Hedge fund results without the hedge fund costs.

In the investment newsletter business it's always last years news that gets the attention. If x writer had a few winners then up go the subscribers and very few of the newsletters will provide any sensible calculation of long-term results. I wonder why? Unfortunately, last years winner will often be this years laggard. One of the reasons for this is that the choices that make for big returns in any given year will often make for losers in many other years.

There are some that consistently rank high in the advice business. Hulbert Financial Digest is one and so is the Prudent Speculator. They make sense and give you some specifics and lots of tools to play with and the ability to spend hours researching, studying, selecting or just take a recommendation and run with it. The question really has to be whether following these types of advice columns suits your needs and what the long term outcome is.  A new newsletter that's proud of it's historical record can be seen at PRIMESIGMA.

Hedge funds are great choices for a very limited number of really rich people. If you're an accredited investor with high net worth and high income you can participate in one of these types of funds. And the outcomes might even be spectacular. Or they might be terrible, mediocre or just plain ok. Some of these guys have an edge and they keep it for several years but you have to pay 2% of your assets every year and you have will give them 20% of the profits. That's a nice compensation plan for someone.

I am particularly interested in a very new investing newsletter that uses quantitative analysis to invest in 3 particular vehicles. They are all leveraged, long investments in broad averages, specifically; Profunds Ultra Nasdaq-100 (UOPIX), Profunds Ultra Small Caps (UAPIX), which can both be traded commission free with a $15,000 account, and EWJ, an MSCI index of Japanese stocks. The information is here: SIGMA with charts and details of the membership.

They are starting at a very low membership set-up fee when you consider the results. The details of membership can be found at www.primesigma.com. Another shocking thing about the business plan for these guys is that you control the investment, they never have access to your funds. That also means that you have to make the trades.