Publisher
Oxford Club
Description
This is the main investment ideas newsletter from the Oxford Club, published twice per month.
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OXFORD CLUB: YOU WOULD WANT TO DOUBLE RESEARCH ANY ADVICE
I have been a member of Oxford Report off and on again for the past 20 years. Each time I subscribed, I was seduced by the “tickler” ads or emails. So far, I have made NO PROFIT from their ‘information’ etc. I also have learned that they have a parent company AGORA FINANCIAL. It seems that all the “Subsidaries” do is to advertise subscriptions to each of the OTHER newsletters of companies under the AGORA umbrella. It seems to be a BIG CIRCLE!
I have subscribed to a number of newsletters, but this is the only one I have kept. I have had it over four years and if I had to choose one to keep it would be this one. Their “secret” is the use of a 25% stop loss. Once I figured this important piece of information out, I cannot complain about the returns. They generally recommend one stock a month with the goal of buying and holding until it hits the 25% stop loss. Most of their recommendations are solid, established companies with little speculation. The articles are interesting and membership does have its rewards. The only drawback is the amount of mail and “special” offers once you become a subscriber. I also subscribed to their premium services, but would not recommend it unless you have capital to play with. Overall, it is the best service I have had.
Some reviewers say that the quality and performance of this newsletter decreased over years. However, according to Hulbert, the track record has been actually significantly better during the time that Alexander Green has been editor.
From the end of 2001 through June 30, 2009, according to the Hulbert Financial Digest’s calculations, the Oxford Club has produced an 8.1% annualized return, vs. a 0.0% annualized gain for the Wilshire 5000. This service is currently in 5th place for risk-adjusted performance over the trailing ten years among the 87 newsletters for which the Hulbert Financial Digest has at least a decade’s worth of data.
For $79 a year, it’s a great value for money. Some newsletters charge this amount per month.
Subscribed twice. Can’t say they really made me
any money, but then, I use these things for my own
research – rather than just blindly buying what
a pundit says to buy – and what should we really
expect for $79.00 a year? Sure, this entry level
letter is offered cheaply to bait people to buy the
more expensive services – but no one has to bite.
I regard Alex Green highly for the integrity of
his recommendations and clearly communicating
about them. I also think Oxford, customer
service wise, has some execellent educational
materials – I particularly like their idea to
buy more of your solid winners and let them run.
I have made nice gains using this idea alone.
They do often get stopped out of a stock without
there being a really apparent, company specific,
reason – and I have noticed that their “stopped out”
stocks often perform well thereafter.
If I subscribe again, I’ll take a new twist. Don’t
rush to buy new recommendations – and focus hard,
research wise, on their stopped out stocks. Often,
they still offer great – perhaps greater – value
at 25% less in price – an even better risk/reward.
Fred
I have been reading newsletters for a long long time. I enjoy Travis’s writeups but was suprised he didn’t remark on the “honest pitch” aspects of Alex’s write up. Most authors would have you believe government contracts were sure to launch this companys stock. Alex merely suggests he feels its
a possibility – so would I, especially if they made one of these machines to look at your feet so you don’t have to take off your shoes at the airport.
Alex Green has a terrific track record in picking stocks, and providing a range of lower risk portfolios. he does not bat a thousand- nobody does.
Travis seems to agree this is one solid company. Alex is offering a fairly priced strong performer in the strongest sector given our recession, with, he believes a strong upside potential with or without a container inspection contract.
He recommended it last year if I recall, and its still has this upside potential in my view. The main juice here I think is the limited number of solid companies with upside will attract institutional money- why? Alex would say the bottom line is believable earnings growth. And institutional money really moves these stocks.
I have been a basic member $99 for many years. Never bought any higher priced pitches. Still subscribing I agree with the comments about way too many teaser letters and have asked them to stop pitching to me to no results. I’ve never gone to their investment ‘parties’ or cruises.
That said I hired an independent financial advisor last year and what they advised was no better that the GFP (Gone Fishing Portfolio). If you can take the long term view, the GFP – either mutuals or exchange traded funds is solid advice as it most of Alex Green’s stuff.
The rest of it is hit or miss. Take the monthly ‘special picks’ as input and do the research yourself. I think the value lies in following their assett allocation and using the trading stops. Nobody picks all winners so yes you get stopped early sometimes but you avoid those crash and burns as well. For the price, I haven’t found a better letter.
i didnt subscribe as i died of boredom and sceptical astonishment (not cancer) before i got to the end of this
letter. if they got to the point a bit more quickly and left out
all the bullsh*t they might avoid the derision their ad deserves
As a former bond trader/salesman then direct mail copywriter I’m always fascinated by the insanely long teaser letters these online research guys send out. I’m also a sap for them. I subscribed to Oxford a few years back when they were using the very same “fights cancer and terrorism” ad they are repeating now. I then received all the follow up letters from other online researchers. I subsequently became involved with Stansberry & Associates, eventually joined their Alliance. Stansberry seems a bit impressed with himself and may or may not be kinda wacky politically, depending on your persuasion, but he’s either been lucky or is just plain smart because I find a lot of his info rings true in my mind and in my accounts. He apparently has a good feel for talent because a few of the other people he has writing for him come up with pretty knowledgable stuff. He predicted a number of 2009’s bankruptcies and has a decent hand at tearing apart finance reports. One of the best investments I’ve made though I wish I didn’t have to filter through all of his nauseating tripe to get the good information.
Oops, I did it again! Subscribed, that is, but its OK. Just read Travis’ review on latest Oxford smart grid tout to gain subscribers.
Need to separate their tout stocks from their real recommendations to buy. Their touts are a bit like Tobin Smith’s – far off to pan out, if they do big time as touted, and ya, these newsletters all have copy writers extraordinare!
But still, for the money, they have some sound recommendations,
well researched, and Alex Green and Bassenese both seem
honorable and very straight forward in explaining their “real” recommendations. That said, sure, the best picks will always be reserved for the high price payers – and no question, the entry level newsletter offers are geared to try to get subscribers to move up – and pay more. But overall,
newsletter wise, I am staying on board – but only at this entry level rate – this time around.
Fred
It’s been a long time since I was affiliated with Oxford Club and Agora, but I actually worked for this newsletter at one time. I think the one thing that I am really most angered with is their shameless promotion of Alex. At one time, they were promoting him as “walking away from a huge Wall Street bonus” just to be with them… Truth is, he did but he had no choice. You see, he was writing for OC AND he was a broker at a major brokerage firm. In fact, the broker he often pointed subscribers to… was his partner! Oh… and by the way, he kinda forgot to tell his brokerage firm that he was writing this newsletter! Big oops. He was asked to leave the firm and return most of the signing bonus they had paid to recruit him.
Folks above are right that the Communique is a hook to sell “premium” trading services. During the couple of years I was there, I never saw one trading service worth the paper it was printed on. The trouble with the trading services, is that you can’t count on conditions being consistent month after month after month, so being able to sell short or buy momentum or write covered calls and generate a consistent profit time after time is difficult.
My personal opinion of the premium service, the Chairman’s Circle, is that it is a colossal waste of money. My apologies if I offend anyone. It’s not intended.
When I started investigating online investing, I subscribed to quite a few free newsletters. The Oxford Club publishes one called “Investment U.” I have profited from some of their ideas. So I figured that if their FREE service was helpful, their paid-for MEMBER service would be wonderful. WRONG!!!! The only additional “benefit” you get from actually paying these SCUMBAGS is that they inundate you with teases for their pricier services.
Just joined Oxford Club. Membership package is classy. Initial foray helped me pick Owens & Minor
(OMI) out of the pack, based on 3 recommended stocks recommended for 2010, (…but not without checking the company out in the S&P Stock Guide and on line: A rated company, paid dividends since 1926, solid earnings and returns, 208m debt to 1,283m in assets and 14.7m in cash.)
Then I tried to access the 13 newsletter/reports listed in the membership guide. Not so fast, Watson. Everything was a teaser. One teaser drove me crazy: 617m Michigan company to build connectivity lines for 62 mega watt Fredonia Reactor.
I’m new to investment advise newsletters, so I’m not surprised
the “honey” didn’t match the hype. Oh, well……
Oxford’s newsletter is mainly to “Sell” you higher costing “Services” that you thought you were going to get when you subscribed originally. A great tease and a LOT of BULL.
Subscribed to Oxford Club October 2009.I waited patiently for new recommendations. There were a couple losers in the beginning but over the last 8 months they are right on target with great returns and a couple of unbelievable picks. I rejoined and at least they do well in a up market. The Oxford Portfolio is A-, the 7 Deadly Sins is also A-, The Perpetual Income Portfolio is B and the other 2 mutual fund portfolios are worthless. I like them and for $79 they are worth a lot more. I throw out all their other junk. Also, I do my own research to verify their recommendations.
I have subscribed to OC ($79/year) for at least 10 years. I have tried many different newsletters, several trading services and options advisors. As you can tell I am a sucker for long shots. That being said, I have benefited greatly, mostly by applying the general knowledge in their articles to my retirement accounts, selecting V.G. mutual funds in line with their (usually Alex Green’s) view of the upcoming year(s). I also from time to time will buy a 100 shares of a stock pick that resonates with me, and that usually works out positively.
As has been said, they work great in a bull market, and in the downturn nothing was working except keeping your head low. Trying to time shorts (puts) was brutal. The fact that they kept recommending buys and getting stopped out they justified by saying that you never know when the bear was going to turn around. True enough.
I wish their pitch for their trading services were true, but they really don’t have a crystal ball anymore than anyone else. It puts a tarnish on their reputation, but apparently it is making them money.
In the long run, I have made many times more than the $790 +/- I have paid in the last 10 years for the basic subscription.
I’ve been with the OC for 4 years and have very sparingly cherry picked their recommendations and only after my own research. The picks I settled on have done very well over the years and I have used their small portfolio allocation advice (no more than 4% per stock). Additionally I have employed their trailing stop advice and between these two key trading/investing tools I have done well. My advice is to ignore all the hype and additional sales pitches–if you ever want to know what over-hyped stock pick they are trying to sell use this site to cut through the BS.
I’ve been a lifetime member since the very early 90’s, so I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly.
The bad in the 90’s was due to ex-Investment Director Chris Weber’s terrible performance (at one point it was -10% for the previous three years according to Hulbert). He was eventually thrown out circa 1998-1999 and replaced with Alex Green, who was recruited by Executive Director, Julia Guth. Those two individuals are pretty much the nuts and bolts of The Oxford Club.
Green brought basic discipline to the club in the form of total portfolio asset allocation, trailing stops on the Trading Portfolio, All Star Portfolio (buy and hold), Perpetual Income Portfolio (since spun off as a separate portfolio with its own monthly newsletter), Seven Sins Portfolio and the Gone Fishin’ Portfolio. While Green is not a market timing believer and that gospel does permeate the entire Club and its numerous journalist correspondents (there is a revolving door — even Porter Stansberry worked for them at one point before being fired; the Club’s best trade of JDSU’s 900%+ gain is solely due to Stansberry), he did warn members about the dot.com mania bubble in January 2000, three months before the top.
Green’s huge screwups were in recommending principal-protected, structured notes from Merrill Lynch (MITTS) that left investors with nothing when Merrill Lynch went belly-up in 2008. For the All Star Portfolio, he also recommended “15-year market beater” (it was really just a quirk of year end calendar reporting) Bill Miller’s Legg Mason Value Fund before it lost 50% or so in 2008. Unfortunately, Green is again pushing a new breed of structured notes in a $49 “book”.
Other than that, the ridiculously high priced advisory services (mostly Green’s) seem overrated. They suffer from the lack of market timing, of which will generate consecutive losing trading during bearish periods. It is really not that difficult to peform basic market timing to improve the risk/reward ratio, yet Green must be overhappy collecting $2K-$5K+ a year from subscribers and not worry about improving his own cooking. Since Green is from Wall Street, the Top 1% mentality must live on.
In case anyone wonders who is behind parent company Agora’s publishing “empire”, I believe it is perma-bears William Bonner (of The Daily Reckoning) and pretend Libertarian but in the closet Republican James Dale Davidson (formerly of Strategic Investment). Agora was not an “empire” in the beginning. Direct marketing is how Agora grew to be an “empire”, not newsletter performance.
It is a stretch to call The Oxford Club an exclusive and private financial club when it is simply a direct marketing business. That’s not to say they are not good at what they do or that there isn’t camradie among Club members at seminars, cruises or local chapter meetings, but it is nowhere the same thing as getting access to the real movers and shakers of Wall Street, which is the kind of image they try to hook you on.
Come to think of it… all of these “investment advisory journalists” seem to get paid six figures while living like a hog and raising their [new] families at our expense. It is not related to stellar outperformance at all, but direct marketing. The Hilton philosophy is alive and well.
Warning: this is a long review, but i go over almost all of their services and perks. This is my experience only.
The Oxford Club is my first investment newsletter that I have come across since I started to get into investing a couple years ago. I was promoted by Early to Rise when Michael Masterson (or Mark Ford who runs he Palm Beach Letter) was running it. It was a good offer and they offered a lot of “fraternal” perks to go along with the newsletter. I liked what I heard and the educational opportunities and went with it.
Went through a whole year of not making use of their picks but following on a play account and keeping any eye on it. I was at the bottom of the barrel membership and I only received the Communique and the Perpetual Income newsletter along with Alexander Green’s Spiritual Wealth which I enjoy reading. Throughout my membership I periodically receive emails and mail pieces along with the newsletters. Half of them are good advice such as portfolio picks, stops, buys and holds. I like their asset allocation strategy and their trail stop strategy. It’s simple but effective and their education behind their picks is sound. They believe in profits = stock gains which is a strong correlation in the market, despite headline driven events.
The other half are marketing pieces for upgrade in service and potential investment ideas and affiliated partners. Since I got this newsletter through ETR, the marketing and sales strategy is very similar and effective to get people to buy. A tad bit annoying as well since I am also subscribed to Investment U (free version) and I get the same promotional offers. But as any business in tough economic times, it is going to do what it can to generate and upgrade new and current customers. That is expected and I am able to see pass it to find value.
This year (2012) I am putting their good picks to use and I must admit that no stock is bullet proof to headline driven news (such as Europe crashing or congressional fiscal irresponsibility), however I will say that between the Communique and Perpetual Income newsletters, they make pretty solid picks. Communique focuses on growth stocks and I will say with my experience that 70-80% of them are winners for me and are excellent choices. The losers that I have have not yet hit their 25% trail stop strategy which is the only reason why I keep them, but at the same time I tend to put my money’s worth in my winners to continue the growth.
The Perpetual Income I will say is 50/50 with winner sand losers. Their picks with dividends do not perform as well and are not really high yields but this is an excellent strategy. Their picks tend to have less volatility then the follow the yield strategy which will fluctuate more than Mitt Romney’s positions (haha?) At the same time however, I am wishing they perform better, but again, 25% trail stop is in place and I adjust it accordingly. They also don’t always pick stocks when I get their newsletter so they are picky (which is good). The better bonus is Steve McDonald’s bond column which is excellent advice for picking bonds and how to play them in this shaky market.
The club has a lot of perks like discounts with brokers, services, discount rates for travel and member exchanges for even bigger discounted rates and they have club houses in a few locations so the fraternal feel is there. They also have conferences quite often though I have yet to go to one.
It’s a solid long term investment newsletter and is great for educational purposes and teaches you some good discipline. I became a lifetime fellowship member and hopefully I’ll test out the VIP services later this year or next year.
As for price, they have offers all the time and you will pay anywhere from $79 to $7000 for a one time fee to join a certain membership level, and then there’s a low annual maintenance fee of like $50 a year. If you can swing it, it’s financially a no brainer. I paid $375 (low offer) to become a fellowship and I like my perks.
As with any newsletter, do your due diligence. Research their pick, see what fits with your portfolio, check past performance and where they are heading (any new acquisitions or profit surges coming up? Is their business model continuous despite the economy?) And you will do well.
I may not always go with their picks, but when I do, I do well and I have become a better investor today.
I have been a lifetime member of the Oxford Club for nearly 30 years. More recently they were ranked in the top 10 newsletter for the past decade (2000-2010) Their service is intended for long term investors, not for short-term investing or trading. If you are seeking long term investing advice, their service is great.