Many successful investors subscribe to investment newsletters. What can an investor learn from a good newsletter? And, what are the best investment newsletters? MarketWatch offers advice on this subject with their article, 10 Investment Newsletters to read besides Buffett’s.
How far back does that tradition extend? In the U.S., it dates at least to the 1800s. The Wall Street Journal itself began as an investment letter in 1883, when Charles Dow and Edward Jones inaugurated “The Customer’s Afternoon Letter.” Dow and Jones changed their service’s name to Wall Street Journal in 1889. (Dow Jones also is the publisher of MarketWatch.)
This is more than just a historical curiosity. Of the 200 investment letters whose performance is monitored by the Hulbert Financial Digest, no fewer than 10 have outperformed Buffett over the past 15 years – since the top of the Internet bubble, in other words.
In addition, each of those 10 can boast of something else besides superior performance: They are published at least monthly, if not more frequently. None of them makes you wait a whole year, as Buffett does, to get updated insights.
The newsletters listed by MarketWatch are these:
- Nate’s Notes
- Turnaround Letter
- Investment Reporter
- The Prudent Speculator
- Sound Advice
- Investor Advisory Service
- Investment Quality Trends
- The Buyback Letter
- Morningstar StockInvestor
- Utility Forecaster
Assuming that you strictly followed the advice of the newsletter the best return on investment over the last fifteen years would have been from Nate’s Notes. Does this make it the best of investment newsletters? The factor common to each of the ten best investment newsletters is that they all look for value in depressed stocks.
Long Term Profits
The focus of the MarketWatch article is on newsletters that recommend investing based on long term value. Is this the best approach to investing or is a short term in and out approach more profitable? There are certainly investments that pay very well over a very short term. The problem is finding these opportunities and not losing money on any of them while waiting for the big payoff. Interestingly, USA Today carries an article by Motley Fool in which the best single stock to own is said to be Warren Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway! In other words do not just read Buffet’s newsletter but rather invest in his company.
In my opinion, the single best stock you can own is Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A) (BRK-B). Simply put, buying Berkshire is like getting a well-diversified investment portfolio that’s managed by some of the greatest minds in the investing world.
Berkshire offers the only way that you can invest in companies including Geico, NetJets, and more than 50 other fully owned subsidiaries, many of which are national brands. And Berkshire’s stock portfolio is a long-term investor’s dream, with such favorites as Johnson & Johnson, ExxonMobil, and Wells Fargo, just to name a few.
Further, I can’t think of anyone I would trust more than Warren Buffett and his team of stock-pickers to invest my money wisely.
A good point is that Berkshire Hathaway has several fully owned subsidiaries and the only way to invest in them is to invest in Berkshire Hathaway.
Is Value Investing Conservative Investing?
Value investing is based on solid fundamental analysis. If you are too conservative and afraid of changing your portfolio you may miss out on great long term profits. Money Morning suggests that investors exploit oil’s current low.
If you’ve been eyeing a new gas-guzzling SUV as your next vehicle, you may want to reconsider that Prius once more. That’s because today’s low gas prices won’t be around forever and oil prices aren’t about to “tank” any time soon.
In fact, the oil price crash has created a state of “contango,” a market anomaly that savvy investors can exploit. It’s presenting a rare market opportunity to profit that only comes around once every few years.
These guys are not on the MarketWatch best investment newsletters list but their advice would seem to be sound.
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