The Successful Investor organization was something of a pioneer, in print and online, in the Canadian investment advisory newsletter publishing industry.

I launched the company in 1994 with one goal in mind: to give Canadian investors a source of investment advice (and, ultimately, portfolio management) that would differ from the alternatives in one key measure. Our Successful Investor service is free of the conflicts of interest that warp other sources of investment advice. I expected a big market for this kind of service.

After all, our best business prospects have always been informed investors who understand that conflicts of interest can taint investment advice and make it costly and dangerous to investors.

Some learned this crucial lesson as I did, by reading, doing research and talking to successful investors. Others learned it from bitter experience, or, as so many describe it, by “getting burned by a broker.”

The financial industry offers a vast range of investment products and services that are “suitable” for the average investor. “Suitability” is the minimum legal requirement for the industry, but it covers an awful lot of ground, much of which is pitfall-riddled for investors. The incentives for selling financial products and services come in a huge variety. This situation creates a jungle of conflicts of interests between investors and their brokers.

Of course, many successful brokers are highly qualified and of high integrity, and they put their clients’ interests above their own. That’s the kind of people they are. But it’s hard to tell them from the other kind of broker. These lesser brokers decide which investments to sell on the basis of what’s in it for them, rather than what’s best for the client.

I’ve found over the years that failure to understand these conflicts of interest is the more costly mistake you can make as an investor.

Our first website

Soon after launching The Successful Investor, I realized our new venture needed a website. Back then, this was a much more expensive undertaking than today, and web sites were far below today’s standards.

I couldn’t afford the sort of site I wanted, but a nephew of mine had taken courses in website design and was eager to help. However, business was good at his day job as a donut baker, and he had too much overtime to work on my site. So I bought a cheap website design program and personally created our first site, thesuccessfulinvestor.com.

This first site offered a selection of analyses that had already appeared in our publications. It drew a surprising number of visitors, and even sold a few newsletter subscriptions.

Several years later, I hired a consultant to create our first professional website. This site sold a lot more subscriptions, but only described our recommendations, philosophy and investing process in general terms. Instead of providing samples of our advice, it offered free trial subscriptions.

We launched our current site, re-christened www.TSINetwork.ca, in mid-2009. This site carries over 10,000 articles from our publications. It too offers free and low-cost trial subscriptions. However, its navigation has become clunky. Worse, many users find the search function is slow to produce usable results. We are now creating a new site that will be in a different class.

This new site won’t look much different from the old site—at first. But, “under the hood”, it will have a much more powerful and productive search tool. It will provide users with a wider range of actionable information and advice. It will come with much more up-to-date, accessible advice, all at no cost to users.

Above all, you’ll notice that the new site provides—at no cost to the user—specific buy-sell-hold advice on a number of stocks we cover. And, more than simply telling you what to do, it will explain how we arrived at our opinion.

As I said earlier, our best business prospects are informed investors. I see the new version of www.TSINetwork.ca as a destination site where investors can go to get conservative, profitable advice at no cost, and learn about how investing really works.

I expect the new site will attract many more visitors than the old one. Some of these visitors will buy our products and services. Many others will gain a lot of value at no cost. Both groups are likely to tell others.

On Monday, July 21, 2014, you’ll see the first step toward our new format: A regular weekly column entitled “A stock to sell.”

My colleagues and I hope you enjoy and profit from this new direction in our service to you. We look forward to hearing your comments and recommendations.

Sincerely,

Pat McKeough