Profile
Trader Mark has been in the market in some form since being a teenager, first with mutual funds, than onto to stocks. Now it is 20 years later. It has been a passion of mine, and as any investor, I've had my ups, downs, and tuition extracted from learning the ins and outs. "If I only knew then..." and I continue to learn each day. I have a BA in economics from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!), and work in finance (not related to Wall St).
Website/Blog
The blog was launched in August 2007; my goal is eventually to manage money in some form/nature. The most apparent way (at the time) was to chronicle my stock ideas in a mock mutual fund run via Marketocracy.com so I can replicate how I'd manage a real fund. I have since switched to Investopedia.com in January 2009 to better reflect the nature of my investment style since it is a more flexible platform. Many people come to the site simply to read, learn, follow along, comment etc - all are welcome. But of course I hope to attract future investors as well.
Since the launch in August 2007, the website has grown into one of the more popular investing blogs on the internet. My work here is republished on many other sites on the internet; for example I am one of the top five most read authors at SeekingAlpha.com.
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Most mutual funds are run with only positions to the long side (buy high, sell higher). I run a hedged style with both long and short positions - this is a structure that is rarely found in the mutual fund world but in down or sideways market is far superior to only buying stocks with the hopes they will all go up. There are always bad stocks/sectors to be short, and good stocks/sectors to be long.
My original goal was to run a "real" mutual fund, hence the blog name. However it takes about approx $7 million in assets to break even on the process. My path has been (1) Build a track record, (2) Build a transparent platform so readers can see what I am thinking and why I buy and sell stocks (3) Through items 1 and 2, convince readers they want to be part of this unique story where individuals create something outside the "mainstream" system.
My unofficial goal is to beat the indexes I track by 15% annualized per year, which would put my fund performance in elite company. We are soundly beating that thus far.
