The National Association of Online Investors (NAOI) is a unique financial organization that has the following goals:

1. To empower individuals to invest with confidence and success via comprehensive and objective education.

2. To develop new investing methods and innovative investment types that enable investors to take full advantage of market gains in a simple, safe and profitable manner.

3. To show investment advisors and financial organizations how to better meet the wants and needs of the investing public. By doing so to enable them to increase their client base, open new revenue streams and develop significant competitive advantages in a crowded market.

This page shows how the organization is meeting these goals.

Founded in 1997 by President and CEO Leland Hevner (see his CV at this link), the NAOI began as an education organization. Hevner saw that while individuals suddenly had the power to invest from their homes using the Web and personal computers, they did not have the knowledge needed to invest with confidence and success. Nowhere in academia was the public offered objective courses on the art and science of investing. The NAOI was formed to address this problem.

The NAOI Investor Certification Program

The organization’s first offering was the NAOI Individual Investor Certification Program that is described at this link. Consisting of 5 books and an online component this Program set the standard for investor education for over a decade. Hundreds of individuals have graduated from this program and earned the diploma shown at right.

NAOI Awareness and Growth

With this success Hevner expanded the NAOI education network to include teaching personal investing courses at the college level and the NAOI became well known as a result of the publicity resulting from John Wiley & Sons publishing Hevner’s book entitled “The Perfect Portfolio”. Working with the Wiley market team, Hevner has appeared on all major financial TV networks and quoted in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, Forbes, Kiplinger and others. He, and the NAOI, are widely recognized as representing the voice of the individual investor; a voice too rarely heard today.

As a result of this publicity and other activities, the NAOI achieved widespread recognition throughout the investing world. Thousands of people have taken our online courses, attended our college classes and or read Hevner’s books - which number close to a dozen at this point in time. The NAOI has also consulted with numerous financial organizations, showing then how to improve their products and increase revenues by adding a customized education component in their offerings.

Then things changed.

The Need for Innovation

From the NAOI’s founding in 1997 we had students how to design and manage portfolios using industry standards based on Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). This approach dictates that portfolios be designed to meet each individual’s risk tolerance and then they are to meant to be held for the long-term, regardless of economic conditions. When the stock market crashed hard in 2008-2009, and the MPT portfolio we had taught students to create and hold crashed with it, we had to realize that more then education was needed to empower investors, also needed was innovation. Hevner had to admit that MPT methods simply could not cope with modern markets and that more than education was needed to empower individual investors; also needed was innovation.

At that point he opened the NAOI Research and Development Division to find a alternative to MPT, which we did as explained on this site. And the NAOI organizational structure grew as illustrated and discussed below.

The NAOI Organization Structure

As mentioned above, investor empowerment requires a lot more than investor education; it also requires investment innovation. And with the creation of innovative products, education of the financial services industry needed as well. As a result the NAOI corporate structure expanded significantly. The diagram below show our current organization chart. Below the chart is a brief explanation of the purpose of each division.

Department Functions and Information Flows

The discussion below provides a brief description of the purpose of each division (shaded in green), the information flows (depicted by arrows) and the synergistic effects of the entire structure.

The Education Division - The NAOI’s first Division, this the where management-approved personal investing content is transformed into online courses, college courses and books. This division also creates customized content, as applicable, for financial organizations with whom we consult. Here are found experienced writers, editors and teachers. More at this Link.

The Investor Market Research Division - This department is key to the NAOI’s success. Its purpose is to listen to the investing public and understand their wants and needs when interacting with advisors, financial organizations and the market. Just as we teach them, they teach us. This information comes to us in the form of course reviews, surveys, interviews and focus groups created by the Division. NAOI course material is created and/or revised based on this information flow. Found in this Division are both educators and behavioral scientists who study how average people with money to invest interact with the market, financial advisors, investing news, etc. and how they make decisions.

The Research and Development Division - Opened by the NAOI following the disastrous performance of MPT portfolios following the 2008-2009 market crash, the R&D Division creates innovative investing products and methods that the public needs but the financial services industry does not offer. Such requests typically originate in the Market Research Division. As you will read on this site, the public needs a better approach to portfolio design and management than MPT - the only choice since the 1950’s. The R&D Division found developed it in the form of Dynamic Investment Theory that is discussed on this site. New innovations are approved by NAOI Management and included, as applicable, in our education courses that then go to the Education and Consulting Divisions. More at this Link.

The Consulting Division - The NAOI not only teaches individuals how to invest, we also teach financial advisors and organizations how to meet the needs of the investing public. In other words, we teach financial professionals to provide individual investors with the products and services that they need to enter the market with confidence and success. We do this via Consulting Contracts and/or Advisory Contracts. Innovations such as Dynamic Investments also enable investing professionals to create higher performance products/services that result in increased market share, competitive advantage and increased revenues. More at this Link.

The Marketing Division - This Division makes the public and the industry aware that the NAOI exists and the products and services we provide. We have direct access to hundreds of financial news outlets and publications as well as to thousands of decision makers in the financial services industry via LinkedIn. We also have an extensive NAOI Updates Email List that you can signup for at the bottom of each page on our Web site.

Partnerships - For a very select group of financial organizations we offer Partnerships to work with us to advance the science of Dynamic Investment product development. More at this Link.

Designing the Future of Investing

The NAOI is organized to design a better future of investing based directly on the wants and needs of both individual and corporate investors and not on decades-old academic theories. We not only research and develop new investment products and investing methods but we also teach the public why they should use them and how. This will create demand that we then teach the financial services industry to meet while also increasing their revenue streams.

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

Contact the NAOI

Further information is available by contacting NAOI President, Leland Hevner, directly at LHevner@naoi.org or go to our Contact Page.

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