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About Me

Who am I?

Hi. My name is David Hood and I love learning about investing. I read and think about investing all the time. Oddly, I spend very little time and effort actually investing.

I have a 3 year old daughter named Claire who, in my unbiased opinion, is the most beautiful little girl ever. I also have a newborn boy named Ben. Having kids made me thankful I've studied investing so much because I can't help my mind from thinking about having a successful financial future for their sake.

What was my life path like that lead me to understanding investing for the regular person?

I was always really good at math as a child. It came easily and I was always among the best in my classes.
I was also a self-taught programmer of neat things. I would program games and other fun things on my graphing calculator in high school while not paying attention to the teachers =)
I went to math competitions in early high school where I beat out upper classmen.
My Junior and Senior years of high school I was taking all college classes and living on a college campus. The program is called Texas Academy of Math and Science (TAMS) -- I loved it.
Even at TAMS, I was among the top 10-20% in math.
I've got bachelor's and master's degrees that are heavy on critical thinking, probability and statistics.
I was a natural at economics in college, but decided at the time that I didn't want to focus on it (perhaps a mistake)
Soon after getting out of college, I decided to "figure out" investing. When I first started investing outside of my 401k, I read about a dozen books in a month. I've learned a lot and plan to continue to read quality investing books and other sources of information about investing. I also intend to continue to communicate my conclusions on this website in layman's terms.
I set out to make investing as easy as possible for myself. I succeeded.
I was an efficiency engineer at a large US company that you've probably heard of - but I will not name -- for 6.5 years. I recently left them to explore my own business opportunities.
Now, my goal is to make it easier for regular people to make good investing decisions and stick to them. Hopefully, I can make enough money with this website (and a few others) to support my family.
I will make it easier for regular people to invest with simple tips and guidance, great and easy to use tools, and creating or making great reading material that will advance someone's understanding of investing.
If I can just help a few people avoid the biggest pitfalls of investing, then I will consider this website a success.

Why am I qualified to lead you on your investing path?

I've checked out many of the different methods out there and know what works.
I've read from and studied the best investing minds.
I have a very good understanding of math and economics - specifically probability and statistics.
I'm not biased towards investing in some specific industry, company, or method. I just want to know the most practical methods for a regular person to invest.
I was once in the same position you're in, so I can alert you to the common investment pitfalls.
I didn't panic during this latest downturn. I'm still not panicking. I've always slept well at night.
I didn't get excited about the stock market in the late 90's and I didn't panic about it in the early 2000's.
I really do want you to be as successful as possible in your investing. I'm not looking to extract as much money as possible from a sucker.
My basic investing philosophy is what Warren Buffett recommends to regular people.

Why trust me? How do you know that I'm not scamming you or trying to take as much money from you as possible without helping you?

I'm not an investment professional. Therefore, I don't have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. The status quo being the mindset of: "How much commission can I get out of this person?" or "What is the highest fee possible I can charge?" Most investment professionals don't care how well you do because how well you do isn't tied to how well they do. For example, a broker can make a ton of money off you by pushing you into frequent trades even if you have big investment losses. Paying trading commissions is certainly not helping your returns.

On top of the conflict of interest between an investor and the investing professionals, professional investing experience is not all its cracked up to be -- 80 to 90% of the mutual fund managers are out performed by the passive, do-nothing approach of investing in a broad index fund!

Conversely, I have a vested interest in making you money. If you receive good, sound advice here you will keep coming back and, hopefully, purchase some of my products or click on ads that you are interested in. If I screw you over, you will not come back.

Why did I create this site?

Because there are a great many sites out there that promote poor investing habits. These poor habits are bad for our society as a whole! There are a select few that profit from these bad habits and I would like for all investors to be educated enough to put the investing leeches out of business. Here are some examples of bad habits that I see put forth by people over and over again:

When your stocks start to fall, sell them.
Since stocks have fallen significantly lately, they are more risky. (If lottery tickets went from $1 to 0.01$, would you consider them more or less risky?)
Since stocks have risen lately, they are less risky.
You can successfully day trade on the side.
The market will do [insert any short-term market prediction]. (No one really knows what the market will do in the near term. Some will, however, guess correctly.)
Technical analysis and trend trading work consistently.

What is my basic investing philosophy?

Keep it simple and low effort with a few balanced index funds that have low costs. Don't check the market prices very often. Contribute regularly. Rebalance your portfolio when necessary. Don't get caught up in the emotional highs and lows of the market.

How did I make this website?

I make a decent amount of money off this website and, with a full time job and a young child, it is not like I have a lot of extra time. So, I used Site Build It.

Their system has helped me quit my day job. It is not a scammy, promises of overnight riches website. With a well thought out process and some hard work, I was able to get this website where it is today.

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