Dear Complete Investor subscribers:
In November, as you’ll recall, we rolled out a series of new features to Porter Stansberry’s Complete Investor, coinciding with its name change from The Big Secret On Wall Street, a handle that served us well since we started Porter & Co. in 2022.
We made the name change because we saw the advisory developing into one that was giving you as a subscriber everything you need – in one, complete membership – to build real, lasting wealth… And we will continue to improve on that.
To that end, we are instituting a few enhancements.
Based on your feedback and to make the service easier for subscribers like yourself to use, here are a few updates we are making in the coming days:
-
Clarifying our risk ratings, with detailed descriptions for each level
-
Adding a new status to our recommendations – a strong buy to go along with buy, hold and sell
-
Changing the publication schedule: third Saturday of the month
-
The Daily Journal will now be published every weekday the markets are open
So here are the details, starting with risk ratings.
—
Since we started Porter & Co. in 2022, we have been assigning a risk rating to recommendations: with 1 being the least risky and 5 being the most risky. But, as we grew, we saw that it wasn’t always an objective measure, and it wasn’t always clear whether we were talking about business risk or about price-volatility risk.
And so now we are standardizing a system that we can very easily explain.
Going forward, our risk ratings are based on business execution risk, not share-price volatility.
So here are the business-risk ratings…
Risk Rating #1
This is a business with a top investment-grade credit rating with decades of near-perfect business execution. Its competitive position is the envy of its peers and it is hard to imagine any scenario over the next decade that would lead to a permanent impairment of its business.
Risk Rating #2
This is a business with a top investment-grade credit rating with many years of successful business execution. It has better-than-average returns on equity and a favorable competitive position. It is very likely to continue to succeed over the next decade.
Risk Rating #3
This is a business with a non-investment-grade rating or a new or emerging business. It can also be an investment-grade company that has a great deal of commodity-price exposure or new intense competition. This business has a smaller moat than a “2.”
Risk Rating #4
This is a speculative business that faces serious execution risks – this could be a development stage business or it could be a well-established business that’s in the midst of a serious competitive crisis.
Risk Rating #5
This is an extremely speculative business that has a substantial risk of going to zero.
—
Next we want to share how we are adding depth to the buy/sell status of each portfolio holding. There are now four levels for each recommendation…
-
Strong Buy signals a strong sense of urgency to our buy recommendation: it is below the “buy up to” price and the current macroeconomic environment favors the stock over the next six to 12 months
-
Buy means it is trading under the “buy up to” price
-
Hold means if you own shares of the company, do not sell, but if you do not own shares, do not purchase at this time, for one of two reasons. Either a) shares are currently above the “buy up to” price or b) we still like the company but have put a hold on the buy recommendation as we await clarity on certain business specific information or better market conditions.
-
Sell means that we recommend exiting a position either because shares have increased to a level where it’s good to take profits or we have lost confidence in our recommendation of the company. (“Sell” status will only appear in our closed portfolios.)
We will highlight this status in the far-right column for each “open” position – and a “sell” status for those in a “closed” position.
The “strong buy” status emerged from our Best Buys. Since May 2025, we have presented readers with a standalone issue of Complete Investor, called Best Buys – in it we highlighted the three portfolio recommendations that are at a particularly attractive buy price. Now, we will apply that status to the list of recommended stocks by tagging those three stocks as “strong buys,” as explained above.
Going forward, rather than being part of Complete Investor, Best Buys will become its own distinct publication, with added features. To curate each monthly Best Buys, we will go beyond Complete Investor, looking across all of our advisories and checking in with all of our analysts to find three current recommendations that are at the most attractive buy price.
These added features will begin to appear in the Complete Investor service on March 1 – in just a few weeks. Also starting in March, we will send Complete Investor to you in one monthly issue – comprised of a market analysis, a full recommendation, and a comprehensive review of our recommendations. In that review, we will not just dig into the performance of our recommendations but also the risk ratings, buy up to price and status when relevant.
Going forward beginning in March, that monthly issue will be emailed to you on the third Saturday of the month, at 10 AM ET – a change from the normal Thursday delivery date that we have been following for the last several years. This will allow readers to fully digest the recommendations and company updates over the weekend and before the market opens on Monday morning.
As a paid-up Complete Investor subscriber, you will continue to receive all the great features that have been accruing over the years…
-
Access to the recommendations: open positions, the watchlist, and closed positions
-
Archives of all issues, going back to the first issue (then called Big Secret On Wall Street) in 2022
-
Porter’s Permanent Portfolio – including all updates and annual re-allocations
-
The monthly editorial Roundtable – a lively discussion with Porter and his team
-
The Investment Indexes – Better Than Berkshire, The Lindy Index, P&C Insurance Index, and more
-
Porter’s Daily Journal, sent to you every day the market is open
The goal of Complete Investor is to give you everything you need – in one, complete membership – to build real, lasting wealth that you can rely on.
We hope that these added benefits will help you in that journey.
Good investing,
Porter & Co.
Stevenson, Maryland