Are You Making This Fatal Investing Mistake? By Jeff D. Opdyke, Editor of Profit Seeker Dear Sovereign Investor,
Spend any time educating yourself on investing and you are certain to come across some version of the trite notion: Don't put all your eggs in one basket. We all know the phrase, and when we read it, we reflexively understand the warning: Diversify! For many investors, that typically means spreading wealth among different assets – stocks, bonds and cash. Some diversify across industries, others across countries and currencies. I go a step further. I diversify across investment strategies, looking for alternative ways of seeing the market that can provide unique opportunities in my portfolio. And for the last seven months, my colleague and I have been pursuing just such an opportunity … Real Value in What Others Often Miss I have never seen the world from a mainstream point of view. I've always been off in left field looking at what others don't care about or don't see. I was opening brokerage accounts overseas in the mid-1990s when all that anyone seemed to care about was the boom in the U.S. markets, and when they thought putting money to work directly overseas was too risky for an individual. I was buying high-end coins when only hard-core collectors cared about them. I was packing away rolls of raggedy silver dimes when silver prices were in the dumpster. I was moving money into Africa when everyone else seemed to be either ignoring the place or pooh-poohing the prospects. Today, I'm buying old, graded comic books because many of them are undervalued and they have a very bright future. In short, I look for the alternatives in life … because the alternatives are where the path to substantial wealth routinely hides. Consider, for example, The Sovereign Individual portfolio. While so many other newsletters pitch the merits of multinational U.S. stocks or lifeless exchange-traded funds and mutual funds, my strategy has always been to take my subscribers directly into alternative markets so that they can diversify their economic, political and currency exposure. That strategy has given them opportunities to pick up a yield of 10% in a Shariah-compliant real-estate investment trust and gains that now exceed 260% in a company that provides oil-field services in Burma. If you are serious about building wealth, you cannot simply stash all your money in one asset, one country, one currency or even one investment strategy. If the asset you're banking on falls out of favor, if the country you're reliant on stumbles, if the currency you're tied to devalues, if the investment strategy you've put your faith in fails – then the wealth you've accumulated will vanish. You can guard against that by owning exposure to multiple assets, multiple countries, multiple currencies and multiple investment styles. It's like adding a smidgen of gold or real estate to a portfolio to balance out the risks of dollar devaluation (gold) or inflation (real estate). By including other assets, countries, currencies and investment styles in your portfolio, you're ultimately protecting your wealth because when one asset, country, currency or strategy is out of favor, others in your portfolio can and will still thrive. A New Way to Strike a Profitable Balance I popped into a bistro on Sunday for a lunch and noticed the Detroit-Philadelphia football game on TV. I haven't seen that much snow coming down since a nor'easter I was in when I lived in northern New Jersey a decade ago. It looked like a blizzard and there had to be 6 inches of snow on that field. The people around me in Baton Rouge were talking about how difficult it must be to run and to find the ball amid the falling snow. Me? I was thinking about the ground delays at the Philly airport and the snarled air traffic all across the region. I lived it for several years. And as a financial writer at the time, I tracked the impact such extreme weather had on public companies. Even as players struggled to navigate the field of snow, I knew American Airlines, Continental and JetBlue, among others, were looking at millions of dollars in losses and added operational costs. That, it turns out, is an investment strategy – an alternative way of seeing opportunities in the world. Like short selling or paired trading, institutional investors routinely rely on a weather strategy to place well-educated bets on companies and industries likely to benefit or suffer from whatever Mother Nature conjures. They're putting money to work in places the average investor doesn't think to look or doesn't have the skill set to exploit. For that reason, I've been working over the last seven months with Chris Orr, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist, to develop a unique investment strategy that aims to give you access to alternative opportunities you're not hearing about anywhere in America today. If you want to know more about what we're up to, click here. I've been working for 30 years now to build wealth in a variety of ways. And while some mainstream opportunities have been fruitful, it has always been the alternative opportunities that have given me the greatest rewards. Until next time, stay Sovereign …
Jeff D. Opdyke
Editor, Profit Seeker
P.S. If you're ready to take a new approach to investing – you might be interested in a presentation Chris Orr just put together. His approach to the markets isn't for everyone, but if you'd like to hear about a unique strategy hedge funds have used for decades, click here. | 
For his Profit Seeker subscribers, Jeff is always looking for companies in position to benefit from the rise of a growing global middle class.
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