The Year Ahead

– Big Christmas party at my house tonight.

– I know.

– We’re going to have about 50 people, employees plus 1.

– Probably. I think the goal for Christmas parties is not to be that person that can get yourself fired.

– There’s always one.

– There’s always one that gets way too loose, right?

– Yeah. Were you there at the Stansberry Research Christmas party many moons ago when a younger employee had too much to drink and started hitting on my wife?

– No. Not at all. I don’t know about that. I must have been gone. It must have been my hiatus.

– Yeah. You’ll never guess what happened to him.

– He probably didn’t work for the company for much longer.

– Got tapped out.

– It reminds me of the time recently last year when we were at the beach club in Miami Beach, and you had your nephew.

– Oh, yes, jeez. We don’t need to talk about this.

– OK, well, we won’t go there.

– That’s not for public–

– Anyways, you seem to attract people–

some bad actors sometimes. We’ll put it that way.

– Yeah.

– It’s weird.

– That was very weird.

– That was very bizarre. Anyways, we were supposed to have a guest today. Unfortunately, our guest has had some technical difficulties been traveling Argentina. I’m sure our subscribers couldn’t guess who that is.

When we mentioned subscribers–

– Well, we’ll reschedule.

– We’ll reschedule for sure.

– So for the holidays, it’s just me and Brabsey.

– Hey, man, I’m all about that.

– Let’s deliver some value. We can do it ourselves.

– Yep. So Porter, I want to read some financial headlines and get your take on this. So we’ve been talking about raising cash for a while now. It’s something that goes contrary to the newsletter business, where most newsletter subscribers, or gurus, don’t like to have a bunch of cash on the sidelines, right?

We’ve been talking about it. Well, guess who else has been raising a bunch of cash? And we wrote about the other day in big secret on Wall Street.

– That would be Berkshire Hathaway.

– That would be Berkshire Hathaway. So they’re sitting on 157 billion in cash right now. And he’s no dummy, so we’re no dummies

– I’m not sure we see exactly the same thing in the markets. What I see is an economy that is much weaker than advertised. And I suspect that the big increases you’ve seen, and consumer defaults, and the returns of paying back student loans, and all that stuff is going to impact the consumer economy.

As a preview, look at the share price of Dollar General. When you’ve got–

you have US consumer who can’t afford Dollar General anymore. They’ve got to go to the food bank. That’s not a real good sign for the economy.

– No.

– So I think people have been dealing with the impact of inflation over the last two years through government stimulus and then more recently, just through credit card. The credit card balances off-soared. And of course, that’s extended this boom, but that’s going to make the hangover worse. And I think you’re going to see it next year.

So I think what you’re going to see is a big credit default cycle. I think you’re going to see a big risk premium increase in the markets. You see the VIX up. You’ll see corporate bankruptcies really soaring.

And I think that’s going to make people a lot more skeptical of the stock market. So it won’t be trading at 21 times earnings. It’ll be trading at 12 times earnings. Well, that’s a big change.

– Yeah, definitely.

– We have not seen an American public skeptical about stocks in a very long time.

– No, not at all. And I was actually shocked to see–

I think it’s just like–

maybe it’s a habit thing, right? So consumer spending is a habit. I think I think some people have this–

the only way they’re going to feel good is if they go buy something. It’s a temporary feeling. But the online–

– Have you tried that?

– No, it’s not for me.

– Doesn’t work.

– No, it doesn’t at all. But the online Black Friday sales were record numbers. And I thought that was very surprising to see something like 9.5 billion or whatever the case. What do you think about that?

– Was that just an increase in prices? Is that just inflation?

– That’s actually a very good point.

– Or is it a real increase in volume of goods sold? How do you look at car sales? Tell me about the volumes.

– Yeah. No, it’s not looking good.

– How about house sales? Tell me about the volumes.

– Terrible.

– Yeah. And the worst–

and I don’t know–

30, 40 years.

– Yeah. Well, we’ve covered this a lot. We write about a lot. It’s the interest rates. And the average mortgage payment, I think, is like $3,000.

– And that’s not the real problem. The new home builders are fine because they can lower the gross margins. They can do things to help people make a mortgage. They can keep moving new product.

But nobody can afford to leave their house because they can’t afford to give up their mortgage. The mortgage has become an asset because they’re paying 2.5%. And the interest rates right now on mortgages are 7% Well, you can’t afford that swap.

So you can’t leave your house. And you can’t afford to go get a home equity line of credit, which is why you’re defaulting on your credit cards instead of refinancing them. All of this is going to cycle through the economy in lots of different ways. But the reality is, if rates are going to be higher for longer, then the economy is going to be weaker than expected for longer. That’s the corollary to it.

– You literally just hit on every topic that I had written down. So I guess we’re done. It’s great to see you. Now, let me go into some stuff.

So with record high–

– But let’s think about this for a second. Also, how much of the market has been in just seven stocks?

– Yeah. I don’t know the percentage, but the waiting is insane.

– Let’s say 80% of the gain this year has been in seven stocks. That’s just a rough ballpark.

– Magnificent Seven.

– OK. And so those seven stocks are now worth more than the entire stock markets of the UK, France, Hong Kong, and Canada. Does that make sense to you?

– Zero

– Doesn’t make sense to me either. So there’s just a lot that’s going to happen. The other thing that seems to be breaking loose is the Japanese bond market and the yen. And people don’t understand those are very, very serious matters.

There’s a lot of the internal workings of the global financial system that are going to break if the value of the yen keeps bouncing around like it’s Bitcoin.

So I’m just saying.

There’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t look like 21 times earnings to me. I’ve been wrong before.

And what does that mean? Well, I’m not saying sell all your stocks. In fact, we recommend good stocks all the time in our newsletter still. But what I am saying is, if you have something where you’re not certain, you want to hold it for another five years, it’s probably a good time to sell it now. Have some cash.

Let’s say you raise–

you should always have say, 10% of cash at least. So let’s say double that. You go to 20%. OK.

Now, you’ve got some cash to play with if there is a big correction. And way better to sell weak businesses now when the market is at 21 times earnings than trying to sell a weak business when the market has corrected 30% or 40%.

– Yes for sure. OK, Porter on October 19, the 10 Year Treasury yield was almost a 5%. I believe you wrote about that.

– Yeah.

– And then since then, it rapidly came down to around 4.2% right now.

PORTER STANSBERRY: Yeah, big rally in the bond markets.

AARON BRABHAM: Huge, huge rally in the bond market. And we’ve also saw oil touch just below $70.

It’s a little above right now. Gold spiked to all-time highs. Bitcoin started soaring again.

The writing’s on the wall, it’s not looking great over here. Things are moving so rapidly that it’s really difficult for the consumer, for the subscriber to understand. And I think that’s why we constantly preach buying the best businesses.

– A guy subscribed to Porter and Company.

And I want to say three weeks later–

so he was subscribed. He joined at the end of September. He canceled his subscription. I want to say on October 21, which was the low in the markets, right before the bond market rallied.

And he asked for a refund, which, of course, we’re always happy to be part his friends. And he complained about the performance of our recommendations.

– Over a three-week period?

– Right, over a three-week period.

[LAUGHS]

– Yeah.

– And I said to him–

I said, I think it’s a little bit unfair that you would judge our work in any three-week period, but most importantly, and in the middle of the worst three-week period in the history of the US bond market. Maybe there’s something else going on here besides just the value of these particular businesses.

– That’s right.

– And I said listen.

I just want you to understand we’re happy to give you your money back. But my strong advice is that you not sell these stocks because you are you’re reacting to a momentary panic in the market. And anyways, I want to see that. And I want to show what happened from when he sold to where they are now.

– It completely slipped.

– Because even in a situation where the Magnificent Seven collapse, even in a situation where the average earnings multiple of the stock market goes from 21 to 14, there can still be lots of good businesses that are going to be just fine. So I don’t want you to hear me saying panic, panic, panic. I just want you to hear me say, this is a time, much like virtually any other time. You really want to focus on having high-quality businesses, especially companies that can manage the impact of inflation. Super important.

– Yeah. And we write about those all the time. We have an inevitable report, where we track these.

You’ve made a career out of this. Hershey’s is always the one that we use as an example, but there are many others that you bought. And it’s going to happen again, right?

– And also, it gives you opportunities.

We didn’t recommend Dollar General. I don’t think.

We put it in our watch list, I’m pretty sure, likewise with Ulta Beauty. Anyways, the point is, there are lots of great businesses that are going to get cheap during this cycle.

We’ve already seen it happen to John Deere, to Alta, to Dollar General. And all you got to do is just be patient. These things will come to you. And then you’ve got it made because now you’ve got a great business.

You bought it at a fair price. You bought it in a difficult period.

Going forward, eventually, the sun will come out again tomorrow. And that stock, instead of trading at 10 times earnings, s going to be trading at 20.

So that’s the whole game. You got to buy great businesses when they’re trading at a fair price.

And unfortunately, it’s not that hard. It’s just not what most people–

for whatever reason, it’s not what their instinct teaches them to do. Instead, like the subscriber who canceled, they’re like, oh, my stock went down. I’m selling. Well, if you know what you’ve bought and you know what it’s worth, why would you do that?

– Yeah. And I think that’s the philosophy at Porter and Company is. If you do the real research, which we do it for you, it takes the emotions out, or at least that’s our goal, right?

– Shouldn’t it shouldn’t be an emotional decision.

– Well, that, I think, a lot of people watching this right now, could kind of check themselves internally.

And if you have those emotions, then you really ought to look at the companies that you’re investing in because you’re probably doing it for the wrong reasons. As we always talk about, this crazy printing and the low interest rates and everything, had required people to be more speculative. And now with inflation, it requires people–

it doesn’t require. People seek speculative things.

– You’ve already lost half of your purchasing power since 2020 if you weren’t invested in good businesses or good assets. So yeah, inflation is a real threat to your financial well-being and your family’s. No question about it.

And the way to deal with that, I believe, is owning great businesses. And I think that investing in common stocks are not commonly thought of as a haven, as a form of asset protection, but it clearly is. It’s been a better form of asset protection than just about anything else.

– I’ll give you an example of me being a bonehead when I was younger, and I’ve done some boneheaded things for investing.

I had that car accident. I received a little bit of insurance money. I think it was like $50,000.

– What happened next?

– Fortunately, fortunately then, online trading didn’t exist. You had to give your money to somebody. And I gave it to a very conservative RIA, and he put me in Disney.

– Sounds good.

– It was during the dotcom boom. And I got livid because I couldn’t understand how he wouldn’t buy these IPO things. And all he would tell me was the things that you did. And so, of course, I pulled all my money from him. And then I finally did get access to some online investing.

– Then what happens next.

– And then I know what happened next. And I look back, and I go, wow, can you imagine if I had kept Disney for 30 years?

– I have got a great test for everybody. Take out your portfolio today, right now, and look at every single name on the list. And when you look at each name, I want you to close your eyes for a minute and just think about it. And if it gives you an emotion, if it makes you feel excited or if it makes you feel nervous, then get out of it.

What? Makes you feel excited? Yeah, you shouldn’t look at your stocks and be like, oh, that’s my lottery ticket. It’s going to pay off. We’re going to the sizzler.

No. You should look at your stocks and be like, huh, OK.

Just completely no emotional, bored, rational–

the same way you look at your vegetable garden. That’s as much excitement you should get from it. And if you’re getting more excitement from it than that, then you’re gambling, and you’re not going to be very successful, I promise.

– Hmm. Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe we should do–

always looking for new customers and Scientology. They have the little meter that–

Is that like the dowsing rod?

– –they hook you up to. So they can measure to see you if you really need their services, right? Maybe we should do that. We pull up their portfolio.

We’ve got them hooked up to something. Oh, you definitely need some Porter and Company newsletters because you’re doing something wrong over there.

– You can also just look at your position sizes. It just never fails. Well, that’s huge.

– It just never fails.

– That’s huge.

– Yeah.

– Actually, right now, we’re currently running trade stops to our list, and not shocking. People love it. People need it.

– Yeah, it works.

– It works. It takes the emotion out.

– It also shows you how much risk you’re taking compared to the market, and most people just have no idea. They don’t understand that–

most people are taking at least twice as much risk as the market. And so if the market goes down 20%, which is a normal bear market, it’s going to happen every three or four years, your portfolio is going to be down 40%. Now, when that happens to you how are you going to feel then?

– Hmm, guess. That’s not going to feel good at all.

– No. So what you’ve got to learn to do is you’ve got, of course, you’ve got to learn to have position sizing that’s based on equal risk. So if you’re in a more volatile stock, you have to have less of it. If you’re in a safer stock, then you can have more of it. And that is just a really good way of dampening the emotional impact of your investing because the real key is staying in these investments.

This is something I learned from Buffett that most people still don’t really understand. And I didn’t honestly completely understand it until recently, which is that if you look at a company’s return on invested capital like Hershey’s, you’ll see it’s 70% annually.

Wow! Well, how are you going to make 70% annually? You’re not because you’ve got to buy that stock at a multiple of its equity value.

So let’s say you buy s at seven or eight times book. Well, then obviously, you’re not making 70% a year, you’re making 70% a year divided by 8, which is good, but not great. And so what Buffett has pointed out is that the longer you hold that stock, the longer you hold it, the more likely it is that your returns will track towards their long-term return on invested capital.

And so if you just buy a great business and you hold on long enough, you’re going to have a fantastic return. Most people don’t think that way. And honestly, of course, if you’re in your 60s you may not have 40 years to invest. That’s strategy. That’s not a sinecure.

It really does explain why if you’re not going to hold an equity investment for at least a decade, you probably should have never made it in the first place because you’re just gambling. And it’s not the same as the guy who bought stocks and three weeks later decided that we were fools and didn’t want to invest with us anymore, but it’s in that same genre. You have to have at least a 5 to 7-year holding period, or you’re just rolling the dice. I can’t guarantee you a positive outcome.

– Yeah. I think we should probably set up some kind of easy survey question thing for people because these things are sometimes asked by RIAs, but they’re rarely asked. And we can’t do individual investment advice.

– No. And what’s nice about trade stops is software that allows you to generate the tools and analytics you need to manage your own portfolio.

– Very easily.

– That’s what’s different about it, is just reading a newsletter.

– Yeah. And I’ll put a link in for our people to learn more about trade stops because it is a fantastic tool.

Actually, when they go watch the video itself, it’s kind of–

I loved it because you have Keith Kaplan who’s fantastic, incredibly smart. And then you’re on the other side. And he took your previous portfolio.

– We don’t need to talk about this, do we?

– Took your previous–

I’m just teasing him. Took your previous portfolio. And it’s where Porter recommended to get out versus what trade stocks would have recommended

– Yeah. So my portfolio, the average return was 40%.

– Which is absurd.

– Really good.

– Amazing.

– But with trade stops and doing nothing but changing the exits according to this dynamic stop loss strategy, the average return went to 131%.

– You’d have been one of the world’s best investors. But hey, that’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to learn. And that’s what we’re talking about trade stops. We don’t have a crystal ball over here.

You always say that all the time.

You have a lot of analysts talking about this Fed pivot in 2020 for up to 4 to 6 cuts of interest rates. You’re very dappered, bow-tied.

Jim Grant disagrees with that. He believes that the rates are going to be held up higher for a lot longer.

– Yeah, I don’t. I honestly don’t think you’re going to see a big Fed pivot. And I think that’s one of the things that’s going to disappoint the stock market. The other thing that I don’t think most people really appreciate is that stocks generally do poorly when the Fed begins to cut because it’s a realization that the economy is very weak.

The unemployment is increasing. And that earnings are likely to fall.

And so whether you get a Fed pivot or not, I just don’t think next year is shaping up to be a real strong year in the markets. It’s not hard to imagine why.

– Yeah, of course.

– Stocks are fully valued at 21 times earnings.

There’s no question that hiring and economic growth is weakening. You see that in the price of oil, in particular. You also see that in the slowing growth of employment. Not yet unemployment growing, but we’re approaching it.

And I think you see it most obviously, like I mentioned, in various measures of the credit markets. Look at the personal bankruptcy filings. Look at the corporate bankruptcy filings.

Look at the credit card defaults. Look at the car loan defaults. All those things are leading indicators of a weaker economy.

– Yeah. Actually, I have a section in here called the consumer is getting crushed.

– Yeah.

– And you’re hitting a lot of my topics here.

– Yeah, because expenses are going way up, especially interest expenses. And salaries aren’t keeping pace.

– I know you’re on X. I’m on X. I really love the platform. I’ve been seeing a lot–

I’m not on TikTok, by the way, but I see a lot of TikTok being posted on X, and it’s this theme of the consumer getting crushed.

– Are we already to the point where no one says Twitter anymore, it’s only X?

– I’m trying to evolve here, man. Now, I’ll still sell tweet. I’ll still say tweet.

– I tweet on X.

– I tweet on X. And actually, Elon was questioned about that. He’s like, yeah. He goes, so far I have post. I post on X. He goes, it’s not as good as tweet. And I would agree with that.

But I see all these TikToks. And man, it is pretty depressing because these aren’t people that don’t want to go make money. These are people making money that can’t survive. And let me tell you something right now that’s going to get me in a lot of trouble.

– Oh, boy.

– I can’t resist. So as you know, I like X a lot. I like Twitter. A lot I post three or four times a day.

– Yes, you do.

– OK. I have studiously stayed away from all of the racial stuff that with the Harvard, and with Penn, and I guess MIT.

– It was Harvard, Penn, which the president I stepped down from Penn.

– I haven’t posted anything about it. And as you know, what got me canceled in 2012 was my aversion to DEI policies and the idea of structural racism. I do not believe that–

I don’t think that you and I know any racists. I’ve never met one.

We grew up in an integrated high school. We had friends of all races and colors. And we judged everybody by their accomplishments and by their character.

Skin had nothing to do with it. Didn’t even occur to us. And now, supposedly, this world that you and I have lived 50 years in, supposedly, this world is now more racist than it was in 1964.

– It’s the number one problem in America.

– The number one problem in America. I don’t believe in any of that.

– White supremacist.

– I don’t believe any of that.

– I don’t think anyone believes that.

– It’s all a sham.

– It’s a grift.

– It’s a grift. And it’s designed to remove power from the people who’ve earned it and give power to the people who have arranged for it via political–

all kinds of whatnot. And so for the first time, for the first time, I put that on Twitter yesterday.

– I saw it.

– I put one post about it.

– I saw it.

– And it was the story of how Harvard had canceled the only economist in their African Studies program who had done any actual hard-core research to understand whether or not structural racism was real, or if it was an artifact of PR firms and grifters.

And so what did he study? He studied whether or not it was more likely that a police officer would use lethal force on a Black suspect other than a white one or a Latin one or whatever. And guess what he found. When he actually did the actual research, he discovered that police were actually less likely to use lethal force on Black subjects than white subjects.

– Which sounds shocking. But by the way, statistics always win when they’re done correctly in a study.

– Look, you can go ahead and read the study for yourself. It was published in 2017. You can criticize the methods if you want. I’ve looked at it.

It’s pretty thorough. And I don’t think any of the criticism that he ever got from it had anything to do with methodology. It had to do simply with it. It was a result that did not meet the DEI narrative.

And so what happened next?

– He’s out.

– Harvard went after him for sexual harassment.

– Yeah, of course. Their number one thing is to go to the honeypot. Try to get him trapped in some BS that they’ve had before.

– You got to watch this documentary. It’s on my X, if you want to find it. So the guy got 20–

there was this woman who alleged that he had done 26 things to her.

Well, it turns out–

then they investigate all this. None of the things are real, with the exception of, I think, it was two. And those things were making a ribald comment in an email.

– Yeah. Whatever.

– Doesn’t seem that unusual to me.

– No, not at all.

– Certainly wouldn’t be unusual for our workplace.

– No. And had that study not come out, none of that investigation could happen.

– So what does he get? Well, the board who did the investigation recommended that he receive some training about sensitivity training.

– Of course.

– If you’re talking to a woman in the workplace, you can’t use ribald.

– Can’t look at them. Can’t talk to them.

– You can’t use ribald language. OK, great. I’ll do better at that. What they did instead was they suspended him for two years.

– Two years?

– Yeah. And the people they put in charge of making the decision of what his punishment was going to be were the same people who his research had indicated were completely full of crap, which is the president of Harvard, who’s the head of the DEI movement, basically, and one of the other African Studies professors whose entire career has been crying racism at every corner.

So I post about it one time. And I say, this looks like a travesty to me. This guy looks like he got railroaded.

– What kind of backlash?

– For the same reasons that I got railroaded. And immediately, somebody links to it saying that I murdered Rey Rivera.

– Are you serious?

– Yeah.

– That’s [MUTTERING].

– And by the way, what’s so interesting is it’s not a person.

– A bot?

– Yeah.

– Some faceless corporation type of entity that is just a troll?

– No. He says, it’s John39388040.

– Oh, of course, of course.

– Right?

– Of course.

– Yeah. And he says, all I want to know is what happened to Rey Rivera?

– It’s like an auto-generated–

we’d like to know as well.

– Yeah, of course.

– And if anybody knows out there, please let us know because that’s something that you exhausted yourself trying to find out.

– And he doesn’t know anything about Rey. He doesn’t know how to spell his name.

– Yeah, there you go.

– But the point is, there’s been no more ridiculous allegation ever made about me in my entire life.

– No. Of course, not.

– And yet when does it come up? It only comes up when I touch that third rail, when I say, oh, here’s evidence, lots of evidence of DEI behaving badly, censoring and railroading people who are good researchers doing good results. And by the way, it shouldn’t make any difference. But the researcher that they suspended for two years, that they railroaded, is an African-American.

– Oh, it doesn’t matter, though. It goes against the narrative.

– And he had done incredible things in education.

Specifically, he had taken a school in Harvard that was trailing white student performance and had improved it to over white student performance. And then he used to give a talk about the gap between Black students and white students, except for in his school, it’s the gap between Black and white, where the whites are underperforming. What a great story. Shouldn’t every single.

– We should celebrate that.

– Shouldn’t every single public school system be studying this researchers methods?

– Yes, should adopt it. They should put it into–

– Why don’t they?

– Because it doesn’t fit the narrative.

– No. Because the number one difference between his school system and all the other was is they aggressively fire underperforming teachers.

– Wow.

– What are the odds that the Democrats are going to attack the teachers union.

– No, never.

– That funds all of their elections.

– Zero chance.

– Zero chance. So what happens to all the poor Black kids who are underperforming in school? Well, it’s too bad.

– Fuck them.

– Yep, too bad.

– Yep.

– Because they’re sacrificed for beholden to power of the unions.

– And I think that’s a travesty. So that makes me a racist.

– Yeah, well.

– It’s ridiculous.

– What happened to Rey Rivera? By the way, you got to watch that documentary. It’s on my Twitter feed.

– Yeah, I saw your post.

– It’s absolutely brilliant. And the researcher from Harvard who got canceled and suspended, he was talking to his grandmother about his findings. And she’s from Daytona Beach near where we grew up.

– Oh, yeah.

– And she’s like, sweetheart, they paid you for that?

Because his findings were if your students are behind in school, they have to spend more time at school. They need better teachers. They need more work.

– Yep.

– How are you going to get back ahead?

She’s like, duh. And she’s been a teacher, too. So she’s like, yeah, of course. If you got a student who’s behind, they need tutoring.

– That’s right.

– They need to spend more time at school. They need more work.

– Yeah, because once they get that gap of feeling like they’re losing hope and feeling like they can keep up, they just quit. That’s what you do.

– And you know what? You’ve seen it. The teachers quit on them, too.

– Oh, absolutely. No, yeah.

– I got an underperformer in my class.

– Figured out how to try to get them out of the class.

– I’m just going to ignore them.

– Yeah.

PORTER STANSBERRY: That’s what happens.

– I hope they just go away. I hope they don’t show up anymore. And of course, recently, they had the report on the Baltimore School. Schools were in Baltimore County.

And there was like, zero people could pass the math and reading. Zero. Which doesn’t make any sense. But they want dumbed-down America

– Why would you need math and reading?

– Well, they want a dumbed-down America, these people that control it, because you make a better class to just–

– I don’t agree with you about that. I don’t agree with you about that.

– I think that’s what it is.

– I just don’t think they care. I think what they care about is power. And they know that if they can keep a bunch of teachers employed that they’ll be able to get the political donations they need to stay in power. But if they start firing bad teachers, then that union is going to lose control. And then they’re not going to have that funding.

– You know me, I’m more of a conspiracy guy. So I think it goes up a little bit higher. But I agree with what you just said. I just think it goes up a little bit higher.

OK, Porter, we’re capitalists over here. We don’t have any problem with that.

I do feel bad for the people when it comes to the cost of living, and housing, and all that type of stuff. And what percentage of, would you say, of firms like BlackRock purchased single family homes in 2023. What percentage of homes were purchased?

– So let me get this straight. The government prints a whole bunch of money, prints trillions of dollars, gives it to a bunch of morons, who then go out and buy new rims, a vacation in Miami Beach.

– Lots of that.

– Yeah. Somebody put rims on a toaster the other day. Look at my rims.

– Hey, man, good to get those new shoes.

– Yeah. OK. So you give a bunch of money to a bunch of morons. And two years later, they don’t have any money. And the price of everything has gone through the roof. But where all the money ends up once it cycles through all the banking system and everything else is where?

– Back at the BlackRock’s.

– Back at BlackRock. So if you look–

– Your money is recycled back to them for them to buy the things that you should have bought.

– If you looked at BlackRock before the bailout back in ’08 or ’09 for the big first mortgage bailouts, they were a reasonably big firm. They were one of many large firms on Wall Street. But after the mortgage bailouts, they grew enormously. They grew 50% in three or four years to where they are managing $10 trillion.

$10 trillion.

– That’s an enormous amount of money. And then the cover bailouts came. And they are even bigger.

– Even more?

– Yeah. So they personally control something on the order of half of US GDP in terms of money. No one’s ever seen a financial firm with that much power.

– It’s way too much, in my opinion.

– I agree.

– Anyways, they bought 44% of these homes.

– So what’s so funny is now, where are they going to put all that money? They got to put it somewhere. Where are they putting it? They’re putting into homes, and that’s driving the home prices up.

– Exactly. Because they don’t care what they buy them at. They’re fine with that.

– So anyways, the message for you folks who are in favor of the government printing money is just remember, you’re going to get what you deserve, good and hard, because if they print money, it’s going to come out of your height, not theirs. It’s going to end up forcing your home prices higher, forcing your food prices higher, forcing your car prices higher.

– Yeah. What you get for a penance is nothing compared to what they’ll get on the upside. It’s the greatest transfer of wealth for them.

– You got to stop believing their lies.

– Yeah, for sure.

– But they won’t.

– No. Of course, not.

– They’ll keep voting for it.

– So another crushing the consumer.

401(k) balances are down 4%. Hardship withdrawals are up over 300%. – the economy is doing great, Aaron.

– Yeah, I know. That’s what they say, right?

OK, Porter, another one. Is the party over? Consumer credit for October 2023 showed expectations for 8.5 billion. Last was 12.25 billion. Not looking good out there.

– So let me get this straight. You’re saying that consumer credit has gone up by more than 50% over expectations?

– Mm-hmm.

– Right, because people have no money, and they can’t afford gas or their rent or food.

– Yeah. Well, the punch Bowl. Is getting taken away. So these credit card companies aren’t extending any more credit any more. Banks aren’t extending any more credit anymore.

And people have a bad habit. They have a spending habit. People can’t live within their means. One thing we’ve always talked about over here that we try to do, and I think we do pretty well, I don’t think you’ve ever had a loan on anything.

I remember you got turned down from a car loan because you’d–

– No, I’ve definitely never–

I’ve never ever borrowed money to buy a car. A car is a depreciating asset. You should never borrow against a depreciating asset. I’ve never borrowed money to buy a boat.

– No. Did you do a house loan ever or no? I’m not even sure if you ever did.

– The one time I borrowed money was when I was building the farm here.

There was a difference between the distributions from my company and the building requirements. And I went to my friend at Everbank. What is his name?

Oh, gosh, I can’t remember now. Anyways, I borrowed money for about six months.

– That was it?

– Yeah.

– Yeah. OK.

– And when I paid him back, I sent him a thank you note and said thanks so much for the short-term loan. And he said, I was the only borrower in his entire career who ever wrote him a thank you note.

– Yeah, you were happy to get rid of the debt, and you were happy that he loaned you money.

– No. I just think that it’s–

I Think the people loaning you money is something very nice to do.

– Totally, but that’s counterintuitive. That’s one thing I like about living in Colombia, is there is no credit for me at all.

– No.

– You want something, you buy it. And actually, it’s very difficult in Colombia for a mortgage down there. You have to have substantial income, substantial assets, and 30% to 40% down.

– Yeah. And how long is that mortgage?

– You get it for 15, 20 years, but you’re putting 30% to 40% down. And probably also has a variable interest rate.

– Well, the interest rates are variable, and they’re like 17%. So you don’t want that.

– No.

– Something you definitely don’t want.

Actually down there, if you’re younger and you want to go rent an apartment and you don’t have enough income to prove or cash in a bank and a good job, you have to have three signers that go to the notary that show all their documents that if you default, they will cover you. They get fingerprinted. You have to have three sugar daddies or family members or whatever the case, just for you to rent a place.

– Wow.

– It’s very strict, which goes back to what you had said before. Colombia never defaulted on their debt. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why.

– Maybe.

– Very strict standards.

– And what would you say–

how much cheaper is the cost of living in Medellin than in reasonable places in the United States? I’m not talking about the cheapest place. I’m not talking about rural Arkansas.

– Sure.

– I’m talking about–

– Orlando. Let’s take Orlando.

– Yeah. If you’re going to live in a regular–

– Houston, Orlando.

– Yeah.

– Houston, Orlando, Charlotte.

– Yeah.

When I first moved there, which was eight years ago, it was in–

you couldn’t believe how cheap it was. Now, it’s not so cheap anymore, Porter. I mean things are creeping up there. However, I would say, compared to say, an Orlando area, it’s still easily 50% cheaper.

Easily.

– It’s gone from being 90% cheaper to being 50% cheaper. But to you, it feels expensive now.

– Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that gap is closing. I mean, I’ve got probably 3,500 square foot house that I lease. That would be the equivalent of Malibu. And it’s got my own gym, Jacuzzi, bedrooms, all that stuff, maid quarters. And it’s $3,200.

And people are like, how do you afford it? That’s insane. That place in Miami would be $25,000.

– Yeah. Similar penthouse here in Baltimore would be $7,500.

– Yeah.

– So 50% cheaper.

– Yeah, 50% cheaper, so. No, I think it’s great.

All right, Porter, let’s jump into some–

just can’t make this stuff up. And one of our topics that we like is the climate change scam, how the government can grift, because that’s really what it is.

It’s a grift. It’s a grift for people getting into the carbon credits. It’s a grift for power and control for the government to squeeze and to get taxes.

One thing that we’ve talked about for a long time, and you said this back when we had Stansberry radio, was air and watch what happens to what they’re going to tax. And you talked about prostitution, OnlyFans. That thing brings in $8 billion, whatever the case is.

You talked about gambling.

Gambling has exploded. You talked about legalization of marijuana. This is what you had talked about for the end-of-society type of thieves.

– Of course. And just think about it. Think about how the government using humans to harvest some wealth.

– That’s what it is.

– They’ve got a plantation. We live on it.

– Yes.

– How do I grift them. Well, let’s get all the girls working.

– Yeah.

– Get them all in the corner.

– Yep. All right? Let’s get all the guys smoking dope.

– Mm-hmm, dumb them down.

– They’re not going to cause any trouble.

– That’s right.

– And then let’s get them addicted to gambling.

– Let’s get them gambling.

– Yeah. Oh, that’s nice.

– Yeah, those things are all booming, by the way. So you probably saw in London over the past year. They had these things called the ULEZ cameras. And the ULEZ cameras are essentially drivers of small cars, vans, motorbikes that don’t meet the ULEZ standards.

So if you have a pre-2005 car/motorcycle/truck, they think that that’s going to hurt the climate. So they’re charging 12.50 a day to drive in and outside. This is 25 round trip. Well, they have these ULEZ blade runners. It’s what they call them.

And it’s people that cut them down essentially. They wear all black, and they get up there and they chop them down. And there’s 2,800 of them, but there’s never more than like 800 that actually function because these people are diehards at doing that.

I thought, OK, well, it’s Europe. Well, guess what, it’s coming to New York City. So New York City literally just passed the initial–

whatever it is–

congestion. It’s like a congestion act.

And it goes from like 60th down to lower Manhattan. And for you to enter there is be between $24 to $36 a day.

Obviously, it’s to save the climate. Obviously, it’s to cut down–

– To save the climate.

– That’s what it is. Obviously, it’s to cut down on emissions.

– You know what it is, is we’re going to make these neighborhoods so expensive that only the rich people can afford to enjoy them.

– Yeah. Well, that’s one way to clean up New York, where all the people live. And also, it’s a tax grift. So they’re estimating–

let’s see what it says–

passenger cars will pay $15 peak periods, while trucks pay $24 to $36. The MTA’s governing board voted 9 to 1 on that to pass, of course.

– You know what’s interesting is it probably won’t affect congestion at all. It’ll probably just lead to a lot more inflation.

– For sure.

– If you’re a truck, you have to be there. So that’s the argument.

– Pass on all those costs to your new customers.

– Exactly.

– So same thing with all the taxis, and the Ubers, and everybody else. Just going to cost more.

– Yeah, because they’re hitting taxis or hitting Uber. So here’s their genius idea. And I love these one-way studies that we talk about. They go put a spreadsheet together, and they try to calculate what they’re going to get. Failing to realize that people just won’t go.

– They’ll change their behavior.

– They’ll change their behavior. But they’re like, oh, we’re going to bring in $1 billion annually. See how that works out.

– They might. It’s hard to get away. It’s hard to get around.

– If you got to deliver, you got to deliver.

– It’s hard to get around transportation.

– Yeah, but you’re right. That’s exactly what’s going to happen. It’s going to be passed on to the consumer.

– Where do they lose is when they say things like, oh, we’re going to double the income tax on you if you make a lot of money. Well, if you make a lot of money, you can move.

– Mm-hmm, yeah, if you have that kind of money. It’s exactly right. It’s getting close to election season when free things are promised again.

– Election season. What can I get?

– Election, exactly.

– What can I get?

– Well, we’re not really that political, and we’re definitely not left-leaning, which is usually where the promises go.

– Free money comes in.

– Free money comes in. So the Biden administration announced this past week that it would forgive an additional $4.8 billion in student loan debt for 80,300 borrowers. But wait a second, the Supreme Court said in June that you couldn’t do that. That was not constitutional.

Well, they always find loopholes. There’s always some kind of grift. So more than 2 billion of the aid will go to nearly 46,000 borrowers enrolled in income-driven repayment plans. And an additional 34,000 borrowers who have worked in public services for a decade will receive $2.6 billion in loan cancellation.

They’re going to find loopholes. They’re going to find ways to quote unquote “buy votes” and keep people coming back.

But it’s like people don’t ever really learn their lessons or at least the behaviors. I believe Biden promised a lot of free things and reneged on a lot of free things, as they always do.

– Guys, there is no such thing as free. There’s no free lunch. So Biden wants to forgive all these debts. Where’s the money coming from? He’s not increasing taxes on someone else to do it, which means they’re printing it.

– Printing and us and–

– So great. So all those morons who took those stupid college classes and learned nothing. Because if you learned anything in college, you wouldn’t go work for the government.

– No, you definitely wouldn’t do that.

– It’s just such nonsense. And then people will wonder, well, how come half of my purchasing power is gone in three years? Welcome to Biden.

– Yep. Bidenomics. They’re trying to spin it.

– By the way, I don’t think there’s any chance he’ll be reelected. Famous last words.

– I don’t think–

– No way.

– I can see the writing on the wall that they’re actually trying to get rid of him. They’re doing everything they can to show that he’s–

– Do you think they’re going to kill him?

– I think there might be a chance of that. I really do.

– I don’t think so. I think what they’re going to do is declare him incompetent.

– If he’s smart, he’ll take that deal and walk away, pardon himself out, pardon Hunter out. Yep. Yeah, just take his grift and get out of there, right?

– Mm-hmm.

– And I think that’s why they’ve been grooming Newsom, who is, to me is like–

– How much is his beach house again?

– It’s like $4 million.

– No.

– How much?

– No way.

– Less than that? $2 million?

– No, no, it’s more than that?

– More than that?

– Delaware beach house got to be at least $8 million.

– Oh, it’s in Delaware, Rehoboth?

– Yeah.

– Oh, that’s expensive area.

– Very expensive.

– Very expensive.

– It’s got to be at least $8 million.

– Yeah. Now, they’ve got–

they’ve found 20 shell companies, and money coming in, and all that type of stuff, but nobody does anything.

– The guy’s never had any job, except for public service. How does he own an $8 million beach house.

– Well, that’s why the congressional–

– Nobody cares.

– That’s why the congressional portfolio tracker is the best tracker that outperforms everything–

the Nancy Pelosi, all these other people. It’s just insane.

– What I wonder is really, seriously, outside of Tucker, where’s the media in any of this? Aren’t they supposed to be our watchdogs?

– No, the media shills for them. You got to go to the Alt-Right media. You have to go to the people that you have a hard time finding. However, X, with Elon Musk–

actually, I just watched the Spaces last night that he brought Alex Jones back, but it had Vivek Ramaswamy.

– Is Alex Jones actually back?

– He’s back.

– On Twitter now?

– He is.

– Really?

– He’s officially back. Yeah.

– He was unbanned?

– He’s unbanned.

– Wow.

– Not only that, they’re having these big talks, and it was Tate. Andrew Tate, the Tate brothers, it was Patrick Bet-David. It was all these outspoken voices right now that were coming together and trying to be team humanity. It’s team humanity.

My favorite that Twitter banned was the–

what was it called, the Babylon Bee?

– Babylon Bee.

– Which is satire.

AARON BRABHAM: Satire.

– Obviously, satire.

– Or it’s the Onion.

– And they banned satire.

AARON BRABHAM: Yeah.

– By the way, why is that? Why are communists so lacking in humor?

– They’re not fun. Well, I think it has to do with one word–

they’re victims. Everything else is everybody’s fault, and they just are never going to have a good time. They’re Debbie Downers. We don’t hang out with those people.

– No.

– Not looking to do that. And speaking of psychopaths and sociopaths, Gavin Newsom reminds me of–

what’s the Christian Bale movie where he was the?

– He is. Yeah.

– He’s literally. What was that name of that movie? What’s

– The name of that movie? Christian Bale is the New York psychopath–

– With this card.

– Yeah.

– And he goes and chops up all the people. I can’t remember the name. American Psychopath.

– American Psycho.
– American Psycho. That’s it.

– American Psycho, yeah.

– He literally is American Psycho.

|- He is.

– OK. So what has happened to San Francisco, it literally became the worst city ever.

You couldn’t clean up the streets. You can’t get the people out of there.

– All the retail had to leave.

– Yep.

– Why anyone wants to live there? I don’t know.

– So recently, they had this APEC MEETING.

– They hired everybody to clean up the streets.

– Within a week. Literally. Within a week–

– And when asked about it, Gavin said, well, of course, we did.

AARON BRABHAM: I got the quote right here. So yeah. So he’s getting some heat. And he’s at the news conference.

And he said “Yeah, I know folks say they’re just cleaning up this place because all these fancy leaders are coming into town because it’s true, literally.” Because it’s true.

Any time you put on an event, by definition, you have people over at your house. You’re going to clean up your house. And then they lined it with Chinese flags everywhere. Pretty amazing. Pretty amazing what this guy’s willing to do.

Actually, Tucker Carlson said it recently. He’s like, the one politician that scares me the most is him because the guy, they’re like, if you could hook him up to a lie detector test, he wouldn’t miss a beat. No sweaty palms. He would just put that big grin out that American Psycho grin out, and he would, right to your face, tell you that just the opposite thing.

– I wonder how many people with a net worth of at least $1 million have left California in the last 10 years.

– Oh, the numbers are staggering.

– Because unless you’re retired, unless you’re not getting any more income, you’ve just you’ve moved everything into muni bonds or whatever, you’re retired. You’re done. There’s no way to live there.

– I don’t see. I think I saw recently that it was like–

the state government was looking at a $36 billion shortfall.

– State taxes are 13%?

– Yeah. You’re 53%, 54% top, with your federal income tax at the top rate.

– So in other words, when you go out and you make money, it’s $1 for the–

it’s $1 plus for the government and then 90 something a little less for me.

– Yeah.

– It doesn’t make any sense.

– No, no, no, not at all. No. And that doesn’t even include

– And gas.

– Your taxes, your gases.

– So a gas was $8 a gallon or something?

– Yeah, your state tax. Yeah.

– And by the way, California produces a ton of oil.

– Yes, they do.

– Look at how ridiculous that is. They have the oil industry. They have the refineries, and yet gas costs twice as much as it does in Florida.

– Oh. And it’s odd.

– Well, there is no oil industry.

– It’s odd because I’ll talk to people from California that make a lot of money, and they’re just hell-bent on staying. They don’t even care. They’re like, yeah, I’m not I’m not a Democrat. And I get it.

But man, can you–

the sunsets are amazing over there and the weather. I’m like, OK.

– The weather is nice.

– It’s fantastic, but it comes at a price, a big price.

– I don’t want to live with a bunch of socialists.

– No, I don’t really want to do that either.

OK, Porter, let’s get to the mailbag. And please, we love your feedback, as always. It’s [email protected].

Only have a few of them today. Giovanni.

What would you say our average age of our customer is, Porter? You know the–

– Probably 65.

– Probably 65, over $100,000 of investing portfolio.

– Way more than that.

– Way more. And also, by the way, we are boutique. That’s one of our distinguishing factors of being–

think of all these.

– Sure. I think our average subscriber has investable assets way over $1 million.

– OK, great. So I got shocked to see this, but it actually made me excited.

We had a 24-year-old deputy sheriff working out of San Francisco Bay Area, of all things.

And he says, “I’ve worked hard and made frugal sacrifices over the last two years to reach the $100,000 benchmark.” That’s hard work. That’s great. I mean, that’s amazing savings.

“My goal is to become a millionaire. And I’m fully committed to making it happen hashtag road to a million. I know you like your hashtags. You have some. Porter, you’re a rock star, raised 30% to 40% of your portfolio in cash, put it in 30-day T-bills, and wait for the opportunity, that is so obvious, it hits you in the forehead.” That was your quote.

“I’ll wait for America to bleed and take advantage be a shark, not a sheep. Great content, gentlemen.”

– Well, thanks very much. I have to tell you, I’m a little bit worried when the public servant is on the road to a million. I worry about that. I remember maybe 10 years ago, I was in Munich for Oktoberfest. And if you guys have ever been to Oktoberfest, it’s a great event. Everyone there is wonderful. It’s like going to the Super Bowl where both teams win.

– And you bought the outfit, by the way.

– Oh, yeah, I had the outfit.

– We got to dig up some of those outfits.

– Lederhosen.

– Lederhosen. By the way, put that out there, and then everyone will call me a Nazi.

– Yeah, OK, let’s not do that.

– I’m wearing lederhosen.

– Actually, let’s not do that.

– Yeah. So anyways, I’m in these beer tents having a great time drinking the beer, staying in the songs. And ironically, almost all the songs they’re singing are American songs.

– It’s like being in America.

– It’s wild. Anyways, it’s a really great time. I was having a fun time. And the people next to us, we didn’t know them.

We were just saying hi. Hey, how are you doing? And they’re like, yeah, yeah, we’re from San Francisco. I’m like, that’s cool.

And they’re like, we’re firefighters.

And I’m like, huh!

This table for four hours was $20,000.

And I met my fiancee Atlas 400 Club guys. So we all have the money. we. Paid for it all. I’m kind of like, huh!

– Yeah, hold on.

– I’m not saying that a firefighter can’t save his money and partner up with his friends and go to Munich. Of course, that’s fine. But this is a very, very exclusive tent we’re in at Oktoberfest, and this is like the most exclusive table. So I’m just curious about it.

And I said to him, no offense buddy.

What’s going on? I’m like, everyone else at this table is a multi-millionaire. You’re a firefighter from San Jose.

He’s like, well, I’m a firefighter from San Jose 10 days a month, but then I’m a firefighter in San Francisco 10 days a month. I mean, you can do both? He’s like, yeah. And I’m like, how much do you make at both?

And this was 10 years ago. He’s like, I make $125,000 at each one.

– Each one.

– And he’s like, and then, I get 10 days a month off. And every time I get off, me and my buddies fly to Eastern Europe and we bang whores.

[LAUGHS]

– They go meet the ladies. That’s what they do.

– And I’m like, huh! Public service in America these days. So let me get this straight. You’re making $250,000 a year being a firefighter, you only work 20 days a month, which–

I mean, that’s a lot. I’m sure it’s very hard.

– Sure.

– And then you have the other 10 days to go travel the world and do whatever you want.

– Yeah, with your buddies. Awesome. Yeah. We actually covered this topic on–

– I’m just not so sure that’s what’s best for society as a whole.

– That’s why it’s so expensive to live in California. So we had this topic–

– By the way, that story is absolutely true. And that guy was so nice. I let him–

you get time with these tables. His time expired. And he said, do you mind if we hang with you guys? And I was like, no, you’re already mooching on me as a taxpayer.

– Yeah. Why not?

– Just join us here. Let me buy you some beers while I’m at it.

– I’m sure he’s a nice guy.

– He was a very nice guy. And I actually didn’t mind his company at all. We hung out for–

I don’t know–

another 4 or 5 hours. And then I gave him my contact information. And he sent me a really nice firefighter jacket thing–

– Oh, nice.

– –from San Jose. So I got something from the state of California.

– You got something from the state of California.

– Got some swag.

– Yeah, nice. Taxpayer paid for–

hey, thanks–

who was that? Giovanni, thanks for paying for that. We appreciate that.

– Thank you, Giovanni.

– We covered that a long time ago. You just can’t make this stuff up. And it was the lifeguards.

– Yeah, the lifeguards.

– And that was 10 years ago making $210,000 for retirement.

– Again, this story was 10 years ago.

– That was 10 years ago.

– We’ll have to go do some research for the podcast and find out what the firefighters in San Jose and San Francisco make today. He’s probably making $500,000 now.

– Oh, man, yeah.

– By the way, it’s good for him as an individual.

– It’s great.

– But it’s not good for society.

– No, it’s not good for society at all.

OK, Porter, we have one for Mark here. Just listened to the podcast and can’t tell you how much I enjoyed it. It’s so great to actually listen to people who don’t insult you by blowing smoke up your ass.

Everything that Porter and his guests say is real-world news that you will never hear on any mainstream financial news channel. It all just makes too much sense. Regards, a loyal paid-up long-armer.

– Oh, very nice. Thanks for your business. And just for the record, I don’t blow anything up other people’s butts.

– No. We’re not doing that.

– Smoke or otherwise.

– No, we’re not trying to do any of that. But you get what he was trying to say there.

– No, it’s very nice. I appreciate very much his business. And yeah, I can’t help it. By the way, I may be wrong about something, but I’m certainly not shining you on.

– No. But you’re also the person–

I think we both are that, where we have new information, we change our minds.

– Yeah. When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?

– Most people don’t.

– Most people, they’ll do anything but think.

– Well, yeah.

– A lot of people would rather die than think. And they do every day.

– Yeah, no one gets out alive.

– By the way, I got a new hobby for you guys. I want you to join me and watching 60 Minutes every week because 60 minutes has become the absolute mouthpiece–

– Propaganda.

– Of the government’s propaganda.

– Yeah, that’s it.

– It’s absolutely what the government wants you to believe.

– Yes.

– So last night on 60 Minutes-

because we’re recording this on Monday. Last night on 60 Minutes, I had 30 minutes of why Ukraine is filled with the most noble, selfless warriors in the world.

– Oh, boy. Yeah.

– One of their politicians, Ukraine is the most corrupt country in the world.

– By far. Hands down.

– But one of their former governors did Rambo, killed everybody, got hit in the leg, cut the muscles off of his own leg with no anesthesia, and stitched himself up. He’s a hero. I’m sure it happened just like that.

– Yeah, of course, just like just like they had that.

So I learned about why Ukraine is a nation full of heroes that we should adopt. And then I learned that Wyoming is a state where there are no longer going to be the world’s largest producer–

the country’s largest producer of coal. Instead, they have a Republican governor that has embraced climate change, and they’re going to become the world’s largest windmill state.

– Oh, man.

Pendulum has swung so far. It has to swing back. On the Ukraine thing the other day, Biden literally said–

he was talking to some congressional members. And a congressional member allegedly–

I don’t know who the member is–

took it to some alternate media and was basically saying, if we don’t get another 100 and whatever billion dollars, $100 billion for Ukraine, we’re definitely sending Americans to go fight the Russians. That’s the number one thing that we have to do, is go after those pesky Russkies.

– OK. The Wyoming windmill thing was just so funny because I’m like, oh, that worked out so well for Germany. I can understand why you want to try it in Wyoming.

– It’s worked out everywhere.

– The other thing is just how ignorant Americans are about everything, but especially about energy. So a couple of fun facts for you here. You do know that Wyoming is the least densely populated state in the United States. It has the lowest population, I’m pretty sure, of any state, and it’s obviously one of the largest.

And why would that be? Because the weather is terrible.

– Cold. You freeze.

– It gets to 60 degrees below zero in Wyoming. And the wind always blows, which is why you’re going to build the windmills there. I get that. That’s nice. But who wants to live near windmills? Nobody.

So there’s no people there. Well, that’s great because then, that’s the place where you should have windmills. Now, if you have all the energy in the world in a windmill farm in Wyoming, how are you going to get that energy to anywhere where there’s people to use it?

– You can’t transfer it. Energy loses. They’re just morons.

– So they’re saying that they’re going to build a transmission line from Wyoming’s windmills to California.

– Oh, yeah, that should be very efficient. Very efficient.

– There’s this thing called the Rocky Mountains. Anyways, I just–

it’s just amazing to me that anybody thinks that’s a good use of capital, as opposed to just–

I don’t know–

using the energy that you already have in California, like enormous amounts of oil and gas.

– Well, we’re betting on that. And I think we’re going to see a big turn on that as well.

We had a recent strategy meeting with some members of the company, and we’re very excited about a bunch of new things for a bunch of new ideas for our subscribers coming soon, like we talked about. We’ve got the biotech.

– Are we going to be investing in windmills?

– No, we’re never going to do that ever. Not for one second.

– And where do you think all the money for those windmills has come from?

– From taxpayer grifts.

– Grift. Yeah.

– Taxpayer grifts, as always. So yeah, we’re really excited about 2024. We hope everybody has a happy holidays.

– Yeah, happy holidays. The show has been so uplifting.

– We’ve really enjoyed our year. It was a great year that we had. Thanks to all of our listeners. Well, the long-armers not the short-armers.

– We had a great year. We started Porter and Company 18 months ago, and we’ve reached about 12,000 subscribers.

– It’s amazing.

– Business is very healthy. Returns for us and our investors have been very good.

Portfolio performance has been great. And tonight, we get to celebrate with the Christmas party. So we’re looking forward to it. I hope you are having some fun as well.

– Well, thank you, Mister Chairman of MarketWise for taking the time–

– Stay out of the eggnog.

– –to come and hang out with us at Porter and Company. And I know you took a couple of key members over to MarketWise to do some work over there for now. They’re all so excited to get back to the barn. And I know you will be, too, once you take care of what you need to take care of.

– You’ve noticed that I haven’t been going in lately.

– Yeah, I did notice that. I noticed that our other people haven’t really been going there either.

– I love barn. I don’t like headquarters very much.

– HQ is not so fun, right?

– No. There’s lots of HR.

– And also, you do–

you can jump on your Honda 250 and go from the house to the barn in about 25 seconds, which is nice.

– Not that fast. I go slow. I don’t wear a helmet.

– Ooh, no helmet?

– Go slow.

– What happened to Rey Rivera?

– Yeah.

– See, I can get you anywhere you want. It doesn’t matter. So anyways, we’ll find out that story.

– That’s me. I just murdered all my best friends.

– I do have the same birthday, so I’m really worried about it. That’s my connection to him, which is ridiculous. And Porter, of course, we love to hear from our subscribers at [email protected],

the longest email ever. But we do read them all, and we appreciate you guys so much.

– This goes in with our legendary URLs.

– Yes.

– We always make them impossible.

– We’re trying to get better.

– To share. Yes. So what’s the podcast, email box again?

– Podcastfeedback.

– Podcastfeedback.

AARON BRABHAM: @

– @.

– Porterand–

A-N-D.

– Porterandcompany, spelled out.

– Research.

– Research. Porterandcompanyresearch.com.

– Yes.

PORTER STANSBERRY: Wow!

– Yes, I know.

– OK.

– Well, it is what it is. Hey, we don’t make it easy.

– By the time they’re finished typing that address, they’ll be too tired to leave a message.

– Well, we don’t make it easy. But if you can get through our gauntlet and our hoops, we do appreciate you.

– It’s tough to buy a bond. You have to use a CUSIP.

– CUSIP, nine digits.

– Whoa!

– Whoa! Can’t do that.

– All right, guys, happy holidays. We’ll see you soon.

NARRATOR: Thank you for listening to the Porter & Company Black Label Podcast, with your hosts, Porter Stansberry and Aaron Brabham. We’ll see you soon.