Muse re-design done - review needed

[jaywenk]

Hello all.

I first posted my muse, SmarterThanWallStreet.com about 6 weeks ago. All has been going well and I've tried to implement suggestions from the forum that made sense to me.

A fairly major redesign is nearly complete and I would like feedback from those willing. You can check out the beta site at:

http://beta.smarterthanwallstreet.com/

On Monday the beta will be moved to the root server and can be viewed at:

www.smarterthanwallstreet.com

There are a few additional things that will be done:

Fairly blank landing page for testing adwords campaign against regular site. The blank page layout can be seen here:

http://beta.smarterthanwallstreet.com/blank/

That page will have a custom aweber form on the right and the full sales letter in the body.

Also, there will be a couple of videos integrated into the sales copy and a video landing page like mass control uses for split testing too. A custom, but simple aweber hover ad will be tested as well for a total of four different landing pages via adwords.

I've been thinking about hiring a pro copy writer. Any wisdom, suggestions, etc. on that is also appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Jay

Thanks to David Craige (from this forum) and Gerlof van Ek for the redesign work. Dave provided the coordination and conceptual help and Gerlof the coding and graphics.

[jaywenk]

the new design is now just on the root server:

www.smarterthanwallstreet.com

Thanks,

Jay

[sub8hr]

Looks much better. You'll have to let us know how the testing goes.

[webgal]

It is an improvement.

[Matthew Connors]

The site itself looks great

In terms of the muse

I have an automatic distrust of these types of systems

As an avid stock investor myself who always outperforms the index I invest in, I find through experience and analysis of these systems they have two fatal flaws.
I acknowledge your only recommending it for the growth 20% of the portfolio and yes it is wise to have approx 10-20% directed to higher growth areas, but almost all predecessors for these systems have failed and have badly burnt investors.

I know these are generalizations and id love to hear why you think Im wrong.

The two flaws include:
1. They work through certain windows of time but ultimately circumstance change and they fail

2. They often operate using stocks with high volatility and ignore the fundamentals of sound investments. Growing profits, ROE, ROI, Nd/Eq payout ratio.... As a result they work well in boom times and when markets move sideways but when we have sudden and prolonged downturns the investors lose out because they have been caught in stocks they should never have had thier money in in the first place, simply because the stock itself does not meet the criteria for a sound investment...

Id be interested to here your views on point 2.

No offense intended, perhaps your model is based on applying the system to value based investment stocks in which case I am wrong, but if your system is based around trading any or most stocks then ????????????????????

[jaywenk]

Matt,

Good questions; allow me to clear them up briefly here. I'm also going to post a video on the faq page that will clear this and other feedback questions up in their entirety.

Answer to Flaw #1:
Stock picking systems do exactly as you suggest: they work for windows in market cycles and then bust. Some would call this a butterfly effect of quantitative stock picking.

The SmarterThanWallStreet.com approach doesn't pick stocks. It rotates through various ETF's that would narrowly represent the market cycles that cause stock picking systems to fail. For example, in the 2000-2007 era, small cap value stocks picked using ROE, ROI, PEG, Price to Book, etc - produced amazing results. This caused foolish system creators and investors to believe they found the holy grail of investing and were then punished when the market collapsed in the past 18 months.

My system rotated from these asset classes early into assets such as gold, long term US treasuries and also shorted the US market; allowing returns to continue along in double digits as though nothing materially changed in the investment word. Money moved, we followed.

Flaw #2:
We don't use stocks, which allows our volatility and ulcer index to remain much lower than broad index investing. Because of the methods used the system has been very robust and will remain that way for many years. I build quantitative stock selection and ETF systems for a living and have been one of the top ranked private asset managers in the US for a few years. So I understand your concerns, thought of them myself, and built a system that should have no issues with many common flaws of mechanical investing.

Thanks again for the feedback,

Jay

The site itself looks great

In terms of the muse

I have an automatic distrust of these types of systems

As an avid stock investor myself who always outperforms the index I invest in, I find through experience and analysis of these systems they have two fatal flaws.
I acknowledge your only recommending it for the growth 20% of the portfolio and yes it is wise to have approx 10-20% directed to higher growth areas, but almost all predecessors for these systems have failed and have badly burnt investors.

I know these are generalizations and id love to hear why you think Im wrong.

The two flaws include:
1. They work through certain windows of time but ultimately circumstance change and they fail

2. They often operate using stocks with high volatility and ignore the fundamentals of sound investments. Growing profits, ROE, ROI, Nd/Eq payout ratio.... As a result they work well in boom times and when markets move sideways but when we have sudden and prolonged downturns the investors lose out because they have been caught in stocks they should never have had thier money in in the first place, simply because the stock itself does not meet the criteria for a sound investment...

Id be interested to here your views on point 2.

No offense intended, perhaps your model is based on applying the system to value based investment stocks in which case I am wrong, but if your system is based around trading any or most stocks then ????????????????????

[DaveCraige.com]

Jay,

Awesome. Happy to see the success of this project. Gerlof does really great work.

Pleasure doing business with you.