Terrell Suggs is one of my all-time favorite Ravens players. Drafted at 20 years old, he was one of the youngest ever to be voted “rookie of the year.” He's the Ravens’ career leader in sacks. Seven Pro Bowls, two all pro awards, Defensive Player of the Year in 2011, and he is #8 on the all-time sack list — ahead of some more famous players, guys like Chicago's Richard Dent, Minnesota's John Randle, and Lawrence Taylor of the New York Giants.
T-Sizzle is a first ballot Hall of Famer. But what I love best about Suggsy is his sense of humor. The man talked shit with the best of them. And nobody got Suggs going more than the greatest quarterback of all time, New England's own pretty boy, Tom Brady.
Now, for the record, and even as a die-hard Ravens fan, I can admit that the Pats have gotten the best of the Ravens in head-to-head matchups. I mean, who can forget that Lee Evans dropped pass for the win, followed by the Cundiff missed chip shot for the tie a few minutes later? I can also tell you that nobody has given the Pats more fits than Ed Reed, Terrell Suggs, and the Baltimore Ravens. I can't forget that 2010 AFC wild card where Ray Rice went 82 yards on the first play of the game, en route to a 33-14 Ravens win. Suggs stripped Brady of the ball in that game and recovered the fumble at the Pats 17-yard line. Ravens converted the TD a couple plays later.
About Brady, Suggs once said, “I don’t like him. He don’t like me. I don’t like his hair. I don’t like his smug attitude.’’
But the best Suggs moment was him standing beside Tom Brady, while Brady gestured for a flag from the ref, saying, “You mad, bro? You mad?” and then wearing a t-shirt that said “You mad, bro?” before the next Ravens-Pats game.
I'm looking at our country, our politics, our stock market, our world, and I'm thinking Are you mad bro? And I know you're mad. I'm mad at stuff, everybody out there is mad at something right now. Today, we're gonna vent a little, blow off some steam and ease that building pressure.
We're ALL Mad — BRO!
If you don't own Tesla stock, you're probably mad that Elon Musk is stupid rich on promises and potential, and his company is worth more than Ford, GM, Chrysler, and Toyota — combined, companies that have actually made money and paid billions in dividends to their investors. If somebody told you gold was the way to play this pandemic and it's up 20%, while Netflix has doubled… weeeell you might be a little ticked off.
If it took you five years to dig out of the financial crisis, while Wall Street assholes got bonuses, yeah, you might be a little mad. If you got a $1,200 check, while the frickin’ LOS ANGELES LAKERS got a $4.6 million PPP loan, eh, you might be griping about it.
If you just finished diligently paying off a giant college education loan only to have Bernie Sanders try to get current loans wiped off the books, you might be thinking WTF. If you pay for health insurance (as most of us do) you're looking at the fact that the U.S. pays far more than any country in the world for care, and yet still doesn't have the best health care system… yeah, pissed. If you're a woman and you make 20% less than a man in the exact same job, you might be mad, bra! (Did he really just say “bra” for the ladies? That's probably a very insensitive joke right there. But what the hell, everybody's already mad, I'm going for it.)
Did somebody tell you they'd bring beautiful clean coal jobs back? Did you get a token tax break while corporations (who aren't people no matter what the Supreme Court says) got their tax bills hacked by $35%?
Have you seen Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' net worth ($157 billion or whatever) and then seen that his warehouse workers make $15 an hour, about $29,000 a year? Has a robot taken your job yet?
If you're a Black man, the cops and COVID are coming for you. If you're a white man, everybody's coming for you: toxic masculinity, #MeToo, white silence, white privilege…
I'm a white man, and I will tell you: I have benefitted from simply speaking the language of the white man in the business world. If you don't recognize that that is a “thing,” lemme tell you a little story…
Lee-Jackson-King Day?! WTF???
I'm from Richmond, Virginia. I went to Harry F. Byrd Middle School. I don't know why, specifically, a Richmond, Virginia school was named for a racist West Virginia senator, but, I can guess…
I graduated from Douglas S. Freeman High School in 1983. The school was named for the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Robert E. Lee. Any guesses what my school's mascot was? Anybody? Yep, the Rebels, the Douglas Southall Freeman Rebels. What were we rebelling against? My best guess: the notion that “all men are created equal.” Richmond was the capital of a group of states for whom equality was anathema.
1983 was also the year that Ronald Reagan made Martin Luther King Jr. Day a federal holiday, which meant that Virginia could no longer celebrate Lee-Jackson-King day. Honestly, when I first remembered that, I was like, Did that really happen? Oooh yes, the good ole boys in the state legislature probably thought it was really funny to celebrate Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Martin Luther King Jr. on the same day — men who actually fought a war to keep King's people in chains.
What if you were a Black kid attending Douglas S. Freeman High School? What does a Black person think about getting Lee-Jackson-King day off of work? You think they might be, oh, I don't know, a little mad, bro?
Yep, we're all mad right now. The thing is none of us has to fully understand why someone else is mad. It's hard to do, put yourself in somebody's shoes. But what's easy is to accept each other's basic humanity, acknowledge fellow Americans, and realize that we all have something to be mad about.
Fairness and opportunity — that's what we want. Is it fair to the average American that Fed policy is blowing a massive stock market bubble that will increase the wealth gap and that one of the biggest investment banks out there, Blackstone, is collecting fees from the Fed to buy corporate bonds? Big corporations have all the money they need. Small businesses are failing at record rates.
The Democrats want to raise capital gains taxes to punish investors. That leads to less opportunity. How about cutting capital gains taxes? How about telling Americans that the best way to live the American Dream is to be a stakeholder, to own parts of America's greatest companies? And then how about incentivizing investment instead of punishing it?
Ask any American what they want, it's probably something like “the freedom and opportunity to take care of my family.” Doesn't sound that hard, does it?
The 5G Revolution Is Here
After years of hype about mobile speeds that let you download full-length movies in mere seconds, 5G is finally here. This means we now have an investment opportunity that I've been talking about for two years right in front of us. Click “Watch Now” to find out which 5G stocks you should have on your radar.
The American Dream
Of course, work hard and take advantage of the opportunities that America offers. Still, Jason and I remain adamant that to fully enjoy this “Land of Opportunity,” you simply have to be investing some of your money in America's great corporations.
There is basically one vehicle in the entire world that can reliably grow your money: the U.S. stock market. A growing population means that great companies will sell more of their products, great management means costs will be consistently managed, and inflation means that prices (and therefore revenue, profits, and stock prices) will rise over time. It's a pretty simple formula…
Jason and I have made it our mission in life to zero in on the best, most reliable stocks for your money. And we take this very seriously. Look through the portfolio, you see a lot of risk there? Unproven startups? Risky penny stocks? Sketchy mining stocks? Nope.
What you see is a lot of household names, stocks you recognize, companies that are riding long-term trends that have rewarded us handsomely and are likely to continue to do so…
I'd love to tell you that Jason and I are smarter, richer, and more handsome than most stock pickers. But the simple fact is what we do is not rocket science. A little foresight, a little brains, a little math, a thorough process, and a whole lot of patience gets us one of the best track records of investment gains you'll find anywhere.
I love to talk about Twilio (NYSE: TWLO) as an example of how our process plays out. Editor's Note: Plus, Jason keeps careful track of who found what stock because even though we are partners here, we are also absolutely competitive with each other, and Twilio just became The Wealth Advisory's best performing stock. I found it, so I get to rub Jason's nose in it a little. Priceless. And I would add that our competitive natures mean that we keep our edge, and you, dear subscriber, get the absolute best that we can offer.
Anyway, Twilio… it was roughly 2014 when the market environment clearly started to favor tech stocks, online services, the cloud, etc. I pivoted the newsletter to take advantage, and, shortly thereafter, Jason finally acquiesced to my recruitment offers and came aboard. So we were both looking for the stocks that made the cloud work. When I found Twilio, it was trading in the mid-$20s, and it was a company that made other companies' apps work. Like Uber…
We did not know we had a tiger by the tail. But we knew the management team was really good. We knew leading companies were using it. So we got in and let time work its magic. Good product/service and good management will just about always reward you.
I brought up selling Twilio in this July issue of The Wealth Advisory to Jason. We have massive gains. And the stock is trading at 27x forward revenue estimates. It is expensive. But here's the thing: Twilio is the expert in managing its business, not me. So what, I'm gonna tell the company, “That's it, you're done growing”?
I will tell you that you might want to take some profits. I will tell you that you might want to wait for a pullback to buy shares. But simply abandon our exposure to one of the absolute best tech stocks out there right now, one that provides mission-critical service to any company that operates online (which is basically every company)?
I know I use that image too much, but I love it.
Anyway, that's it from me. You can find my favorite current recommendation HERE. Talk to you soon…
