The real 'destroyer of worlds'... 'Death' versus 'time'... 'Zero recovery' for Bed Bath & Beyond's shareholders... Facing bankruptcy, Yellow's stock surges 450% in a week... Why I keep repeating my 'prepare, don't predict' mantra...
 You've probably heard J. Robert Oppenheimer's name a lot in recent weeks...
The "Father of the Atomic Bomb" is the subject of a new biopic called Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was the physicist in charge of the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico during World War II. And of course, that's where the U.S. created the atomic bomb and tested it on July 16, 1945. I (Dan Ferris) haven't seen the movie yet. But I've read a lot of reviews and analysis in recent weeks. While doing that, I've come across a few mentions about the Bhagavad Gita. Oppenheimer famously told NBC News in 1965 that he had thought of a passage from the ancient Hindu scripture while watching the first atomic-bomb test 20 years earlier... We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita. [The god] Vishnu is trying to persuade the [Pandava] Prince [Arjuna] that he should do his duty and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that one way or another. With that interview, Oppenheimer probably did a lot to make the Bhagavad Gita more popular. And he certainly brought that particular quote into the mainstream. Oppenheimer, who died two years after that interview at age 62, was fascinated with Hinduism. During his lifetime, he studied the Sanskrit language of the Bhagavad Gita. It's easy to see why Oppenheimer would've thought of the Bhagavad Gita in the New Mexico desert that night... You see, the Bhagavad Gita is all about Prince Arjuna's decision to go to war. And a passage shortly before the one Oppenheimer quoted talks about how Vishnu's brilliance is like a thousand suns in the sky all at once – or like an atomic-bomb explosion. I've tried to find the Bhagavad Gita translation that contains Oppenheimer's exact quote. But everything I've found interprets that passage in a slightly different way than he did... They don't refer to "Death" as the "destroyer of worlds" at all. Instead, according to these translations, something else is the defining element in Vishnu's identity and purpose... I am time that has aged
who makes the world perish.
I have come forth
to destroy the worlds.
Even without you
these warriors
facing off against each other
will no longer exist. In other words, time is the real destroyer of worlds – not death. You can't prevent death because you can't stop time. That characterization makes sense if you know a little bit about Hinduism... Vishnu isn't the Grim Reaper. He's the god of preservation, a critical role when it comes to the topic of time. That part of the Bhagavad Gita gets into a lot of other things. For example, it covers the idea that death is an illusion – and that we're not really born, and we don't really die. But in today's Digest, let's stick with time... Time is the most confounding aspect of investing... If investing involves the mastery of any one aspect of reality, it's certainly time. Time is how we learn to exercise patience. It's how we learn to exit our mistakes before we're emotionally ready. And it's how we learn to stick with our winners even though every cell in our body tells us to book that profit and run to the next opportunity. Think about it... The first question on everybody's mind about any investment always seems to be "When?" When should I buy? When should I sell? When will the stock go up? When will something happen? These questions seem natural and normal. But they're also frank admissions that investors can handle everything except the passage of time. As humans, we can't just sit and wait. Unfortunately, when is usually unknowable... You're far more likely to understand the financial performance of a business, why its management team made a particular decision, or its current valuation than you are to know when its stock will go up enough to make you glad you bought it at that exact moment. Another good example of time's destructive power is one of the many dimensions of options that make them hard to understand and trade well (and something my colleague Doc Eifrig mastered to achieve his incredible track record in his Retirement Trader options service). Most options buyers know that part of the premium they pay (or receive, if they're sellers) is due to the amount of time left between their purchase and the option's expiration. The more time that's left until expiration, the higher the option premium (with all other things equal). As time passes and the option gets closer to its expiration date, that time value decays. In Retirement Trader, Doc has shown his subscribers how to use time decay to their advantage. More importantly, he has helped them create secure income streams from it. When it comes to regular stocks, I'm sure most of us have held a loser too long – allowing time to erode the wealth we've earned. Not holding a winner long enough to allow the power of compounding to do its work is another way time gets the better of us. Time will preserve and grow your wealth if you let it... Compounding is simply the magic of time applied to your capital. Let's say you start with $100,000. If you make 5% per year in interest, you'll have $105,000 after one year. After 10 years of compounding, you'll have nearly $163,000. After 20 years, you'll have more than $265,000. That's what happens if you just leave your money alone and let time work its magic. Good investors always consider the time value of money when allocating capital... In other words, a dollar received today is worth more than a dollar received in the future. And that basic premise leads us into the idea that every dollar you invest in one place for a period of time is a dollar not invested somewhere else. It's no coincidence that the best-performing stock my colleague Mike Barrett and I have found in our Extreme Value service, Automatic Data Processing (ADP), is also our oldest recommendation. I originally recommended it in the depths of the financial crisis in October 2008 – and we've sung its praises to our subscribers many more times over the years. As of yesterday's close, our recommendation is up 886% (including dividends). The stock has compounded at nearly 16.5% annually for the past 15 years. After 15 years, that kind of compounding can transform every $100,000 invested into more than $980,000. Time is also a big reason why I keep writing about the so-called 'meme stocks'... I'm highly confident time will destroy the meme-stock gamblers' wealth. But they think of it in a different way... They believe time is their friend. They don't understand that Vishnu will ultimately shine hotter than a thousand suns, vaporizing their whole world. They don't stand a chance against that awesome power. Every time I talk about meme stocks like AMC Entertainment (AMC) or Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBYQ), it's not a question of when they'll prove to be disastrous investments. I don't know that. No one does. As I said earlier, that's usually unknowable. Rather, I was confident that time would turn Bed Bath & Beyond's bankruptcy from inevitable to imminent to occurring. That's what happened in April. Time finally destroyed the value of Bed Bath & Beyond's equity two weeks ago. And it happened so quietly that I didn't even notice it until yesterday. As the Wall Street Journal reported on July 21... Bed Bath & Beyond shareholders will receive zero recovery under a proposed reorganization plan that the bankrupt home-goods retailer revealed on Thursday. The proposal, filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey, said the stock in Bed Bath & Beyond "shall be canceled, released and extinguished." Shareholders will have no right to claim any future recovery either, according to the proposed plan... Some individual investors continued to buy Bed Bath & Beyond shares even after the company entered chapter 11 in April, ignoring warnings by the company that its shares would be worthless in bankruptcy. Supporters fueled social media hype that the iconic chain could defy the odds and make an unlikely comeback. It took longer than I would've guessed for the meme stockers who kept buying Bed Bath & Beyond shares on every dip to go broke. But in the end... time won again. I hope you can see that time was (and is) all the meme stocks' enemy, not their friend. Bed Bath & Beyond's shareholders were like the "warriors" in Vishnu's quote from the Bhagavad Gita that I shared above... Vishnu tells the prince that these warriors "will no longer exist," even without his participation in the battle. In other words, the shareholders would've already been wiped out as soon as they bought the stock. The only thing left was for time to reveal the truth, which it has now done. Bed Bath & Beyond's stock still trades actively in the market. Remarkably, it's still at around $0.28 per share. And millions of shares exchanged hands today. I assume the stock will be delisted soon. But I'll bet the last trade before that happens will be a meme-stocker loading up at $0.01 per share in hopes of making "100x" returns. Shareholders of trucking company Yellow (YELL) also learned the power of time this week... The Nashville-based company is one of the biggest "less than truckload" haulers in the U.S. At last count, it had 12,700 tractors, 42,000 trailers, 308 service facilities, and 30,000 employees. Its customers include Walmart (WMT), Home Depot (HD), and thousands of smaller businesses. It started 99 years ago as a small taxi and bus operation in Oklahoma. But time hasn't been kind to Yellow... The business has deteriorated in terms of every important metric in the industry. That includes shipments per workday, weight per shipment, and revenue per shipment. Yellow's first-quarter revenue of around $1.2 billion was the company's worst performance since the pandemic-lockdown lows in the second quarter of 2020. Even though the company's 2021 and 2022 revenues exceeded the pre-pandemic highs, it has reported a sea of red ink recently – including net losses in five of the past seven quarters. Yellow has roughly $1.5 billion in debt – nearly half of which is pandemic-era government loans. The rest came from a series of poorly executed mergers. Yellow's total debt is up 85% since the fourth quarter of 2018. Its quarterly interest expense climbed 65% during that same period to $46.5 million in the first quarter of 2023. Well, none of that is in the present tense anymore... As my colleague and Digest editor Corey McLaughlin reported on Monday, the company shut down operations last weekend. And according to reports, it intends to declare bankruptcy. Yellow has struggled for years. It was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2010, 2014, and 2020. In fact, in a twist of fate, Yellow didn't gain national prominence until 1951 – when it declared bankruptcy and was bought by Missouri-based banker George Powell. The older you are, the more memories you likely have of Yellow trucks traveling across U.S. highways. Now, just shy of the company's 100th birthday, they're all gone. But some folks refuse to respect what Vishnu – and the power of time – has done to Yellow... Since the company ceased operations and will soon declare bankruptcy, you would think its stock price would've plunged to zero in recent days. That's what should have happened. But we're still living in the meme-stock bizarro world. So naturally, Yellow's stock closed up more than 450% at one point this week. Take a look at its year-to-date chart... 
Yellow's meme-stock-like ascension only means one thing... Somebody thinks the company's assets are worth more than its liabilities. And they think that way despite Yellow's intention to declare bankruptcy and its latest balance sheet indicating that its assets are worth at least $437 million less than its liabilities. After decades of looking at balance sheets, I've learned that a company's asset values can be overstated. But the liabilities are usually spot on. So in short, Yellow's equity is worth zero. And yet, the meme stockers still don't get it. They insist on buying shares of a soon-to-be-bankrupt company whose stock is destined to go extinct just like Bed Bath & Beyond. Time has revealed Yellow as a ruthless destroyer of shareholder value... In split-adjusted terms, the company's share price peaked at $476,000 per share in 2005. By the first trading day of 2011, it had lost more than 99% of its value. During that period, its total share count rose by a factor nearly 6,500. That sounds just like what has happened to the share counts of Bed Bath & Beyond and AMC Entertainment. Yellow must be one of the worst-run companies in history. After being born out of bankruptcy and nearly going bankrupt at least three other times over the past 13 years, Vishnu is finally, mercifully sweeping it away for good. But that doesn't matter to the world's most clueless investors. Instead, they think this news is a reason to run the company's stock up a few hundred percent within a week. Yellow is only the most recent example of time wrecking the market's clueless hordes... Last month, popular kitchenware maker Tupperware Brands (TUP) fell as much as 95% below its 52-week high closing price. The stock closed as high as $12.48 per share last August. And on July 18, it closed as low as $0.62 per share. Tupperware said last month that it didn't have enough cash to make its interest payments. It was one of the most shorted stocks in the market, according to data provider S3 Partners. That hasn't stopped the meme-stockers... Tupperware's stock closed Tuesday at $5.38 per share. That's a 768% surge in two weeks. But just like all the other meme stocks, Tupperware soon fell off a cliff... The next day, Tupperware closed at $3.67 per share. Imagine if you were one of the folks who bought into the hype on Tuesday. By Wednesday night, you were sitting on a 32% loss. Perversely, meme stocks' soaring share prices show that individual investors have regained the power they lost to institutions in recent decades. It's perverse because individuals are demonstrating their power by lighting money on fire, not by attempting to build wealth responsibly. This bizarro world is not for the faint of heart. Longtime readers will remember the chart I first shared in my December 30, 2022 Digest... Author, investor, and personal friend Vitaliy Katsenelson had told me earlier in the year... Whatever happened to you over the last 20 years, just invert it. I applied that advice to the biggest market trends of the past few decades and produced this chart. It's a look backward and forward in time that I believe is still valid today... 
More than seven months into 2023, the chart has done pretty well... As we've discussed, retail traders are moving the markets again. That's one of the things on the list. We've also seen higher interest rates. And we've experienced good performance from cash-generating real assets, commodities, and value stocks. Ideologically driven capital allocation is also growing – mostly in the form of investments in so-called "green" energy. (Personally, I find it mildly amusing that green energy tries to reduce carbon dioxide – one of the primary reasons the planet has so much green on it.) Green energy became a $1 trillion annual business last year. And if the world's governments get their way, it will keep growing until nobody can afford to pay for electricity and the power goes out every 15 minutes. I'm known for refusing to make predictions. But I also love looking into the future. I bring these two seemingly contradictory ideas together with my "prepare, don't predict" mantra. I try to show a great deal of respect for time – and I recommend you do the same... Over time, I'll keep saying "prepare, don't predict" in these Digest missives. That's because I know time will tell us all what the future holds. And we won't likely know much about what's happening until it happens. All we can do is prepare to the best of our ability. You can do that by holding a core portfolio of great stocks, owning some gold and silver, and keeping plenty of cash on hand. And I'll do my part by keeping after the meme-stockers even though they've managed to make a few stocks soar in the short term. That's because I know those stocks are garbage businesses. And over time, anybody who hangs on to them is highly likely to lose every penny. Don't fall into this trap... If you're buying garbage stocks that have rallied recently, I hope you'll get rid of them soon. Time will not be kind to them. And it will not ask you when you'd like to sell. It will vaporize them at its leisure, leaving a figurative mushroom cloud over your account. And of course, I'll keep contemplating various unpleasant future financial and economic scenarios. If nothing else, I'll do that because I view them as more likely than most folks do. I believe these types of scenarios are inevitable – though not necessarily imminent today. Time will tell how it all works out. New 52-week highs (as of 8/3/23): Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B), Dice Therapeutics (DICE), Comfort Systems USA (FIX), Ingersoll Rand (IR), Procter & Gamble (PG), Parker-Hannifin (PH), TFI International (TFII), and Trane Technologies (TT). In today's mailbag, we're sharing more praise for Doc's option-trading strategies, which he wrote to you about in a special guest series this week (here, here, and here). Don't forget... You can see Doc's "Real Money Demo" with Stansberry Research-sponsored pro golfer Kevin Kisner right here. Doc walked Kevin through exactly how to place a trade. And he offered all viewers a free recommendation. As always, we welcome your thoughts, comments, and observations. You can send them to feedback@stansberryresearch.com. And we'll publish our favorites in the coming days. "Doc Eifrig, I was greatly relieved recently when a subscriber asked you whether you intended to keep publishing Retirement Trader and you replied that you had no intention of quitting. "I was terrified of the word 'options' until I sucked it up and subscribed to Retirement Trader. I have learned how to use them and apply them to other stocks that I own. "Every 2nd and 4th Fridays, I camp out in front of my computer and wait for your new recommendations so that I can execute them immediately. Thank you very sincerely for helping all of the little guys like me!!" – Subscriber Keith M. Good investing, Dan Ferris
Eagle Point, Oregon
August 4, 2023
Stansberry Research Top 10 Open Recommendations Top 10 highest-returning open positions across all Stansberry Research portfolios | Stock | Buy Date | Return | Publication | Analyst | MSFT
Microsoft | 11/11/10 | 1,186.9% | Retirement Millionaire | Doc | MSFT
Microsoft | 02/10/12 | 1,024.0% | Stansberry's Investment Advisory | Porter | ADP
Automatic Data Processing | 10/09/08 | 886.0% | Extreme Value | Ferris | wstETH
Wrapped Staked Ethereum | 02/21/20 | 703.9% | Stansberry Innovations Report | Wade | HSY
Hershey | 12/07/07 | 558.3% | Stansberry's Investment Advisory | Porter | WRB
W.R. Berkley | 03/16/12 | 550.6% | Stansberry's Investment Advisory | Porter | BRK.B
Berkshire Hathaway | 04/01/09 | 527.3% | Retirement Millionaire | Doc | AFG
American Financial | 10/12/12 | 391.2% | Stansberry's Investment Advisory | Porter | TTD
The Trade Desk | 10/17/19 | 342.5% | Stansberry Innovations Report | Engel | FSMEX
Fidelity Sel Med | 09/03/08 | 313.5% | Retirement Millionaire | Doc | Please note: Securities appearing in the Top 10 are not necessarily recommended buys at current prices. The list reflects the best-performing positions currently in the model portfolio of any Stansberry Research publication. The buy date reflects when the editor recommended the investment in the listed publication, and the return shows its performance since that date. To learn if a security is still a recommended buy today, you must be a subscriber to that publication and refer to the most recent portfolio.
| Top 10 Totals | | 4 | Stansberry's Investment Advisory | Porter | | 3 | Retirement Millionaire | Doc | | 2 | Stansberry Innovations Report | Engel/Wade | | 1 | Extreme Value | Ferris |
Top 5 Crypto Capital Open Recommendations Top 5 highest-returning open positions in the Crypto Capital model portfolio | Stock | Buy Date | Return | Publication | Analyst | wstETH
Wrapped Staked Ethereum | 12/07/18 | 1,602.5% | Crypto Capital | Wade | ONE-USD
Harmony | 12/16/19 | 1,063.8% | Crypto Capital | Wade | POLY/USD
Polymath | 05/19/20 | 1,035.0% | Crypto Capital | Wade | MATIC/USD
Polygon | 02/25/21 | 799.9% | Crypto Capital | Wade | BTC/USD
Bitcoin | 11/27/18 | 676.7% | Crypto Capital | Wade | Please note: Securities appearing in the Top 5 are not necessarily recommended buys at current prices. The list reflects the best-performing positions currently in the Crypto Capital model portfolio. The buy date reflects when the recommendation was made, and the return shows its performance since that date. To learn if it's still a recommended buy today, you must be a subscriber and refer to the most recent portfolio.
Stansberry Research Hall of Fame Top 10 all-time, highest-returning closed positions across all Stansberry portfolios | Investment | Symbol | Duration | Gain | Publication | Analyst | | Nvidia^* | NVDA | 5.96 years | 1,466% | Venture Tech. | Lashmet | | Band Protocol crypto | | 0.32 years | 1,169% | Crypto Capital | Wade | | Terra crypto | | 0.41 years | 1,164% | Crypto Capital | Wade | | Inovio Pharma.^ | INO | 1.01 years | 1,139% | Venture Tech. | Lashmet | | Seabridge Gold^ | SA | 4.20 years | 995% | Sjug Conf. | Sjuggerud | | Frontier crypto | | 0.08 years | 978% | Crypto Capital | Wade | | Binance Coin crypto | | 1.78 years | 963% | Crypto Capital | Wade | | Nvidia^* | NVDA | 4.12 years | 777% | Venture Tech. | Lashmet | | Intellia Therapeutics | NTLA | 1.95 years | 775% | Amer. Moonshots | Root | | Rite Aid 8.5% bond | | 4.97 years | 773% | True Income | Williams | ^ These gains occurred with a partial position in the respective stocks.
* The two partial positions in Nvidia were part of a single recommendation. Editor Dave Lashmet closed the first leg of the position in November 2016 for a gain of about 108%. Then, he closed the second leg in July 2020 for a 777% return. And finally, in May 2022, he booked a 1,466% return on the final leg. Subscribers who followed his advice on Nvidia could've recorded a total weighted average gain of more than 600%. | 
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