A Truly Happy New Year!

By Kenny Polcari

Kenny Polcari here, wishing you a truly Happy New Year!

I'm editor of Weiss Ratings' Wealth and Wisdom.

And I'm very happy about some very important things:

But, alas, most stock and bond investors continue to live in a high-risk world.

So, my thoughts go back to another New Year's Day, 94 years ago — January 1, 1929.

That's when Irving Weiss, Dr. Martin Weiss' father, first became a stockbroker on Wall Street.

He didn't have many clients yet — just friends and family.

But he saw worrying signs of an impending economic crash. In August of that year, he issued his first warning — urging everyone to get the heck out of the market.

In his office, the veteran stockbrokers laughed at him. "Weiss is just a kid," they scoffed. "What does he know?"

They refused to get out of the market.

Then came Black Monday, October 28th, 1929. The market nosedived the equivalent of about 4,500 points in the Dow Industrials.

The next day, it plunged the equivalent of another 4,000 points.

It was an 8,500-point crash in just 48 hours.

Those veteran stockbrokers weren't laughing anymore. Suddenly, young Irving was a hero. Word quickly spread around Wall Street that he was the only one who saw it coming.

That's when he got the confidence — and the idea — to do much, much more.

He methodically collected financial data on as many companies as he could.

And he created a series of formulas that assigned each company a rating — to identify which ones would fail and which would survive to come back again another day.

Years later, these formulas become the foundation for the forecasting and ratings he helped his son Martin start in 1971.

Together, they pumped millions of dollars into computer models.

They created forecasting models designed to predict booms and busts in the economy.

They created ratings models to help warn, ahead of time, of stock declines and corporate failures.

And then, in late 2017, Martin and team created the world's first and only cryptocurrency ratings.

Bitcoin got a mediocre grade. Almost all cryptos got "D"s and "E"s. And not a single one merited an "A."

The Bitcoin lovers of the world responded in anger. They even mounted an attack on the Weiss website.

But Weiss was not against crypto. Far from it! He was just following the data, which told him that, with the crypto frenzy at a peak, it was the wrong time to buy.

Sure enough, crypto crashed. Those who failed to heed his warnings lost up to 90% of their money.

It wasn't until mid-December 2018, three days before the big bottom in the market, that Weiss' lead crypto analyst, Juan Villaverde, announced to the world that it was "time to buy Bitcoin again."

Meanwhile, in the realm of traditional assets, I'm delighted to see that the Weiss ratings are so accurate they've been praised by Members of Congress, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Forbes, Barron's, The New York Times and many others.

For example, the WSJ reported that the Weiss stock ratings were ranked No. 1 in profit performance, ahead of all major rating agencies and Wall Street firms, including Standard & Poor's, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch.

And in the late 1990s, on the eve of the great dot-com crash, all major brokerage and research firms on Wall Street touted internet stocks with glowing ratings. Over 98% of their ratings were "Buys" and practically none were "Sells."

But the Weiss ratings said precisely the opposite. Not a single one was a "Buy." Nearly all were "Sell" ratings. And just as his father had done 70 years earlier, Martin Weiss told everyone to "get the heck out of the market."

Again, all those who were enjoying the raging bull market laughed, refusing to get out. But the Nasdaq fell 75%.

Hundreds of companies went bankrupt.

Those who listened ended up saving millions, and those who didn't lost nearly everything.

In 2008, it happened again.

Weiss was the only one who specifically named — and gave advance warning in writing about — the two worst Wall Street bankruptcies of the Great Financial Crisis.

He warned about the big Bear Stearns failure 102 days in advance. And he warned about the even bigger Lehman Brothers failure 182 days in advance.

Now, Weiss says that, as bad as things are in the traditional asset world today, they're about to get worse — in ways no one is talking about in Washington, on Wall Street, on TV or in social media.

So, he's asked me and my colleague, Sean Brodrick, to search for unique opportunities that not only can survive, but could greatly outperform in 2023.

We have risen to the challenge. And we will give you our conclusions eight days from today — on Tuesday, January 10.

I can think of no better way to kick of the New Year!

If you'd like to attend, be sure to secure your free ticket here.

For your wealth and wisdom,

Kenny Polcari