It's not good enough for us to tell you what a great deal High Yield Trader is and how great our returns are, we want you to shop and compare!
Currently we only know of three other services that provide high yield ETF and mutual fund timing. One is purely a signal provider that caters to registered investment advisors. The other two are investment advisors that will manage your money for you at their custodian. A brief overview of each is provided below.
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http://www.anchor-research.com/
Anchor Research is a signal provider for major market indexes and for high yield bonds. Their service is marketed to licensed active investment managers (Anchor a member of the National Association of Active Investment Managers - NAAIM) and is commonly sold as a subscription service that includes regular updates for all of their signals. The cost is several times that of High Yield Trader. To get their most current pricing you will need to contact them directly as they do not publish it on their site.
Our take: Anchor has a decent service and provides insightful commentary but it can be prohibitively expensive, even for a small independent investment advisor, let alone an individual investor. The value you receive from this service will really depend on what other signal sources you have access to and your ability to manage and implement them... having too many conflicting signals can be a bad thing!
http://www.halbertwealth.com/advisorlink/sojourn.php
Halbert Wealth Management offers the Columbus High Yield Bond Program to their clients and essentially plays the role of a solicitor for this service. Sojourn Financial Strategies designed the strategy and is the signal provider. Purcell Advisory Services provides the actual portfolio management and client accounts are custodianed at Trust Company of America. The minimum initial investment is $50,000 and the base management fee is 2.5% plus 0.1% in custodial fees.
Our take: Certainly there are too many people vying for a cut of your money given the high fees. The results, while good, are not as good Merit below and Merit charges a lower management fees, has overall better returns, and has a longer track record. Note that this service lost money in 2008. For a $100,000 portfolio, you will pay $2,600 in fees per year!
http://www.meritadvisors.com/high-yield-bond-strategy
Merit Advisors offers managed accounts using their own proprietary signals. Accounts are held with their custodian, Trade-PMR. The management fee is 1.6% per annum.
Our take: Admittedly, Merit is the service we are least familiar with. A search on the SEC website (http://www.adviserinfo.sec.gov) reveals assets under management of $12.6 million at Merit. Also Merit has informed us that they license their signals to other Investment Advisors who collectively manage $72 million in high yield bond funds. Their returns are impressive, and, as we noted above their fees are a reasonable 1.6%. We are not familiar with their custodian, Trade-PMR so we cannot comment on them. Merit's returns are impressive although they, like the Sojourn service offered by Halbert above, did lose money in 2008.
Disclaimer: The information provided above is not guaranteed to be current or correct. These companies may change their services and fees at anytime. This information is provided as a courtesy and you should independently verify information before making decisions or taking any actions related to this information.
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- Superior returns
- Affordable price
- Many ETFs / funds to choose from
- Use your broker
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