Today, we're gonna talk about an asset class that's been right under our noses (and over our heads) for centuries.

Pigeons.

Before you accuse me of day-drinking, allow me to explain.

These feathered friends might just be the most underrated urban dwellers since that guy who invented the pizza rat meme.

Bold claim, I realize.

BUT, the thing is…

Pigeons have a bit of an image problem.

They're the Nickelbacks of the bird world - everybody loves to hate them. What they don’t know: pigeons represent the biggest opportunity since Jeff Bezos sold his first book.

The Truth About Pigeons

Once upon a time, pigeons were the iPhone 77 of the animal kingdom - prized, pampered, posh.

Unfortunately, things went south when the lowly lobster poached the pigeon’s PR guy.

The once-repugnant “cockroach of the ocean” crawled its way from prison food to black-tie delicacy while the illustrious pigeon became a mere “rat with wings”. Sad!

People forget: These birds have witnessed firsthand and adapted to the entire sweep of human civilization.

The modern American city pigeon descends from the wild rock dove (Columba livia), whose natural habitat is not NYC and Chicago…

But coastal cliffs and rocky areas in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of South Asia.

All of them, except maybe a few in San Francisco (the band-taileds), were brought here as messenger birds, for show, or for racing…

And then, yes, later abandoned.

They were domesticated thousands of years ago. As human civilization spread, so did the pigeon.

They served as the backbone of the first Internet, hundreds of years before Al Gore, Jeb Bush, and your neighbor’s eccentric uncle “invented” it.

(No central authority, no single point of failure. Sound familiar?)

They saved countless lives by delivering crucial intelligence during large-scale conflicts.

And, in peacetime, they proved just as valuable as they helped farmers monitor distant fields and transport lightweight, valuable goods like silkworm eggs.

Also, they are SMART.

Pigeons:

• Have passed the "mirror test," used as an indicator of self-awareness in animals.
• Can recognize and remember human faces.
• Can perform basic math problems like addition and subtraction.
• Can understand the concept of time and can be trained to respond to different time intervals.
• Have an excellent sense of direction and can find their way home from great distances.
• Often mate for life, showing complex social behaviors.
• Have been trained to distinguish between benign and malignant tumors in medical images.
• Can differentiate between various artistic styles and even specific artists. (First Monet and Picasso. Then Chagall and Van Gogh.)
• And, while they don't use language like humans, pigeons can categorize objects in ways that are considered “language-like”.

As a testament to their ingenuity, in a world where many species are struggling, pigeons thrive.

They've adapted to every major city on the planet.

If that's not a lesson in antifragility, I don't know what is.

Rise of the Underbirds

Now, I'm not saying you should go out and start a pigeon-based hedge fund or launch a pigeon-backed crypto (though if you do, I want in).

But I am saying there's value in looking at the world through pigeon-colored glasses.

Market crash? Economic downturn? Pigeons don't care. They've survived everything from the fall of Rome to the rise of the smartphone.

And what’s most incredible? They still love us. Even if we despise them.

For that, I think it’s time to raise a glass for the humble pigeon…

Moral: Don't underestimate the underbirds.

While we love newfangled technologies, especially here in these digital leaves…

We also realize big opportunities might come from the old, timeless, and overlooked.

In a world full of peacocks, it pays to study the pigeons.

That’s what James is (basically) talking about when he talks about SUPERSTOCKS - what we might affectionately dub “the pigeons of finance”.