The One Big Secret

Take Care Of The Basics First

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.

Table of Contents

• Take Care Of The Basics First

• Letting A Pro Invest Your Money

• Three Things To Know Before We Go…

With Porter out this week, we’re sharing parts of an investment classic that Porter wrote more than a decade ago, at Stansberry Research. For years, readers cherished Porter’s musings in the Friday edition of the Stansberry Digest… and this was one of his best.

Here’s Porter in 2014…

For my entire career, I (Porter) have been working hard to give individual investors the strategies, information, and insight they need to compete with the pros on Wall Street. 

And, today, I’m going to give you the one, big secret. It’s the only real, true secret of finance. And once you understand it, you won’t need us (or anyone else) ever again.

As longtime readers must be tired of hearing me say… I write the Friday Digest personally because I feel a huge responsibility to tell you what I would want to know if our roles were reversed. You’ve paid us to help you make decisions about investing your hard-earned savings. We aren’t fiduciaries. We don’t offer any personalized investment advice, nor do we manage anyone’s money. But this doesn’t absolve us of responsibility to you. You deserve our best. I’ve always tried my best to live up to that obligation.

So what’s the most important idea I’ve discovered in finance? What’s the one thing I’m going to teach my kids beyond the obvious stuff about saving, compounding, and risk management? What do I believe is the real secret to investment success? And… the biggest question of all… How do I invest my own money in securities?

Over the long sweep of your investing lifetime, strategies that only work extremely well in certain market situations are unlikely to play a dominant role. The big secret therefore is something you can use all of the time, for your entire life, as an investor. And here it is: Some companies are much better than others at compounding capital. Much better.