Financial Newsletter Question

[RonBoyd]

In John Mauldin's Blog this morning, I find this statement:

Which brings up a problem and an opportunity. Pat's letter is just getting too big circulation wise for the typically smaller companies he finds and writes about. His publishers (Agora) decided last week to basically double the price (and it is not cheap to begin with!) to reduce the number of subscribers. They did a "final promotion" at the old price with a deadline of last week. I just saw that. I asked them to extend that offer for one week to my readers and they agreed.

So for the next week, you can subscribe at a discounted $699 before it goes to double that.

Does anyone on this list subscribe to any newsletter of this type? And, if so, is there value in such a thing?

 

[haha]

In John Mauldin's Blog this morning, I find this statement:



Does anyone on this list subscribe to any newsletter of this type? And, if so, is there value in such a thing?

I can't say if there is value or not, but Agora is a giant marketing organization that publishes many newsletters. The main owner is a very good writer and intersting guy named Bill Bonner.

Two years ago I subscribed to Morningstar Dividend Investor, and I thought it was pretty good but nothing that I couldn't easily do on my own.

I can get the basic Morningstar stock and mutual fund service and Value Line at my library, and I use both.

By far the most useful subscription I ever bought was Vickers Insider Letter. It was just a compilation of all the form 4s from the previous week, arranged alphabetically. It also tallied buys and sells by industry which was extremely predictive. Sometimes I acted on this, sometimes not, but it usually the info was very helpful and my results during the time of my subscription would have been better if I had always used it. I found this most useful when valuations were low so I dropped it when to my eye prices were too high.

I think they have changed format and gone upmarket, providing different ways of looking at the data. But IMO the old way was about perfect, and affordable.

Another very useful newsletter that made me some real money in the past was John S. Herold Oil and Gas Letter. It didn't make suggestions, just did statistical writeups on different industry firms that emphasized reserves, who the reserve engineers were, whether the firms used full cost or successful efforts accounting. A ton of info for $60 a year. It also went upmarket, and by then I was pretty familiar with many of the firms. In those days it was much easier to call a middle cap company and talk to the CFO or CEO. I got pretty good at interpreting what was being said, unsaid and subtly suggested.

Ha

 

[RonBoyd]

Along this same line (or is it?) is this from Thomas Stanley's Blog this morning:

Listen to Your Analyst!

Recently, The Wall Street Journal published its annual rankings of financial analysts. ... In fact, of the 200 top high income categories, analysts consistently rank among the top five in the proportion of those who have earned incomes of $200,000 or more. Ah, but are they wealthy? Absolutely. In other words, these top ranked people are not only experts in making other people wealthy they do the same for themselves. So listen to your analysts, especially the good ones. They are excellent in transforming their income into wealth. In fact, they significantly outpace most financial consultants who are part of the same age/income cohort.

I don't subscribe to the Journal either so cannot get to (what I suppose are) the good stuff.

(This is way too much thinking -- on my part -- for my taste.)

 

[W2R]

I don't subscribe to a newsletter (or magazines, or newspaper, or websites that require payment). This is part of an overall attempt to minimize recurring expenses in my budget, for LBYM reasons. This could change as it is an old habit and I do have more discretionary spending money available to me now than previously.