are investment newsletters worth it 
after decades of hulbert ratings one thing is clear most newsletters like most actively managed mutual funds underperform the market hulbert himself has come to agree with the conventional but hard to follow wisdom that for all the sophisticated hedging techniques and analytical instruments available an investor s best bet is to dump a sum of money into an index fund and hold it hulbert has even gone so far as to suggest that virtually all changes investors make to their portfolios are mistakes that said hulbert has defended newsletters as useful given the weakness of human psychology specifically hulbert views the average investor as incapable of following the index fund strategy because the average investor will panic in a down market and end up selling low hulbert prefers consistently following a suboptimal strategy namely acting on the buy and sell advice of an investment newsletter compared to inconsistently following the optimal strategy which is to invest in an index fund and hold during downturns not everyone agrees but when deciding on investment strategies investors should remember the truism that most actively managed funds and portfolios underperform the market 