Hello, I would like to introduce myself as Leland Hevner, President of the National Association of Online Investors (NAOI), and welcome you to our new Website that includes a discussion of our new Investing Research Center. The NAOI, formed in 1997, has for almost two decades been the market’s premier supplier of objective investor education to the public. Thousands of people have learned the basics of investing via our online courses, published books and college classes. But we found that education is not enough to meet the NAOI mission of empowering individuals to become confident and effective investors. Following the market crash of 2008 I realized that we also needed to be teaching updated investing methods. I founded the Investing Research Center as a Division of the NAOI to find and develop them.

On this site you will learn about the new investing innovations we have developed and those that we are working on. You will be amazed to learn that investing methods that the financial establishment today insists are "settled science" are neither settled nor science. They are just the opposite. And, in fact, they are dangerously outdated in today's markets. On this site I invite you to glimpse the future of investing.

2008: The Year Everything Changed

For the first decade of its existence the NAOI taught traditional, industry-approved, investing methods. Chief among these was Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), an approach to portfolio design introduced in 1952 and used today by virtually all financial advisors to create asset-allocation portfolios.

Then things changed. In 2008 as the markets were crashing the MPT portfolios we were teaching students to create were crashing just as hard. At that point I realized that while markets had evolved over the past many decades, investing methods had barely changed at all and they no longer worked. I saw that buying-and-holding an MPT-based portfolio in a dynamic market was a disaster waiting to happen. And in 2008 it did. Many MPT portfolio holders lost up to 50% of their wealth during the market crash and more than a few people gave up on investing altogether. They had lost faith in financial advice and left the market.

At that point I halted all of my college classes until the NAOI could find a better approach to investing , one that works in today’s markets. And we did.

Dynamic Investments: The Future of Investing:

Following and extensive period of research the NAOI developed a new investing approach that met our investor empowerment mission in the form of Dynamic Investment Theory. This new approach creates Dynamic Investments that change their holding(s) based on market trends – automatically buying into assets / markets that are moving up in price and avoiding or getting out of assets / markets that are trending down. Through extensive testing we found that this new investment type is capable of 20%+ average annual returns in virtually any economic environment with less risk. In addition Dynamic Investments are so simple that any person, regardless of experience level, can implement and management them on their own if they wish. I am confident that this is the investment type that will shape the future of investing.

This Web Site

I have been told by beta reviewers that this site has too many words; that people will not take the time to read this much content. And I would agree if this were simply a sales and marketing site. Such sites work well using sound bites, huge headlines and unsupported promises of amazing returns. On such sites, the less information given to the reader the better. This is not one of those sites.

This site is primarily dedicated to information and education. It first tells you who the National Association of Online Investors (NAOI) is and describes our mission of empowering individual investors through education and innovation. It then presents a fundamentally new way investing that is impossible to convey in just a few words or pages. I am confident that individuals who are seriously looking for better ways to grow and protect their financial security will be rewarded by devoting time to reading the content presented here.

I suggest that you start your exploration on the Web Site Tour page. It will direct you to areas that may be of immediate interest to you. And I would ask you to keep this in mind: If you are looking for a short-cut to investing riches, then you are on the wrong site. However, if you are looking for a serious discussion of how you can earn higher investment returns with less risk and how you can take more personal control of your financial future, then you are in exactly the right place.

Leland B. Hevner
President, NAOI
January, 2016

Note: Although I have passed the NASA Series 65 Exam that qualifies me to be a Registered Investment Advisor, I am not currently practicing in this capacity. Nothing on this site should be seen as personalized investing advice for any reader.