A note to followers about upcoming live sessions
and a link to this week's Zoom session recording
I've been told by subscribers that I am very generous with my time. It thrills me to hear that, because when I sold my investment firm and semi-retired after 27 years as a fiduciary advisor and fund manager, that was EXACTLY the goal. As I say, I only want 2 things at this stage of my career: to be useful, and be paid fairly for it.
We started Sungarden YARP Portfolio, the newest investing group on Seeking Alpha, in early November. So we are nearly 3 months in. What have we learned so far:
1. There IS a market for serious, risk-managed investing. What we offer is NOT a standard "subscription newsletter." When Seeking Alpha chose us to be their first new investing group launched in nearly a year, we worked with them very carefully to craft something that was DIFFERENT, UNIQUE and which keys in on what we think are huge gaps in the industry of providing non-personalized investment research.
2. There are not many services like this. Most subscription publishing outfits cater to the masses. We don't have any "gates" preventing folks from joining our investing group, but at $1,500 a year ($125 a month), it is higher than most...intentionally, and for good reason. Coming from a dedicated fiduciary background, this financial publishing business was not what I expected when I transitioned into it 4 years ago, first through the Substack platform (as ETFYourself.com and SungardenInvestment.com) and now through Sungarden YARP Portfolio at Seeking Alpha, which replaced both of those paid services. I learned that the average low-cost subscription service member stays for...get this...90 days! That's because they have no "skin in the game" and the services are run for the masses. Don't get me wrong, there are some very good subscription services that can be had for a few hundred dollars a year or less. I subscribe to some myself. But the world can only benefit from so many of those. And my career was spent putting in more time and effort for a moderately-sized client base, who had a solid 6-figure, 7-figure or 8-figure net worth. I can no longer tell someone else what they should do with their money. That was my role for decades. Here, I am a "group leader" and if you ask our existing subscribers, I think they'd tell you that's what I try to do every day. Lead by example, which is not the same as telling them what they should do.
3. If you are asking questions like "what's your track record?" you are asking the wrong question! Oh, I have a track record, mostly audited by a 3rd party, from my advisory days. But that portfolio (Core ETF) was crafted with a specific goal through the previous decade: provide an alternative to bond investing, without relying on bonds. Rates were near zero for most of that time. Using ETFs, a tactical/active approach, my charting experience and some options work along the edges, that portfolio with all I've learned...especially the mistakes and mis-judgements (like not putting up heroic performance numbers in most QQQ-driven years, in exchange for being profitable in 2020 when the S&P 500 fell 33% in 5 weeks, as well as many other sizable market drops.
Here's that Core track record (purple line) since the start of 2017 through now:
All I get from looking at this is that it trounced the bond index, that it "only" averaged 5% a year...but bonds earned about 1% a year. And over the past 5 years, which included Covid-19, the end of a 40-year bond bear market and a lopsided stock market, the standard deviation (popular risk measure) was only 5% a year. Bonds had a 25% higher figure. For the S&P 500, it was 19%. For the average stock (not carried by the Mag-7 giants as the regular S&P 500 is). it was 22%. So, when the mission was "don't lose, beat bonds and oh by the way, don't lose," the mission was accomplished. And then I retired. But I kept the strategy going for some of my own money. NOT to promote "how much I made" but to show potential subscribers that RISK MANAGEMENT is not losing 40% when the S&P 500 falls by 50%, as it has done twice since the year 2000.
4. Risk management is THE differentiating feature at Sungarden YARP Portfolio. Most of the money I manage for my own family is invested with a higher long-term growth target than Core. The primary YARP portfolio has a total return focus, with as much of that coming from income as possible. But what's the use of earning a lot of income if you lose much more than that in principal, with no idea when or if you will recover it? Risk management is personalized. And that part is up to each subscriber. Each is their own investment manager. We're just here to transfer my nearly 40 years of "being around the block" as a professional investor. This is RESEARCH, not portfolio management. That said, any subscriber can choose to simply copy what I do. It is all up to them. We aim to provide plenty of insight, from which each member of the investing group can choose to use, consider or ignore as they see fit. THAT is the beauty of this format, we think.
5. This service is best-described as a club that each person seeks out and joins because they come to realize how rare a COMMUNITY we have already built in just a short time. While it is something that prompts some members to take my research and spend many hours a week personalizing it for themselves, others spend 30-60 minutes a week because that's all they need and want. As such, we aim to spend a lot less time convincing people they should be part of this, and a lot more time drilling down on and enhancing the research program and process here. For existing members, they are already learning to "speak Sungarden": YARP, ROAR, ABL, and even "Dolphin's mouth" are part of our vernacular. There's a lot to learn, and 2025's market environment is a great time to learn it. But we are moving past the heavy "join us" phase to the "grow with us" phase.
6. We will soon limit our live sessions (as well as the recordings) to paid subscribers only. The schedule of live events through February is listed below, and we have designated which ones are open to anyone, versus which ones are for paid subscribers only. We have also added some additional dates and days of the week, since we know some folks cannot make our typical Monday 4PM ET weekly session.
If you missed our live session on Monday or want to review the material, here is the link: Live Zoom recording 01/27/25
These links are always available for our paid subscribers.
Note that while the next 2 (2/3 and 2/10) are open to anyone who happens to find us, starting in 2 weeks we will have only 1 session a month that is open beyond current paid subscribers. We ran a 35% off "legacy" pricing schedule for about 2 months ($975) but the $1,500 regular annual price is now in force. And, while Seeking Alpha does offer a 30-day paid trial (essentially about $4 a day until making an annual commitment), our message to those who intend to sign up, "test drive it" for a few days or weeks and then quit the group is this: we strongly believe that will not answer the questions you have about what we do here, and how it is different. This is a group of people who aim to be long-term "investors" in this collaborative learning community, led by me. And we have plenty of free resources, including several recent recorded live sessions and a sample of our research deck, which should help any DIY investor if they want to DIY themselves, or DIY with the ongoing research and timely views that we provide.
7. This service is not for everyone...but if it is for you, we think this is the time to join our community. To summarize, here's the difference between us and the rest:
THEM: subscription newsletter, play offense but not much defense ==> months later, you're looking around for the next "hot dot" to chase.
US: investing group, collaborative, interactive, but NOT personalized, play offense and defense AT THE SAME TIME ==> every week and month you get sharper, and over the years you thank yourself for trading in the "usual suspects" in investment publishing for something different, something that goes way beyond "stock picks."