I have signed up for the Supernovia 3 months ago. I have been retired for many years. The stock market keeps going up but the stocks that I bought that the Supernova recommended have over all lost $2-3 for every dollar made. Related to the S & P return, I down over 8%. I was thinking that maybe I should swith to the Income Investor newsletter.
What are you thoughts.

Thanks for your input,
eugenet95648

Forget about newsletters. Learn to do it on your own.

Go to http://boards.fool.com/mechanical-investing-100093.aspx?mid=... and skim over the last years worth of posts.

Google bogleheads and do the same.

If you really want to see about TMF newsletters, google up the final post on their rulemakers and rulebreakers portfolios. They terminated each when it lost 50%.

I have signed up for the Supernovia 3 months ago.

I agree wholeheartedly with Rayvt's comments. Newsletters are pretty much just a way to separate you from your money. And that applies to any investing newsletter, not just this one.

However, in the most generous spirit I can muster toward any pay investing newsletter, most investing strategies are longer-term propositions than 3 months. I can't think of any strategy involving stocks that will not suffer underperformance from time to time.

The most important thing you can do with any newsletter is to understand what they are doing and what losses you might expect. It's also important to know what benchmark to test them against. I have no idea what the Supernova portfolio invests in, but it is possible that it would not be appropriate to measure it against the S&P 500. Given it's name, it might be more appropriate to compare it to some small cap index.

--Peter

Hi Peter,
I thank you for your response. The reason I refered to the S & P was for two reasons. 1) The advertisement promised to out porform the S & P by a factor of 2 to 3 times. 2) The Motley Fool has a page to keep score of how you are doing and the page ties your porfomance to the porformance of the S & P.
I value your response.

Thanks Again,

eugenet95648

What is your investment objective?

If, in retirement, your objective is reliable income, I can imagine a portfolio of things like preferred stock that will provide this, but will not appreciate in value. There is nothing wrong with this arrangement, providing the portfolio is providing what you seek and you understand and accept the risks that go with it.

I don't have any problem with investment newsletters, if they save me the time and work of what I would be doing anyway....and providing the writer of the newsletter will show me his/her data they used. Most newsletters I've ever looked at are nothing more than "do this" and "don't do that" types that won't show their data. Or they cherry-pick a few pieces of data and draw broad conclusions from it. Today the only 'newsletter' I susbscribe to is Morningstar Premium, and that's mostly for access to their 'premium' data.

BruceM

Hi eugenet95648!

All TMF newsletters are not created equal ( differing objectives/strategies ), nor are their results the same.

TMF Income Investor has delivered a 27.8% increase since it's August, 2003 debut. During the same time period, the S&P 500 has delivered a 14.7% increase*

* "Total average returns are the average of all individual stock recommendations (active and sold) and the average of the S&P 500 Total Return Index, starting from the end of the day we make each recommendation. Both the stock and benchmark returns include reinvested dividends, splits, and adjustments for other corporate actions such as spinoffs and acquisitions, if applicable."

Avoiding generalizations is a key in almost everything. ;-)

Cheers!
Murph
Home Fool
( who seems to remember that any TMF newsletter has a free trial period-100% money back if not satisfied )

Eugene wrote The reason I refered to the S & P was for two reasons. 1) The advertisement promised to out porform the S & P by a factor of 2 to 3 times.

While it possible you will wake tomorrow and know exactly where to dig in your yard to discover and pick up $50,000, I am going to say you won't do that. Anybody who makes the statement you wrote, is getting close my finding $50,000 story. The world is full of mutual funds and EFTs who have very highly paid management teams. Last time I read up the vast majority of these mutual funds were unable to equal the S&P500 returns for periods of say 10 years. By vast majority I mean well over 90%.

For sure this or that fund or system will be great in some specific time or situation. Look at data over several years and keep in mind, even a broken two handed wrist watch displays the correct time twice a day.

Gordon
Atlanta

...Related to the S & P return, I down over 8%. I was thinking that maybe I should swith to the Income Investor newsletter.
What are you thoughts.


You should go to a used book store or a library and find some of the original Motely Fool books form the late 1990's and read how the Motley Fool origionally got its name and what it means to be "Wise".

It would be good to keep the vast majority of your retirment funds in low cost index funds and only try to select stocks with at most a small percentage of your retirment funds.

Greg

I agree with you, Greg.

I never get any newsletters. I've been retired for 10 years, and I manage my own IRA. I have NO mutual funds, but have a mix of dividend-paying stocks, plus a few growth stocks (some do both), and an occasional "flyer", but never much money in the flyers.

I tend to do better than the market, and have not gotten rich, but have not gone down a lot, either.

Vermonter