Who I am and What I do

I am not a journalist, though much of what I do is similar to what any good reporter does: I read a lot, talk to/e-mail with many people, and try to deeply understand complex companies and issues.

But I am, first and foremost, an investor and, secondarily, an investment newsletter publisher.

This means that, unlike a journalist, my goal is, first, to develop a strong opinion about the future of a company or industry – ideally one that is out of consensus, and therefore not reflected in the stock price(s).

Then, I write up my analysis and resulting conclusion (what you pejoratively call "an agenda") and share it with my readers. (I give much of it away for free in Whitney Tilson's Daily, but reserve the best ideas for my paid-up subscribers of Empire Stock Investor – you can sign up for it here; there is a 30-day money-back guarantee.)

I have three objectives: to educate, entertain, and enrich all of my readers, whether subscribers or not.

Every day in these e-mails, I seek to provide solid insights, sound advice, and provocative opinions (if I don't make you laugh out loud and/or spit out your coffee at least once a week, I'm not doing my job!).

In addition, I look, a few times a year, to make a big, bold call. I only do so when I'm extremely confident I'll be proven right. People pay attention because I have a two-decade track record to back me up. Past examples include:

• Recommending Apple (AAPL) when it had a $7.2 billion market cap (vs. $850 billion today) and warning about Cisco (CSCO) when its market cap was $395 billion (vs. $247 billion today), on October 16, 2000 (Cisco, Apple, and Probabilities)

• Pitching Netflix (NFLX) at my conference and on CNBC the day it bottomed at $7.78 on October 1, 2012, when I called it "this decade's Amazon" (you can see my slides here)

• Warning about the Internet, housing, 3D printing, bitcoin, and pot stock bubbles right at their peaks (in the case of the latter two, to the very hour!)