ETF YOURSELF ANNOUNCES MAJOR SERVICE CHANGES AND UPGRADES

Taking what we learned in year 1, and putting it to work in year 2

It was around this time in 2023 that we (Rob and Dana Isbitts) made our first foray into the publishing business via the Substack platform. We are semi-retired and I divide my time between freelance writing, managing my portfolio and providing research to the buyer of the investment advisory practice we sold in 2020. That all keeps me busy, but having our own direct-to-consumer/non-personalized research service has been a goal of mine since last century.

So, we started ETFYourself.com on the Substack platform. And then, we started our full-scale SungardenInvestment.com service on Substack.

THE NEW ETF Yourself

Starting on September 1, 2024, ETF Yourself will convert from its current form into what is essentially the ETF-only portion of the full research offering found over at SungardenInvestment.com.

And for reasons we hope have become apparent to subscribers of that full-service, the offering at SungardenInvestment.com is taking on a new name that reflects the vision we’ve always had for it: SUNGARDEN INVESTMENT RESEARCH GROUP (SIRG).

We’ll have more to say about that over on that site. As with ETFYourself.com, the site has a free subscription version, so sign up there if you want to keep in touch with how that part of our work evolves.

So, starting September 1, ETF Yourself will offer the following “package” of features:

• Direct access to my CORE ETF portfolio (minus the options positions that are occasionally part of it). I have run it for more than 20 years in different forms. It was built as an alternative to conservative strategies, essentially replacing what bonds used to do well.

• Trade alerts every time I buy or sell something in my CORE portfolio. This is already one key feature of the SungardenInvestment.com service, and now it will be the focus of ETF Yourself, along with…

• An enhanced ETF Research Deck. More ETFs, proprietary ratings and grades. This is the evolution of my 30 years of ETF analysis, plus all we’ve learned from the feedback we’ve received from ETF Yourself subscribers. The existing ETF WATCHLIST tab on the shared document provided to paid subscribers should reflect those enhancements by September 1.

• Weekly commentary. As we have done for the past year, each Tuesday I will present my market takes, charts, Sungarden news and anything else we think our audience will benefit from knowing.

• The subscription price of ETFYourself.com will be raised to $125 a month (or $1,200 a year, a 20% discount for a 12-month commitment).

• NOTE: Our monthly rate will not increase until Tuesday, October 1. See below for more subscription-related questions and answers.

• The 7-ETF portfolio will be discontinued on September 1. We think access to the CORE portfolio is a nice upgrade. The 7-ETF portfolio was created as a more constrained, simplified version of CORE, but more as a learning tool.

We have created a short “story” of the CORE portfolio and how I navigated the past decade using it as one of my main portfolio tools. It will be posted to the site separately, today. Here’s one part of it.

Reminder: This is a subscription research service, and not a personal advisory service.

We find that in a modern digital economy, this is a critical distinction that people miss. And it leads to misunderstanding what to expect from us, and not to expect from us.

We tell you what we're doing, not what you should do. And we don't trade for you. Once it is published, it is out of our hands and completely in yours. We are not paid based on how much you have. So as we see it, someone paying what amounts to up to 1% of their assets each year for our research is still getting a good deal versus the alternatives. So we are focusing on what we do best, and not taking a risk of spreading ourselves too thin.

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Subscription-related questions

First, for any existing subscriber that reads the above enhancements and decides they want to unsubscribe from ETF Yourself: We won’t take it personally! We worked hard to re-design it in ways we think raise the bar for our subscribers, and make it so that we can do our very best work.

This new, more sophisticated version comes with a higher price tag. However, do note that existing ETF Yourself subscribers get a temporary discount, offering a chance to try it out in its new form. It all depends on what type of subscriber you are (monthly or annual) and when your subscription expires. That has everything to do with Substack’s billing approach.

What if I’m already signed up for ETF Yourself for $400 a year and still have time left?

Congratulations, you will be getting more for the money you already paid. Through the duration of your subscription, the updated version of ETF Yourself will be what you’ll get. Your subscription rate will not be increased until the end of your full-year term (you’ll get a reminder before it renews). And of course, you’ll be able to cancel your subscription before your renewal date if you wish.

What if I’m already signed up for ETF Yourself for $40 a month?

Our monthly rate will not be increased until Tuesday, October 1. So depending on when your monthly billing date is, you won’t see the increase until your first monthly billing that occurs on or after that date. We did this so that every existing subscriber can try out the new format at the existing monthly rate for at least 30 days.

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More information (Q&A Style) on our updated services

What prompted these changes?

Earlier in my career I worked for a few years in New York City at firm called Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ). One of the founders of that firm had a saying along the lines of this: you learn a lot about a business and its potential during the first 12 months. We are there now, and we are focusing on what think we do well, and minimizing or eliminating what we think does not add enough value to keep doing it.

One key conclusion we reached:

• $40 a month (or $400 a year), which is what we have charged for ETFYourself.com since we started it nearly 12 months ago, is not the right price point for investors to access my “best thinking.” And while we are delighted at the strong reception we’ve had to our full research offering at the other site for $300 a month (or $2,880/year with the 20% discount), there’s a big gap between $300 a month and $40 a month. So we needed to figure out a way to bridge that gap. For us and for our audience.

Who do we think is a good fit for our subscription services?

There is so much financial and investing “stuff” out there, it can get pretty noisy. So as we transition to our second year and the upgraded version of ETFYourself.com, we thought about who we are doing this for. We’ve said it many times: we are not a mass-market research firm.

“Likes” and “followers” don’t mean very much to us. Extending the breadth and depth of my hands-on investment experience does not have a target audience size attached to it. And, while anyone is free to sign up for either our full service or ETFYourself.com segment of it, we think our best work is done not for the masses, but for those within the masses who can say “yes” to several of these questions:

1. I have done enough investing of my own money to have a good sense of what I want from my portfolio: how much risk I’m willing to take, and how I want my portfolio to behave in different types of market environments.

2. I’ve tried low-cost newsletters (under $500/year) and realized that while there might be some hidden gems, most are driven by sales hype, urgency, and appealing to the old reliable human emotion: greed. I want something different.

3. I had or still have a financial planner, but I think that often, there are 2 very different parts to the value of such professionals. Financial planning expertise is valuable and worth paying for. But it is less about my level of “assets under management” and more of a fixed annual value. And so while I might have a financial planner, the science and art of “portfolio management” and my investment process are a separate topic for me. And I want to do some or all of that myself, rather than pay a percent of assets for it.

4. I no longer want to pay an asset-based fee for what is often an outsourced, "traditional" portfolio mix. For me paying a filet mignon price for more of a Spam quality portfolio is not for me.

5. I want to add structure and process to all of the information I consume about investing and markets. I follow some investing "experts" on social media, trying to be my own money manager. But even though I’ve found some good ones, I want to take the next step to build, maintain and monitor my own portfolio.

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We’ve learned a lot. Here’s some of what we learned, and why we are changing things up at ETF Yourself:

• Many investors are not prepared for how modern markets work. They risk falling into classic traps (FOMO, thinking the “long-term” takes care of everything, stock picks over investment process, to name a few). We think we can help that through regular written and occasional live group communication, now that my days of providing 1:1 investment advise are long behind me.

• That, in turn, gives us a reason to try to help those who believe as we do, that modern markets require a modern approach. I built one 25 years ago, and have been evolving it ever since. Now in semi-retirement, I am trying to share what I’ve learned, and how I operate as an investor today. But without personalized advice. That was my career for 27 years until 2020, but not anymore.

• Mass-market publications are, as the name implies, everywhere. And many of them are an investor’s worst enemy. They bait people into subscribing with annoying but somehow effective sales pitches, only to have them stay a few months and then cancel. We want none of that. We want investors who evaluate my investment PROCESS AND STRUCTURE, and decide they want to come along for the ride with us.

• We are in this by choice. And the choice for us is how to allocate our time. I spent about 120,000 hours of my business career managing other people’s money. That ended in 2020 when we sold our advisory practice. But that started a new chapter for us, one that allows me to simply explain what I am doing with my own money, why I’m doing it, and inviting others to follow along, and use my research and buying/selling moves however they wish. Sure, we show my “track record” but that should always be secondary to what creates that record. Again, it is the PROCESS AND STRUCTURE, particular in my case as it applies to RISK MANAGEMENT. I’m no high-flying investor!

ETF Yourself :

OUR GOAL: provide ETF research, perspective and a live conservative portfolio, so experienced self-directed investors can make their own decisions to take on modern markets.