HEDGEfolios is an online newsletter that offers its readers assistance to build and manage their own portfolios through reading articles and using a database that covers over 2,750 stocks and exchange traded funds (ETFs). The goal of HEDGEfolios is to bring fundamental and technical analysis together in a format that is easy for everyone to understand without having to run fundamental screens or look at confusing technical indicators.

It is important to note that HEDGEfolios is NOT a trading system and does not provide recommendations to buy or sell any security. HEDGEfolios is available to help readers pick their own stocks and once they do, to help them make the best possible choices for timing decisions.

The articles contained in the READ section will be published weekly, and if there are interesting topics to discuss, it is likely that there will be commentary during the trading week. Simplicity, brevity, and speed are core principles of HEDGEfolios, so articles will be just long enough to convey our message. Since this entire site is for educational and entertainment purposes, it will be similar to other editorial publications and readers should expect that there will be an abundance of opinion contained within the articles.

Unless it is deemed appropriate and important to do so on a particular topic, HEDGEfolios will not reiterate what you can find elsewhere on financial television, radio, print or the web. We place a premium on contrarian and possibly, controversial opinions that are focused on helping our readers make money. We are committed to being singularly biased towards performance and not biased on an agenda that promotes a unidirectional bullish or bearish stance.

At the start of each month, HEDGEfolios runs a proprietary methodology to analyze the key criteria that most investors use to build their portfolios – market cap (size), valuation (style), yield (income) and diversification (sector and industry). If users are looking for a fundamental screening tool, they won’t find it here. They’ll only find the results of data that is already screened and presented in a format that is straightforward and easy to understand.

Each weekend, HEDGEfolios conducts multiple forms of technical analysis to assess the probability that each covered stock will be going up or down for the foreseeable future. If users are looking for technical indicators to interpret, they won’t find them here. They’ll only find the results of HEDGEfolios technical analysis shown in simple, “Up” or “Down” signals.

HEDGEfolios is led by me, Michael Steinhardt, so for those of you that care about such things, I’ll cover some aspects of my background. First of all, I am not “that” Michael Steinhardt – the hedge fund manager that is often called one of the greatest investors of all time. It would be great to hear the same thing said about “this” Michael Steinhardt someday, but my focus is to ensure that HEDGEfolios helps its users achieve similarly spectacular results. My bachelor’s degree and MBA in finance from Indiana University are helpful, but there are no degrees granted for trading, making money or building websites. The main thing that is relevant to HEDGEfolios is my experience at McDonald Financial helping manage portfolios after the markets peaked in 2000. During those years, the market was moving faster than a quantitative and technical analyst like me could do the research so I became committed to making the simplest, fastest and most accurate portfolio management tool. For the past two years, I have been devoted to developing analytical methodologies, tracking the performance, and building, with the help of an excellent web developer, the HEDGEfolios site.

I created HEDGEfolios to help stockbrokers and investment pros as well as individual investors that have decided to construct and manage their own equity portfolios. I am a huge proponent of active portfolio management and believe that you should hire a licensed securities professional to manage your investments. However, if you are a do-it-yourselfer, please just do it actively.

I will do my best to provide a quality product to help you rapidly get you through the 90% of researching, analyzing and managing stocks that is generic, yet time-consuming and intimidating. Once you figure out which stocks meet your individual criteria, the remaining 10% is up to you and you alone must be accountable for the portfolio decisions that you make. Please discuss all decisions with your Registered Investment Advisor and spend time on other financial research sites and any other means possible to ensure that the investments are suitable for you and the timing is as good as you can make it.

During this introductory period, HEDGEfolios is being offered FREE of charge, but that will be changing soon. Within the next two months, HEDGEfolios will not be entirely free, but will provide a 30-day FREE trial and monthly ($40) or quarterly ($110) subscriptions.

If you like HEDGEfolios, please tell others and provide us feedback so that we may continually improve upon it.