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| By Kenny Polcari |
Kenny Polcari here, wishing you a Happy New Year!
I'm editor of Weiss Rating's Wealth & Wisdom.
And I'm very happy about some very important things:
- We've survived the worst pandemic in a hundred years.
- The threat of a nuclear war in Europe has faded.
- And thank God we're safe!
But, alas, most investors continue to live in a high-risk world.
So, my thoughts go back to another New Year's Day, 94 years ago — Jan. 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, and 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, Oct. 28, 1929. The market nose-dived the equivalent of about 4,500 points in the Dow Jones.
On the next day, it plunged the equivalent of another 4,000 points.
It was an 8,500-point crash in just 48 hours.
The 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 became 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 failure.
And they used their models to help identify the best investments to own even in the worst of times.
Today, 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 Wall Street Journal reported that the Weiss stock ratings were ranked #1 in profit performance, ahead of all major ratings 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 even 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 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 also greatly outperform in 2023.
We have risen to the challenge. And we will give you our conclusions eight days from today — on Tuesday, Jan. 10.
I can think of no better way to kick off the new year!
If you'd like to attend, be sure to secure your free ticket here.
To your wealth and wisdom,
Kenny Polcari
