Weiss Ratings X-List: The Sell-Rated Banks and Insurers

The “X-List” is the signature product inside Dr. Martin Weiss’s “America’s Next Subprime Crisis” presentation, the deliverable the pitch’s five-step plan is organized around. Step two of the pitch describes it directly: “X List number one includes the precise names, state, and Weiss rating of the nation’s banks our data indicates are at the greatest risk of insolvency in this coming crisis.”

If you have seen the presentation, the X-List is the thing you were left wondering about. Here is what it is, what it claims to draw on, and our honest read.

What the X-List Actually Is

The X-List is a packaged form of the firm’s core product: independent financial strength ratings. Weiss Ratings has graded banks and insurers since 1971, on a model the pitch is built to contrast with the big three agencies: subscribers pay for the ratings, and the firm takes no money from the companies it rates. “I have never accepted a dime from the companies we rate, and I never will,” Weiss says in the presentation. The X-List converts that database into sorted, actionable lists: the banks at greatest insolvency risk, the weakest insurers (including annuity issuers, with the tease that “some of them are names you would absolutely recognize. Some are running ads on television right now”), and a third list grading “every single stock in the S and P 500” as sell, hold, or buy, plus a special edition covering the world’s weakest and strongest banks.

The Data Behind It

The pitch describes the scope: subscribers get “free and open access to nearly 60,000 Weiss ratings all updated in real time,” spanning stocks, “more than 2,800 ETFs, 21,551 mutual funds,” plus the bank and insurer grades. The methodology is computed from regulatory filings (capitalization, asset quality, earnings, liquidity for banks; reserves and portfolio quality for insurers), which is the same public data the agencies use; the difference is the incentive structure of who pays for the grade.

The credibility claim the pitch attaches: “the big three said, oh, they’re fine. And nearly every time, Weiss Ratings said, get out,” backed by the firm’s named crisis calls (Bear Stearns warned “one hundred and two days before it imploded,” Lehman “one hundred and eighty one days in advance,” Citigroup “a hundred and ten days before its bailout,” Fannie Mae “four years before its collapse”) and its own count that of the 549 bank failures since 2008, “Weiss Ratings has called ninety seven percent of them.” The failure count is public record; the 97% is the firm’s own metric, consistent with its long-published record though not independently re-derivable. The GAO study the pitch cites found the firm outperformed AM Best “by a factor of three to one” identifying insurance-company failures. We break down that angle in our “Weiss Ratings: The Firm That Called 97% of Bank Failures” piece.

Why the Pitch Wants You to Want It

The X-List is the connective tissue between the pitch’s fear story and its offer. The presentation’s thesis is that the $3 trillion private credit market is “not subprime mortgages, but subprime private credit,” spreading “like cancer within America’s financial system,” with the four named exhibits (First Brands’ $11 billion-plus Chapter 11 with missing collateral, Tricolor’s double-pledged collateral and SEC fraud charges, the 5% withdrawal cap at BlackRock’s HPS fund, the redemption backlogs at BCRED) all verified against the financial press. If credit stress spreads to banks and insurers, the pitch argues, the official grades arrive too late (co-presenter Nilus Mattive’s insider account of downgrade appeals is the supporting testimony), so an independent early-warning list is the protection. The staleness objection, “suppose I get your x list and I wait to act,” is answered by the real-time database access: the lists are the entry point, the database is the maintenance.

The Reader’s Checklist Before Buying

Two questions make this purchase decision easy. First, do you hold the products the lists check? A bank account, an annuity, a stock portfolio: the X-List is an auditing tool, and it only pays if you have something to audit. Second, are you willing to act on what you find? If a check reveals your annuity issuer is rated weak, the useful responses (contacting the insurer, reviewing surrender terms, consulting an advisor about an exchange) all require follow-through. Readers who answer yes to both get real value from the lists; readers who answer no should enjoy the presentation and save the forty-nine dollars.

Our Honest Read

The X-List is the most defensible item in the offer, because its value does not depend on the crisis forecast. Even if the systemic thesis never lands, an independent grade on your bank and your annuity insurer is diligence worth having, and the firm’s long warning record is documented history rather than marketing. The honest caveats: the list contents are entirely behind the paywall (the pitch deliberately withholds every name), the 97% statistic is the firm’s own accounting, and the insolvency-risk framing (“in this coming crisis”) presumes the forecast. The list arrives inside a $49 trial year of the Safe Money Report with a 12-month, no-questions-asked refund window and keep-the-reports courtesy.

For the protective ground the X-List covers, see our guide to portfolio protection strategies for a shaky market; for the annuity mechanics behind the insurer list, how annuities work and what they really cost; and for the parallel hidden-risk argument, subprime AI debt inside the AI bubble warnings.

You can review the presentation and the offer here.

The Weiss Ratings X-List decodes as: a 55-year-old ratings database, sorted into the names you would want to check first. Whether the “coming crisis” framing proves right or not, the checking itself is the part of this pitch that stands on its own. That angle gets the deep-dive treatment in our “How to Turn Market Mayhem Into Cold Hard Cash: Decoded” piece.

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