Welcome to the Web site of the National Association of Online Investors (NAOI). Founded in 1997 by President Leland Hevner the NAOI is a market leading investor-education, investment-research and financial-consulting organization. The NAOI is unique in that we work with both investment buyers and sellers to meet the goals of each.

The NAOI Mission Statement

The NAOI Mission Statement contains two main goals as follows:

1. Empowering Investment Buyers. The NAOI seeks to empower individuals and organizations to participate in equity markets with confidence, with success and without fear. This goal is met by via objective and comprehensive investor education, investor-market research and the creation of innovative investment types as well as new portfolio designs and management methods.

2. Empowering Investing Professionals. The NAOI seeks to show investment designers, developers and advisors how to create and offer innovative investment and types that better meet the wants and needs of the investing public . And, by doing so, to enable them to gain a significant competitive advantage in today’s crowded field of financial services.

This Web page shows how the NAOI is uniquely structured to meet these goals. It also provides a “first look” at a new investment type and portfolio design approach that will change how investing works at a fundamental level.

The NAOI Organization Chart

When founded in 1997 the NAOI simply provided an investor education product to the market. Since that time the association has added multiple corporate Divisions that enable us to meet the goals of our mission statement shown above. The current NAOI organization chart presented below shows these Divisions and information flows between them, our students and the financial services industry. Below the chart is a brief description of each with links to more detailed information.

Below is brief description of the purpose of each Division. Links are provided to more information for each.

The Investor Education Division

The NAOI is the market’s premier provider of objective, comprehensive and actionable investor education to the public. Thousands of individuals have taken our online courses, read our books and/or attended our college classes. At the core of our education products is the NAOI Individual Investor Certification Program. Those who complete it earn the Diploma shown at right. More information is found at this link.

The Investor Market-Research Division

Via our education offerings the NAOI works with hundreds of individuals with money to invest. As we teach them, they teach us. The purpose of this Division is to gather data from our students that enables us to understand how the public views the world of investing, how they choose advisors to work with and what they want and need from the financial services industry to enter the market with confidence and without fear.

Recent data gathered from the investing people show us that far too many people who need investing income are not participating in the market. Why? They are increasingly unwilling to accept the buy and hold, MPT-based portfolios they are offered today. They see the risk of owning static portfolios in modern dynamic markets as being simply too high. Many are purchasing annuities instead. To address this problem and fix it the NAOI Produce Design and Development Division as discussed below was called into action.

The Investment-Product Design and Development Division.

To fix the above mentioned problem, The NAOI Product and Development Division designed a new investment type that uses ETF combinations and quantitative market factors to produce higher returns with less risk - in bear or bull markets - than virtually any investment product or portfolio being offered today. Called Dynamic Investments (DIs) this innovative investment type will change the way investing works today at a fundamental level and those that learn about it first will benefit the most.

DIs are described in detail in a recently released NAOI Research Report shown at right. For more information and to purchase this report go to this link.

The NAOI Consulting Division

The NAOI Partnership Division

The NAOI was established in 1997 by Leland Hevner to individuals the basics of investing and how to participate in the market with confidence. He saw that this critical life-skill was not being taught in academia at any level and that investors had little choice but to simply accept without question the portfolios they were given by financial advisors who were also salespeople.

To enable investors to take control of their savings, the NAOI has created multiple investment education courses that are objective, comprehensive and actionable via the use of online resources.

The primary NAOI education offering is the “Individual Investor Certification Program” consisting of 6 course books that students must read and then answer close to 200 questions in an online testing component. Upon doing so, they are awarded the Certification Diploma shown just above. This is the “gold standard” for investor education today. More information related to this program is found at this link.

The NAOI Investor Market Research Division

Since our founding, thousands of individuals have taken our online courses, read our published books and/or attended our college classes. As we teach them, they teach us. As a result we have an unmatched knowledge of how individuals view the world of investing and how the choose an advisor to work with. The NAOI has created the Investor-Market Research Division to constantly update our education content and to design investing products that better meet the wants/needs of investors. We also provide this valuable information to our consulting clients to enable them to attract far more clients than they do today.

From student input and focus-groups we know that far too many people who need investing income today are not participating in the market. Why? A major reason is that they are increasingly unwilling to accept the MPT-based, buy-and-hold portfolios offered to them by investment advisors. They see the risk of significant losses when markets crash (an event that happens on an average of every 6 years) as being unacceptable. This is information we have passed to our Investment Product and Development Division, discussed below.

The NAOI Investment Research and Development Division

Based on information gathered from our students and input from investing professionals, the NAOI Research and Development Division designs investment products that better meet the wants/needs of both investment buyers and sellers.

Most recently this Division initiated a multi-year R&D effort to find an alternative for, or supplement to, MPT for designing portfolios that more effectively meet the challenges of modern markets.

The Research and Development team succeeded in this effort with the development of a new investing approach that we called Dynamic Investment Theory (DIT) and the “market-sensitive” investment type it creates that we call Dynamic Investments (DIs).

DIs use both qualitative and quantitative factors to purchase only ETFs that are trending up in price while avoiding, or quickly selling those that are trending down. By doing so extensive testing has shown that this simple but powerful investment type is capable of producing returns that are consistently higher than any single ETF, mutual fund or even MPT-based portfolio being offered to investors today.

More information related to DIT and DIs is found at this link. And this innovative approach to investing is discussed in more detail in the NAOI Research Report entitled “The Power of ETF Combinations” shown just above. It can be purchased at this link.

The NAOI Consulting Division

The NAOI Consulting Division was created to share our education content, investor research data and innovative investment products with the financial services industry.

Via an NAOI Consulting Agreement we show financial organizations and advisors how to create and offer investing products and methods that better meet the needs of the investing public than those they are offering today. By doing so, our consulting clients are able to significantly expand their client base, increase revenues and gain a massive competitive advantage in the very crowded field of financial services. For more information related to NAOI Consulting go to this link.

NAOI Partnerships

The NAOI offers DI product Research, Development and Marketing Partnerships to financial organizations that will give enable them to offer to the market superior investment products that will give them a massive competitive advantage in the crowded field of financial services today.

More information related to NAOI Partnerships is found at this link.

Why DIT and Dynamic Investments Cannot Be Ignored

Dynamic Investment (DI) Components

DIs are designed to hold only ETFs that track asset classes and markets/market segments that are moving up in price while avoiding, or quickly selling, those moving down. This makes them market-sensitive and capable of producing positive returns in all market conditions - bear or bull - with minimal risk.

Below are listed the components of all DIs. Each is a variable defined by the DI designer. Readers of the above described NAOI Research Report will learn how to easily design an unlimited number of high performance, low risk DIs for a full range of investing goals by defining the values of these components.

Dynamic ETF Pool (the DEP) - Illustrated at right, the DEP is where a DI designer places a combination of ETFs that are DI “purchase candidates”. Typically these are ETFs that are uncorrelated, each of which thrives in different market conditions - e.g. Stocks and Bonds.

Review Period - This is how often the DI reviews the DEP to purchase, or retain if currently held, the ETF moving up most strongly in price. Quarterly and Monthly are common Review Period selections.

Trend Indicator - This is the price trend indicator the designer selects to identify the ETF in the DEP moving up most strongly in price. The ETF selected is purchased, or retained, until the next Review Period when the ETF selection process is repeated. A simple and effective indicator is the ETF price increase since the previous Review.

Trailing Stop Loss Order (TSL) - A TSL is placed on all ETFs purchased. The DI will automatically sell the ETF if its price drops by a designer-specified percentage from the highest price it reached while being held. 10%, 12% and 15% are commonly used sell-triggers. The NAOI recommends that designers place higher TSL sell triggers on ETFs with higher volatility. If a TSL sale is triggered, the DI purchases and holds a cash-equivalent ETF until the next Review when an uptrending ETF from the DEP is purchased.

These simple components make DIs market-sensitive and capable of producing higher returns with lower risk than the buy-and-hold, non-market sensitive, MPT based portfolios offered by advisors today. Example returns are shown must below. And further down on this page you will see how DIs can be used in today’s MPT portfolios to make them market-sensitive as well.

DI Example Returns

NAOI designed Dynamic Investment come in many forms and for a wide variety of investing goals. Below are shown just a few examples of the performance of three DIs compared to the performance of a 60% Stock / 40% Bond Portfolio that is given to most investors today.

The backtest period is from 2008-2024 and the performance figures shown for each of the following examples are the Average Annual Return achieved by each.

It can be seen in the performance tables above that DIs produce significantly higher returns than the traditional 60/40 buy and hold MPT offered to the public today. The reason is that the MPT portfolio holds both winning and losing investments at all times to reduce risk. The DIs are designed to hold only winning ETFs at all times. Risk is reduced by purchasing only ETFs that are uptrending in price while avoiding or quickly selling ETFs that are trending down in price.

The above DIs designed and tested by the NAOI are just three of an unlimited number of DIs that can be created for an unlimited number of investing goals. The NAOI Research Report shown above on this page shows how.

“Dynamic Portfolios”: The Investment Type of the Future

Despite the higher returns and lower risk of DIs, the NAOI is not advocating that MPT portfolios be replaced. There are certainly advantages to a buy and hold strategy. We predict that the dominant investment type of the future will be portfolios that use DIs as building blocks in traditional MPT portfolios as illustrated in the picture just below. We call these Dynamic Portfolios or DPorts for short.

DI enhanced MPT portfolios are “market-sensitive”, enabling them to thrive in all market conditions, unlike static MPT portfolios that move up and down in value with the tides of the market. The NAOI Research Report devotes an entire Section that shows how to build them.

Designers will determine the percent of portfolio money to the DIT and MPT Segments as well as the percent of money to each investment type within each Segment.

The Dawn of the “Productization of Investing”

DIs are investing “products” that can be sold via investment product catalogs. They are designed to maximize returns and minimize risk in all market conditions. This is a universal investing goal that works for all investors regardless of their risk profile. Thus they usher in the productization of investing - the Holy Grail of the investing world.

Why DIs Cannot Be Ignored

The NAOI is currently teaching

NAOI Advisory Assistance

NAOI President Leland Hevner is available to join financial organization Advisory Boards. In this role he draws on his 25+ years of working with the investing public to show organizations how to create marketing plans, investing products and investor solutions that will give them a significant advantage over their competitors. Hevner’s CV is found at this link.

True Investing Evolution

Many organizations today are attempting to “evolve” the world of investing to meet the challenges of modern markets via a variety of fintech methods. And the NAOI sees much value in these efforts. But our experience in working with the investing public tells us that average investors have little interest in them.

The NAOI believes that true investing evolution comes only from questioning and continuously updating how investing works to enable investors to profit in changing markets. This means challenging the use of Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) as the only way to design and manage investment portfolios. The NAOI is doing so with the introduction of Dynamic Investment Theory (DIT) as discussed beginning at this link.

Financial Organizations and Investment Advisors - Let’s Talk

There is absolutely no simpler, quicker or more cost effective way for a financial organization to gain a massive competitive advantage in the crowded field of investing services than by working with the NAOI. We know what the public wants/needs to participate in the market with confidence and without fear. As leaders in the world of investing education we are well positioned to make our students aware of the financial advisors that offer the innovative investing products and methods created by the NAOI.

Feel free to contact NAOI President, Leland Hevner directly at LHevner@naoi.org, or on LinkedIn to learn more about how we can work together to enable your organization to attract far more clients than you do today.

“The Future of Investing Starts Here” is a registered trademark of Leland Hevner and the NAOI.