About the Index Investor

Why are you in business?
The purpose of our business is to help as many people as possible achieve financial security and peace of mind at the lowest possible cost.

How do you do this?
Weprovide subscribers with information to help them address three critical issues:

• How to determine the minimum rate of return you need to earn on your investments in order to meet your goals;
• How to decide on the mix of assets that will achieve this return with the lowest possible risk;
• How to implement this asset allocation at the lowest possible cost through the use of index mutual and exchange traded funds (ETFs)

What we don't do is offer hot trading tips. We're not for people who want to get rich quickly. Our focus is on helping people achieve their financial goals through superior asset allocation strategy and its implementation through low cost index funds.

Why don't you charge more?
As we've said elsewhere on the site, our purpose as an organization is to help as many people as possible achieve financial security and peace of mind at the lowest possible cost. While a certain percentage of our subscribers could no doubt pay more, they are probably not the ones who most need the information we provide. By holding down our pricing, think we can do the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In this case, our values have triumphed over our wallets.

As our subscriber base grows, and we benefit from scale economies, we plan to cut our subscription price even further, while still adding new features.

Do you offer trial versions of your newsletter to people who are thinking about subscribing, but haven't decided yet?
Unfortunately, we can't. We tried it once and ran into some problems with people abusing our trust, as it were. So what we've done instead is to add a lot of free information on the site that hopefully will give people a good idea of the value of what we offer.

Are you owned by a company that sells index funds?
No, we are not. We are privately owned, and have no conflict of interest related to the index mutual and exchange traded funds we cover in our newsletter.

What's your business model? (you're an internet company, after all!)
When we started Index Investor more than four years ago, we decided to base it on a good old fashion subscription (that is, pay for content) model. For a while we got a lot of abuse for that. These days, we don't hear this criticism as much.

What's the background of the people behind The Index Investor?
The three founders of the company collectively have almost seventy years of experience in securities and investment analysis, credit analysis, and commercial and investment banking. However, in the eyes of many high priced active investment managers (who, embarrassingly, usually fail to match the performance of index funds), we're hellraisers bent on the destruction of civilization, pure and simple.

How can we contact you?
The best way is via email at info@indexinvestor.com. Alternatively, you can call us on (401) 453-4392 or fax us at (401) 453-4394. Our mailing address is Index Investor Inc., 76 Westminster Street, Suite 420, Providence, RI 02903.

What People Say About Index Investor

On Adam Smith's Money Game television show, on May 22, 1998, Index Investor was mentioned as a very useful mutual fund site, along with mornigstar.com, valueline.com, and Mutual Funds Interactive at brill.com. We were also featured in the March, 1998 issue of the NAPFA Advisor, the monthly journal of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors.

In a May, 1999 article in the Chicago Tribune, here's what Scot Burns had to say about us: "For a primer on how asset allocation can help produce a higher return or lower risk, check out The Index Investor."

Our approach to asset allocation and our model portfolios were also featured in the September, 1999 Kiplinger's Retirement Report.

We like Lycos Asia's comment about Index Investor: "Here's a neat site that answers fundamental questions on the why, what and how of investing in index funds."

In its March 20, 2000 edition, Barrons compared us to eight other top financial advisory sites, including financialengines.com, morningstar.com, fabian.com, indexfunds.com, firsthandfunds.com, nasdaq.com, sellsignal.com, and money.net. We were pleased to find that they rated the quality of our content as second only to Morningstar.

Finally, a very comprehensive recent review of 100 top financial websites by students at Cal State University at Long Beach had this to say about Index Investor: "This site helps members improve investment performance through enhanced asset allocation and indexing. It is very easy to use. It tells you exactly what it offers and exactly what it is capable of doing. The information is very high quality and can really help out an investor in making the right decisions. The information is also very timely."