“There’s a lot of money to be made from financial newsletters that give investment advice. But the money comes from selling the newsletters, not from taking the advice.” ~Paul Merriman 

Investment newsletters are getting more popular every year and the returns they promote are extremely tempting. So, should you ditch your financial plan and subscribe?  

We’re diving into newsletters to give you our honest opinion and concerns.  

Unfortunately, anyone can create an investing newsletter, and because they are not actually managing your investment accounts, they have no regulatory agency monitoring their recommendations or investment performance accuracy.   

Investment newsletters only fall under the 1st amendment right of free speech, so they can claim any returns over any time period regardless of actual performance.  

From the article “The Truth About Financial Newletters” by Paul Merriman.   

https://paulmerriman.com/the-truth-about-financial-newsletters/ 

“In a 35th anniversary edition of The Hulbert Financial Digest, publisher Mark Hulbert noted that when he began tracking newsletters in 1980, there were 28 of them. Of those 28, only nine have survived. The rest are gone. 

Of the nine newsletters for which he has continuous data back to mid-1980, only two have beaten the market (measured by the Wilshire 5000 Index) on a risk-adjusted basis. One newsletter has matched the market for 30 years, and the other six have lagged behind.”