Investing for Geeks
Why don&#x27;t geeks read Mark Hulbert?  Every time I see people discussing investing, it&#x27;s usually about index funds.  Stock picking is supposedly fool&#x27;s gold, so you should buy the whole market, or so goes common wisdom.<p>But the market can be brutal.  It can have decades-long stretches of terrible returns.  If you had all your money in  index funds, and retired in 1929, you would have made no money for 25 years.  If you retired in 1967, 15 years.  If 2000, 10 years.  Do you have 10 years of living expenses saved up?<p>There <i>are</i> good stock pickers out there, people who focus on fundamentals.  And you don&#x27;t have to take their word for it.  Mark Hulbert has been subscribing to many stock pickers&#x27; newsletters, trying out their picks, and reporting objectively on the results since 1980.  Some libraries subscribe to his monthly report, but since investing is a very long-term process, the same handful of newsletters keep showing up in the report: you only need to look at a few recent Hulbert reports to find good stock pickers.