The site is now live! Go here to sign up. We won’t make the official announcement until Monday, but its up and running as of this week.
The blog will still continue in its present form; As noted too many times, both the ST trading calls and longer term asset management discussions were moved behind the firewall. The blog will still keep doing what its been doing, with 2 – 4 posts daily.
I want to thank readers for all the great feedback they gave, and as
you can see alot of it was incorporated into the site. We also will be
following up with conference calls, and hotline as requested by you.
All those who signed up as guinea pigs/beta testers, will get a free
month; those beta testers who already subscribed won’t see their
subscription clock start the cycle until July 1.
If someone can figure out how we can do a student rate that won’t be abused, let me know.
Thank you again for all the terrific input!
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UPDATE: June 16, 2006 6:58am
Two items: We’ll work on a student rate that offers a discount for a period of time (one year? two years? share your thoughts)
Also, I have in the past offered free subscriptions (when it was institutional-only, sell-side research) to those who were in active military service. Any suggestions how to pursue this further? Free to all active service men? Those below the rank of Lieutenant Colonel? What say ye?
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UPDATE: June 17, 2006 6:53am
Several readers have made the suggestion that posting stale news & market commentary so people can get a flavor of the market calls and trades — a kinda track record.
I think that can be squeezed by legal. The only issue I know of is "cherry picking" and that can be handled by posting everything (not just winners) on the blog, but time delayed, with the disclaimer "This was originally posted on June XX for subscribers – it is 2 weeks old – not a recommendation – blah blah blah."
So on June 20, I can blog "back-post" the June 13th call, (and do it on June 13th location in the blog) and then pointing to it from a post on June 20th. Does that work?
Comments on this are welcome.
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UPDATE: June 17, 2006 9:27am
Question for you:
I am not sure if RR&A readership is interested in the occasional option trade. 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.
Trading is a relative rarity — but when the occasion presents itself (3 or 4 times a year) we like to take advantage of the opportunity. Tuesday was a perfect example.
Again, an option trade presented itself on Tuesday, 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 will backpost that as an example of how we might show "Stale" market/trade calls (Done!), but I am really 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? Trades? Options?
(Note: This will be posted later on June 17 as a "standalone" — I want feedback and I assume this will be overlooked as it is now 3 days old already)
Thank you very much for your blog, please keep it going!
damn. i guess it didn’t dawn on me i could actually have signed up a couple of weeks back. doh. anyway, regarding the student rates, minyanville requires a “.edu” email address for theirs. not that this doesn’t exclude faculty/staff/whatever, but it seemed a reasonable restriction.
Hi Barry,
Student discounts are usually only given to people with .edu email addresses. I’m sure there is still some scope for abuse (people may have friends with .edu sign up and ‘share’ user logins etc, but it’s probably hard to avoid that. )
I agree with the .edu deal, seems like that’s usually the best way to screen for students. And make the student rate cheap so those of us (present company included) can have access to your daily thoughts! ;)
Hey, Barry, howzabout posting (for free viewing) some stale news and recommendations at Ritholtz Research & Analytics so the reader can get an idea of what kind of service his money would buy him?
BR: That’s a pretty good idea — I’ve been thinking about it — the question is how long a delay, where do you post it — perhaps chronologically with a note at top saying (This went out June 10, etc)?
Hey Barry,
Made a couple of large today on your buy recommendation. ROI on the subscription was brilliant.
Best regards,
Drew Yallop
Woah – I’m a student at a private school. No .edu address for me.
How about we register what school we’re a part of and that just scares people into being honest??
Lowell
Damn! I just have to watch out for the wiley Prof Jeremy Siegel’s email, which also ends with .edu
When I was a student I didn’t have 2 cents to invest.
I’ve also got a .edu address for my primary mail, though I’m a researcher and not a student. I can assure you that the arbiters of the .edu domain are exceedingly stringent about allocating new names, and it’s about the best approach you’ll have until a real authorization infrastructure grows in popularity here in America.
Any dork in college with enough cash to open a brokerage account and trade QQQQs should pay the same price the rest of schmucks did.
Who had money to trade in college?
Let these trust fund babies fend for themselves.
-Slick Rick
I’m a student…………..of the market. Do I get a deal?
It’s impossible to guarantee a unabused student rate.
So how about this approach: Any student gets to be a student for one year. After that, he or she “graduates”…to the full price.
Financial education is sorely lacking in this country. My Dad felt that very strongly. My parents never bought me a car or fancy clothes. But they did pay for half of my college education and most importantly, my mother and father transferred $10K into my name in 1990 during my freshman year. They wanted me invest it for myself. I never got another chunk of change from my parents.
Living in Boston, I rode my bike over to one of Fidelity’s downtown offices. I opened an account and started reading the financial press. I also had a number of friends who had spent summers working at MSFT and were thrilled with the company.
So, no kidding here: I put it all in MSFT in the winter of 1990. And kept it there until the late nineties — when the dotcom bubble taught me a few painful lessons about diversification.
Now I’m older, married, the grey hairs are poking through, but I’m hooked to investing for life. The majority of my investable assets can be traced back to that original MSFT purchase.
On to the topic at hand: a discount to students is a good idea. Supporting young people in their financial education is healthy.
Barry, I’m a daily reader (sometimes multiple times / day) and a student. But, I have no .edu address and although I shy away from subscriptions, if you had a student rate I’d sign up in a heart beat.
Maybe there’s another way we can validate ourselves? Not that you’d want the extra paper work, but I’d be up for sending in a photocopy of the student ID card, proof of enrollment from the university I’m at, or whatever you decide on.
Hey Barry,
I really enjoy all that you share on this site; it has been very educational for me. I am a student, a husband, a father of an 11 month old boy, and I work nights at UPS and sometimes double shifting to earn extra money. My wife and I have a savings account from which I invest, it’s not a lot, but at a young age I am applying money management skills. Would I love a student rate? You bet. Do I deserve a student rate? No, I don’t. Just because I am a student doesn’t mean that I should get certain privileges. Although some have had it harder than others, does that mean we should all suffer as that person did? UPS sucks to work at, but it has taught me many lessons. So, Barry, its your business, you do what you think is best, whatever fulfills your business model. If you don’t have a student rate, I would be wrong in complaining. It means I need to work harder until I can pay full price. God help a country where people develop an entitlement mentality. I think we are already there. JB
I almost forgot to mention–one way to keep track of a student subscriber maybe to email you the latest regestration form showing approximately how much schooling one has left–or something along those lines. That may be a lot of work for your staff. Anyway, I go to a Christian school, so if I lie, I have bigger problems than just getting a subscriber discount. :) JB
Bummer, nobody offers military rates anymore. At least it’s easy to police – .mil address. I’ll continue to read the blog everyday, it’s an outstanding deal as is.
I’ve offered readers in the military free subscriptions
.mil works for me.
.edu email addresses are a minimal check on whether someone is a student or not. It will work for 90% of the students out there, but it will also work for faculty and staff. Some schools (including MIT) give alums email addresses (anyone@alum.mit.edu is no longer a student). Some research labs are attached to schools and allow all the researchers to get .edu emails.
You could include something in the terms of service saying that if you determine that someone is fraudulently claiming to be a student, then they will be backcharged the full rate plus a penalty. You can ask for registration information or transcripts to check. If it’s too much work to check everyone, you could randomly sample some people every semester and hit people with penalties if they can’t prove they are a student. That would probably be enough to keep people honest, since you could make the penalty more than they would save in a year by lying. I guess it depends on how much you care about giving students a discount and how much you care about non-students abusing it.
Re: military: I’m inclined not to discriminate among rank. A (free) subscription could be your contribution to morale to everyone for which I, for one, thank you.
Re: student rate. Certainly you want to make it as easy as possible for your organization to monitor whether a subscriber is really a student or a free-rider. What about an automatic one free year with the second year requiring proof of student status? This limits the amount of verification hassle you have to endure. Also, keep in mind that after doing this for a while, you may discover a more reliable way to monitor the “truthiness” of your student subscribers. If so, the verification issue would become moot.
Re: charging TOS penalties suggested by jkw.
They may be hard to collect. The KISS principle works for me. Going forward, violators’ subscription rate is doubled for each year of misrepresented status.
Admittedly, there’s a way around this (e.g., subscribe under a friend’s name) but does one really want to turn oneself into a pretzel to stay on top of the few who are ethically challenged?
I think a lot of people will abuse the student rate program if they can. If you want to have this program the students should mail to your office: a copy of their transcript, as well as their user id and password they have selected with check or credit card info included. It shouldn’t take your staff more than a couple of minutes per student to input the info.
Steve C. may have the best approach of all, especially if he’s right that many would abuse the student rate program.
I agree with Mr. Dork. Increasing financial literacy among college students is vital. While most students may not have enough funds to invest now, developing a framework to analyze the market, what to look for, etc, will serve them well later on when they have investible funds.
Re: anonimouse’s idea of publishing stale news. (No one seems to have commented on this.)
I like the idea very much. Your site could have a “Looking Backwards” section that includes such items. You might add occasional update comments when warranted.
Long term, I suspect this would boost subscriptions — a win-win.
If you don’t have a student rate, I would be wrong in complaining. It means I need to work harder until I can pay full price. God help a country where people develop an entitlement mentality.
I don’t think student discounts for financial education are like other entitlements. Teaching young, influenceable folks how to be financially responsible helps create stability in our economy—on the other hand, letting them be taught how to handle money by television and credit card companies probably leads them to overborrow and overspend, which can get us to the sort of economy which we enjoy now. In that sense, we may all benefit from Barry’s student discount.
As for the moral side of the issue, how far do we go in expecting our younger citizens to be independent? Should a college student of 19 be turned over, with no financial education, to a world full of enticements, addictions and free money? Are we going to require so much independence of our youngsters that we leave them to figure out for themselves how to become independent?
And financial responsibility is practically synonymous with independence.
Why limit discount to just students? How about discounts for the following: Senior citizens, minorities, illegal immigrants, working poor, disabled, police and military retired or not, any protected “class”, women or anyone else that can claim victimhood or thinks he or she deserves preferential treatment etc. etc..
It’s a mistake to offer discounts. Just because someone may be a student doesn’t mean they can’t afford a sub, and most will be gaming you anyway. If you want to do something altruistic, offer a scholarship based on subscription revenue.