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1. What services do you provide? 1. What services do you provide? Subscribers receive market commentary and investment recommendations in the form of a Weekend Update that is normally posted to the website on Sunday, after which an email alert is sent to all subscribers. The Weekend Update contains coverage of market activity for the week just completed, including any important news for individual sectors or stocks where funds are currently invested, as well as an update to the Model Portfolio. Major events for the week ahead are addressed and any upcoming changes to the Model Portfolio are identified along with supporting rationale. Commentary on important trends or major themes that may affect future investment decision also appears weekly. Additional original writing is available in the subscribers area on subjects such as personal finance and general aspects of investing, as well as a section to help guide new subscribers who may be unfamiliar with investing in this sector.
The subscription cost is $199 per year, $329 for two years, or $20 per month - see the subscription page for full details.
No. Free trials are no longer available.
4. What is the Model Portfolio? The Model Portfolio is a collection of up to 30 positions of varying size in commodities, stocks, ETFs (exchange traded funds), mutual funds, foreign currencies, and any other investment vehicle that may be deemed appropriate for inclusion in the future. The emphasis is on commodities such as oil and gold along with related natural resource companies of varying market capitalization. The Model Portfolio would typically be part of a larger portfolio that might include other investments such as fixed income, real estate, or other equity holdings that, taken together, form a complete investment portfolio suited to individual needs. As to the question of what percentage the Model Portfolio should contribute to an overall portfolio, this is a personal decision that each individual must make on their own based on their personal goals and risk tolerance. My personal allocation has ranged from a low of 30 percent to a high of 70 percent. The Model Portfolio indicates the recommended allocation for each type of investment based on a December 30, 2005 starting size of $100,000 and it is updated weekly. The weekly updates and detailed accounting of gains and losses are provided so that its progress can be tracked and its performance can be measured in an unambiguous way. Due to practical considerations, the Model Portfolio does not correspond exactly to my personal holdings, however, the correlation is very high, and every position in the Model Portfolio is included in my personal portfolio. The detailed portfolio information, as well as the commentary on individual positions, allow for easy adaptation to the needs of individual subscribers. For example, if an investor chooses only certain sectors or certain stocks, the relative importance of each position should be clear by the weighting in the model portfolio. Alternatively, if an investor chooses to completely replicate the Model Portfolio, it can be done rather easily by applying the same percent allocation for each position.
5. What makes this service different than others? There are many fine newsletters available today, and I have subscribed to quite a few of them. This service is different from others in that it provides many of the items that were thought to be lacking in other services. For example, providing recommendations alone with no indication as to how they should fit into a larger investment portfolio makes it difficult for subscribers to make this determination on their own. Assistance for new subscribers just getting started with investing in the natural resource sector is provided here as well. In recent years, I have asked and answered many of the same questions that new investors may be asking, and as part of this service, this information will be shared to the extent that is practical. Most importantly, however, this service is intended to be broader than most other newsletters while at the same time providing very specific investment recommendations. An example of this is my initial and continued interest in Federal Reserve policy when writing the blog - this has resulted in a profound appreciation for mainstream economic thought and monetary policy actions around the world. While it is my belief that both of these are flawed in many ways, the world economy and all financial markets are driven by this thinking and it should be well understood in order to make sound investment decisions. There is no single area of expertise here - instead of focusing on one particular sector (e.g., energy or junior mining stocks), this service includes investment recommendations covering nearly all of commodity-based investing as well as exposure to investment vehicles that benefit from a declining dollar or other important trends. Another unique aspect to this service is that it is currently, and is intended to always be, a one-man operation. No administrative staff, no one else answering email, and no grand aspirations of a growing business enterprise where an ever expanding subscriber base is prodded with an ever expanding array of products and services on which to spend additional money. I am a retired engineer who just turned 50. I spend a great deal of my time learning about and writing about financial markets and managing my investment portfolio. This is shared with subscribers in what is intended to be a simple and inexpensive newsletter that will be in publication for a very long time.
Infrequently - once or twice a month. For the most part, the investment approach here is to buy and hold through the duration of the commodity bull market that began in 2000 and that will likely run through 2014, perhaps longer. Occasional rebalancing in addition to a few purchases and sales results in an average of one or two transactions per month, and in many cases there will be no change for many weeks in a row. One of the important lessons that I have learned in recent years is that successful investing does require a very good understanding of markets and broad themes, but it does not require a lot of activity. If, for example, you were to have purchased commodities in the 1970s, then sold them in 1980 and bought Japanese equities, then sold these in 1990 and bought U.S. equities, then switched into commodities in the year 2000 - you would have been very successful, yet made very few trades in the last 35 years.
This website began after following and investing in the natural resources sector for years, then writing the blog starting in early 2005, and subsequently realizing that many people were interested in the commentary that I was providing, finding it both insightful and well-reasoned. At the same time, in reading other blogs and discussion boards, I found many people looking for non-mainstream investment advice as more and more people began noticing rising oil, gas, gold, and silver prices as the real estate market approached a peak. Meanwhile, friends and acquaintances, after recalling a previous mention of oil or gold from years before, increasingly began asking me about alternatives to their 401k investment choices and for opinions on what they hear from the mainstream financial media. I had been giving away this advice to a very limited (and now very happy) audience and felt it was time to expand. One of the reasons that the blog was started in the first place is that investing in natural resources is, by its nature, a very long-term undertaking that is prone to major advances and pull-backs which often times panic new investors (including me, many years ago). Over the last decade and in the years ahead, it has and will continue to be very rewarding, but the short term volatility is distracting and disconcerting to many investors. Writing the blog, and now commentary for this website, greatly helps to put things into perspective, both for me and for subscribers.
8. What is the relationship between the blog and this website? The blog and this website are completely separate entities with only a few links between the two, and it is intended to remain this way for the foreseeable future. It was deemed necessary to keep the two separate for a single and very important reason - this website is serious business, whereas the blog is not necessarily so. This website deals with where my money is invested and influences where subscribers invest their money. There is nothing to joke around about here, with the possible exception, for example, of an occasional wry comment about gold prices having risen so far so fast. The corrections in commodity markets can be very painful, something that you get used to over time, and are clearly worth the temporary discomfort that they cause but I never want to appear cavalier to subscribers at times such as these. From the very beginning, in addition to providing well-reasoned commentary, the blog was also intended to amuse, parody, or in some way make light of current conditions or individuals in the news. This is an important aspect to my writing, and something that I enjoy doing because many times points become clearer through satire or analogies that may be viewed as too casual when personal investments are involved.
9. What plans do you have for the blog and the website? At the present time and for the foreseeable future, I feel it is important to maintain both the blog and the website. The blog is a creative outlet (to some degree, at least) and the website is serious business - both are important to me, and I feel they are complementary. In the long run, I expect this to be a world-class website/newsletter, but still a one-man show. This website is viewed as a very long-term undertaking and I am pleased to have found something that is both enjoyable to me and financially rewarding to both myself and to subscribers.
10. What is your cancellation policy? Subscribers may cancel their subscriptions at any time with no questions asked. Annual subscriptions cancelled within the first 60 days will receive a complete refund, provided that notice is made in writing to the following address within the 60 day period: [email protected]. Due to the terms of our payment service provider, no refunds will be granted after this 60 day period. Monthly subscriptions through PayPal must be cancelled with PayPal - the link below will provide access to your subscription to this service which you, the subscriber, must cancel.
Cancelled monthly subscriptions will remain valid until the end of the current billing period and provided the subscriber has cancelled this service through PayPal, no further billing will occur.
11. How do you pronounce your last name? The name Iacono can be pronounced many ways, I pronounce it - eye-a-ko'-no. It is Sicilian in origin and the correct Italian pronunciation is Ya'-ko-no, however, some relatives (including my parents) pronounce it eye'-a-kon, where the last vowel is silent. It is often mistaken for being Hawaiian, and I have gone with the pronunciation that has offered the least resistance during my life, as most people seem to pronounce it eye-a-ko'-no or eye-a-ko'-na (it's not clear why the last 'o' is often times turned into an 'a' - it could be that, by the time the last vowel is encountered, all the previous vowels have worn out the person trying to pronounce the name). |
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