I received a lot of emails from readers on the shift to a premium offering, so I thought I would summarize the why and the what.
The What
1. If you subscribe to MFR or Idea Farm you will get first look at our publications, including the recently completed QTAA paper 2012 update.
2. You get a free copy of all upcoming books – including Shareholder Yield out in a few weeks.
3. Updates to data series readers want – ie quarterly CAPE updates.
4. Mailbag questions from readers.
5. Most interesting I think, quant research systems and ideas not available to the general public.
The Why
1. The reality is that it is expensive to run a research shop. I wish I had a team of analysts that worked for free, but we paid ~$250-300k in data and research costs in 2012, on top of another $200k in lawyer fees (in addition to rent, salaries, etc). Once the money management biz gets to scale I’d love to have all of the research published for free again.
2. I am hoping it forces me to write more. A lot more.
3. We are taking The Idea Farm private next week and charging a small fee. Preferably, if we convert enough readers I’ll return MFR to totally free and refund the charges (so make sure to signup!).
Again, this is a new experiment for me so we’ll see how it goes! Any feedback is certainly helpful…
