Do Not Forward: Secret Briefing Enclosed

A briefcase tethered to a lifeless body floats toward the southern Spanish coast.

It’s intercepted by a lone fisherman.

Dragged onto the beach and inspected by Spanish soldiers, the body is identified as Major Martin, a British Royal Marines captain.

In his pockets are a photograph of his fiancée, love letters, a receipt for a diamond ring, ticket stubs from a London theater, a bill for a stay at the Naval and Military Club in London, a silver cross, and an overdraft notice from Lloyds Bank.

The briefcase contains a letter marked “PERSONAL AND MOST SECRET,” hinting at the Allied invasion plans for Southern Europe through Greece and Sardinia, citing Sicily as a decoy.

Nazi intelligence intercepts the letter, and Hitler diverts troops from France and the Eastern Front to Greece, choosing not to reinforce Sicily.

The only problem for the Nazis?

It was all a ruse.

Operation Mincemeat

In early 1943, an Allied invasion of Southern Europe was imminent, and Sicily was the chosen spot as it would open the Mediterranean to Allied shipping.

But it was also the most obvious location, so the Allies needed to make Hitler believe they were going to land somewhere else.

They needed a secret weapon.

They needed deception.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill leaned heavily on deception in World War II and thought it was the only way to win the war, saying, “Gentlemen, we have run out of money. Now we have to think.”

So they hatched a plan called Operation Mincemeat (you’ve gotta love that British humor), which was carried out by the XX Committee, a secret division of MI5, Britain’s counterintelligence service.

We can further attribute the plan to author Ian Fleming, who served as an assistant to the head of British Naval Intelligence before creating the James Bond novels.

The Allies drew on ideas in his famous “Trout Memo,” which lists 54 ways to lure in and deceive the enemy.

It turns out “Major Martin” was a vagrant who died from eating rat poison, and all the “pocket litter,” as spies call it, was fictitious and worn in to give the appearance of use (one man even wore the fake officer’s suit and had an affair with the aforementioned fiancée).

The silver cross indicated the man was a Catholic, which meant the Spanish doctors wouldn’t perform an autopsy.

It was important to conceal the man’s true cause of death.

The XX Committee thought of everything, and the plan worked.

Two months later, Sicily was easily taken, opening Southern Europe to the Allies.

Corkscrew Thinking

Operation Mincemeat succeeded only because of what Churchill called “corkscrew thinking,” i.e., creative problem solving and doing more with less.

Further, he knew Hitler to be a “straight-line thinker,” someone who follows a rational line of thought from point A to point B.

The XX Committee didn’t have a big budget, which meant operatives had to use their minds to deceive the Nazis, thereby helping all other operations run smoothly and ending the war sooner.

Fast-forward to today, and we need more corkscrew thinkers in our own government… especially when the former White House doctor and 13 House Republicans are now urging the president to take a cognitive test.

That’s why you need to enlist corkscrew thinkers on your side.

We consider ourselves corkscrew thinkers at Wealth Daily, as we’re willing to think outside the box to find the best companies worth your hard-earned investing dollars.

For too long investors have thought the well-known big blue chip companies are where they should park their money, but that’s just straight-line thinking.

What investors need is a system that identifies safe companies on the verge of a blowout. It’s the opposite of what you’d expect — just what corkscrew thinkers love.

Monday Market Movers

Here are three stocks I’m watching this week:

Arista Networks (NYSE: ANET)

California-based Arista Networks is a multinational computer networking and cloud computing company. Founded in 2004, Arista Networks makes high-performance network switches and other networking solutions for data centers and cloud computing environments.

The company is known for its high-speed and low-latency networking infrastructure for cloud service providers, large enterprises, and other organizations with demanding networking requirements. ANET's products are often used in mission-critical applications where fast and reliable data transfer is essential.

Arista Network has gained a strong presence in the data center and cloud networking market and competes with other major networking companies like Cisco and Juniper Networks.

They have gained a lot of attention previously when Elon Musk said he’s creating X.AI, an intelligent AI with a mission of understanding the universe — and this AI will rely heavily on Arista’s infrastructure.

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (OTC: GBTC) and Grayscale Ethereum Trust (OTC: ETHE)

As the world grapples with wars, inflation, and de-dollarization, crypto could go on another bull run. You can now get exposure to cryptocurrency and limit your risk through these trust funds.

They can also work as a tax tool for your retirement because you won’t incur capital gains taxes by selling individual cryptos.

Even better, Ark Invest founder and CEO Cathie Wood has previously bought millions of dollars’ worth of shares of the Bitcoin Trust. So if you’re risk-averse or don’t have the technical understanding of buying and selling cryptos, these funds are the most popular buy-and-hold strategy to play the trend.

The third stock I’m watching is a backdoor play on renewable energy. I’ve put together an entire presentation on it that you can access here.

Stay frosty,

Alexander Boulden
Editor, Wealth Daily

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After Alexander’s passion for economics and investing drew him to one of the largest financial publishers in the world, where he rubbed elbows with former Chicago Board Options Exchange floor traders, Wall Street hedge fund managers, and International Monetary Fund analysts, he decided to take up the pen and guide others through this new age of investing.

Alexander is the investment director of Insider Stakeout — a weekly investment advisory service dedicated to tracking the smartest money on the planet so that his readers can achieve life-altering, market-beating returns. He also serves at the managing editor for R.I.C.H. Report, a comprehensive service that uses the highest-quality investment research and strategies that guides its members in growing their wealth on top of preserving it.

Check out his editor’s page here.

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