The Luckiest Man in the World

Few men in this world are more fortunate than the newsletter man. A king is nothing beside him…

For the newsletter man is a man truly enthroned. He is blessed by fortune and heaven alike — believe it.

This cardinal fact has never held truer than it does today.

The newsletter man inhabits times that are uniquely exhilarating, astounding, confounding… and imbecilic.

They offer bountiful grist for his modest little mill.

Is he compensated justly for his vexful and lonesome labors? Almost certainly he is not.

Must he endure at times the assorted hells unique to his profession? Alas, he must.

He is nonetheless an extremely fortunate, enviable and God-blessed fellow. Consider the newsletter man’s lot…

What a Life!

He is free to disregard the rooster’s obnoxious call, unlike — for example — the trash man whose day is old by midmorning…

Or the cafe proprietor who must wipe the sand from his bleary eyes each dismal morning, brew the coffee and cook the eggs…

Or the suffering airline pilot who must report for his 6 a.m. flight after a heavy night at the bar.

The newsletter man, meantime, can tumble from his cocooning sheets when he pleases.

Over his leisurely breakfast he canvasses the day’s headlines. What will he write about this day?

He is at once spoiled for choice. Options besiege him from every side, both conceivable and inconceivable…

What a World!

See, for example, a random sample of today’s headlines:

“Record-Breaking Bony Fish Weighing 3 Tons Found”…

“Santa’s Grave Discovered in Turkey”…

“Pennsylvania Democrat Candidate Calls for a ‘Right to Sex’”…

“Bill Gates Says European Energy Crisis Is ‘Good’”…

“Two Top Cardiologists Implicate Beastly Vax in All Unexplained Heart Attacks Since 2021”…

“No One Has Seen This Journalist Since the FBI Raided His Home”…

“Biden to Release Another 15 Million Barrels From SPR”…

“There’s No Chance of Negotiating an End to the Ukraine War”…

“Raising Rates Have Set a Debt ‘Avalanche’ in Motion”…

“U.S. Housing Starts Plunge as Homebuilder Confidence Crashes”…

“Inflation-Driven Social Security Increase Could Lead to More Inflation.”

What a Job!

Again — here is but a random plucking of the day’s headlines. There are more!

Thus the newsletter man finds himself a child at large in a candy store… or a pig frolicking in mud.

So many choices open before him, he scarcely knows where to begin.

He proceeds to while his day away, hazard-free. The sole risk he confronts emerges from sore readers and the barbs they hurl at him.

As our co-founder Mr. Bill Bonner has wondered:

Was ever there a fairer métier than ours?

The poor carpenter risks cutting his fingers or banging his knee.

The used car salesman’s hearing goes bad as soon as he takes up his job: “No, I don’t hear any rattle,” says he.

The foot soldier gets sent to a godforsaken hole like Afghanistan, where the women are covered up and the liquor stashed away.

But in our trade as newsletter publishers, hardly a day passes without a good laugh. Our only occupational hazard is a rupture of the midriff.

We have suffered the ruptured midriff with a regularity verging on the obscene.

That is because each day we are witness to a fresh parade of fools, scoundrels, scalawags, frauds, knaves, rogues, bunco men, ne’er-do-wells, popinjays, world improvers, lunatics, confidence men and pitchmen.

They are all vastly amusing in their own way. Hence the perennial yet tolerable risk of the abdominal tear.

What a Deal!

Here is another choice luxury in which the newsletter man basks — at least this newsletter man:

He is free to illustrate the world’s faults without the corresponding duty to hold out solutions.

He instead sinks into his armchair and heaves his darts at the abovesaid fools, scoundrels, scalawags, frauds, knaves, rogues, bunco men, ne’er-do-wells, popinjays, world improvers, lunatics, confidence men and pitchmen who afflict us daily.

These are very easy targets to lacerate. Mr. Bonner:

At any given time, most of the ideas that pass for truth are just fads and fashions. Our job is to cut down these false truths in order to allow a little daylight onto better ones…

People don’t like to see their fashionable truths attacked. And attacking them puts us at odds with the mainstream press, the government, Wall Street, the academics and all the people whose reputations and wealth depend on them.

And… we’re often wrong… which leaves us exposed to ridicule as well as regulatory threats.

“You said that stock would go up…” say the critics.

“You said Congress would never go along…”

“You said the economy would be in recession by now…”

Just so. Yet as Mr. Bonner reminds us:

When you’re looking into the future, there are an infinite number of things you can be wrong about. Since we’ve been writing for so long, we’ve probably already been wrong about most of them.

And we’ll get the rest of them wrong in due course.

But it is not given to man to know his fate; that’s an “old truth.”

And our Dear Readers know we are mortal, just like they are. They don’t expect us to be right all the time. They only expect us to be honest… about what we see and hear and think and know… and to work hard to try to discover tomorrow’s truth before it is mainstream news.

What a Purpose!

Here then is our central purpose, our animating vision:

We are out to connect the dots so we can see…

When to buy stocks… what the Fed will do… what will happen to our economy… or where the country is going…

We mock the conceits of the great and the good. We laugh at absurd trends and foolish fads… and at ourselves…

And we squint so hard our eyes hurt, desperately trying to catch a tiny glimpse of real truth.

And we never forget our humble motto: Sometimes right, sometimes wrong… and always in doubt.

If we ever emerge from doubt into the false light of certitude, it will be a sign to pack our belongings — and walk out.

Yet we have gathered enough wool for one day.

We will return tomorrow with penetrating market insight that may actually profit you… hopefully right, possibly wrong… undoubtedly in doubt.