Oxford Club's '29% Account' — The Royalty Stock Behind Marc Lichtenfeld's Secret Trust Fund

The Hook

Marc Lichtenfeld’s pitch for the Oxford Income Letter opens the way most of these do: with the gap between what banks pay savers and what banks earn for themselves. The promo calls it “America’s Secret Trust Fund,” an “account” that “averaged 29% a year going back decades,” where “BlackRock parks $1.9 to $2.2 billion,” and that “anyone can open in five minutes or less, no matter your age, income level, or geographic location.”

The framing is classic financial-newsletter architecture: the wealthy and the banks have quietly used this vehicle for more than a century, while ordinary savers settle for “a pathetic 0.4%,” and now, thanks to this one presentation, you can join them. It is the “democratization” play, applied to a royalty company most people have never heard of.

The tease is a real thing, and it is actually a good one. The “account” is Texas Pacific Land, a company with roots in the 1880s railroad land-grant era that today collects royalties from roughly 870,000 acres in the Permian Basin. What the pitch gets right matters, and what it quietly slides past matters more. The 29% number is real, but “income” is the wrong word for it, and that distinction is everything if you are an income investor who clicked on a pitch from the Oxford Income Letter.

The Big Claim

The headline number is “29% a year,” presented as an average return going back decades. The promo says $1,000 invested in 2000 would be worth $556,000 today, making it “one of the top three investments of the 21st century,” behind only NVIDIA and Monster Energy. It claims a 137-year track record that “predates Exxon-Mobil, Coca-Cola, Ford, GE.” And it promises a “healthy dividend” with “$347 million in cash payouts to shareholders.”

There is also a bonus pick, a precious-metals royalty company described as “up 87%” in 2025 with “record revenue and operating cash flow quarter after quarter,” a “$3 billion war chest,” and a target of “40% production growth by 2029.”

The promise is seductive because it combines two things investors want and rarely get together: enormous long-term returns and the safety of something that has existed for 137 years. The implication is that if something has worked this well for this long, it will keep working, and the 29% is a structural feature, not a historical accident. That is the claim worth examining.

The Mechanism

The “29% Account” is Texas Pacific Land (TPL). The backstory is genuinely fascinating and worth understanding because it explains what you are actually buying. In the 1880s, the federal government granted railroads enormous tracts of land for every mile of track they laid, an incentive to build a transcontinental network across a sparsely populated continent. When many of those railroads went bust, the leftover land, mineral rights included, was organized into trusts. Texas Pacific Land was one of those trusts, a passive liquidating vehicle that sat on its acreage for over 130 years, collecting royalties from whoever drilled on it, until it converted to a corporation in 2021.

Today TPL holds roughly 870,000 acres in the Permian Basin, the most productive oil field in the United States, and collects royalties from thousands of oil and gas wells operated by other companies. It does not operate the wells, which is the structural beauty of the model: it gets a top-line share of revenue without the operating costs, the labor disputes, or the geological risk. The drillers take all the execution risk. TPL takes a royalty check. That is why the company has virtually no capital expenditures, almost no employees relative to its acreage, and margins that most operating companies can only dream about.

Lichtenfeld adds a forward-looking angle that is genuinely interesting and not just a rehash of the oil-royalty story. The same 870,000 acres sit atop massive water rights and cheap, abundant energy from the Permian’s natural gas, exactly the two things AI data centers need in enormous quantities. He notes $265 million in water-rights revenue in 2024 alone and argues that tech giants will pay premium prices for land, energy, and water in West Texas as they race to build the infrastructure for AI training and inference. That is not fantasy. Data-center developers are actively looking at the Permian for power and water access, and TPL is one of the largest private landowners in the region. If the AI build-out continues at its current pace, water rights in West Texas could become more valuable than ever.

We have covered Texas Pacific Land’s business in more detail for readers who want a deeper dive into the royalty structure and the Permian Basin dynamics. The short version is that TPL is almost certainly the best royalty structure in America. The question is whether it is an “income” investment, and the answer is more complicated than the pitch suggests.

The bonus is Wheaton Precious Metals (WPM). Wheaton, formerly Silver Wheaton, is the largest precious-metals streaming company in the world, now roughly 60% gold and 40% silver by revenue. Streaming is a cousin of royalties. Instead of owning the land, Wheaton pays miners up front for a share of future production at a fixed, low cost per ounce. A miner needs capital to build a mine, so it sells Wheaton the right to buy a percentage of the mine’s output at, say, $450 per ounce of gold for the life of the mine. If gold is at $2,500, Wheaton pockets the $2,050 spread. If gold falls to $1,800, Wheaton still makes $1,350, and the margin holds because the fixed cost is so low.

The structure is brilliant for the same reason TPL’s is: low operating costs, high margins, no mine-operating risk. When gold rises, Wheaton captures almost all of the upside. When gold falls, the low fixed-cost base provides a cushion that operating miners do not have. The promo cites “$503 million in revenue, up 68% year over year, and $450 million in operating cash flow, up 77%.” Those numbers are real, but they are Q2 figures, not Q3 as the presentation implies, a small error worth flagging because it signals the pitch’s numbers deserve a second look. We have a separate piece on Wheaton’s streaming model for readers interested in the full breakdown.

Wheaton is high quality and cash-efficient, with roughly 40 employees and operating costs that are a rounding error relative to the revenue its streaming contracts generate. But like most royalty majors at current commodity prices, it does not look cheap. The forward price-to-earnings ratio is in the mid-20s, the enterprise-value-to-EBITDA multiple is in the high teens, and the dividend yield is only about 0.5%, which matters because this pitch came from an income newsletter.

The Real Picks

Does the Math Check Out?

The 29% figure is real, and it is not, depending on what question you are asking.

It is real as a 25-year average annual return for TPL shareholders. If you bought the trust in 2000, when oil was cheap, the Permian was considered played out, and nobody wanted a passive land trust with no growth story, you have compounded at roughly 29% a year. That is a genuinely extraordinary result, and it puts TPL in the same historical neighborhood as the best-performing stocks of the past quarter-century.

It is not real as “income.” The return has been almost entirely share-price appreciation. The company’s actual dividend yield is around 0.6% — very similar, ironically enough, to what you might earn from a savings account at a big bank. If you wanted to live off the 29% return, you would have to sell shares every year, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do with a capital-gains compounder but not the same thing as collecting a 29% dividend check.

The base rate also matters enormously, and the pitch does not discuss it. TPL was effectively written off around 2000. From 1980 to 2000, the trust returned about 2% a year. From 2000 to 2010, it returned about 10% a year. The spectacular 20-year run coincides almost perfectly with the fracking revolution that turned the Permian from “played out” into the most productive oil basin on the planet. The 29% average is real, but it is a story about one specific technological shift, not a permanent structural feature of the asset. If the Permian had not been revolutionized by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, TPL would still be an obscure land trust returning mid-single digits.

The AI data-center angle is the most forward-looking part of the pitch and the hardest to size. TPL’s water rights are real, and data-center demand for both water and power is real and growing. The Permian has abundant natural gas that can generate cheap electricity, and TPL owns the surface rights and water rights that data-center developers need. But the company “fell hard in 2025 as oil prices dropped,” a reminder that for the foreseeable future, this is fundamentally an oil-price bet wearing a technology-story hat. If oil goes to $50, it does not matter how many data centers want West Texas water. TPL’s revenue is still dominated by oil and gas royalties, and the stock will trade with oil.

For Wheaton, the cited growth is real, and the company is excellent. Revenue up 68% year over year, operating cash flow up 77%, a $3 billion balance sheet with plenty of dry powder for new streaming deals, and a target of 40% production growth by 2029. These are not fabricated numbers. Wheaton is one of the best-run companies in the precious-metals space, and the streaming model is structurally superior to operating mining companies. But the “income letter” framing is strained. A 0.5% dividend is not income in any ordinary sense, and the stock does not look cheap outside a commodity correction. The margin of safety is thin at current prices, and an income investor buying Wheaton for the dividend is going to be disappointed.

One more point on track record, because it matters specifically for an income newsletter audience. Lichtenfeld’s prior royalty recommendation in this same space was Permian Basin Trust (PBT), a much lower-quality structure that depends on a net-profits interest rather than a true royalty. PBT had a rough 2023 and 2024, and investors who followed that recommendation learned the hard way that not all royalty structures are created equal. The fact that Lichtenfeld has moved to Texas Pacific Land is a genuine upgrade and worth acknowledging. TPL is a vastly better structure than PBT. But it is also a reminder that even a well-known income analyst’s royalty picks are not all winners, and the difference between a true royalty and a net-profits interest is the kind of fine print that separates good outcomes from bad ones.

What They Got Right

• Texas Pacific Land is a genuinely excellent royalty structure: passive, low-cost, tax-efficient, and leveraged to some of the richest mineral and water rights in the country. There is a reason BlackRock owns nearly 10% of the company. It is not a promotional vehicle. It is a real, high-quality asset.
• The AI data-center angle is real and forward-looking. TPL’s land, water rights, and cheap Permian energy are exactly what data-center developers are hunting for, and Lichtenfeld is right to flag it as a potential second act for a company that has already been one of the best-performing stocks of the century.
• The “anyone can open it in five minutes” framing is literally true. TPL is an ordinary publicly traded stock. You do not need to be an accredited investor or open a special account. The democratization angle is not exaggerated in this specific respect.
• Wheaton Precious Metals is a high-quality streaming company with real operating leverage and a strong balance sheet. It is not a speculative junior miner or a promotional vehicle. The company has been executing the streaming model for decades, and the numbers cited in the pitch are directionally accurate.
• The historical detail, specifically the railroad land-grant origin story, is accurate and gives the pitch genuine educational value. Readers learn something real about how a 137-year-old land trust became one of the best-performing stocks in America, and that is more than most promo presentations deliver.
• The move from recommending PBT to recommending TPL is a genuine upgrade in quality, and Lichtenfeld deserves credit for steering his readers toward a superior royalty structure rather than doubling down on a prior pick that underperformed.

What They Got Wrong

• Calling a 29% capital-gains average an “account” that pays “income” is the central misdirection. The actual dividend yield is about 0.6%, roughly what a big-bank savings account pays. An income investor who opens this “account” expecting to receive 29% a year in cash distributions is going to be confused and disappointed.
• The “137-year track record” obscures the fact that the asset returned about 2% a year from 1980 to 2000. The spectacular returns are a fracking-era phenomenon, not a century-long constant. Presenting the 29% as an enduring structural feature rather than a product of one specific technological revolution is misleading.
• The “one of the top three investments of the 21st century” framing leans on a base rate that assumes you bought when the company was given up for dead. Starting-point selection is the oldest trick in the performance-reporting playbook, and a newsletter that markets itself on analytical rigor should know better.
• The Wheaton “Q3” figures are actually Q2 numbers, a small error but one that signals the pitch’s numbers deserve independent verification. If the quarter is wrong, what else might be stretched?
• The “set it and forget it income” promise ignores that TPL is fundamentally an oil-price bet that fell hard in 2025 when crude declined, and that its dividend is not the source of the historical return. The income framing is central to the pitch and also the least accurate part of it.

The Verdict

Texas Pacific Land is a genuinely good business, a tax-efficient, near-zero-cost royalty on West Texas energy and water, and Lichtenfeld deserves credit for pointing his readers at one of the best royalty structures in America after years of recommending lesser names. The AI data-center angle adds a genuinely interesting second chapter to a story that has already been one of the best in the market.

But the “29% account” framing is misleading in the one dimension that matters most to an income investor. This is a capital-gains compounder, not a yield instrument, and its best years were tied to a fracking boom that cannot repeat from scratch. The right way to think about TPL is as a high-quality energy royalty you buy when oil sentiment is weak and hold for decades, not as a savings-account replacement that pays 29% a year. If you understand that distinction, TPL deserves a look. If you are buying it because the pitch made it sound like a high-yield bank account, you are buying the wrong thing for the wrong reason.

Wheaton Precious Metals is a fine streaming company for a precious-metals allocation, but buy it for the optionality on higher gold and silver prices, not for a dividend that barely beats a money-market fund. The streaming model is excellent. The valuation at current commodity prices is not. Wait for a pullback in gold, or in Wheaton specifically, and you will have a better entry point on a company that will almost certainly still be executing the same high-quality strategy.

The pitch is better than most. The picks are real, the historical context is accurate, and the educational content is genuinely useful. The problem is not what Lichtenfeld is selling, it is how he is selling it. A capital-gains compounder dressed up as an income account is a square peg in a round hole, and the Oxford Income Letter audience is being sold the wrong shape.

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