As I was preparing for my own presentation, I attended a few others. The first one was Mark Hulbert, the legendary newsletter grader. He mentioned one newsletter that had performed very well for many years in up and down markets, NoLoad FundX (www.fundx.com). I had never heard of them, but their President was presenting at the MoneyShow, so I decided to check it out. I am always interested in different ways of doing things, especially when there is a long track record.
The newsletter, which costs only $100 per year, has been published over 35 years. Hulbert, by the way, has been tracking since 1980. NoLoad FundX is published by DAL Investment Company, which was founded in 1969. DAL runs separately managed accounts as well as a mutual fund (over $500mm) that has an expense ratio of about 1.2%.
I was very impressed with the President as well as the Chief Investment Officer. What they do is simply a momentum strategy, but it is done very professionally, with an emphasis on risk-control (i.e. never 100% energy funds). I am not sure that it's worth all the effort to follow the newsletter (says the model portfolio guy!), but, if you invest in mutual funds, they rank them all as Buy, Hold or Sell. More interesting to me is the funds they run, with a variety of styles (normal, aggressive, conservative and flexible income for mutual funds, normal and aggressive for ETFs and two hedged funds that aren't fully invested like their others and that use options (and seem to be dogs quite frankly, at least the first one, TACTX).
If anyone is familiar, I would love to hear your thoughts. When I meet smart people who have been successful over a long period of time, which is the case here, I take notice.