How Can I Help You Get Rich(er) Through Investing?
When I recently set up a twitter account for InvestorsFriend, I described the business this way: “InvestorsFriend Inc. exists to help investors grow rich through more intelligent investing.”
Let me review a bit of the history around how this came to be.
I started the InvestorsFriend web site back in June of 1999.
My original purpose was to share valuable advice and analysis on investing, and that has not changed. The original name was Investment-Picks.com based on the fact that the content included specific Stock Picks that visitors could investment in. For the first few years everything was free of charge.
I quickly realized that putting up a web site and having people visit it and read my work was pretty exciting. There is a certain inherent satisfaction – even a “high” – that comes from gaining an audience. Like every web site author, I craved more traffic. More or less the web site demanded to be “fed” with content which would attract and retain traffic. And so began the never-ending process of regularly creating new and valuable content for my readers.
By 2002 I concluded that having a hyphen in the web site name (www.investment-picks.com) was a mistake. In thinking about a new name I thought: “What can I offer that other investment sites are not offering?”. And I thought, well one thing I can offer is complete honesty and a devotion to being helpful to investors. To me, the name InvestorsFriend” best conveyed what the web site was about. The name itself is a constant reminder to me that the web site exists to serve the needs of investors.
It’s true that by early 2003, the Buy / Sell reports on individual stocks were restricted to paid subscribers. However most of the content on the site is still free of charge. And I have never relied on this site as my source of income. The absence of any real need for the income that the site generates helped me to avoid ever getting into aggressively advertising or “hyping” the service. I have turned down dozens of requests to advertise on this site because I did not trust the products and services being advertised and I did not need the money it would generate. I even refused almost all requests for reciprocal links to other sites. These links would have generated traffic and higher Google rankings for me. But I refuse to be a part of sending my visitors to dubious sites such as foreign exchange trading sites. I also refuse all offers to provide outside content for my site, since such articles are almost always just thinly-veiled advertisements.
While I don’t give away my Stock Picks free of charge, I think I can safely say that InvestorsFriend.com has lived up to its name and to the key values of honesty and transparency. And the performance of the Stock Picks (while never guaranteed) has more than lived up to the name as well.
And So, How Can I Help You?
If you are already a paid subscriber, then you already know that I will attempt to help you via the individual stock reports with buy/sell ratings and through my daily comments.
If you are a non-paid subscriber then the way in which I may be able to help depends on your current situation.
For many people, a first step would be to gain some knowledge of investing. Learning about investing is like learning most others things in life: It’s a never-ending process. If you want to learn a new language, or a new skill or even to to learn how to appreciate watching a new sport you have to start with gaining a little foothold or island of knowledge and then expand from there.
For those who need to or want to start by learning what investing and its rewards is and how it differs from saving, I have two articles at this link.
For those who are invested in mutual funds and are are thinking they might be interested in investing in individual stocks, I have two articles on how to get started. Not everyone is interested in or in a position to invest in individual stocks. Those who are can consider subscribing to InvestorsFriend’s stock rating service.
I have a group of nine articles which I group under the heading “Accumulating Wealth – Getting Rich”. Most or all of these articles are quite old but are still relevant.
In total I have written 96 original articles over a period of 16 years. Almost all of these are directly designed to assist investors in making money through investing. Often, they were written as I researched and analysed answers to my own questions about investing.
I also have a group of eight articles that are updated periodically that focus on whether the stock market offers good value at the point in time each article is updated. Included here are two additional special reports that show exactly how past investors have done in the past over various 30 year periods of investing or of drawing down a portfolio in retirement.
In addition to this, see the list of all of the past editions of my free newsletter. The list indicates the topics covered in each newsletter.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I have been growing my wealth quite successfully through investing for almost 30 years. My education and my intensive studies of investing have been the reason for my success (along with, no doubt, some good luck). For the past 17 years I have shared what I learned and what I am in invested in on this web site. The process of developing all of the articles and analysis on this site has greatly helped me to answer my own questions about investing. While there are absolutely no guarantees it seems to me that the information provided is meeting the goal of helping many investors grow rich through more intelligent investing.
Is the S&P 500 Index Over-Valued At This Time?
With the S&P 500 index trading at 25 times its achieved 2016 earnings level, it certainly appears over-valued on its face. I recently updated my comprehensive article on the valuation of this index and, to me, it does appear to be over-valued. But that does depend on various assumptions. Review the article to see why I think it is indeed over-valued. That does not mean that I am predicting that the S&P 500 index will soon decline.
END
Shawn Allen, CFA, CMA, MBA, P.Eng.
InvestorsFriend Inc.
March 4, 2017