The Wealth Advisory

Sometimes people ask me why I left the big money of the mortgage business behind at its height.

And when they do, I always tell them the same thing: The mortgage business left me long before I ever decided to leave it.

That's because being a "mortgage consultant" at the peak had very little to do with how I was taught the business to begin with. It had turned into a game in which the only thing that mattered was the size of your pipeline and how many people you squeezed each month.

How you slept at night was your own problem... And no amount of money in the world was enough for me to live like that.

Frankly, it turned my stomach, and leaving that scene was the easiest decision I ever made.

So it is no wonder to me now that all of it came crashing down around us. Unchecked greed has its price.

Housing was going down, I was sure of it — and so were the banks. The rest is history.

After writing hundreds of articles warning my Wealth Daily readers about the coming crisis in housing, it finally happened, crushing one portfolio after another.

So when my publisher Brian Hicks came to me with the opportunity to head up a new newsletter called The Wealth Advisory, I jumped at the chance.

After all, when I wasn't trying to warn my readers about the coming mortgage crisis, I spent my time doing what I truly loved: researching stocks and making investments.

But as good as Brian's offer was, I had a few ideas of my own to add to the mix, and I wasn't sure if he would be willing to use them all.

First, The Wealth Advisory had to be more than just stock picks. It had to be educational, too. I wanted to teach my readers how to think for themselves and build their own portfolios without taking big risks. Technical and fundamentals, we would cover it all.

Second, the letter had to be broad-based. Niche investing just isn't my style. So I wanted to be able to put my readers into the stocks that are working without feeling as though I was tied to any one corner of the broader markets.

Third (and this is important), I wanted to create an advisory panel that would give the best picks from all of the editors at Angel Research. To me, that was the key, since the letter would be so broad-based; it would give me the opportunity to pick some of the best brains in the business before making a recommendation.

To my surprise, Brian went along with every bit of it.

The Wealth Advisory Investment Philosophy

As for The Wealth Advisory's investment philosophy, it is as simple now as it was coming from the man who taught it to me over 25 years ago. And it has served me well ever since.

We will look to buy stocks that have been heavily discounted and sell them at a time when others will pay any price.

This was the philosophy taught to me by my Uncle Charlie, a man who hadn't held a job (at least not in the traditional sense) since the Great Depression. My uncle was very much out of the Benjamin Graham school when it came to investing.

Of course, if you were behind him in line at the grocery store, that's the last thing you would've thought about him...

He was a self-made man and he owed it all to his winning investment philosophy.

"It's all about taking and managing risks," he used to say. "It's just that simple. Figure that out, and you'll never have to work again," he'd declare with a chuckle and a wink.

To be honest, it is not much more complicated than that — as long as you know how to keep your risks to a minimum.

You see, if there's one thing I've consistently discovered in talking to retail investors, it's that they simply take on too much risk. And in the end, that's what ruins their portfolios.

The markets are more than happy to reward you... You just have to have enough patience to protect your principal and be willing to learn along the way.

That said, I hope you'll join me for a weekly look at the markets that matter.

Your making-an-honest-buck-while-avoiding-big-risks analyst,

Steve Christ
Investment Director, The Wealth Advisory