Blogging as you have come to know it at HEDGEfolios is over for now.  I said “for now” because I don’t want to say “forever” but it is time for me to move in another direction.

I am contemplating a weekly or monthly newsletter and if that happens, I’ll probably post a notice here telling you how to get it for those that would be interested.  If you want to be notified via email, then you’ll need to send me one of your own to let me know.  Just use the Contact form that you can find by clicking here.

I started this site at a very difficult time in my life and it became a way for me to focus and channel much of my energies.  For quite a while, I looked at the success or failure of HEDGEfolios as the one thing that would define the success or failure of the rest of my professional life.  With that great commitment comes reward and yet for all the things that this has given me, it has also taken away.  For both the positive rewards and the negative sacrifices, you become extremely attached to things and it is extremely difficult to break out of that.  I finally got there.

HEDGEfolios was the platform for me to show evidence of a new way to manage money - the Steinhardt way.  It was the best platform for me to provide a transparent record of what I could do as a no-name stock analyst outside of New York.  Much of my work flies in the face of finance theory and by working by myself and speaking for myself on the blog, I was free to challenge those established ideas and more importantly, challenge myself.  My methodologies would never have been given a chance 6 years ago if I was trying to do them for someone else with real big money on the line.  That just does not happen until you have a reputation and provide enough of a track record to prove what you can do.  Have I proven that 1 person covering 3000-4000 equities by himself each week using a set of tools available to anyone for very little money can be extremely successful?  You decide.  Let the results speak for themselves…they have been open for everyone to see for the past 4 or so years HEDGEfolios has been online.  Both the good results and the bad results.  Check the performance.  Check the stability during these volatile times.   How many mutual fund managers or hedge fund managers have done as well?  All of them in my opinion.  They made money delivering whatever performance their investors received.

HEDGEfolios has not been lucrative for me - the opportunity cost of my time has put this into the negative high 6 figures.  Much of that was based upon my choices.  Maybe I should have dressed in a gorilla suit and spent money on tv commercials.  I chose not to do that because it is not me.  Maybe I should have promoted myself by appearing on television and bragging about my performance and my opinion on the news of the second.  I chose not to do that because it is not me.  Maybe I should have responded to newspaper reporters who sought my comments to get more publicity.  I chose to say no comment when I really didn’t feel I had the credibility to respond to their questions.  Maybe I should have asked for other sites to link to my site over and over again regardless of whether I liked the content on the other sites.  I chose to never ask for a link request and never accepted a link request from someone else.  Maybe I should have sold those google ads that annoy the hell out of me and promote products that I may not like or care to associate with.  I chose to not populate my site with that crap.  Maybe I should have continued to sell subscriptions for something I had decided to shut down 10 months ago.  I chose to make it free for everyone because my integrity is worth more than taking $40 per month from someone.  Those were my choices, for good or bad.  I don’t do well trying to profit from things that are not consistent with who I am.

I thought that performance mattered.  I thought that consistency mattered.  I thought that making things simple and convenient to use mattered.  It did matter.  Not the performance of my signals or the consistent accuracy of the signals regardless of market volatility or the simplicity and convenience of the HEDGEfolios database.  Nope, I am not talking about that.  I am talking about the pathetic performance of my ability to get people to sign up for a free trial.  Thousands of site visitors that don’t check out the goods.  I am talking about the consistency of the free trial users who never return or never pay for the subscription when the trial is over.  I am talking about the simplicity and convenience of how to measure something that others are not willing to pay for.  It’s my version of mark-to-market.  The only thing worse than doing something that does not work is to continue doing it the way you have been doing it.

I mistakenly thought that my signal performance would be more popular than my writing.  I kept saying things like….”I have no idea how anyone profits from reading this stuff or how they avoid losing money.”  I hope you did, but not like I think you would have by following my analytical work.  Yet, I could sit down and write a spoof of some market event in a few minutes and it would fly around the internet.  It’s humbling to have work you care little about be appreciated far more than the work you devote your life to.  The blog has been fun and fortunately I never anticipated getting paid a penny for it, because I never did receive that penny.  I love a lot of things in life…writing is near the top.  I am even enjoying writing this painful ass post.   However, since I am not getting paid a ton of money to compensate me for my time, I am going to take a break to channel my efforts in other directions.  Like I said, I’ll probably write periodically for as long as that does not present conflicts for my other activities whether that means managing a fund or finishing a book I have been working on - The America I Want - and how to get it.  If I ever do get that published, I’ll send a free signed copy to the first 100 people that send me an email.  I am a sucker for giving stuff away for free!

I am appreciative of those that helped me in this endeavor and I’ll avoid the stupid Oscar-like list of names.  They’ll here from me in private.  Thanks to all the readers and to the ones that I have communicated with, you will hear from me in private.

There are some great bloggers to keep the focus on the facts.  I’ll keep reading them.  I’ll keep communicating with them about ideas.

There are a few journalists I respect like Pimm Fox of Bloomberg and if you ever see me do an interview(not likely), it’ll probably be with Pimm.

Going forward, there will be stuff appearing on this blog for the indefinite future.  The content will probably be boring for most, if not all of you.  Mostly academic stuff relating to the database results.  The database will continue for an undetermined while as well.  Access privileges may change to accredited investors only or it may disappear entirely.  Come back if you want, just don’t expect to see what you have been used to.  As I said, if you want to communicate with me to receive whatever I might be able to put out in the future, you need to do that before the site goes away or try to find me after that.

So until we meet again…good luck with your investing.  Keep asking tough questions of yourself.  Keep doing your own work.  That’s what I’ll be doing.