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.

Annoyed, irked, furious that some stockbroker, brokerage “financial planner,” or shill led you down the garden path? Here’s what they think of you.

Years ago, in the course of interviewing some commodity salesmen at a major brokerage house, Yours Crankily discovered the word that financial salespeople use for customers who complain that they’ve taken their advisors' advice and lost money.

“Crybabies.”

Yeah, they can afford to put you down. After all, it wasn’t their money that got lost. It was yours.

Not to say that the buyer shouldn’t always beware just on general principals. Anybody who says he knows where a stock is going a week down the road ought either to have his head examined or get arrested for fraud or insider trading. A childhood friend of mine, who was a Senior Vice President at a couple of well-known banks once told me, “I made my entire career and a lot of money pretending I knew what the market would do. The truth is, I didn’t know s**t.”

All the same, people come to brokers, bankers, advisors and publications because they know they need to invest and they’re not sure what to do. They figure the “expert” knows more than they do. And these experts are more than happy to sell advice to them, and sometimes securities and wealth management plans as well.

So people who sell their expertise want you to believe that indeed, they are God.

Visit the web testimonials page of The Oxford Club, an organization that sells subscriptions to newsletters containing investment advice. The first testimonial you encounter says this, “"Alex Green is the one of the most creative investment advisors I have ever encountered. I've known him for over 25 years, and have been continually impressed by his thorough diligence and skillful timing on investments. Alex has a broad view of investment opportunities, from domestic to foreign." http://www.oxfordclub.com/Visitors/Testimonials.html

Oxford mail and e-mail promotion pieces talk not only about beating the Dow or the S&P 500, but also about doubling and tripling your money in short amounts of time. No wonder some naïve investors look on these people as God. And no wonder they cry like Job when the market drowns their hopes, and sucks away their savings. But at least God restored Job to his former state when Job cut out his praise-the-Lord stuff and turned crybaby. Don't expect that from the Oxford Club, or anyone having anything to do with Wall Street.

Listen, I happen to like the Oxford Club. Green has made recommendations that have made money for me in recent times. All the more reason why I get nervous when Green sends me an e-mail praising, of all people, the author Ayn Rand, and carrying on about John Gault, a fictional Rand character. Worse, he uses Rand's colossally ridiculous fiction as the basis for his latest round of investment advice.

Do I mean the same fiction that praises ruthlessly predatory capitalists? Yup. And that scares me. Green writes:

“First, take responsibility for your own trades. Whether you make money or lose money, you should relish the fruits of your labors when your stocks go up, and not blame others when your investments decline.

“Granted, you may have learned of an investment idea from a stockbroker, newsletter writer or TV personality, but only you can be blamed if the stock goes south. Ultimately, it was YOU who decided to use that broker, subscribe to that newsletter writer, or watch that favorite financial program. Wise investors use several sources and then make their own investment decisions.”

Wait a second, Alex! Wait just one damn second! Why didn’t you tell me this when The Oxford Club was selling your skills as a stock guru?

In fact, why is Oxford telling me, in a box full of lusciously purple prose about blue water, inserted right into the text of Green's e-mail about John Gault, “The 2007 Breakout Commodity Report: Make Up to 689% in the Next Few Months from ‘The BLUE Revolution’

“A torrent of water is about to let loose on thirsty Nevada, from rivers of water that lay 200 feet to 2,000 feet below the surface of some of the most barren-looking land in the world. And a single company owns the right to that water - more than a million acres of proven reserves - that will generate approximately 11.4 billion gallons per year!

“Investors who know about this secret network of underground rivers stand to almost quadruple their money (on this investment alone) when the water begins flowing in just months.

“And that’s just one of four water-related opportunities you’ll learn about in The Oxford Club’s new report: Profit From The Blue Revolution: Pocket 689% Gains Or More From The One Commodity More Precious Than Oil, Uranium And Natural Gas.”

Got that, folks? Six hundred and eighty-nine percent, Green's "club" says. “In the next few months” at that.

Holy cow! That’s what I call a bold attempt to grab me through my computer screen and massage my greed gland to financial orgasm.

Just remember that on the same page, Green is excusing himself from any liability if the Oxford prediction of almost septupling your money in a few months turns out to be as phony as a $3 bill.

What scares me even more is that people who sell advice – even the generally good advice the Oxford Club has been selling me – are beginning to get off specifics and into John Gault and Ayn Rand morality. Consider that a giant “uh oh.” What do they know about the state of the market that they don’t want me to know until I part with my subscription dollars?

Or do they really know anything at all?