This is Porter’s Daily Journal, a free e-letter from Porter & Co. that provides unfiltered insights on markets, the economy, and life to help readers become better investors. It includes weekday editions and two weekend editions… and is free to all subscribers.

Today – taking a break from our normal publishing schedule – we are continuing our “12 Days Of Christmas” series.

Better than seven swans a-swimming or 10 lords a-leaping, Porter & Co.’s version of the “12 Days Of Christmas” brings you something actually useful: hard-earned investment lessons to guide you through 2026. For the remainder of the year – in place of our regular research and insights – we will dish out key lessons from 2025… some earned from pain and others from gain. 

Over the past year, editors across all of our publications have recommended stocks, bonds, or other trades that have resulted in a mix of outsized performances and humbling underachievements. Having begun yesterday, December 23, and extending through January 2, we will reveal a pivotal lesson – about why a stock soared to double-digit returns, or why one languished. We will also explore the ones that got away – that we sold too soon or that we didn’t recommend at all. 

Analyst Jared Simons sets the parameters for our Saturday Stock Screen – part of the free research we share with subscribers to Porter’s Daily Journal. After setting the filter, Jared then helps Porter analyze the data that emerges and, occasionally, reports on what they think could be a future recommendation for Complete Investor or another Porter & Co. advisory. 

Below, Jared shares one such report that has become a big winner for the Complete Investor portfolio.

Every Saturday in Porter’s Daily Journal, we provide readers a behind-the-scenes look: publishing a quantitative stock screen to uncover the most compelling, highest-upside investment ideas. 

For Partner Pass members, we’ll occasionally spotlight one opportunity from the screen that appears especially attractive. These aren’t official recommendations, but early “on-the-radar” ideas that we feel we need to keep an eye on.

Today, we’re looking back at one of those screens and the Partner-only report that accompanied it… and share how this early look at a great company has become a big winner for our Partners and Complete Investors. 

These weekly screens apply our analysts’ proprietary filters to identify the strongest, most durable, capital efficient companies in the market. They are free for all readers – and week after week, they continue to surface businesses that outperform the market.

Our screens are inspired by some of the greatest investment minds of all time – from the Emerging Lindy Screen, which finds innovative growth companies with long-term staying power, to Marty Fridson’s Stock screen, built around the traits of history’s best-performing stocks. We also feature Porter’s 3X Screen, designed to uncover companies capable of tripling the market over time, as well as our Modified Munger Screen, based on the late Berkshire Hathaway vice chair’s simple approach to finding high-quality, long-term compounders.

We track these four core screens, along with a fifth screen to track major fund managers through their 13F filings, here.

On May 24, we released one of our most effective screens of the year, featuring Porter’s 3X Screen… “A Market Dominator That Continues To Grow.”

Out of thousands of publicly traded businesses, just 36 companies passed through Porter’s 3X Screen that week. If you invested in all 36 of those companies, you would’ve generated a 20% return compared with 18% for the S&P 500 over the same period. 

While our screens consistently deliver value, we like to remind subscribers that these are only a starting point… screens can surface great companies but a deeper look is required to develop conviction – and ultimately a formal recommendation. In the May 24 screen, there was one company that stood out particularly above the rest – Alphabet (Nasdaq: GOOG) – when shares traded around $168.

On May 24 we wrote:

At the time, Alphabet was trading at a rare discount to its intrinsic value. Despite generating extraordinary levels of free cash flow, maintaining global search dominance, and aggressively buying back stock, the market had mispriced it.

It was the classic Porter & Co. set up… a world-class business, misunderstood and discounted by the market.

As is typical in our Saturday Screen issues, we didn’t recommend the company we featured in that weekend issue. But four months later we did officially recommend Alphabet (aka Google) in Porter Stanberry’s Complete Investor portfolio and released our formal “sum of parts” valuation, recording an official entry price of $231… up 36% since our Saturday Stock Screen report.

Fast forward to today… Alphabet shares trade around $305. 

That’s an 81% total return since we originally identified them for Partners in May – and a 32% gain since added to the Complete Investor model portfolio.

And while our screen provides value-generating small alpha and a 20% total return since May 24 – our paid members get a much deeper advantage. Our screening tools help our analysts narrow their choices, but it’s our deeper research that generates real alpha for Partners.

Shortly after our analysis, the latest round of 13F filings revealed something remarkable – one of the most successful investors of all time was following the same thesis.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway initiated a massive new position in Alphabet. During Q3, Berkshire acquired 17.9 million shares, establishing a $4.34 billion stake.

The move was notable for two reasons:

So while our free screens provide remarkable value – our paid research highlights the standouts and often the professional investors like Berkshire follow along months later.

To become a Partner Pass member contact our Customer Care team at [email protected].

Porter & Co.
Stevenson, Maryland