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So, is Steve Sjuggerud’s True Wealth Newsletter really worth it?
Is Steve Sjuggerud legit?
Can you really improve your investment results by following his stock recommendations in the True Wealth Newsletter?
True Wealth Investment Newsletter Strategy
Dr. Steve Sjuggerud is the editor of the True Wealth investment newsletter.
Before joining Stansberry Research in 2001, he was a stockbroker and also worked in the fund management industry.
So, Steve Sjuggerud’s investment strategy for True Wealth Newsletter is to buy things of extraordinary value at a time when nobody else wants them. Then sell when people are willing to pay any price.
This all sounds like a superb proposition.
I mean, who does not want that?
But, whether or not you can actually do it is another matter.
So far, the only ones who had truly done it consistently over a very long period of time are legendary investors such as Warren Buffet, Seth Klarman, Charlie Munger, and Philip Fisher.
For True Wealth Investment Newsletter, it is designed to recommend safe alternative investment ideas in the form of stocks and ETFs.
Examples of alternative investments include precious metals such as gold and real estate.
Is alternative investment a good idea, especially if you are going to retire or planning for your retirement?
Let’s take a look at the investment returns across different asset types in the past.
Gold vs Stocks
If you look at the historical returns of investing in gold, you could see that it has done much worse than stocks and bonds.
According to Warren Buffet, gold is not a producing asset.
It’s much easier to value a profitable business that generates net profits year after year than try to put a value on gold.
That’s why he invests mainly in great businesses.
Having said that, it doesn’t mean that you cannot make money investing in gold.
It’s possible IF you could time the gold bull run.
For example, it was a gold bull market from 2001 to 2010.
However, the following decade was very bad for gold.
Gold price went down and stayed down for years and only managed to go back to its 2010 high after 10 years.
If you had invested in gold at its peak in 2010, you would have wasted 10 years just waiting to break even on your investments.
The truth about timing the gold market (in fact any market) is that NO ONE CAN PREDICT when a bull market starts and ends.
If anyone said that he or she could time the market, there would be no need for him (or her) to sell expensive investment newsletters for a living.
By the way, True Wealth is not the only newsletter that Steve Sjuggerud is selling.
There are other investment products such as the $4,000 True Wealth System as shown below.
Steve Sjuggerud also recommends real estate investments such as REITs or land Trusts.
The thing about REITs is that they could give you relatively stable dividends if it’s a high-quality REIT.
However, most of their performance depends on the economy and interest rates.
When there is a recession, dividends will probably get cut.
If the interest rate goes up, REITs would be negatively affected as well.
On top of that, REITs could be very volatile as you can see that one of his recommended stocks, Simon Property Group, could easily crash more than 50% during an economic crisis or in a rising interest rate environment.
True Wealth Investment Newsletter Performance
So, how have True Wealth stock recommendations performed over the years?
How accurate is their prediction about the market?
Looking through the monthly issues of True Wealth, in the Feb 2022 monthly issue, they mentioned that “the Fed Won’t Kill The Bull Market.”
Guess what?
Six Months later, the S&P 500 is down more than 20% while Nasdaq is down more than 30%.
If you listened to this advice, you would have missed the chance to get out of your positions during the bear market rally in March 2022.
Again, it shows that no one can predict the market.
As Warren Buffet said, he only focuses on evaluating whether the business is worth investing in or not at the current price because he knows that no one can predict the economy or future interest rates.
Since its inception in 2001, I think the True Wealth newsletter has about 10 stock recommendations with a return of 100% or more.
Assuming there is just one new monthly recommendation, there is approximately a total of 260 stock recommendations.
Yet, there are just 10 out of 260 stock recommendations with a return of 100% or more.
- 420% on the ProShares Ultra Health Care Fund
- 206% on AU50 Liberty Gold Coin
- 182% on MS65 St. Gaudens Gold Coin
- 133% on ProShares Ultra Technology Fund
- 165% on Texas Pacific Land Trust
- 118% on Seabridge Gold
- 103% on Simon Property Group
- 120% on Berkshire Hathaway
- 192% on Blackstone Group
- 273% on MS63 St. Gaudens Gold Coin
This performance is good, but not super impressive.
Here’s why.
S&P 500, at the beginning of 2001, was around 1300 points.
As of October 2022, S&P 500 has gone up by about 177% since 2011.
If you had just invested in S&P 500 index ETF and did nothing, you would have almost tripled your investment.
On top of that, below is Motley Fool Stock Advisor’s track record for its stock recommendations.
As you can see, they had picked quite a few 10 baggers (1,000%+) and many stocks with a return of 100% or more.
As of 6th September 2023, Motley Fool Stock Advisor has had 173 stock recommendations with 100%+ returns.
[Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Individual investment results may vary. All investing involves risk of loss.]
Will the Motley Fool Stock Advisor always be right about their stock recommendations?
No, because no one can be right about their stock picks 100% of the time.
Let me sidetrack a bit here.
If any stock picking service tells you that they have a close to 100% success rate on their stock picks and can guarantee you high investment returns, you should definitely stay away.
Even Warren Buffet has loss-making stocks in his portfolio, but he still achieves above-average returns because a few big gainers in the portfolio can make up for the under-performers.
What I like about the Motley Fool Stock Advisor is that they are very open and transparent about their bad investments.
As a member, I can see the performance of ALL its past and current stock recommendations (even for closed positions).
Some other stock-picking services that I’ve tried, don’t publish the performance of all their past and current stock recommendations, so it’s not easy for you to find out their true track record.
For example, the year 2022 has not been good for high-growth stocks because of rising interest rates and high inflation.
So, you can see a lot of Motley Fool Stock Advisor’s stock recommendations are not doing very well.
The truth is that other stock-picking services are not doing well either because of the stock market crash.
Do I still think it’s worth subscribing to the Motley Fool Stock Advisor?
My answer is yes.
The stock market goes up and down all the time.
Every few years, there is a bear market.
According to Peter Lynch who is a legendary fund manager, far more money has been lost by investors trying to anticipate correction than lost in corrections themselves.
In fact, I think the bear market is the BEST time to start investing in the stock market.
Why?
During a bear market, it’s more likely to find great businesses selling at very cheap prices because people are just selling out of fear when the business is still fundamentally sound.
A market crash is a time when huge wealth transfers from irrational and emotional investors to patient and rational investors.
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True Wealth Investment Newsletter Pricing
So, how much does the True Wealth investment newsletter subscription cost?
As a subscriber, what do you get?
Here is what you would get:
- 12 Monthly Issues of True Wealth with new monthly stock recommendations and updates on the model portfolio
- Special Reports
- The Stansberry Digest which is a daily market summary
The usual price for an annual True Wealth subscription is $199.
Is it worth it?
Personally, I think there are other much better alternatives.
For example, I use Motley Fool Stock Advisor to get stock ideas, then I will do my own independent research using Stock Rover and Seeking Alpha because I don’t think it’s a good idea to rely on someone else to make investment decisions for you.
As a subscriber, here’s what you get:
- You will receive two stock recommendations every month (one stock recommendation on the first Thursday and the other one on the third Thursday of the month). Each new stock recommendation comes with a full analysis of the opportunities and risks
- The current Top 10 Favorite Investment Opportunities are released on the second Thursday of every month
- 10 Foundational Stocks for new investors (regularly updated)
- 5 Exchange-Traded-Funds
- You will receive a real-time email notification when it’s time to sell, so you are never left wondering what to do
- You gain instant access to all past Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor recommendations
So, how much does Motley Fool Stock Advisor cost?
Usually, its annual subscription is $199.
Right now, there’s a special limited-time 50% OFF offer* for new members for the first year when you click the link here to try it out for 30 days with a Membership-Fee-Back Guarantee. (*Billed annually. Introductory price for the first year for new members only. First-year bills at $99 and renews at $199)
So, for $99 a year- that’s just $1.80 a week – you can gain unlimited access to their library of expert stock recommendations which are carefully selected to help you grow your wealth.
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