I can’t blame you if you want to forget all about 2020…
We’ve seen a global pandemic… widespread economic destruction… and insane market volatility.
Since the COVID-19 outbreak in March, more than 1.4 million people have died around the world… 20 million Americans are receiving unemployment benefits… And with a resurgence in the virus, a bevy of new lockdowns are on the horizon.
Yet here at Palm Beach Research Group, we’ll remember 2020 as another year of phenomenal profits.
I don’t say that to boast. Millions of Americans – and millions more around the world – are hurting right now.
They’ve lost loved ones. They’ve lost jobs. And they’ve lost the ability to do many of the things that give them pleasure.
I fully sympathize with their suffering. It shouldn’t be glossed over.
At the same time, the greatest contribution I can make to society is through this newsletter – by helping as many people as possible protect and grow their wealth… especially during difficult times.
That’s why, without trying to sound overly celebratory, I’m proud of what we achieved this year.
I’ll get into the specifics in just a moment. But first, let me also say that I’m equally proud of you.
You didn’t simply decide to subscribe to my services. You made the much harder decision to follow through on our ideas.
And you made the most difficult decision of them all – to trust us and stay the course… even as most people were running for the exits back in March.
So it didn’t just take good ideas to outperform in 2020. It also took guts and grit.
We provided the former. You did the rest. And your part was no easy task.
We Beat the Market – And Then Some
In 2020, even some of Wall Street’s biggest and best were whipsawed emotionally and financially. To illustrate my point, consider the 10 largest hedge funds’ collective performance in the United States…
Through the end of October, they had lost an average of 1.85% this year against a 2.77% gain in the S&P 500.
That’s sad, especially since hedge funds are only available to the wealthiest individuals and institutions.
As a former hedge fund manager, I should also remind you that investors generally pay 2% of their assets just for the privilege of participating. And they also fork over an additional 20% of their gains.
As I pen this, our entire Palm Beach Letter model portfolio – warts and all – shows an open gain of 46% this year, compared to the S&P 500’s 14% gain. So we’ have been beating the broad stock market index more than three times over in 2020.
This past year’s performance wasn’t a fluke, either.
Last year, we had an audit firm certify our entire track record. They found that since our inception on April 13, 2011, through June 30, 2019, The Palm Beach Letter’s recommendations have average annual returns of 123.6%. Compare that to the average annual return of just 11.6% for the S&P 500.
But some of my other services have done even better than that…
As of this writing, my elite Palm Beach Confidential crypto service portfolio is up 159% in 2020. And my elite hedge fund-like Alpha Edge service has a 90% win-rate and average gains of 63% this year.
And in what is likely a first in the newsletter business, the first private placement recommendation in my Palm Beach Venture portfolio went public in November. My subscribers saw the chance to make gains as high as 302% after it listed.
But you don’t even need to subscribe to my paid services to make market-beating gains.
Over the last five years, my free crypto picks alone have averaged 844%.
(And that’s just my free crypto picks. In October 2019, I recommended six free picks at our annual Legacy Summit in Carlsbad, California. One is up 11x, and another six are up triple digits.)
Now, it’s not all roses, of course. We also had a few setbacks in 2020. For instance, some of my cannabis plays are down sharply… and that stings.
But after a series of ballot-box victories for legal cannabis across the country, we’re seeing cannabis-related investments spring back to life.
And after a bumpy start, my team tweaked our propriety quant trading algorithm this past July. Since then, it’s on a run of 21 profitable trades out of 26 total. So it’s headed in the right direction as we prepare to enter the new year.
This is a good jumping-off point to highlight our secret sauce at PBRG: asymmetric risk.
Our Secret Sauce
Symmetric risk is when you invest $100 for a chance to make $100. That’s a 100% return. And triple-digit returns are rare in the stock market.
But the typical investor makes a very unfair negative asymmetric bet. They put up $100 for the chance to make $10 per year. That’s because the average annual return on the S&P 500 is about 10%.
When you make a negative asymmetric bet, you’re risking way more than what you’re potentially getting in return.
What I do is something very different. I put you in the position to harness the effects of positive asymmetric risk.
With positive asymmetric risk, you put up $100, and you stand to make $153,000.
Now, I didn’t pick that number out of the air. In 2017, I recommended a tiny crypto in Palm Beach Confidential that turned every $100 into as much as $153,000.
That’s not an isolated gain. I’ve given readers of this newsletter the opportunity to make gains as high as 5,250%, 5,761%, and 15,649% in crypto. That’s enough to turn every $1,000 into $53,500, $58,610, and $157,490, respectively.
So long as you position-size correctly and don’t bet more than you can afford to lose, you can ride out the volatility in assets like crypto and cannabis.
These are long-term trends with incredibly high upside. So we don’t want to be shaken out of our positions by a fickle market.
What I’m Most Grateful For
As I showed you above, even some of the wealthiest investors struggled to get a decent return in 2020.
What’s more, many of them paid ridiculous amounts of money to various hedge funds just to end up with completely subpar performance.
I’m so glad I left that world behind to write this newsletter for you.
I can deliver my very best ideas to you, no matter who you are or how much money you have. And I can do it without any concern about how much money I might make personally.
I’m already wealthy in monetary terms. This newsletter enriches me in far deeper ways.
Because it feels a lot better to help regular everyday people grow their wealth than it does to help somebody who’s already worth $1 billion or more.
So if you’ve been acting on our recommendations and making a killing, I’m elated.
And if you haven’t yet acted on our ideas as much as you would have liked, don’t worry. My team will continue looking for new ones in the coming year.
So pat yourself on the back for having faith in our wealth-building strategy. And let’s get ready to crush the market again in 2021.
Until then, thank you for believing in us. I’m more grateful to you than you can ever imagine.
Let the Game Come to You!
Teeka Tiwari
Editor, Palm Beach Daily