Stansberry Research Review – Analyzing the Investment Advisory Service

About Stansberry’s Investment Advisory Program

Investment Advisory is a monthly stock newsletter from Stansberry Research that offers stock picks from the firm’s in-house analysts. The newsletters are lengthy, using storytelling to build a case for why a specific industry, and ultimately a particular company, is worth investing in. While it’s challenging to get a sense of the Investment Advisory’s historical performance, the service emphasizes long-term trades and enables investors to build a diversified portfolio over time.

Our Stansberry Research review will take a closer look at this company’s most popular investing program. Keep reading to find out if the Investment Advisory service is right for you.

About Stansberry Research

Stansberry Research is a publishing company and investment research firm that was founded in 1999 by Frank Porter Stansberry. The publication initially served as an outlet for its founder to share his own research and write opinion pieces on a variety of financial topics.

Since then, Stansberry Research has expanded and now offers a range of services. Stansberry Research’s model feels like a blend between Motley Fool’s research and Agora Financial’s prolific publications. The company regularly releases unique investment ideas and specialized market reports through services like Investment Advisory and True Wealth.

The Investment Advisory newsletter service, which covers the stock market and focuses on emerging trends, is the most popular of these research offerings. It was run for many years by Frank Porter Stansberry, but Stansberry has since passed the torch to analyst Alan Gula.

📈 Features	Stock Picks, Research Reports
💰 Pricing	$199/year
⭐ Offers	Trial Subscription (30-Day Refund)
✅ Best For	Long-Term Investors
🙍‍♂ Key People	Alan Gula
🔁 Alternative To	Motley Fool, Zacks

Stansberry Research Subscription Costs

Stansberry Research Investment Advisory costs $199 per year and starts with a 30-day free trial. This is in line with the other Stansberry Research newsletters, as well as stock picking services from competitors like Motley Fool and Zacks.

Investments

The Investment Advisory is a relatively conservative stock recommendation service that offers deep dives into a single stock each month. That means that only one new position is opened per month. Most stock purchases that the Stansberry’s Investment Advisory recommends are intended to be multi-year positions. As of 2019, 5 out of 24 open positions date to 2012, and one dates to 2007.

The portfolio that the Investment Advisory develops aims to contain around 20 positions on average. Most of these are long-term positions and focus on well-known Fortune 500 stocks. However, the Investment Advisory will occasionally recommend short positions or highlight lesser-known companies. The stock pick recommendations span a range of sectors, and the picks are separated by themes, such as:

• Future of Medicine
• Next Boom and Speculations
• World’s Most Capital-Efficient

In this sense, subscribers get access to several different investment strategies. The Investment Advisory looks at growth stocks, value stocks, dividend stocks, emerging markets, and more. Compared to other services like Motley Fool’s Stock Advisor, the picks are relatively diverse.

Each stock in the portfolio is updated with a buy/sell/hold rating each month and assigned a risk rating on a 1-5 scale.

Stansberry Research Newsletter

The monthly newsletter is sent to subscribers on the first Friday of each month. It’s typically a 20-30 minute read. The newsletter starts with a lengthy story that may or may not be related to the stock market, but which ultimately leads to a deep dive into a specific industry.

From there, the lead analyst, Alan Gula, will make a case for why this industry is set up for success (or failure) and hone in on the financials and recent performance of several of the major companies in the industry. Finally, the newsletter will focus in on a single stock pick and highlight a few long-term technical analyses to identify an entry point.

For impatient readers, the Investment Advisory’s recommendation is succinctly summarized in a blue box at the bottom of the newsletter.

After the new position is discussed, the newsletter includes a paragraph about each stock currently in the portfolio. It is here that each stock will receive an updated buy/sell/hold rating. All of this information is summarized in a table at the bottom of the newsletter.

Occasionally, Stansberry Research will issue special reports that are available to newsletter subscribers. These read much like the newsletter issues, but focus on broad market trends or emerging issues rather than specific investment recommendations.

Stansberry Research Track Record

Historical performance is difficult to gauge for the Investment Advisory newsletter. There’s no way to see a record of closed positions without going back to every past newsletter. Recent positions vary in whether they are outperforming the S&P 500, although the long-term positions that remain open typically have gains two to three times that of the broader market. All positions that the Investment Advisory recommends come with standing 25% stop-loss orders as well as target entry prices

Who is Stansberry’s Investment Advisory Best For?

Stansberry’s Investment Advisory is designed for long-term, passive investors. Investors rarely need to act in the month between newsletters except to update stop losses. Instructions for how positions should be changed are clearly communicated with each new issue.

While the Investment Advisory’s performance appears to be strong compared to the broader market, investors need to be comfortable with trusting the newsletter’s rationale for why a company will succeed. There is little true fundamental or technical analysis that goes into the recommended investments. Instead, they are primarily based on market trends.

Stansberry Research recommends that all members have at least $1,000 in their portfolios, and we agree with this sentiment. We may even push the recommendation up to $5,000. Since Stansberry Research’s stock picks cost $199/year, you need to be able to generate at least that much more in returns (when compared to the broad market) to make the service worthwhile. This is doable, but it will be much easier for investors with larger accounts who can double down on the most successful stocks in the portfolio.

How Does Investment Advisory Compare to Other Stansberry Research Subscriptions?

Stansberry’s Investment Advisory is the flagship newsletter offered by Stansberry Research. But it’s just one of many services available from the company. In all, Stansberry Research has 25 different investment research services. Stansberry Research services include:

• True Wealth (alternative investments)
• Extreme Value (value stocks)
• Commodity Supercycles (commodities)
• Retirement Millionaire (retirement investing)
• Crypto Capital (cryptocurrency)
• Stansberry Gold and Silver Investor (gold stocks)

You’ll also find three complete portfolio solutions that you can invest in right away. The Total Portfolio has 40 positions including growth stocks, emerging markets, and small cap stocks. The Income Portfolio has 20-30 positions including income-generating stocks, fixed-income bonds, and bonds funds. And the Capital Portfolio has 20 positions including large-cap US stocks and exchange-traded funds. All three portfolios include lifetime access to a selection of investment advisory newsletters.

While these unique niche services may be right for some investors, we prefer to stick with the flagship Stansberry’s Investment Advisory. It offers a broad range of stock picks and can help generate investment ideas for long-term investors with a wide range of financial goals. At the end of the day, all of Stanberry Research’s investment services share the same goal – make more money!

Is Stansberry Research Legit?

Stansberry Research runs a range of different investment advice newsletters. While we cannot speak to the validity of every newsletter, the Investment Advisory is legit. Remember, increasing your wealth takes time and you shouldn’t expect a single newsletter to help you become a millionaire overnight.

It’s worth noting that Stansberry Research ran afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2007 for promising investors they could “double their money” if they purchased a special report. The company was fined $1.5 million and had a permanent injunction against it from 2007 until 2020, when it was lifted without any objection from the SEC.

Stansberry Research Customer Service

Stansberry Research has a customer service center that’s available from 9am-5pm Eastern, Monday-Friday. You can get in touch by phone or email.

How Does Stansberry’s Investment Advisory Compare to Other Stock Recommendation Services?

Stansberry’s Investment Advisory is one of many stock recommendation newsletters. It sets itself apart with its solid track record of long-term investments and diversified portfolio. It also doesn’t spam your inbox as much as some other online stock recommendation platforms do. The factthat the newsletter is only released once per month means you don’t have to devote your life to following this service.

Let’s take a closer look at how Investment Advisory compares to some popular stock picking services:

Investment Advisory vs. Stock Advisor

Stock Advisor is the flagship stock picking newsletter from Motley Fool. Like Investment Advisory, it’s built for long-term investors who prefer ready-to-buy stock picks.

Stock Advisor has an outstanding track record and has consistently beaten the market since it launched in 2002. However, compared to Stansberry’s Investment Advisory, Stock Advisor isn’t as concerned with diversification. The service is focused on explosive growth stocks, not value or dividend stocks. The Stock Advisor portfolio is often tech-heavy and it can suffer more than the wider market during downturns.

So, Investment Advisory may be the better choice for conservative investors, while Stock Advisory is better for aggressive growth investors. Investors who want even more diversification might consider using both services.

For more details, check out our full Motley Fool vs. Stansberry Research comparison.

Investment Advisory vs. Zacks Premium

Zacks Premium is a stock research service built for self-directed investors. You won’t find ready-to-buy stock picks, but rather detailed fundamental research and analyst reports that help you identify the best stocks to buy today. Zacks Premium also offers a #1 ranking list, which includes around 100 stocks that the company’s analysts think are worth investing in.

The advantage to Zacks Premium is that you get a lot of stock picks to explore and potentially add to your portfolio. However, this service takes a lot more work and investing knowledge compared to Stansberry’s Investment Advisory. In addition, Zacks Premium picks have an investment horizon of only one year, which is much shorter than the horizon for Investment Advisory picks.

Check out our Zacks Premium review for more information.

Additional Stock Picking Services to Explore

Check out some of our other stock picking service reviews to decide if Stansberry Research is right for you:

• Motley Fool Review
• Oxford Club Review
• Gorilla Trades Review
• Forbes Investor Review
• Fidelity Investor Review
• Nate’s Notes Review
• Action Alerts Plus Review

Pros

• Relatively conservative investment style
• Develops a long-term diversified portfolio
• Inexpensive compared to potential returns
• Positions are updated monthly
• Not spammy like many other newsletters

Cons

• Newsletters are long and take a while to get to the point
• Very little apparent technical analysis around entry and exit points
• Difficult to gauge historical performance