There’s an old saying among lawyers, “Never ask a question if you don’t know the answer.”
That makes sense.
You don’t want to ask a witness a question if it risks making your client look bad.
But we’re not lawyers. So, we’ve ignored that advice.
In publishing the inaugural Legacy Research Annual Report Card, we’re effectively “asking a question” without knowing the answer.
But it’s worth it.
We’re opening our research to scrutiny. And while it may (or may not) cause some awkwardness in the short term… in the long term, it will result in better research… better results… and a better relationship with you.
Now, we’re still some weeks away from releasing part one of our Report Card. But today, we’ll take you behind the scenes to look at some of the work going into preparing the Report Card, and what you can expect to see when we publish it.
But first, our regular check-in on the day’s market action…
Market Data
The S&P 500 closed up 0.2% to end the day at 4,697.24… the NASDAQ gained 0.1% to close at 14,524.07.
In commodities, West Texas Intermediate crude oil trades at $73.90, up $1.49…
Gold is $2,050.90 per troy ounce, down 20 cents…
And bitcoin is $43,769, down $632 from yesterday.
Now, back to our story…
We Had Three Choices
We’ve received a great response from your fellow readers on our decision to publish the Report Card.
Here’s a small selection:
“The report card is an interesting and long overdue improvement.”
– Norm B.
“Fantastic news about the upcoming report cards. I am also a Stansberry subscriber, and I love their report cards. Really looking forward to yours. Thanks again!”
– K. Young
“Kudos for the honest introspection, for the courage to make changes to better service your customers, and the willingness to share it.”
– Kevin
“Overall, I applaud you for providing a grading system.”
– Tom K.
Tom K. had some further comments. We’ll share those shortly. Our response may not entirely please him… but we’ll explain our reasoning.
More on that in a moment.
We’ll start by saying the Report Card has been a bigger project to figure out than we expected.
For starters, by our count, we will grade 34 investment advisories and trading services.
Second, as we pointed out when we announced we would publish a Report Card, our publications made 1,089 investment recommendations in 2023 (and that was only through December 8!).
Third, once you start down the “rabbit hole” of trying to figure out what to include in the report… how to analyze the results… what time frame to choose… and how much subjectivity to apply… there’s a risk it becomes such a burden, that we end up doing nothing.
Take the time frame as an example. What’s fair? Should it be the results over a calendar year? Should it be multiple calendar years? Or should we “cherry-pick” specific dates?
That was one of the comments from subscriber, Tom K., we mentioned above. In addition to his positive comments on publishing a report card, he wrote:
I am familiar with Stansberry’s system, but for me, it has serious limitations. But they are the only one who does it, and I give them credit for doing something to evaluate their results.
I have written them multiple times but to no avail. My criticism stems from the idea that they cherry-pick their time frames to evaluate. It’s not the same every year.
They do give bad grades to some advisors, so I am sure that hurts them. However, whatever time frame you pick in my opinion, it should be the same every year. Also, no matter what time frame you pick, you should also include annual results from January 1 to December 31.
The reference to “Stansberry” is Stansberry Research, the business started by our founder, Porter Stansberry, in 1998. Stansberry Research has published a report card every year for more than a decade.
It was the inspiration for us to publish our own.
We’ll go into more detail on the time frame we’ve chosen below, and again when we publish the Report Card. But it came down to three choices.
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Publish results based on a simple calendar year
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Publish results that cover a distinct bear and bull market period
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Publish results that cover from the beginning of the most recent bull market period
There are good arguments for each of these. All have merit. But for us, we’re weighing which approach will best provide a true reflection of a service’s performance and best reflects the reader’s experience.
But regardless of the time frame chosen, the most important part (in our view) is that we chose the parameters before knowing the results (hence the reference to the old lawyer saying at the top).
Some may say that’s foolhardy. But in our view, that was the only way to do it. Coming up with a bunch of scenarios… running the results… and then picking the best scenario would be pointless and a betrayal of your trust in us.
But we didn’t want to choose an arbitrary time frame. So, we looked at a chart of the market and chose a start date that we felt would be relevant, would make the most sense, and which we could justify to you.
So, which time frame have we chosen? We’ll tell you now…
The Only Choice That Makes Sense
Ultimately, we’ve gone with the third option – results that cover from the beginning of the most recent bull market period.
That means stretching the Report Card performance back to October 12, 2022 – so slightly longer than the calendar year. You’ll see on the chart below. This is where the market turned in 2022 leading into the 2023 bull market:
But why do we believe this is a better time frame than purely using a calendar year?
The answer is quite simple. We want to see if any of our experts were able to get in on the bull market either at the bottom or soon after it began.
If they did… we want to reward them for it. If we used the calendar year, it would penalize (in terms of report card grades) anyone who got in early.
At the same time, if they didn’t pick the bottom of the market… or the early stage of the rally, then we can figure out why, or hold them to account for it.
We don’t know if that reasoning will satisfy Tom K. or others with similar views. So we’re happy to hear from you.
It won’t change how we do things this year. But we’re sure there are plenty of things we’ll learn from this process and make any changes next year.
Remember, you can email me directly at my personal email address: [email protected]. Emails to that address come straight to my inbox… not via the Customer Service team.
I can’t reply individually to those emails. But I do read each one and plan to publish as many of them as possible in these pages.
We’ll share more Report Card updates as we lead up to the “big reveal” in a few weeks. Stay tuned.
The Winners Circle
We’ve done a lot of introspection… navel gazing recently. We’ve highlighted some of the things we want to improve on.
That’s an ongoing process. The Report Card is one of those things we believe will help improve our service to you.
But we also don’t want to give the impression that we aren’t proud of a lot of the work we do and the research our experts and analysts produce.
To highlight that, we’ll publish an occasional feature called “The Winners Circle.” Here we’ll show you recent profit gains from our services – usually a day or two after we publish the alert in the paid research report.
This will serve several purposes. First, it will showcase the great work of the experts and gurus. Second, if you missed the profit alert in the paid subscription, you’ll see it here.
And third, we often hear from readers that they don’t believe the claims we make in the sales promotions. We figure that could be because you don’t see us highlight our positive results outside of the promotions.
So, look out for The Winners Circle starting Monday. By then we’ll have at least four gains to showcase.
That includes two 100% crypto gains in Teeka Tiwari’s Palm Beach Confidential service from this week… And a couple of gains from Jeff Clark during the break. He closed a stock trade for a 26% gain and an options trade for an 82.6% gain.
Full details on Monday.
Teeka’s Freedom Number
Your editor first got into the financial markets in 1995. We’ve been in the financial publishing industry since 2005.
In all that time, we’ve never seen a track record that matches Teeka Tiwari’s. Since 2016, Teeka has given his readers 27 chances to make more than 1,000% gains.
And now, he tells us that an unprecedented event in Washington, D.C., will soon trigger the biggest bull run in history. Specifically, in a subsector of the crypto market that accounts for less than 1% of all coins.
That’s a big claim. And we invite you to tune in this coming Tuesday, January 9, at 8 p.m. ET, to check out Teeka’s claims. He’s hosting an urgent crypto briefing to discuss his top six coins in that subsector.
You can register now here.
More Markets
Today’s top gaining ETFs…
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Global X MSCI Colombia ETF (GXG) +3.3%
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iShares MSCI Mexico ETF (EWW) +2.3%
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First Trust Brazil AlphaDEX Fund (FBZ) +1.7%
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iShares MSCI Japan Value ETF (EWJV) +1.7%
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Franklin FTSE Latin America ETF (FLLA) +1.5%
Today’s biggest losing ETFs…
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KraneShares MSCI All China Health Care Index ETF (KURE) -2%
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Amplify Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK) -1.8%
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KraneShares MSCI China Clean Technology ETF (KGRN) -1.7%
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Hull Tactical US ETF (HTUS) -1.4%
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Invesco China Technology ETF (CQQQ) -1.1%
Mailbag
If you have any questions or comments for our experts here at Legacy Research, we’d love to hear from you.
Write to us at [email protected] and just type “Daily Cut mailbag” in the subject line.
Cheers,
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Kris Sayce
Editor, The Daily Cut