Question for you:
I set up RR&A in order to provide very specific economic, investing and trading advice. How this progresses, and what the ideal balance should be will form over time.
But I am not sure what the RR&A readership is most interested in: The goal of the service is to guide individual investors
on their long term holdings, and discuss the Macro enviroment relative
to their asset allocation. But what about the occasional trading opportunity? How about a rare option trade?
In my opinion, Trading should be relatively rare — but when the occasion presents itself
(3 or 4 times a year) I like to take advantage of the opportunity.
Tuesday was a perfect example, and we issued the first RR&A trading alert.
Also, an even rarer option trade presented itself on Wednesday, and within the
confines (and under the legal protections) of Real Money, I posted an
option idea that turned out to be a moneymaker.
I have backposted that as an example of how we might show "Stale"
market/trade calls, but I am also interested in a broader question:
for potential and actual subscribers of RR&A, what is it that you
are most interested in: Long term investing? Asset Allocation? Medium term (30 days) Trades? Options?
Comment away; You guys have become my best R&D resource:
Let me ask you this Barry…
As a potential subscriber who relies on a slow dial-up connection (not too many options out here in the boondocks) I’m leery of paying full price for a lot of bells and whistles, graphics, etc. which I may not be able to take full advantage of. If, on the other hand, most of the site’s info is delivered in a text only format (i.e. weekly newsletters, email alerts) I would be very interested in subscribing…can you advise?
As to the type of guidance I’m most interested in I’d have to say medium to long term trading/investing.
Good call on gold settling around 575 BTW near term though I suspect it will head lower again with the mkts after a brief but doomed rally of sorts.
I am an actual subscriber as of last night. I guess I want it all. I see the need for long term investing which I imagine you measure in years. But I would also enjoy having a mechanism to pay for the newsletter, an occassional dinner at Morton’s or the like, or a trip to NY to take you out for the best burgers in NY, or whatever I could afford from a great short term trade.
The abilility to do 30 day trades means I can add to my long term portfolio and actually retire earlier. You are the math wizard, how fast can you compound money with what std. deviation?
As to asset allocation, every financial planning book I have ever gotten close to has extolled that more money is made and lost through asset allocation decisions than stock or bond selections that I’d be an idiot not to hope that you’d include that in your newsletter. Was it not just yesterday that you wrote a piece about beating the S&P 500 by investing in bonds and midcaps and small caps for the last six years? I am not B or Alaskan Pete or one of your other insightfull commentators who know where to invest and make a ton of money and write newsletters. I don’t always understand what they say, byt I read them anyway figuring one day a light bulb will turn on. I am the guy trying to figure out why I can’t log onto your site, and why my portfolio isn’t bigger, and why I lost money doing this and that.
So, to summarize, I think that a review of the long term view and the strategy and current taqctics for dealing with it are always appropriate. Thirty day trades help fund my portfolio when they work, and learning to sell would be a blessing.
Trades that work make trips to high class steak houses possible. For the vegan, new clothes. Also, exceptional warm feelings, good wishes, and when possible one rushes to NY to treat the the person with the great trade to something well deserved.
Asset allocation is supposed to be the mother’s milk of finacial planning. I can’t wait to see who will turn this into a myth.
That’s all I can think of. I hope it helps.
There are a few options, and we are considering others.
Right now, we have it structured that people get email notifications when a new comment gets posted.
you log into the site, and download a PDF.
Some people have asked to be emailed the full comment instead of the notice/log in/download process;
If you see this: http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2006/06/markets_sketchi.html
it was posted as a 124 kb three page pdf –
The other request that came in a bit was something like this: ” I really like the blog, but I dont have time to read all the content — can you direct me only to the most recent and important post?”
So we set up “What we are watching” — all meat, no fat, 3 or so posts per week (no notices, its a link when you log in)
This is still an evolving format, so we are open to any ideas . . .
Commentary alone is available for free. Yours might be better, but that doesn’t necessarily make it worth paying for. Including trade suggestions allows people who aren’t sure what to do to make money off your research, which makes them more willing to pay for it.
Daytrading will be done by people who are trading full time and have their own models. I think that extends to anyone that wants to trade more than a few times a month. Trade suggestions should be frequent enough to make money but rare enough that people who have a full time job can follow them. The market moves in cycles, and there are opportunites to make money in countertrends. Some people will want to trade every week, while others will want to trade only 3-4 times a year. If you can include an expected timescale on trade suggestions, it would be very useful. Then people can ignore trades that are below their timescale.
I personally would want trade suggestions for anything where you expect at least a 10% move. I am still a graduate student and don’t have enough time or money to bother with small movements. 3-4 trades a year would be plenty. You called the top pretty well. If you can call the bottom to within 5% and continue forecasting that well then it would definitely be worth paying for your service (especially if you have a student rate).
But I’m not really interested in just trade suggestions. I definitely want some explanation of why you are making them. It looks like you provide explanations as well as trading ideas.
As for products, I am fine with trading anything. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past two years learning how options and futures work, but I don’t have enough money to trade futures. I also don’t have enough money to trade individual stocks. Perhaps you could put out a forecast on where you expect an index to go and then list several ways that traders could make money if the prediction is correct as well as the risk of each strategy if the prediction is wrong. Futures/ETFs/Index options can get confusing until you learn how they work. Teaching people how to make directional trades with options would be valuable. Teaching people proper risk management strategies would also be valuable.
Your plan seems to involve a lot of explanation for what is going on. I have been considering subscribing to other services, but I always worry that their completely undescribed models will start failing at some point and I won’t be able to tell the difference until I have lost a lot of money. Your models could stop working too, but I have more confidence in a model that comes with reasoning then one that just gives buy and sell signals. Especially as a young investor, getting an explanation of why I would want to go long or short is as valuable as the actual trade suggestions.
I’m interested in your view of proper investment allocation that gives some balance to what I read/hear elsewhere.
Second, I want to hear your big picture perspective on the direction of things.
Lastly, a little humor is a bonus!
Barry,
I am interested in the trading, medium term and even shorter. Your alert on 6/13 is exactly why I subscribed. I agree they should be rare as too many alerts become just another car alarm going off. However, anything you believe in should be shared. I’d also like a specific discussion of upcoming events that may move the market. For example, on K & C in early April you talked about selling into a strong jobs report which turned out to be a perfect call. You’re tapped into Wall Street and I’m not. Any insight that you can share is greatly appreciated. In fact, I would really like a premarket blurb with occasional intraday comments to help me keep my finger on the pulse. Like a quick comment on say the BOJ holding at zero, a Bernanke speech or an approaching hurricane, etc. I’m not asking for specific daytrading calls, but simply anything that can help get me closer to the street. I find that the more I stay in touch with the flow of the market, the better my medium term trades are.
Possibly an internal message board for Q&A or topical discussion. More in-depth articles extending from your work on thestreet.com (i.e. Apprentice Investor)
Hi Barry,
I am a long time reader of the big picture, and am seriously considering subscribing.
I personally would be very interested to see more short-mid term trend information. Basically over the next few days, weeks and months, what you think will happen and why. So these would not need to be specific trade suggestions, but enough information to allow people to use it to supplement their own short-mid term strategy if they want to. (The could eventually be a standing section of you site, explaining possible scenarios for the next few days, week and months – so that someone could log on, click on a ‘market radar’ link and get a feeling for your current mindset about the market. Also the ‘market visibility factor’ would be useful, for example, you may say “OK next week will be data dependant, so we don’t have the visibility into possible short term market moves, but we think by the end of the month/quarter the bearish sentiment will have returned forcing things lower”, in more words than that of course ;)
Short-mid term trade and options suggestions will also be useful as and when they present themselves. Actually with these, you could potentially have some ‘risk levels’ associated with suggested trades. I.e. so a reader determines what level of risk he wants to take (say 1 -5 with 5 being something like the option trade you discussed) and 1 being something much more safe. If you come up with a risky but potentially lucrative trade, I would be great for you to post it, and you can just make sure the readers understand it is risky and may not be for them.
I agree long term holdings will be an important part of this, but I’m not sure right now is a good term to buy and hold. (I don’t personally plan to be long anytime soon as I feel we still have more potential downside). The only things I am holding right now are put leaps on homebuilders/HGX that I got in Q1. It would be very useful for me to get more insight to help me decide if I should close these out around September, or hold them into next year – that is the kind of information that would quickly pay for itself.
So I am wondering, do you still see the DOW finishing the year around 7000, with it actually ending up from it’s year low around September/October? If so do you think the low will be much lower than 7000? This is the sort of question that I would hope to get an answer to as a subscriber.
As a young investor (24 y/o with about 3 years of investing experience) I tend to take an extremely aggressive approach. It has has given my net worth extreme volatility. Most recently I made my first futures trade with a purchase of gold when the spot price was at $710 and didn’t sell until it hit $605. Pain…
I would be extremely interested in your service if it included some of the big-picture insight of your blog, with some specific trading ideas to act on your big-picture theories. I would be thrilled if these trading ideas involved not just stocks, but also options and futures and options on futures. Also, after my latest loss, I would really like to know what the “stop loss” is on your trades or some other type of hedging built into your trade suggestions.
For me, too many trading suggestions would actually turn me off from the service….. I want to see the really compelling ideas.
Charter member. Like everything you do Barry. I’m long term. Looking for early warning on long term trend changes. Asset allocation would be a plus. Long term is a year plus. Tax rates at 15% are hard to beat. I shorted the Qs with you a couple months ago-ish and held longer (till week before last.) Shorting as a hedge would be of interest. This was just a short; I had no exposure at all to Naz stocks.
I’m overwieght natural resources (grossly) and have been for a couple of years. Did great last year. Still up about 5% this year. Sold some in May, should have done more. Your thoughts on commodities/related stocks/China/etc. would be welcome. Areas within this group.
Options and trades for my trading money. Advice on bond etfs for long term money allocation.
OH yeah and definately top and bottom calls based on technicals.
I haven’t subscribed (yet?) because of the cost.
I’m a new investor just beginning to pay attention. I’m not sure at what point the cost of a subscription will be offset by the (profitability) of the information. Also, I may just ship off all my money to someone (like you!) to handle so that I can pay attention to earning my living.
If (when?) I subscribe, the following will be of interest to me in ASCENDING order:
* The occasional good trade idea. (jmn’s comment that too many ideas become like the ubiquitous car alarms is exactly on point.) A few times a year sound terrific AND/OR jkw’s idea about touting ideas that, in your opinion, have a 10% or better potential.
* Recommended asset allocation. Right now I’m about 70% in cash — and was about 95% invested EOY ’05. I figure I’ll collect my guaranteed 5% while I study and learn more about investing, at which point I’ll move forward into…what? I’d like to know how to allocate prudently so that I don’t blow myself out of the water.
* Big picture with commentary based on it. The overall view is important along with the thinking that informs it. This includes (in my book) suggestions on small move possibilities. Mentioned above was your insightful call to sell into the jobs report. Perfect!
As for promotion: I suspect the best promotion of all will be….RR&A itself. Seems to me the easiest and best way to accomplish this is simply to make the whole thing available two weeks later. Being able to see the ideas offered/suggested relatively recently helps one to assess whether or not the subscription investment is right for him or her — not to mention the if-I-had-only-realized-it-THEN factor. A lot of people will decide that going foward, they want to know it NOW — and subscribe.
Of course, the time frame here is an issue. If you focus on trading, complete availability w/in a few days could stir up the regret factor; if you focus on Big Picture ideas, a greater time-lag is indicated.
I would also remain mindful of drey’s comment re: his slow dial-up connection. I promoted a big conference in NYC and was (reluctantly) persuaded by the person creating the website to be mindful of people who don’t have gee-whiz computer technology.
As you say: it’s a work in progress.
We all appreciate your blog and hope to “pay back” by offering ideas that may be useful to you.
The above are one woman’s thoughts.
I’m a new subscriber. One size does not fit all … I’d like to hear about great trading opportunities when they come up … that might be four in one week or nothing for six months. The particular opportunity is what’s important not the frequency of trading recommendations. It matters not to me if the recommendation is a daytrade or a long term hold; I’m interested in profit, following or not following a system is of no concern to me.
Thanks much for your focus and committment, Barry. I appreciate the effort that goes into developing a focused, concise and accurate perspective.
Paul Jaffe’s pithy suggestion is on the money. Plus it was focused, concise and (in my book) accurate!
I like the debate in the Big Picture blog, regardless of long or short term. It’s a way to make sure I’ve thought through all the variables to a position I’m taking (or looking to take).
Watching your trades on RR&A would be interesting, but I’m not a big fan of running other people’s positions.
I would pay for the debate, but not the trades.
The great thing about debate is that you’re never wrong, you are only providing a point of view. If you start offering up trades, you will be wrong and wrong often.
trading ideas…. what you like and more importantly WHY you like it… not that i’m necessarily going to follow them (hell, i shorted more after your buy call on the 13th, LOL)… but i’m hoping to learn from your technical and fundamental analysis so i can make better decisions on my own.
Not to jump on you toddz, but you appear to have it backwards.
The web is bursting with debate and top down commentary… most of it low quality but some of it quite good. Big Picture, Paul Kasriel, Paul McCulley, John Mauldin, John Hussman, Jeff Saut, Brad Setser, Charles Kirk, Birinyi Associates, Fleckenstein, Bloomberg,… those are just a few great sources off free, hiqh quality stuff of the top of my head. There is more than enough good debate out there.
It’s the actionable stuff that is hard to find… the willingness for a trusted commentator / market participant to be clear, specific, and definably right or wrong in a way that general commentators never are. Listening to someone like Barry doesn’t make you a sheep either; it just makes you open to more ideas. Top hedge guys are bouncing ideas, theories and calls off each other all the time. It’s hard to do that without the rolodex.
A willingness to make hard calls in ambiguous situations, and to own up to mistakes as well as successes, is exactly the kind of thing that makes a good service worth paying for. If a subscriber doesn’t understand that being wrong for small amounts on a regular basis is a part of trading, then that’s their problem… and speculative trades can easily be differentiated from longer term investment calls, as can levels of conviction and appropriateness etc.
Barry,
I signed up last week. Having read that the opening of the service is going to rein in some of your posts here hooked me. I’ve never paid for a newsletter and honestly am just hoping for more of the same.
Your stated goal of “guid[ing[ individual investors on their long term holdings” nicely sums up why I subscribed. I suppose you need to define (and maybe state) what assumptions you are making about this “individual investor.” I dunno, maybe there are levels to this. A lot of posters on the blog are not typical and are short-term oriented. Generally speaking, for example, does an individual investor doesn’t trade options. At least I don’t / haven’t.
Much of DaveF’s and Nona’s posts above summed up my viewpoints, I can’t add much to these. Also this cracked me up:
>> Trades that work make trips to high class steak houses possible. For the vegan, new clothes.
In the interest of offering another viewpoint, I already subscribe to several services in order to get opinions as well as access to data that isn’t generally available for free. I use these sources to shape my trading decisions, but am not interested in specific trade alerts, signals, etc., as I’ve worked pretty hard to come up with my own little money management, risk management, and decision system that is good enough for me.
But Barry’s commentary has been very helpful in my efforts over the past several months, as have the posts of assorted unknowns to the discussion area of the blog. If that disappears into the pay site, then I might subscribe, but there are a lot of others who may just walk away. Barry has managed to develop something of a community via the blog and will have quite a conundrum(!) in determining where to draw the line between the content that is available for free now and what is pay without breaking that community up.
BR writes: The blog will stay up and active. Lots of posts, debates, discussions, charts, just nothing to give the atttys headaches.
I envision a three tiered system:
Blog: Free
RR&A: Annual fee (reasonable)
RR&A Institutional: Soft dollar/Annual fee (expensive)
Depending upon how self directed you want to be, you can pay much (alot), medium (annual fee) or as little (nothing!) as you want.
per ec0nj0hn:
“A lot of posters on the blog are not typical and are short-term oriented. Generally speaking, for example, does an individual investor doesn’t trade options. At least I don’t / haven’t.”
It depends on what you mean by short-term oriented, but options don’t have to be approached on that basis. I buy deep in the money LEAPs at the index ETF level with a 2-9 month trading horizon that is based on macro expectations.
But you have a point about individuals and options simply because of the suitability issues that the brokers have to contend with before agreeing to let you have a chair at the table. If most of Barry’s subscribers don’t have options-qualified accounts, then there isn’t much point in offering alerts on options trades.
hrm… i should read my comments aloud before posting. that should have read:
> “Generally speaking, for example, an individual investor doesn’t trade options. At least I don’t / haven’t.”
Also that statement refers to the hypothetical “typical” Ind. Inv.
Barry,
I subscribed last week. What I want–and need– is for you to focus on long term holdings, and discuss the Macro enviroment relative to optimal asset allocation.
To the extent that you can also identify specific stocks to buy as long term holds, so much the better.
I turn 50 this year, am retired and looking for long term capital gains. As another poster stated above: “I’m long term. Looking for early warning on long term trend changes. Asset allocation would be a plus. Long term is a year plus. Tax rates at 15% are hard to beat.”
Thanks!
Bruce Sherman
Barry,
I think your blog basically breaks down what your readers most desire: We’re here basically for the knowledge and the things we can learn from you. Another thing we’ve really liked is your changes on the bigger picture.
Sure you’ll have more active traders and people who want to get more frequent updates, but your focus still should be on the bigger picture.
Any knowledge, or shorter term trades along the way are simply the icing on the cake.
I’d like an RSS feed of anything I subscribe to.
I’m a big fan of bigpicture, including VIX coverage.
I’d like to see a worked example of trading on the VIX.
eg have $10000 to invest, VIX at $15, buy,
i) VIX goes to $18, sell at profit
ii) VIX goes to $12, close at loss.
I’d like to see the logic of how you chose specific VIX
instruments, how far out of money, weeks to expiry —
the full development of thew strategy, beyond just
the sentiment of VIX will go up or down.
In addition to specifically detailed actionable information (especially for how to profit when the big drop you are forecasting arrives), I would like as much information as possible about how you reach these decisions. With the amount of capital I have to work with, I would have to do quite well on balance to make enough extra to cover the cost of the subscription, but learning how it is done will benefit me over the years as I put more aside into my investment accounts.
You know, give a man a fish and he is fed for a day, teach a man to fish and his wife will hate you forever.
Hi Barry:
I am most intersted in macro theory that then can be translated into specific, actionable trades (the duration of the trade does not matter – short, intermediate or longer term). The compelling factor is the theory needs to match the action-specific reccomendation. I am a user of both the blog and new site and think that you generally hit this balance, so thanks. ACK
Barry,
Your subscribers consist of value player, momentum players and everything in between. As a subscriber, I will give you my suggestion of what features I would find helpful and hopeful you will consider some of them.
1) The Logic / Basis for your decisions. As someone with an engineering background I want to see all the charts and reasoning behind your short or long term calls. I very much appreciated all the charts & explanation you provided on your first RR&A alert. By providing such detail all you subscribers can understand your thinking and then decide for themselves whether to make the trade or not.
2) Allocations – One of the toughest decisions I make as an investor is trying to decide proper allocations among the various investment groups. I will give you just one personal example here. I started investing in Commodities about 2 years ago. Even though I listened to T. Boone Pickens, Marc Faber, Felix Zulauf, and other Gurus, most of the credit goes to Jim Rogers and his “Hot Commodity” Book. I agreed 100% with his logic. Even today after the Hugh run up in oil prices, the U.S. is still not building new refineries, drilling in Alaska, or building a Nuclear Plant. When gold starting going parabolic in April, I knew the risk was high, and that gold would probably correct back to its 200 day moving average. But I could not decide the best course of action. With the tremendous rise, gold became a bigger part of my equity allocation than I had planned, but what percentage should one allow gold positions to become. That is a tough question to answer. I would like your site to provide subscribers with overall allocation thoughts on investment including fixed income, foreign market, commodities, short term trading money, and etc. For example you mentioned your investing in Taiwan and Malaysia, but what percentage are you allocating to the foreign markets?? BTW, I too own EWT and EWM. In fact, I know you are overall bearish, but I do not now what percentage you have in Cash.
3) Allocation Part 2- Also in your recent RR&A alert and you went long the market, but I would have liked for you to provide what your allocation was. For example, if you said go long 1% of your equity allocation, I would figure you were not to convinced of the trade.
4) Forum – Right now you right a Blog and we your readers can freely respond to your particular Blog topic. I would like the ability to be able to post a question to a forum. For example, in early May, I could have asked, “Barry, what should we do now that gold has gone ballistic; Sell, buy a put, or short????? “ Of course, I realize this would take a lot of your time to read and respond to everybody’s questions, but even getting idea from the other investors would be helpful.
5) Longer Term investing – I am mostly a longer term investor, but there are times I will add to my positions and times I will trim my positions. I would like you to talk more about when you think certain positions are cheap and one should add to their position and when they are overpriced and it is time to trim the position. For example, Malaysia has come down, is now a good time to add to ones position?? This would also be a forum question.
Anyway, here are just some of my thought, but I have gone on long enough.
I’m keenly interested in the international markets, both equity and debt, for the longer term. EM markets especially, where the greatest econ growth lies in future.
Some trading alerts before crashes and before rebounds would save me a lot of money, given any percentage of accuracy, since like most investors I tend to sit on investments that are in jeapordy too long, and to pass up prime buying opportunities.
I would like to see asset allocation and long-term investing suggestions be the main basis of your service.
However, alerts are important too – occassionally, such as the EM call, when immediciacy is important. However, like one reader said, too many going off is like a car alarm.
Also, not sure of what I’m getting for the $400 annually (seems about $100 high, off the top of my head). Dated samples on site would be good (perhaps I missed them?)
Thanks for your blog – keep up the good work.
Jay Walker
The Confused Capitalist
Barry:
I have several subscriptions, so I’ve not signed on to yours yet. I tend to value subscriptions based on actionable tradeable information. For example, in Real Money, I have received wonderful tradeable information from Dan Fitzpatrick and Alan Farley. Also, JCC made an options call on GS that I researched and followed and did well on. I also have received terrific value from the Almanac Investor that pays for the subscription many times over. Tradeable specifics are a great way for readers to see a positive cost benefit–recovering their annual fee through specific trade recommendations with clear outlines for entry/exit points. I also value John Murphy’s commentary on Stockcharts.com.
With respect to macro issues, discussion of the gap between “reality” vs “market perception” adds a critical value, not in the sense of “here’s the trade and here’s the risk/reward”, but rather in ascertaining current market risk (which adds value when you don’t lose your putookus). The trouble is that there is so much investment advice, and so much of it conflicting, that it’s hard for people to synthesize it all and distill it in a way that makes sense for their personal situation. Accordingly, leveraging the contrarian view and identifying the gap helps folks quantify the “what if I’m wrong and the crowd is right, or “what if I’m right and the crowd is wrong.” Your web content is predicated on the latter and that is where you should focus your commentary and provide value in addition to throwing out some specific trade bones.
Barry,
I subscribed to see what you can deliver. I do this myself so have a few insights. The first is that when you have a really strong feeling or high conviction on something, we want to know about it. This is true whether it comes 1x or 10x per year.
Secondly I have heard from people that my more frequent writings that are really opinions about things have helped them more than I would ever imagine.
So maybe it’s about the things you really feel strongly about and having some very frequent commentary around them.
That’s my 2c.
Kris
Wow, grat comments Leisa–spot on.
Also, mentioned this before but how about a subscriber forum to get discrete threads going on various topics and trade ideas etc? Something like http://www.tradingblox.com/forum/ except oriented to macro issues, investing ideas, friendly debates, etc. (I have no affiliation with tradingblox, they are just an example of a nice format that would be extremely easy to set up.)
As you are already aware, the bigpicture community is something of an asset. Creating a discussion forum for subscribers would be a way to add significant value by expanding the use and productivity of that asset.
I’ve seen many bright people take opposite positions so often that I don’t care for other people’s stock picks. I do my own research and do my own picking.
You are a connector and what I really like about your blog is that I get the pulse of the market.
Your blog helps me stay focused on the issues at hand, the backburner ones and usually gives me leads.
What I also like about your blog is that I find you logically thorough, something quite rare in our business. There is so much misinformation out there it is sickening; I love the fact you speak the truth.
> Also, mentioned this before but how about a subscriber forum to get discrete threads going on various topics and trade ideas etc?
This I think would be fabulous. And/Or maybe just an early feed of the blog?
I am a subscriber and I agree with some of the posters that an asset allocation for a conservative, aggresive, etc, investor would be helpful. In addition, Barry’s ideas of new sectors that appear ready for an investment (ie energy in 2003) would be great.
Main reasons I subscribed:
1) Barry is NOT a professional economist or an MBA.
2) He graduated with a law degree from the Cardozo School of Law.
3) Barry has a great sense of humor!