Weight-loss drugs are mainstream… Why the growth story is far from over… Our Dave Lashmet explains… His next stock pick is coming soon… The Fed is on deck (again)… What to watch…

‘Honey, can you record Oprah?’…

Around 8 o’clock last night, I (Corey McLaughlin) received that text message from my wife. She was in another room and wanted to make sure she could watch all of Oprah Winfrey’s new special on weight-loss drugs that was airing live on ABC…

I obliged, of course, but it was unbelievable…

This – the development of weight-loss drugs and the growing demand for them – is a major investing story we discussed here in the Digest just last week… and at various points over the past five years…

As we’ve explained, our colleague and Stansberry Venture Technology editor Dave Lashmet has been on top of weight-loss-drug developments for years. He has traveled to conferences around the world and saw firsthand how interested doctors were in even the thought of these drugs.

Then he tracked their performance through clinical trials and shared detailed insight and recommendations along the way in Venture Technology and here in the Digest. He knows the potential for adoption of these drugs inside and out… and the companies best positioned to deliver massive returns for early investors.

Last night, you could say the story officially went mainstream…

Much like she did on her massively popular daytime talk show from 1986 to 2011, Oprah – who famously struggled with her weight over the years – put together a wide-ranging forum on this single topic…

She brought on patients who have been taking these drugs, talked to doctors about why they were prescribing them, and brought on the current CEO of WW, the company better known as WeightWatchers.

“This is what we’ve been talking about,” I told my wife as she sat down to watch.

Now, savvy investors might think, ‘Well, there goes the opportunity to invest in this trend’…

Seasoned investing vets know to consider that if “everybody knows about it” already, the biggest money has already been made, right? Well, as Dave will tell you, that’s not the case here. While weight-loss drugs are popular news now, the growth story is far from over, he says.

In short – and what we didn’t hear during the Oprah show last night – is what Dave explained in Friday’s Digest… Producing these glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) drugs involves making a protein, a building block of life, which takes time… So these companies aren’t able to keep up with current demand.

Next, consider the total addressable market – a key factor that many successful investors consider before putting money to work because it gives you a start to gauge demand. As Dave wrote on Friday…

Demand is insatiable, really. At a minimum, 100 million American adults are clinically obese… So are another 100 million globally.

And if you add folks who are considered overweight though not obese, you get another 50 million Americans and 350 million folks in Europe…

These drugs have a supply issue…

As Dave detailed Friday, the leaders in this weight-loss-drug race are just now investing billions in building out the facilities to make them (that look a lot like what beer companies use to make beer).

As Dave expects, this capital investment will help more folks access these drugs over the long run… and lead to more earnings and rewards for shareholders of these companies. He said…

This scenario matters to investors because in this case, supply directly translates into profits. The demand is there.

One company making these drugs has just committed to a $10 billion building spree, mostly in the U.S…

The second company making weight-loss drugs committed $6 billion to expand manufacturing in Europe. Then a few weeks ago, it spent another $11 billion to buy the protein-brewing vats from its one key supplier…

Altogether, these two weight-loss companies are spending $27 billion – an amount that we’ve never before seen invested into the production of these kinds of protein drugs.

These companies have already seen their share prices soar. But these stocks have not peaked…

Earnings ultimately drive their share prices. And if they build more drugs, they can sell more, and make more.

In many cases, an Oprah show or other mainstream-media reference makes us consider a contrarian decision. Dave says all this attention isn’t a “sign of the top” when it comes to weight-loss drugs.

Far from it… He foresees 200% upside for each of these two firms despite the gains folks have already made from them – and expects more developments to keep happening.

To explain all of this in greater detail, we’ve put together a new free presentation…

You’ll hear from our colleague Ken Millstone, who recently sat down to share his story about how a GLP-1 drug he’s taking has changed his life and why he believes the weight-loss-drug “revolution” is just getting started, too.

He personally sees demand skyrocketing and can’t even fill his prescription right now.

In the presentation, you’ll also have a chance to get the stock tickers of the two companies leading the way in this trend – and hear about how you can access all of Dave’s latest research in Venture Technology for 60% off the usual cost and get a free bonus valued at $2,500.

(As a reminder… Dave is the guy who has recommended more than 30 stocks that have doubled – 100% gains or more – since the inception of his newsletter. One of them was Nvidia, which tops the Stansberry Research Hall of Fame.)

And act now…

Dave told me today that, next week, he’s planning to send a brand-new recommendation to his subscribers about a company that has been working on a weight-loss pill with “no competition.” You’ll want to be among the first to hear about it.

Again, click here to check out Ken’s story – and get more details about Dave and his latest research, including how you can access his elite service at a steep discount and get the free bonus today.

A quick postscript…

In another time, like anywhere from 1986 to 2011 when the original Oprah Winfrey Show aired, we might have needed to record the show to a VCR tape, fumbled around a dresser looking for the equipment, and missed the whole thing.

Thanks to our digital streaming service – which costs the equivalent of what a cable and Internet package used to (a story about the media landscape for another time) – we hit the record button and watched painlessly.

Onward… to Fed-land…

Tomorrow marks the conclusion of another Federal Reserve policy meeting, followed by a press conference that will take us into the mind of Fed Chair (and noted astrologer, remember) Jerome Powell.

The prevailing market expectation is for the central bank to keep its suggested benchmark bank-lending rate range – the federal-funds rate – between 5.25% and 5.5%, right where it has been since last June. I would be stunned by anything else.

As is usually the case with these meetings, though, Wall Street analysts, investors, and the financial media will weigh “what’s next”…

Setting the stage…

The timing of the Fed’s recently promised rate cuts later this year remains uncertain. And we haven’t heard anything about the central bank’s plans with its balance sheet in quite a while.

Plus, this month’s Fed meeting marks one of its quarterly “Summary of Economic Projections” meetings. That’s when Fed members publish their expectations for interest rates, inflation, GDP, and unemployment over the next year and beyond.

Forget for a moment that these predictions are frequently wrong… We’ve observed that enough investors make decisions based on them for these meetings to be meaningful for price action one way or another.

In December, for example, the Fed projected three 50-basis-point rate cuts in 2024 – more than it had three months earlier. This helped fuel a strong year-end rally in 2023 in the major U.S. stock indexes that is still going (because cuts mean a lower “cost of money”).

In September, on the other hand, when the Fed projected its benchmark lending rate would stay above 5% throughout all of 2024, the indexes continued their summer and early-fall swoon that bottomed in October.

Stocks have been trending up lately…

The benchmark S&P 500 Index was up today. It’s 4% higher over the past month and up 25% since its low in October 2023.

The leading expectation is for the Fed to cut rates and make financial life for the world easier sometime this summer. Anything that casts doubt on that idea could cause some volatility tomorrow and the next few days, at least.

Of late, the market has acted like higher-than-expected inflation numbers haven’t mattered, because the central bank will be lowering rates sometime in the next nine months no matter what.

So, if we hear higher expectations for growth and inflation – and Fed interest rates – or any of the three, it could lead to a haircut for dollar-denominated assets. Alternatively, Fed numbers and a Powell press conference supporting the status quo could just keep the bullish theme going.

We’ll be keeping an eye on it all for the rest of the week – stocks, bonds, the U.S. dollar, gold, and even bitcoin, to gauge what the market is signaling – and report back, starting tomorrow.

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New 52-week highs (as of 3/18/24): Aya Gold & Silver (AYASF), Cencora (COR), Disney (DIS), Enerplus (ERF), Diamondback Energy (FANG), W.W. Grainger (GWW), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Oracle (ORCL), Textron (TXT), and Waste Management (WM).

In today’s mailbag, feedback for Stansberry Research employee Ken Millstone, who we mentioned has decided to share his story of seeking out and trying a GLP-1 weight-loss drug. Again, you can hear all those details here… Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.

“Ken, I’m a retired person and I have limited ‘dry powder’ to invest. Your story is greatly inspiring, you have lots to be grateful for! Thank you! For your message!” – Subscriber Bill K.

All the best,

Corey McLaughlin
Baltimore, Maryland
March 19, 2024