It is a cliché that people sit down and give serious thought to their lives on their birthdays. Well, perhaps some do but most of us use birthdays and anniversaries to basically party. Now let me make it clear that I have no intention of being hypocritical and saying that here at Value Research, we have no intention of partying to celebrate the second birthday of this magazine. We are definitely going to be doing some serious partying as soon as this issue comes out. (Of course, I'm saying this more for the benefit of everyone at Value Research, where I'm frequently accused of not being the partying kind, assuming that Value Researchers actually read my editorials).
However, long before the partying starts we have done some introspection too. We've sat down and thought about exactly what it is that we've done during these last two years, and perhaps more importantly, what is it that we haven't been able to do.
Our biggest failure has been that we haven't been able to make fund investing (or indeed any kind of investing) exciting. People write in to know which is 'the hottest fund' around and, not having the right kind of thermometer, we are unable to tell them. They write in to ask if this is the top of the market and we have to shamefacedly admit that we don't have the faintest clue.
Earlier, in 2002, they would ask if this was the bottom of the market and we were never able to tell them. However, this wasn't a permanent failure and we can now say with confidence that yes, sometime in 2002 the market did hit its bottom. In fact some researchers have even managed to discover the exact date in 2002 when the market was at its bottom.
Similarly, one day in the future we will also be able to tell you whether the market is at its top nowadays. In fact, we will even be able to tell you which was the hottest fund of 2004 on the morning of January 1, 2005.
Well, not morning, maybe a little later in the day — depends on the post-New Year's eve hangovers our researchers have. In the long run, all such questions can be answered accurately.
So have we been utter failures, then? Not quite. Unlike the hot-fund-seekers and the bottom-fishers, our readers tend to be a different sort. Among the portfolios we get for our Portfolio Makeover feature, we now find a high percentage of sensible, long-term investors who know that a lot of money can be made through the right investing approach, provided they act sensibly and think long-term.
Looking at this, we like to think that we have succeeded in a limited way with a limited audience. And the audience is limited. Based on the readership data we have, there are probably around 60,000 to 80,000 individuals who read this magazine in some way. And there are another 100,000 people who regularly visit our website. Honestly, for a niche media organisation like ours, that's not bad, but as a percentage of the number of investors in this country, it's depressingly small. Still, we derive comfort from tha fact that these people are the torch-bearers and opinion leaders of the right kind of investing.
However, even the number won't always be so small — that's one thing I'd like to believe we can predict about the future.
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