What’s next for Wall Street? A porno portfolio?

Matthew Carr has looked at aspects of America's
insanity – and discovered there's money to be
made there.

No, this isn’t another of those rants against the evil Bankers of Doom, prepping to vampire-suck your

financial blood from your bank account’s veins.

It’s way more ominous than that

Over at The Oxford Club, a subscription service that recommends investments, their “Emerging Trends Strategist,” a dude named Matthew Car with what appears from his photographs to be a shaved head, has looked at various aspects of our paranoid nation’s insanity and decided there’s money to be made from all the nut cases – and that Wall Street is the place to make it.

In an e-mail to investors Carr reminds his fans:

“…back in August 2012, as shows like Doomsday Preppers really began to gain ground, I started thinking, "Are there profits to be made on the apocalypse?" 

It's a very capitalistic idea, I know. But that's my job. 

So I developed a "Doomsday Portfolio" and shared it with my readers in Investment U.
The idea behind the Doomsday Portfolio was simple: What are Preppers focusing on? And what do they need to survive - and thrive - during an apocalypse? 

Carr honed in on makers of doomsday “essentials” – manufacturers of “firearms, camping gear, generators and radiation detection devices.” He would also have recommended investing in bomb shelters except that, as he mournfully points out, there are no publicly-traded bomb shelter manufactuers.

Anyway, he put his recommendation out there for his subscribers. And how did it go?

Money, money, money, mon-eeee!

If you bought Carr's portfolio, “An $8,000 investment on August 20, 2012 would be worth $12,706 today,” he rejoices, “A total portfolio gain of 58.83 %.”

Next he came up with his “Death Portfolio. (Well, he called it a “Funeral Services Index” but we all know what that means.)

This one also did well, since (brace yourself for the inevitable pun) people are dying to make money for it  – although it didn’t do quite as well as the crazier Doomsday Portfolio. In the case of the Death Portfolio, an $8,000 investment in Carr's list of funeral companies on March 4, 2013, would be worth $9,767 in late October, a ”a gain of 22.09% in a little more than seven months.”

Which leads me to believe that Carr may be on to something. I personally prefer archly conservative, reliably-dividend-paying, no-fun, old-fogey stocks like utilities, insurance companies, and manufactuers of  household staples. (Even in the worst of times you’re not likely to say, “Honey, we’ve really got to cut back. How about us doing without toilet paper this month?) And in fact, The Oxford Club has a guy who recommends just that sort of thing for retirement portfolios – toilet paper manufacturers (two of them), utilities, pill manufacturers and others yawners, most of which do nothing but lie there and reliably dribble money into my old age fund.

Even so, in a crazy nation (which our The United States most assuredly is) there actually may be something to grouping our insanities in clusters and investing in them.

The National Bankruptcy Portfolio, 

the Texas Secession Portfolio, and 

raw, uninhibitedly-profitable sex

Since races to the cliff edge of national bankruptcy are becoming America's favorite spectator sport, how about a national bankruptcy portfolio? I’ll leave it to Carr to pick the stocks, but it might include a Swiss or Bahamian bank where the billionaires can ship their own stashes before their U.S. banks cave in; an airplane leasing company or small jet airplane manufacturer, so the rich can get the hell out of the country without waiting on security lines before Everything Is Worthless; a tin cup manufacturers and a pencil maker (need I explain?); and a a pharmaceutical company that makes pills useful for quick and painless suicides that avoid messy plunges from the 20th story windows. (Can you still get a prescription for Penobarbitol, the suicide drug-of-choice back in the 1950s, and under consideration for snuffing Death Row inmates today?)

I’m also rather fond of the idea of a Texas Secession Portfolio. The Tea Party whackos down there are acting as if they’re part of a separate nation anyway. When they break away and form their own separate Republic they’re going to need their own army, making them a natural customer for American defense industry companies. They’ll need their own currency (consider purchasing stock in companies making printing and engraving equipment.) And they’ll need elementary school textbooks that reflect their special way of life. Sooner or later, some public book publisher will put out a reader that begins, “See Dick. See Dick run. See Dick run black people, Hispanics and women out of the voting booths.”)

Finally, whether there’s a democracy or a dictatorship, a kingdom or anarchy, people will always need, love, and practice sex. It’s just never going to go out of style. Matthew, which condom manufacturer's stock should I buy Also, should I buy the makers of Viagra or of Cialis? There’s no public manufacturer of inflatable sex dolls, but I do take note that Amazon.com, which is certainly public,  offers “inflatable love dolls” including an inflatable love sheep, and "Sex For Dummies" books.

Of course, porn will always be big business (and no, I’m not going to give you any URLs here. Do your own homework.) But if Vivid Entertainment ever goes public, please do count me in on the IPO.

Over to you, Matthew.