Research
See AllAbout Complete Investor
The Real Secret To Long-Term Wealth
By putting all of our investment recommendations and strategies into a single product, with complete do-it-for-you portfolios like Porter’s Permanent Portfolio, and adding a lively Roundtable discussion each month, this single membership is truly everything you need to be a complete investor.
Learn MoreAbout Distressed Investing
The Secret To Investing In Distressed Debt
As the corporate debt bubble unwinds, we have partnered with legendary financial author and credit analyst Martin Fridson to take advantage of “the greatest legal transfer of wealth in history.” Martin releases monthly distressed debt and equity recommendations, for Partners only.
Learn MoreAbout Biotechnology
A Once-In-A-Generation Moment For Tech Investors
We’re at a tipping point with emerging technology, witnessing changes that were unimaginable just years ago. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area — the tech capital of the world — Tech Frontiers senior analyst Erez Kalir has his finger on the pulse of advancements in artificial intelligence, blockchain, computing, and biosciences.
Learn MoreAbout The Trading Club
Harnessing The Power of Non‑Correlated Return Streams
A trading service unlike anything we’ve ever done before. We funded a live account with $100,000 of our own money and execute behind our highest-conviction trading ideas. And you can follow along with every step of the way. Get access to trades built around the best independent research from our team.
Learn MoreAbout Porter & Co. Best Buys
The New Porter & Co. Best Buys
Every month, we send you the three best investment ideas from across the Porter & Co. universe. and check in with all of our analysts to select three current recommendations that are at a very attractive buy price. These become our Best Buys.
Learn MorePorter & Co.
Porter StansberryFounder, Porter & Co.
Porter Stansberry is one of the most recognized voices in independent financial publishing over the past quarter century. He built Stansberry Research from a single newsletter into a company that went public at a $3 billion valuation, then walked away to start over, on his own terms.
Career
From Baltimore
to a $3 Billion
Company
In 1999, Porter Stansberry launched what would become Stansberry Research with a borrowed laptop and $36,000 in seed financing from publisher Bill Bonner. The operation began in a modest Baltimore apartment, where he wrote his first newsletter, initially called the Pirate Investor, and built a subscriber base through the quality and directness of the analysis itself.
The model was simple in concept and difficult in execution: deliver genuinely useful investment research to individual investors who had no access to the same quality of analysis available to institutional clients. That founding principle shaped everything that followed.
Before starting his own firm, Porter had already established a foothold in financial publishing by becoming the first American editor of the Fleet Street Letter, the world's oldest English-language financial newsletter. The role gave him a grounding in the tradition of long-form, independent financial analysis, a tradition he would spend the next two decades expanding.
Over more than twenty years, Stansberry Research grew into one of the largest independent investment research operations in the world. After several acquisitions including Casey Research, Tradestops, and InvestorPlace, Porter created a holding company called MarketWise, which completed a public offering in 2021 at a valuation of approximately $3 billion.
Porter Stansberry departed from MarketWise in 2020 and founded Porter & Co. in April of that year. He left the institutional structure of a public company behind and returned to the model he had started with: a small, editorially-independent team producing research without compliance committees, corporate mandates, or outside investors determining the agenda.
Investment Philosophy
Forever Stocks & Capital Efficiency
At the core of Porter Stansberry's investment approach is a concept he calls "Forever Stocks": businesses so well-constructed that the correct holding period, in his view, is simply forever. These are companies with high free cash flow generation, low capital requirements to sustain and grow their operations, and durable competitive advantages that make them difficult to displace over time.
The concept of capital efficiency sits at the center of his stock selection process. A capital-efficient business is one that can convert a high proportion of its revenues into free cash flow without requiring constant reinvestment just to maintain its competitive position. These businesses generate returns on invested capital that dwarf what they need to keep the lights on, and they return the surplus to shareholders in the form of dividends, buybacks, or further investment in genuinely high-return opportunities.
The contrast he draws is with capital-intensive industries: airlines, steel producers, most commodity businesses, where profits are perpetually consumed by the demands of keeping the enterprise operational.
Porter Stansberry has also refined the Permanent Portfolio framework, adapted from the work of Harry Browne. It is a fixed-allocation strategy designed to perform through multiple economic regimes, growth, recession, inflation, and deflation, without requiring the investor to predict which regime is coming next. The version used in his research has, since its launch, generated returns he reports have nearly doubled the S&P 500's performance over the same period.
Track Record
Notable Market Calls
Porter Stansberry's reputation as an investment analyst rests substantially on a series of documented macro and company-level calls made ahead of major market dislocations.
- 2006–2008
Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac & General Motors
Stansberry publicly predicted that all three institutions would fail. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed into government conservatorship in September 2008; General Motors filed for bankruptcy in 2009.
- 2008
General Growth Properties
In late 2008, Stansberry warned that General Growth Properties, at the time the largest mall owner in the United States, was headed for bankruptcy. General Growth Properties filed for Chapter 11 in April 2009, in what was then one of the largest real estate bankruptcies in American history.
- 2008
Financial Crisis Positioning
Stansberry published explicit warnings about the stability of major financial institutions and the broader credit market while much of the financial media remained constructive. His subscribers were positioned for the downturn well before it became consensus.
- 2010
End of America
Stansberry published a widely circulated presentation arguing that the U.S. dollar's reserve currency status was at risk, that the government's debt trajectory was unsustainable, and that the social and political instability following the 2008 bailouts would be more severe and lasting than mainstream forecasters expected. He has since revisited and defended its core arguments on multiple occasions as the underlying debt dynamics have continued to worsen.
- Ongoing
Corporate Bonds & Capital-Efficient Energy
Stansberry has been an early and consistent advocate for investment-grade and high-yield corporate bonds as an asset class underappreciated by individual investors, and for capital-efficient energy businesses over broad index exposure. He has argued that the energy transition narrative has obscured the durable cash flow generation of well-run traditional energy companies operating within their means.
Porter & Co.
Built to Last, Built to Be Small
Porter & Co. was founded in April 2022, shortly after Porter Stansberry's departure from MarketWise. The firm operates out of a renovated barn, a deliberate contrast with the corporate infrastructure of a public company, staffed by a small team of analysts, many of whom have worked with Stansberry for ten to fifteen years.
The structure is intentional: small enough to move quickly, independent enough to publish without institutional interference, and staffed by people whose investment judgment has been tested across multiple market cycles alongside his own.
The flagship publication is Complete Investor, a monthly research letter focused on "unbeatable businesses" meeting his capital efficiency criteria. Subscribers also receive access to Porter's Permanent Portfolio, proprietary indexes including the Better than Buffett index, a monthly video roundtable, and more.
Beyond Complete Investor, Porter & Co. publishes Porter's Daily Journal, a free, regular commentary from Stansberry on markets, macro conditions, business analysis, and the occasional digression into the broader economic and political landscape.
Current Work
Where Porter's Focus Is Today
Porter Stansberry's current publishing outlets, the Complete Investor and Porter's Daily Journal, reflect a consistent skepticism about the reliability of the U.S. government to protect its citizens from a decline of the dollar and quality of living.
Porter has also questioned the durability of the artificial intelligence investment cycle. He has argued that the AI build-out shares structural characteristics with the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s: genuine technological transformation accompanied by capital allocation that has outpaced any reasonable near-term earnings justification.
His focus remains on the credit cycle, where he sees systemic risks that most equity-focused investors are underweighting, and on capital-efficient energy businesses, which he views as structurally cheap relative to their long-term cash generation capacity. Distressed debt opportunities also remain within his analytical scope, consistent with a career-long interest in the fixed-income market as a source of returns that individual investors frequently overlook.
Follow Porter
Read His Current Research
Monthly Research Letter
Complete Investor
Each monthly issue covers a primary stock recommendation along with full portfolio analysis and Stansberry's macro commentary. Subscribers also receive access to the Permanent Portfolio, proprietary indexes, and a monthly video roundtable.
Learn More →Free Daily Commentary
Porter's Daily Journal
A fantastic free resource for direct, frequent access to Porter's views on markets and specific businesses. Does not contain specific investment recommendations, but reflects his commitment to independent, unfiltered financial analysis.
Read For Free →Ready to invest with clarity
and confidence?
Join more than 180,000 serious investors who read Porter & Co. research every day.