Why We Don't Recommend Securities On This Blog

So I recently an into somebody I know who reads my blog but does not work with us.  He wanted to know why I don't post recommendations of my investments, which are currently almost exclusively ETFs, on this site.   I've covered this before but I'll go over it again today.

Primarily I write all of my columns for the clients of my firm Lumen Capital Management, LLC.  Next I write for friends of the firm and then I write for the general audience.  Since only my clients pay me and since I understand their investment profiles, I'm happy discussing with my clients the risk/reward characteristics of investments I make for them.  I'm happy discussing with them why a certain investment {primarily ETFs} is or is not bought for their accounts, why I think it is a good investment along with the risks of the investment as I currently understand them.  Since this is the only group with whom I have that conviction, these are the only people who get to know what we are buying or selling.  If you want to know what we're doing with client assets then you'll have to hire me.

We may from time to time discuss bigger picture overviews of the markets or certain sectors we think are worth commenting upon or even mention individual stocks as part of the overall commentary for that day.  We do not make any investment recommendations in these posts and we certainly do not recommend individual stocks.  When we make these comments, especially regarding sectors or different asset classes, we stress that any investor that is not a client of our firm needs to do their homework, talk to their advisor or better yet to hire us before acting on anything they read on our blog.  If you decide to invest in any security based on what you read here then you are on your own!  We may or may not come back to revisit any topic or overview article on this blog.  We will attempt to give appropriate disclosures on client and personal holdings related to the article but we will not discuss on this blog any individual security we may buy or sell.  In particular we are under no obligation to report here when we might decide an investment has become unattractive and we have sold it or parts of it out of client or personal accounts.

Also, if you invest based on what you read on this blog then you should consider that I may be wrong, particularly in the short-term.  I am not what some might call a short-term trader for clients.  In general my time horizon for an investment can be anywhere between 6-18 months and often is longer.  I currently hold many investments that stretch back multiple years.  For these investments, and for the clients who hold them, the near term may not matter so much.  Frankly most of my clients don't remember if I bought investment XYZ at $22 only to see it move to $20 before it finally began its move higher.  If you are a trader and make short-term decisions based on what you read here then there is a high probability that you will lose money.  Also I may just be wrong or early on my analysis of an investment theme.

Hope that explains what I'm trying to convey in these posts.  The best thing to remember if you read my blog is that if you are not a client and you invest based on anything you read here, you're on your own!

Back Monday.