The Swamp Shows Us the Perfect Investment
Andy Snyder|November 29, 2022
It’s one of the best investments anyone can make. The returns are nearly guaranteed… and they come year after year.
Owning a senator isn’t cheap… but dang, does it pay off.
Fortunately, there’s a way to own a senator directly: through the New York Stock Exchange.
If you’ve sorted through the news over the last few days, you may have noticed our friends in Europe aren’t all that happy with us folks in the U.S.
We’re making a killing off the war in Iraq Afghanistan Ukraine… and they’re paying the price.
Their food is expensive. Their fuel costs four times more than ours. And they face a nasty, deep recession.
Here at home, though, folks are getting rich.
Oil prices are falling. Stocks are rising once more. And the swamp is as dank as ever.
Pay attention and you’ll see how all of this works.
Good Money
It was August of last year when American troops said an ugly goodbye to Afghanistan. As our cargo planes went wheels up… we left behind more than terrified citizens. We left behind an era of incredible defense spending.
The numbers are unreal.
If only the rest of us could get returns like these…
According to official documents, over the 20 years following 9/11, the nation’s top five defense firms spent $1.1 billion lobbying Congress for more death and destruction.
It paid off.
Their piece of the budget shot up 188% over that time.
Combined, the five firms received $2.02 trillion in contracts – a nearly 200,000% return on their money.
That well went dry, though, as soon as we left those Afghan folks dangling from our airplanes.
It took just six months to dig a new well.
By February, we’d found another war to fund. It’s been less than a year, but over $100 billion has already been sent to Ukraine or is on its way.
Getting Rich
In most cases, the money goes directly to the five big defense firms mentioned above – Boeing (BA), Lockheed Martin (LMT), Northrop Grumman (NOC), Raytheon (RTX) and General Dynamics (GD).
Unlike the vast majority of stocks, these defense darlings are having yet another strong year.
With the exception of problem-prone Boeing, shares are up… and in some cases, they’re up almost as much as shares in the oil industry (which has, by the way, increased its lobbying budget by more than 10% this year).
It’s a bittersweet set of facts. There’s money to be made… but at the cost of lives lost and families destroyed.
Our allies are right to be angry. They’re pawns in this game too.
We say all this to prove a point.
It’s not just that you can make big money by following government spending. The big truth in all of this is what we’ve been saying for years and years: If you want to get rich, you’d better know what your local senator is up to… and who’s paying his mortgage.
The government – not the free market’s invisible hand – is the most powerful force on Wall Street.
Invest accordingly.
If you can’t buy a senator outright… own the companies that can.
Andy Snyder
Andy Snyder is an American author, investor and serial entrepreneur. He cut his teeth at an esteemed financial firm with nearly $100 billion in assets under management. Andy and his ideas have been featured on Fox News, on countless radio stations, and in numerous print and online outlets. He’s been a keynote speaker and panelist at events all over the world, from four-star ballrooms to Capitol hearing rooms.
