time lock. And Gruber's gang couldn't hack their way into it. Before long, a group of FBI agents showed up. They still believed it was a terrorist and hostage situation. So they followed standard operating procedure during terrorist attacks – at least in "movie world" – and ordered the electric company to cut the building's power. Gruber immediately realized that this move would open the safe's time lock. And it prompted one of several great lines in the movie... "You ask for miracles... I give you the FBI." That single line from Die Hard has been ringing in my head all week... Most of the time, when you say you can count on someone, it means you can count on them to work hard... be honest... do the right thing... or just generally behave well. But when the villain says he can count on the FBI to deliver miracles... it means he's counting on a bunch of clueless government buffoons to make his job easier. Likewise, if you can count on one thing in the most massive financial bubble in human history, it's "visionaries" with daffy ideas lighting huge sums of investor capital on fire. We've covered a couple classic examples over the past two years in the Digest. The sagas involving [Cathie Wood's ARK Investment Management]( and [Bill Hwang's Archegos Capital Management]( should sound familiar to regular Digest readers. And I've warned for the past few weeks that the stock market is nowhere near a bear market bottom. In fact, [two weeks ago]( I said I don't think the top is even fully in yet. Well, as Hans Gruber might put it... You ask for signs that the top of the biggest bubble in history is just above us and the bottom is far below us, and... I give you the eccentric tag team of venture-capital firm 'a16z' and WeWork (WE) visionary Adam Neumann... Since I've never written about a16z before, let's start there... The firm's real name is Andreessen Horowitz. It's named for co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The nickname "a16z" represents the first letter in "Andreessen"... the last letter in "Horowitz"... and the 16 letters between the two words. It keeps the firm from needing a long, unwieldy website address and makes it easier to find online. (In fact, I misspelled Andreessen's name in the rough draft of this Digest. Just imagine if I needed to type "andreessenhorowitz.com" into a web browser. How long would that take?) Andreessen and Horowitz founded a16z in 2009 based on a mutual love for angel investing in small tech companies. They started with $300 million under management, which grew to $4 billion within five years. The firm invested early in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And today, it manages $35 billion in tech-focused venture-capital ("VC") investments. Andreessen and Horowitz are tech VC royalty... Andreessen became famous as the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used Internet browser that launched in 1993. He also co-founded Netscape in 1994. That browser had a 90% market share in the mid-1990s, but it fell to less than 1% by 2006. More importantly, Netscape's programmers created JavaScript, HTTP cookies, and SSL. (Google them.) Horowitz worked with Andreessen at Netscape. And he later teamed up with him to found software provider Opsware, which they sold to Hewlett-Packard in July 2007 for $1.6 billion. Horowitz has also written two books, including The Hard Thing About Hard Things. It's perhaps the best book on building and running a business that I've ever read. If I hadn't read that book, I might not be doing weekly Digests. It contains the following quote... There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all. Embrace your weirdness, your background, your instinct. If the keys are not there, they do not exist. I have a ton of respect for both of these guys. But... When I read [Andreessen's August 15 blog post]( announcing the firm's $350 million investment in Neumann's company – reportedly a16z's largest ever – earlier this week, it gave me that Hans Gruber feeling. I'll get to that in a minute. First, let's catch up with Neumann and his new company... Neumann first entered the limelight in 2019 when he tried to take his co-working company public at a $47 billion valuation. WeWork's initial filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was filled with red flags. Investors balked, and Neumann stepped down as CEO later that year. You might also remember that, among other shady antics... Neumann bought the trademark for "We" and sold it back to WeWork for $6 million. And even though Neumann left the company, he still owns 10% of WeWork. The new company itself is exquisitely Neumann-esque... First of all, it's called [Flow](. The brevity and modularity of the single-syllable word is reminiscent of the "We" brand. That's probably not a good thing. Neumann may as well have called it "Bull" or "Tripe." By the way, Flow is unrelated to Flowcarbon – another one of Neumann's visions that got $70 million from a16z in May. Flowcarbon claims to be trying to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide by tokenizing carbon credits. The relation between the credits and the atmosphere is never explained, though. Typical of tech VC deals of the past few years, Neumann's new company is also long on hype and short on any type of substance. According to the New York Times, Flow will operate 3,000 apartments that Neumann owns in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Atlanta, and Nashville. They're mostly new buildings, with more than 200 units each. And they feature amenities like dog parks, co-working spaces, and putting greens. As the New York Times reported... [Neumann's] aim is to rethink the housing rental market by creating a branded product with consistent service and community features. Flow will operate the properties Neumann has bought and also offer its services to new developments and other third parties. Exact details of the business plan could not be learned. The only other decent source of information about Flow is Andreessen's blog post announcing a16z's $350 million investment. It tells us a lot... mostly by its lack of details. First, Andreessen notes that America is forming households faster than it's building homes. If true, building apartments seems like a good idea. But of course, everybody already knows that... That's why the apartment market has been red hot for a couple years now. Then, he describes homeownership as difficult today due to low inventory and prohibitively high costs. Even if you can buy a home, Andreessen says, "You're now stuck – you can't move, even if your economic opportunity or life path wants to take you somewhere else." Um... Did he really say folks who've worked hard, saved, and can finally afford to buy a home are now stuck? This guy is working way too hard to justify the money he's lighting on fire – er, I mean giving to Neumann. Andreessen never mentions how Flow will solve the fact that an apartment building is as stuck in one place as a home. We're supposed to believe homeowners are "stuck" due to the mortgage, but you can't say homes are expensive and reason that it's too hard to sell them if you get a better job in the same sentence. Maybe it would be too hard to buy another one. I don't really know what Andreessen is trying to say. But the idea seems awkward and poorly thought-out. The blog post quickly goes downhill from there... Andreessen describes apartment life as – I'm not kidding – "a soulless experience." And he waxes as condescendingly arrogant as anyone on the topic... Do you even meet your neighbors, much less have any friends in your complex? Does it feel like home, or just a place to sleep? Are you proud to bring friends and family to visit, or hesitant?... Apartments don't generate any bond between person and place and without community, no bond between person to person. According to Andreessen, nobody who lives in an apartment has ever made friends with anybody else who lived in the same building. And what better way to pitch the world on the soundness of your new investment than by calling every potential customer's home "soulless" in a blog post? (Maybe Neumann's genius for marketing is rubbing off!) It doesn't help that Andreessen lives in a $177 million compound in Malibu. Or that he has reportedly spent $255 million in total on three homes in the area over the past year. Read the room, Marc. The zeitgeist is a tad on the divided, troubled side these days. There's a lot of talk about the enormous divide between rich folks like you and all those poor, sad fools who live in soulless dwellings. But I have to admit, there's no place more soulful than 6.6 acres in Malibu... am I right, amigo? In the post, Andreessen levels another criticism at those soulless apartment dwellers... It's often cited by aspiring homeowners, too... And you can pay rent for decades and still own zero equity – nothing. So far, Andreessen or Neumann haven't elaborated on how they plan to solve that little problem for renters. Will they offer a rent-to-own program of some kind? Andreessen then praises Neumann, who, I'll remind you, once said he wants to live forever, be king of the world, and become the first trillionaire. In the post, Andreessen says... Adam is a visionary leader who revolutionized the second largest asset class in the world – commercial real estate – by bringing community and brand to an industry in which neither existed before. Say what? For now, we'll skip the fact that WeWork was a bad business idea that cost its investors billions of dollars. I want you to focus on something else from Andreessen's quote... Andreessen just told us everything we need to know about his questionable investment target... It happened when he said Neumann is "bringing community and brand to an industry [apartment buildings] in which neither existed before." Notice the word "brand" in there. Along the same lines, the New York Times pointed out... The business is effectively a service that landlords can team up with for their properties, somewhat similar to the way an owner of a hotel might contract with a branded hotel chain to operate the property. All the talk of branding makes the hair on my arm stand up. It explains why Flow lacks the substance that no one can detect from any of the public announcements or press articles. You see, nobody seems interested in telling us why developers will want to partner with Neumann's company to build apartments based on his... what? What is Neumann's brand? Are we talking about his brilliant interior and exterior building designs? Will folks love his marvelous financial management? Is he offering free beer? (That last one was WeWork's primary "innovation.") We don't know. Nobody knows. Nobody. Is. Talking. The Wall Street Journal reported in January that Neumann owned 4,000 apartments worth "more than $1 billion." The latest reported number is 3,000 apartments. The investment from a16z reportedly values Flow at $1 billion. Neumann is said to be planning a "sizeable personal investment" of cash and real estate into Flow, too. And the company expects to launch some time in 2023. But I'm not confident in that timeline... Just look at the total lack of substance everywhere... the emphasis on branding real estate (at which Neumann has so far only failed spectacularly)... the fact that leopards tend not to change their spots... the big money coming in at the top... It feels to me like a typical, late-cycle stew full of hype and big, 'smart' money... Neumann wants us to believe he can turn an apartment building into an Apple iPhone or a Prada handbag – or at least the next Marriott or Hilton hotel. But the thing is... he already tried something like this and failed before. Back when Neumann and his wife tried to attach the "We" brand to any stray thought that popped up between tequila shots, one of their ideas was WeLive. And as business magazine Fast Company reported earlier this week... Neumann tried residential real estate before and failed. Under his leadership, the We brand launched WeLive, co-living spaces in New York and Virginia. The plans to expand to India and Israel quickly shuttered, and in 2019, WeLive became the subject of an investigation by New York City. Flow is just WeLive II. It's old wine in new bottles. It's just like WeWork's co-working business, an idea that was around long before Neumann and his nebulous vision arrived. It's truly a mystery how anybody can come away from the WeWork debacle and call Neumann "a visionary leader" like Andreessen did. It's like Andreessen is totally oblivious to Neumann's track record – or maybe he's just trying to revise history. In the blog post, he said, "We love seeing repeat-founders build on past successes by growing from lessons learned." What? Counting WeWork as a past success is a pretty big stretch. Set aside that the idea of renting buildings long term then subletting space in them shorter term at higher rents backfired badly at WeWork. The problem goes much deeper than that. Just Google 'WeWork toxic culture'... You'll find everything from requiring new hires to scream "WeWork" until red in the face to tracking bracelets used to make sure employees attended "alcohol fueled" parties with sexual abuse and "frat boy" culture. And of course, you can't ignore Neumann's eternally condescending tone. How does Andreessen expect us to believe the guy behind that nightmare is a great visionary? I should thank Neumann for his dumb ideas and Andreessen for his blindness to their shallowness and lack of value. For someone like me trying to come up with entertaining financial insights once a week, Neumann is the gift (the grift?) that keeps on giving... Neumann has raised $420 million for two different, highly questionable companies this year. He did that just three years after trying to take his first highly questionable company public. And this time, he's not trying to bamboozle a bunch of perversely incentivized Wall Street bankers or the wider investing community through an initial public offering ("IPO") full of red flags like he did with WeWork. No, this time, Neumann is leaning into his real talent... He's raising vast sums of money based on hot air and blue sky by aiming it at the smartest tech VC investors on the planet. And somehow, he has convinced them to make their largest investment ever in a brand-new startup from the guy behind one of the most famous, highly questionable, audaciously unshareholder-friendly IPOs that never happened. As Hans Gruber, I can't really compete with Adam Neumann. This is his moment, not mine. He's basically saying... 'You ask for miracles... I give you the smartest tech VC investors on the planet'... Neumann is also great at thinking up cute, one-syllable brand names like "We" and "Flow." And wrong or not, he excels at convincing people who move among the creators of Facebook and iPhones that apartments are more like Facebook and iPhones than anything else. Sometimes, I don't think people understand what makes a brand tick... It needs to be something of value that folks will perceive as worth an elevated price tag simply due to what it symbolizes – like a Mercedes car instead of a Toyota, an iPhone instead of Nokia or Samsung, or a Tiffany diamond instead of one you buy at the mall. You can paint the word "Flow" on the side of an apartment building and call it a brand. But it doesn't mean it's special. Everybody knows it's just an apartment. It's as if Donald Trump just announced his intention to "Make Apartments Great Again." Or perhaps it's like Joe Biden announcing that he planned to "Build Apartments Back Better." Maybe these guys know they're only investing in apartments and just want it to sound cool... The trouble is, I can't believe a dreamer like Neumann would ever be satisfied with so little. Guys like him are never satisfied. But the thing is... In a global economy that wasn't propped up by central banks tinkering with interest rates and governments writing trillion-dollar stimulus checks, a guy like Neumann would never get funded. He would need to get a job, which he could never do. So he would probably wind up running a Ponzi scheme, lose all his money, get found out, and go to jail. Or maybe he would go to Las Vegas, win big once, then lose it all and then some, get his hands broken by loan sharks, and die of alcoholism. Lucky for Neumann, we're living in the age of the Omnipotent Central Bank... So Neumann can raise hundreds of millions of dollars by telling stories about all the apartment buildings he owns, make inflated claims about his vision of the future, get drunk whenever he wants, and say it's all part of the brand. The Flow deal is a sign of ongoing excesses in the broader financial markets – and in VC, specifically... A recent Financial Times article points out that the VC market is cracking. However, it hasn't yet taken the drubbing like the bubbles in publicly traded cannabis companies, special purpose acquisition companies, and money-losing tech stocks of the [Cathie Wood variety](. VC is where rich people invest in private companies at exorbitant valuations in hopes that they'll find the next Amazon or Facebook. Like every other asset class in the everything mega-bubble, VC had a record-breaking 2021... According to the Financial Times, VC investors put about $621 billion to work in new investments last year. That's more than the previous two years combined. Like other public markets, the VC market has felt some pain in 2022. But you don't hear about it because no public stock exchange quotations or retail investors are touting the deals on social media. Add in a compensation system based on the amount of assets under management, and you get a situation ripe for "creative accounting" of asset values. When it's time to assign asset values so you can tell your investors how much money they have left, the VC firm can more or less pick a number and tell a story about it. So while VC is declining along with everything else, it hasn't been forced to confront reality head-on yet. As the Financial Times reported earlier this month... Josh Wolfe, co-founder of Lux Capital, likens the response to "the classic five stages of grief." "We're probably somewhere between anger and bargaining," he says, referring to the emotions that follow denial. Yet investors and company founders, Wolfe adds, are still resisting the full implications of a market downturn that will have a profound effect on the start-up economy. And then, Wolfe delivered the Gruber-esque line I've been waiting for... Despite VC valuations becoming more reasonable recently, he told the Financial Times... We don't yet have the full puking that's required. In other words, we're not near the market bottom yet. We haven't even reached the top. It will take a "full puking" for folks like Marc Andreessen to realize that no one should ever give Adam Neumann $350 – let alone $350 million. But perhaps you think I'm not giving Andreessen enough credit... After all, he's the one with all the money – not me. Maybe I'm just having trouble spotting geniuses since I'm not one. If only I could meet Neumann, then maybe I'd be convinced... No doubt. If I ever met the guy, I'd be as susceptible to his charms as anybody else. But I don't have $350 million to toss his way. So he would soon get bored. And I would sober up, go back to my desk, and do what I'm doing in this Digest. By that, I mean helping you see that... If Neumann can raise $350 million to try to turn apartment buildings into the real estate equivalent of Gucci sneakers... the top in the global financial markets isn't even here yet. Doc's Getting Close! Today, our colleague Dr. David "Doc" Eifrig is closing out eight more winning trades in his Retirement Trader advisory. The winners include trades for annualized gains of more than 50% on Alphabet (GOOGL) and close to 30% annualized on Raytheon Technologies (RTX). Doc's win streak is now up to 130. That's just six winners shy of his franchise-best record. And his "playoff beard" keeps getting longer. You can see what we mean in this picture, which he took earlier this week in Sonoma County, California, while preparing for the early harvest of his Eifrig Cellars wine... Here's to many more wins for Doc and his loyal subscribers in the future. To join Doc on his final push to a new record, and learn how to add "instant cash" to your portfolio with the simple strategy he uses in Retirement Trader, [click here for more details](. --------------------------------------------------------------- Recommended Links: # ['Here's ONE Asset Destined to SOAR in the Financial Crisis Ahead']( Wall Street is already quietly preparing... And nearly $1 TRILLION in guaranteed government funding means this ONE practically invisible group of stocks could save you from any more financial heartache in the months ahead. Get the full story today on this peculiar trail of spending... including why one senior analyst now says "this is the most perfect, surefire 10X setup I have EVER seen in my 20-plus-year career." [Click here for details](. --------------------------------------------------------------- # [Huge Recession Loophole (See These Charts)]( Amid today's market turmoil, THIS is one of the biggest and most bullish opportunities today: a red-hot sector with almost unlimited pricing power and a history of outperforming in recessions. It's also the sector where our good friend Dr. David Eifrig spent half his professional life – meaning he's extremely qualified to spot world-class opportunities today. [Take a look at the evidence here](. --------------------------------------------------------------- New 52-week highs (as of 8/18/22): Automatic Data Processing (ADP), Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), CTS (CTS), W.W. Grainger (GWW), Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), Cheniere Energy (LNG), Northrop Grumman (NOC), and the Utilities Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLU). In today's mailbag, feedback on [yesterday's Digest](... and more of your stories about your early lessons about money and investing. Please keep the stories coming – and send any other comments and questions, as usual – to feedback@stansberryresearch.com. "Should we not accept that for almost a generation interest rates have been exceptionally and artificially low which has 1) encouraged people to believe that is normal and will not change, and 2) the people and businesses have acted on that 'low interest' expectation and taken on more debt because it was cheap? "Should we not accept that the tax cuts in two previous administrations, not backed up by reductions in spending, have not fulfilled the fiscal and economic promise of the 'trickle down' economy? "With enormous debt that resulted from that and other 'corrective actions', it seems we need to take a look at economic theories and policies that don't serve us well and drive us into very difficult situations. You have a role in getting on a better path." – Paid-up subscriber Richard M. "My first lessons in finance were learned from my grandparents when I was about 10 years old. They were German immigrants. Grandma worked in a sweatshop in New Britain, Conn., sewing work shirts. Grandpa Otto worked for the Corbin Lock Company. "I asked Grandma if I could go to the general store to buy a candy bar. She asked if I had the money for that. I replied that I borrowed 25 cents from my friend. She then said, 'Never borr'y nothin' from nobody. Go return the money and then sweep the kitchen floor. I'll pay you 25 cents.' "Those grandparents raised two daughters, one being my mother, who started the first 'all girls band' in the U.S. – the Novelty Syncopators – in the '30s. They started with virtually nothing, saved their earnings, and purchased a three-story multi-family home in the late '40s. They lived on the first floor and rented out the upper floors for their retirement income. They were the first to instill financial discipline in me. My parents were also hardworking and rather frugal, and they imparted further sound advice. Their lessons have served me well throughout life. "I believe that for those not fortunate enough to have had such parents and grandparents, both public and private schools should include course material in their curricula to impart some basic financial knowledge and the concept of 'personal responsibility,' probably starting in middle school and continuing in high school. Designed properly, such courses could actually be made quite interesting and perhaps even counter some of the 'handout' mentality so prevalent today. "They could even cause children to understand that nothing in terms of finances is free... that handouts from the federal and lower levels of government come from tax paying citizens and corporations. There is a large percentage of the American population (maybe a majority) who simply do not understand that. And perhaps over a decade or so, they would be able to discern when a politician was simply engaged in buying votes by promoting 'freebies,' increasing the national, state or local debt, and creating hardships for future generations." – Paid-up subscriber Duane B. "Mom told me when in high school, you ARE NOT going to war (Vietnam) like your father (WWII). I'm going to send you to college to become an accountant. I shrugged my shoulders and mumbled, 'Okay.' "Even though I had an accounting background, and Mom and Dad had handed down sound money management theory – buy a house, save for a rainy day, have an emergency fund... but their investment advice was [to] buy annuities when you're old enough. "After doing business taxes for years, I just burned out and left. I went 180 degrees in a different direction and went to work in the manufacturing sector. They, of course, took advantage of my accounting skills and put me in charge of a multi-million inventory. "They offered a 401(k) with multiple choices of mutual funds. I thought why not, they do offer a small matching percentage. This was 1995, heading towards the dot-com bubble. I heard about all these dot-com stock offerings, so I directed my funds to the Nasdaq index. I knew of stocks and knew that mutual funds were a basket of stocks, but that was the extent of my investing knowledge. Yes, even for an accountant... "I really enjoyed the job, but my back didn't. Under the advice of my doctor, 'You better go back to your accounting world, or you'll be crippled if you stay in this manufacturing arena.' Long story short, I left in August 2000. My $3,500 invested had grown to $10,500, so I opened an IRA account at my bank. "Little did I know that this was pure dumb luck! I missed the dot-com crash but started reading about mutual funds and then the actual stocks that made up the myriad of mutual funds out there. Holy criminy, this is overwhelming. "My first purchase was GE (hey they pay a dividend!) and everyone's darling at the time, Lucent. GE kind of held its own but Lucent was a dumpster fire and was 'dumb, stupid!' "I don't remember the how or the why, but Dr. Steve Sjuggerud came up in my total obsession of reading and researching stocks. He was part of this Stansberry group. Hum, I can sign up for some free advice and e-mails. Now this Porter Stansberry was the editor in charge and what he wrote about wasn't just about stocks but about politics, world events etc. "This Dr. Sjugg's mantra was 'buy what is cheap, hated and in an uptrend.' Hum, makes sense. Oh, he also has an intro offer to his monthly publication, True Wealth. Well, over the years Dr. Sjugg, Porter and now Dr. [Doc] Eifrig has helped me become a much better investor and I can't thank you enough for all the education and great reads over these years. "Oh yes, the investment advice has helped me and my wife as we open a new chapter in our lives, retirement. Thanks so much." – Paid-up subscriber Steve R. "I had two grandfathers who lived in the 1929 depression. One bought stock on margin – and literally lost the farm. The other was hoarding cash and bought lots of houses on his block for great deals. "But the best financial advice came from my mother (whose dad hoarded cash). She brought me to the bank each month with my allowance or birthday/Christmas money to deposit. Back in the '60s they had the passbooks where the interest was added each month. I could see that my $10 deposit earned money (albeit cents – but I was making money!!) This stuck with me, and I convinced my husband to be frugal as well. "I retired from a 23-year (rough) career with a mediocre salary, and am now able to work an enjoyable part-time job and volunteer with animal rescue! Our retirement plan says we have a 99% chance of a comfortable retirement! "I did take my 'retirement pension' as a lump sum, and I've learned to invest in dividend stocks and trade options along with Doc (Retirement Trader) and Chris Igou (DailyWealth Trader) and many more of the Stansberry bright minds. I earn 'interest' every month. "My best move was to become a [Stansberry] Flex member – going on 12 years now!!" – Paid-up subscriber Susanne P. "How I got involved in finance and really wanting to learn things is out of a personal tragedy. My daughter died three hours after being born, but the company I work for automatically added her to a life insurance policy. We left that money to our surviving children and I left it sitting in a Fidelity account getting a whopping couple of pennies every month in interest. I'm like, I've got time before my kids become adults. But at this rate, they are going to have less money than they started out with based on inflation. "I didn't know where to start. I didn't even know companies paid dividends. I just started buying a share of this company or that company without a clue. Then I started seeing all these videos about the next Amazon and I'm like, 'What revelation do these guys have?' But I learned fundamental analysis and now technical analysis and look for capital-efficient companies who pay fat dividends who I can also write covered calls on. "Now my 11- and 7-year-old know how to read balance sheets and cash flow statements. Whatever it is, if they look at a cash flow statement they can quickly see if it's a good investment or not. My 11-year-old has a paper trading account. They play the Cash Flow Board game Robert Kiyosaki made. So, while I feel savvy, I'm teaching my kids to be investing innate. It's part of their vocabulary... They have time to learn now. "And also, what I've learned about student loans... I feel duped into having taken them and still paying on them years later. I'm teaching my boys that they can do whatever they want to do, become whatever they want to become. But be an electrician or a plumber. Then, pay your way through school. Or save up a ton of money and start living off of dividends or other investments early. And they are on board with it. "They won't have to feel like they should know everything and not want to learn finance later. They are excited to learn now." – Paid-up subscriber Caleb B. Corey McLaughlin comment: Amazing story, Caleb. Congrats to you and your children. Thanks to you and everyone who has been writing in. Keep your stories coming. Good investing, Dan Ferris Eagle Point, Oregon August 19, 2022 --------------------------------------------------------------- Stansberry Research Top 10 Open Recommendations Top 10 highest-returning open positions across all Stansberry Research portfolios Stock Buy Date Return Publication Analyst MSFT Microsoft 11/11/10 1,043.9% Retirement Millionaire Doc ADP Automatic Data 10/09/08 912.7% Extreme Value Ferris MSFT Microsoft 02/10/12 898.8% Stansberry's Investment Advisory Porter ETH/USD Ethereum 02/21/20 641.0% Stansberry Innovations Report Wade HSY Hershey 12/07/07 549.7% Stansberry's Investment Advisory Porter BRK.B Berkshire Hathaway 04/01/09 439.5% Retirement Millionaire Doc AFG American Financial 10/12/12 434.0% Stansberry's Investment Advisory Porter WRB W.R. Berkley 03/16/12 380.6% Stansberry's Investment Advisory Porter FSMEX Fidelity Sel Med 09/03/08 315.2% Retirement Millionaire Doc TTD The Trade Desk 10/17/19 303.7% Stansberry Innovations Report Engel Please note: Securities appearing in the Top 10 are not necessarily recommended buys at current prices. The list reflects the best-performing positions currently in the model portfolio of any Stansberry Research publication. The buy date reflects when the editor recommended the investment in the listed publication, and the return shows its performance since that date. To learn if a security is still a recommended buy today, you must be a subscriber to that publication and refer to the most recent portfolio. --------------------------------------------------------------- Top 10 Totals 3 Retirement Millionaire Doc 1 Extreme Value Ferris 4 Stansberry's Investment Advisory Porter 2 Stansberry Innovations Report Engel/Wade --------------------------------------------------------------- Top 5 Crypto Capital Open Recommendations Top 5 highest-returning open positions in the Crypto Capital model portfolio Stock Buy Date Return Publication Analyst ETH/USD Ethereum 12/07/18 1,441.4% Crypto Capital Wade ONE-USD Harmony 12/16/19 1,222.8% Crypto Capital Wade POLY/USD Polymath 05/19/20 1,074.2% Crypto Capital Wade MATIC/USD Polygon 02/25/21 852.4% Crypto Capital Wade BTC/USD Bitcoin 11/27/18 517.7% Crypto Capital Wade Please note: Securities appearing in the Top 5 are not necessarily recommended buys at current prices. The list reflects the best-performing positions currently in the Crypto Capital model portfolio. The buy date reflects when the recommendation was made, and the return shows its performance since that date. To learn if it's still a recommended buy today, you must be a subscriber and refer to the most recent portfolio. --------------------------------------------------------------- Stansberry Research Hall of Fame Top 10 all-time, highest-returning closed positions across all Stansberry portfolios Investment Symbol Duration Gain Publication Analyst Nvidia^* NVDA 5.96 years 1,466% Venture Tech. Lashmet Band Protocol crypto 0.32 years 1,169% Crypto Capital Wade Terra crypto 0.41 years 1,164% Crypto Capital Wade Inovio Pharma.^ INO 1.01 years 1,139% Venture Tech. Lashmet Seabridge Gold^ SA 4.20 years 995% Sjug Conf. Sjuggerud Frontier crypto 0.08 years 978% Crypto Capital Wade Binance Coin crypto 1.78 years 963% Crypto Capital Wade Nvidia^* NVDA 4.12 years 777% Venture Tech. Lashmet Intellia Therapeutics NTLA 1.95 years 775% Amer. Moonshots Root Rite Aid 8.5% bond 4.97 years 773% True Income Williams ^ These gains occurred with a partial position in the respective stocks. * The two partial positions in Nvidia were part of a single recommendation. Editor Dave Lashmet closed the first leg of the position in November 2016 for a gain of about 108%. Then, he closed the second leg in July 2020 for a 777% return. And finally, in May 2022, he booked a 1,466% return on the final leg. Subscribers who followed his advice on Nvidia could've recorded a total weighted average gain of more than 600%. You have received this e-mail as part of your subscription to Stansberry Digest. If you no longer want to receive e-mails from Stansberry Digest [click here](. Published by Stansberry Research. You’re receiving this e-mail at {EMAIL}. Stansberry Research welcomes comments or suggestions at feedback@stansberryresearch.com. This address is for feedback only. 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