True Contrarians

I like contrarians, and consider contrarian a term of endearment. If we believe the investment lore, only contrarian traders achieve success. The myth rings true: to beat the market, one must go against it. To win, contrarians need to believe in their own edge over otters. Which might explain why contrarians lionize individualism. They need to go their own way. Sometimes it works for all the good reasons.

Chace Barber drove logging trucks since the beginnings, to pay for his U. Big, heavily loaded trucks riding up and down mountain forests. Frustrated by the job offers from econ shops, he bought a 1969 Kenworth and started a trucking gig. It failed, after which he started Edison Motors {1}. His company now builds custom electric and hybrid trucks.

I see two main ingredients in his secret sauce. First, that parts from old trucks are all standardized, and thus cheap. During the Cold War the US Army asked contractors to build vehicles with interchangeable parts. This is critical for logging trucks, because when they break, drivers need to fix them on their own in the middle of nowhere. Second, he wants to exploit a known physical effect {2}:

This Physics Professor Recharges Electric Trucks as they Ride with this ONE WEIRD TRICK!

Hard not to root for Chace. He looks and sounds like a true contrarian. The same could have been said of Porter Stansberry, for different reasons, at least at first. When Porter talks about recession, distressed debt or crypto, he sounds like a run of the mill value investor {3}. But when he goes full Climateball mode, we see that going one’s way can reach epic hubris.

Take his Two Men project. It features Larry Fink, from Blackrock, and Michael Bloomberg. Two powerful men, incidentally of Jewish lineages. Let me spare you the financial and mediatic details he offers about the Great Reset of Western Civilization. You already heard a similar tune.

On the Climateball side, many Bingo squares get triggered, among them But Alarmism. But 12 Years, But Modulz, But Data, But RCPs, and But The Poor. You may never guess his smoking gun: Junior’s conspiracy at Forbes’, a company owned in majority by Integrated Whale Media {4}.

So Porter’s recipe reads like this: (1) create websites with fake documentaries and well-known Climateball tropes; (2) after red meat priming, ask Freedom Fighters to subscribe to a newsletter and buy reports on hand picked small cap stocks, which he presumably already owns; (3) profit.

Hard for me not to root for Chace. Hard for me not to dismiss Porter as another crank. Yet Chace’s path carries more risks. Many of Porter’s calls were tremendously profitable over the years. Investing in gas indeed is a no brainer for anyone who followed the energy markets recently. So it’s not exactly a scam.

Why the Climateball talking points, then? Why rant about gas stoves? Why persist in trying to bend hard facts known for decades? As Sage Welch suggests, to resurrect this concern can only help those who wish to bring climate to the forefront.

All and all, we need better contrarians. True contrarians. No time to wait for our milquetoast troglodytes. Become one yourself. Be a contrarian’s contrarian. ABC – Always Be Contrarian.

Notes

{1} Chace raises money over Tik Tok. He only accepts 1K investments. Most of his funding comes from truckers who can recognize the value proposition behind the craftsmanship.

{2} Levin’s channel is pure awesomeness. It belongs in a space shuttle for aliens not to despair on us.

{3} Value investors tend to be contrarian. Think Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch, Carl Icahn.

{4} Oh, Junior. You silly you.