First, we want express our gratitude for the more than 2,300 subcribers to ETFYourself.com. We are merely 5 weeks into this, and we have already seen that there is a receptive audience for straightforward, experienced perspective on markets, ETF research, and constructing risk-managed portfolios. Thank you!
“Give a fish” vs. “teach to fish”
Our mission is perhaps best understood by the old saying, “give a person a fish, they eat for a day…but teach them to fish, they eat for a lifetime.” We are all fishing for good investment ideas. But I see too many investors mistake “stock picks” and “what to buy right now” communications as an important part of investing. It isn’t, at least if you are trying to be serious about building and maintaining wealth.
ETFYourself.com is all about teaching you to fish. Sure, we “name names” in our premium service, with model portfolios and an extensive watchlist of nearly 200 ETFs I consider to build and rotate those portfolios. But the most important thing I think differentiates our approach is not what to buy and sell and when. There are hundreds of services like that, emphasizing “picks” and the “now” aspect of investing. We created ETFYourself.com to try to offer something that instead of handing investors fish on a regular basis, teaches them how to fish…er, manage investment portfolios. So they can do it themselves, with the help of our platform.
My latest article for Seeking Alpha, posted today (10/24/23), was about one particular ETF from our watchlist, because that’s the nature of that platform. However, in that article I included my thoughts about ratings on securities. They are NOT what many investors think they are. This is investment RESEARCH, not personalized investment advice. That’s what the “YOURSELF” is for in ETFYourself.
Here is that section from the article, to round out my thoughts on this subject.
Excerpts from Seeking Alpha article posted 10/24/2023
I follow about 200 ETFs, and don’t own more than perhaps 20 at a time across the trio of model portfolios I run at ETFYourself.com and in my personal trading accounts. I strongly emphasize the research and the rationale, rather than the bottom-line rating.
In addition, as someone who sat in the fiduciary advisor “hot seat” for 27 years but has retired from that business, no bottom line ETF rating should EVER be interpreted as an instruction, as personalized advice, or as anything other than my assessment at the moment I write it.
That view has a lot to do with how investors are over-simplifying and/or misinterpreting things like ratings, opinions and individual security work. In my strong opinion, this is a time where portfolio weightings and risk management are way more critical than any isolated rating, grade or “pick.”
Later this week, I’ll be pulling some of my most impactful commentary from the past 12 months and providing links to it here so you can combine what you read at ETFYourself.com with what I was saying and thinking before we started the site last month. Enjoy!