Who We Are and What We’re All About

1. Your 5 Bullets are free… and you get what you pay for!
2. What sets us apart from Wall Street and the financial media
3. The “trade-off” for having no conflicts of interest
4. Why some of our services cost so much
5. How we measure our success (not what you think).

Without a Paradigm, You Have No Investment Strategy

“It would really be a breath of fresh air,” a reader wrote to us some years back, “if a company like yours would deliver everything we expected from our subscriptions.”

“I didn’t buy this to hear news,” wrote another. “I bought to find reasonable predictions backed with data to demonstrate why I should buy a stock or a cryptocurrency.”

“I don’t get anything but the same old news in new packaging,” said a third.

Today – with U.S. markets closed for the observation of Juneteenth – we’re taking time out from our usual fare to address some timeless reader concerns.

If you’re a newer reader, you’ll come away with a better understanding of who we are and what we’re all about. If you’re a veteran, you can skip today’s edition — or you can skim it and maybe learn something new anyway.

First things first: As the “from line” attests, these daily emails come to you from an outfit called Paradigm Press.

We’re one of the leading names in financial publishing – a storied and colorful niche in the media, one that was making waves long before the advent of the internet.

We traffic in investment ideas outside the mainstream – as you’re surely aware from the presence of the most familiar name in our stable of editors, Jim Rickards.

Our publishers chose the name Paradigm Press with great care.

In the New Oxford American Dictionary, one definition of “paradigm” is “a worldview underlying the theories and methodology of a particular scientific subject.”

How does that apply to the realm of investing, you wonder?

There’s no shortage of places where you can find formulaic “investment advice.” But it’s a rare thing indeed to find investment recommendations that rest on a systematic worldview.

That is, we’re talking about a model of how the economy and the markets work — one that’s grounded in tried-and-true principles, yes, but one that can also evolve in the face of new information.

We firmly believe that by acting on a rigorous paradigm, you can achieve significant outperformance in your portfolio — preserving your wealth, growing your retirement, securing your future.

Especially now at a time when confusion and commotion pervade the markets in a way they haven’t in many, many decades.

Each of our editors embraces this mission with gusto – Jim Rickards, of course, as well as income investing specialist Zach Scheidt… natural resources authority Byron King… technology maven Ray Blanco… venture capital veteran and crypto evangelist James Altucher… and trading specialist Alan Knuckman.

We spotlight their ideas each day here in Paradigm Pressroom’s 5 Bullets.

“Wait, This Isn’t What I Paid For”

Before we go any further, let’s get one thing out of the way: If in the course of reading these 5 Bullets you’ve ever thought to yourself, This isn’t what I paid for... well, no, it’s not.

Perhaps you first encountered Paradigm Press’ work via an ad on Facebook... and you were persuaded to sign up for one of our entry-level newsletters. If you’ve come aboard within the last year, it’s highly likely you did so in response to the “Biden Bucks” campaign for Jim Rickards’ Strategic Intelligence.

Typically, the “fulfillment” for a $49 annual subscription like that includes a monthly issue with an investment recommendation… weekly updates on previous recommendations… maybe links to articles in the financial press that reinforce the themes the editor is following (in Jim’s case, the “5 Links” every Monday)… and “flash” buy and sell alerts as needed.

But we also throw some freebies into the mix — including the e-letter you’re reading right now.

Because your paid product reaches out and touches you once or twice a week… while this missive comes to you every day… it’s understandable that you might think 5 Bullets is the main product. But it’s not — it’s a free bonus on top of the Paradigm Press publication you paid for.

[If you’re not getting what you actually paid for — the monthly issues, weekly updates and so on — by all means, get in touch with our friendly and helpful customer care team.]

So what’s this 5 Bullets thing all about, anyway? Our daily recipe goes something like this: Take the Paradigm team’s best ideas... mix in some not-so-common takes on the day’s financial headlines… throw in a dash of “quirk” from the business world… and add a generous helping of reader feedback. Leaven the whole thing with the mockery Wall Street and Washington so richly deserve. We bake and serve our 5 Bullets every business day.

This e-letter adopted its new name and new look three weeks ago; it came under the Paradigm Press umbrella last year. But its origins go all the way back to its launch in 2007 as The 5 Min. Forecast. With that kind of longevity, we like to think we’re doing something right.

What Makes Paradigm Press Different

Our mission at Paradigm Press is to provide fiercely independent financial research — the kind of guidance you can’t possibly get from the big Wall Street brokerages that plaster their slick commercials all over TV.

So much of the financial world is shot through with conflicts of interest. For instance…

• If an analyst on Wall Street thinks a stock or other security his firm is flogging is junk… he has to hold his tongue

• Brokerages and financial advisers are frequently incentivized to sell you “packaged products” that generate fees for themselves, even if the investments in those products aren’t suited to your personal needs

• Most financial media outlets pay the bills by soliciting advertising — often from brokerages and other Wall Street firms. The “news” you read or watch is generated by journalists who are forever looking over their shoulders, worried about offending the advertisers (assuming they haven’t totally drunk Wall Street’s Kool-Aid already).

In 2017, the situation got even worse with the outbreak of a “fake financial news” scandal. It turns out certain writers took payments under the table to write some 450 bullish articles about public companies.

The articles ended up on many popular sites including Seeking Alpha, Forbes, TheStreet, Yahoo Finance, The Motley Fool, Benzinga, Minyanville, Wall Street Cheat Sheet, SmallCap Network, Investor Village and Market Playground. In some cases, the articles even had a disclaimer saying the writer wasn’t being paid… and it was flat untrue.

At Paradigm Press, our business model allows us to sidestep that BS. No conflicts of interest here.

We generate the overwhelming majority of our revenue through the subscription fees of readers like you. Doing so affords us much independence. We don’t take secret payments from companies to tout a stock just so we can keep the lights on. Nor do we have to look over our shoulder and wonder what outside advertisers think of our content.

What you read from us is the unvarnished opinion of our editors. And many of our editors are refugees from Wall Street — demoralized by a culture where they were constantly answering to clients or advertisers or the board of directors, watching their backs one moment, kissing someone else’s backside the next.

All those problems go away when they come to work for Paradigm Press. Subscription revenue is our bread and butter, so all an editor has to do is speak his truth and hope his truth resonates with his subscriber base.

A Look “Under the Hood” at What We Do

The “downside” to this business model, if that’s what you want to call it, is the marketing.

Maybe you think it’s “aggressive.” We know it’s aggressive. We don’t apologize for that, because we think ours is a much more honest way to earn a living than to, well, kowtow to external advertisers or take payments from the investor-relations departments of public companies. No conflicts of interest here. No hidden agendas. No BS.

We’re proud of the research we turn out at Paradigm Press. We think it can make a positive difference in your life. So yes, once you buy one of our products, we’re keen to sell you another.

Generally speaking, we have two kinds of products. There are the entry-level newsletters I mentioned earlier like Rickards’ Strategic Intelligence or Lifetime Income Report. Then there are the high-end trading advisories like Rickards’ Countdown to Crisis, Ray Blanco’s Catalyst Trader, The Profit Wire or The Income Alliance.

The premium services are priced higher — usually, as you’ve likely discovered from our sales promotions, a lot higher. There are several reasons for that.

First, the risk-reward ratio with the recommendations in these premium advisories is much higher. The aim is for big profits in comparatively little time. Usually we’re talking speculations as opposed to investments. Readers need to go in with eyes wide open and know those recommendations inevitably entail more risk. The higher price shuts out beginners and people of comparatively little means — that is, people who shouldn’t be taking on that level of risk.

Too, the plays tend to be more sophisticated. They might be short-term trades of as little as a week. Or you’re buying options. Or you’re selling options to pocket instant income. Or you're acquiring microcap stocks that are thinly traded.

The microcaps are a special area of concern for us. We’re talking about companies worth only millions of dollars, not billions. If we published them in an entry-level newsletter to tens of thousands of people, we’d artificially goose the share price, only to see it crash again. Bad for us, bad for readers. Charging a higher price for those recommendations limits the number of people who would potentially buy in.

If you feel the tug of the promise that comes with one of our high-end advisories but you don’t have the means to afford it yet… well, the idea is that the money you make following an entry-level newsletter will allow you to step up to a higher level of service, hopefully sooner rather than later.

In the end, it does us no good just to have customers. It’s happy customers we want.

That’s why we’ve built out a customer care team that’s 100% located in Paradigm Press’ home base of Baltimore. There’s nothing that gets offshored when you email or call them. (Some of the reps might have that distinctive mid-Atlantic accent in which “downtown” sounds like “day-own tay-own,” but we doubt anything will get lost in translation.)

Again, if you suspect you’re not getting all the “deliverables” you were promised in that lip-smacking sales promotion — if you don’t think you’re getting the buy and sell alerts and such — get in touch. It’s what those folks are there for. Call 1-844-731-0984 or use this handy “contact us” form. For as much thought as we put into those “promos” and how we get them in front of people’s eyeballs… we really do care about service after the sale, as the saying goes.

Fun fact: Long before I left the TV news racket and got into the financial publishing business in 2007… I was a newsletter subscriber just like you.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about the reader experience. And not a week goes by that I’m not offering feedback to our publishers and editors about how we’re either doing it well or we could do it better.

The Analysis… and the Recommendations

So a few final words about this e-letter you’re getting each day.

Again, this isn’t the product you bought. This is a freebie. So if you read these 5 Bullets and wonder, Where are the recommendations? it comes back to a rule of thumb we’ve had for many years — long before our team came together under the Paradigm Press banner.

The analysis you get here is free. The recommendations are reserved for paying readers.

Think of it like this: If you saw a recommendation in your paid publication one week and then saw the name of the stock mentioned in 5 Bullets the following week, wouldn’t you feel rooked?

Yes, sometimes the content you read here is structured in a way that might spur you to subscribe to a new newsletter or trading advisory in addition to whatever you’re reading already. We’d be delighted if you clicked and even more delighted if you bought.

But that’s not the yardstick by which we measure our success. Ultimately, we succeed if at the end of each 5 Bullets edition…

• ... you learn at least one interesting thing you didn’t know before
• ... you decide to come back the next day.

Thanks for hearing us out today and letting us explain a little about how we do that voodoo we do. Tomorrow the markets are open again and we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Best regards,

Dave Gonigam
Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets