Well, its that time again.  WordPress informs me that this is post 300.  For me, that means a time to stop and reflect, and let readers know what’s going on in my life.

The blog has been live now for about seven months, and it has seen growth.  Growth in readers at syndicated sites (I’ve lost count), growth in readers through Feedburner (RSS) and Feedblitz (e-mail), growth in the number of blogs linking to me, growth in comments, personal e-mails, and spam.  Since the blog started, I have screened out over 6000 spam comments.  It fascinates me how much effort goes into trying to penetrate the comments filter of this blog.  I review the spam filter periodically to rescue the 0.1% of captured posts that are genuine.

As in most of life, we don’t succeed purely on our own.  It helps to have friends.  My most personal support comes from my family and my church.  Beyond that, though, I don’t think this blog would have gotten where it is today with the aid of James Altucher at TheStreet.com, Abnormal Returns, Charles Kirk at the Kirk Report, Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture, StumbleUpon.com (surprising how much traffic has come from there, and all recent), Roger Nusbaum of Random Roger’s Big Picture, Bill Luby at VIX and More, Seeking Alpha (Aleph - Shalom), and Jeff Miller at A Dash of Insight.  A special thanks to my friend Cody Willard who encouraged me to do this early on, and who has received the promotion of a lifetime recently by becoming an anchor at the new FOX business news channel.  The quality of insight in business journalism has just taken a turn for the better.

Speaking of friends, I’d like to talk a little about what I am up to now.   No one has bitten yet on my equity management product, which has handily outperformed the market over the past seven years.  In one sense, that’s no surprise.  Doing well with a small asset base is not going to attract many takers, even if you have done in a liquid, disciplined, institutional way, as I have.  But I am still talking to people, and I have a four page synopsis of what I have done over the past seven years.  If any of my readers has an institution or a wealthy friend that you think might like to seed me (early investors get advantageous terms, permanently), please e-mail me.  Any real referral puts you in my “friend for life” category.

We’ll see where this leads. My dream is to manage money for others using my eight rules, and eventually set up a mutual fund so that smaller investors can join in.

But friends help in other ways also.  Two friends have decided to employ me as a consultant.  One for bond management advice at his bank, and management of two balanced funds, and another to analyze four insurance companies that he owns big stakes in to get a second opinion.  I am available for other consulting arrangements as well.  My wide (shallow?) skill set makes me particularly good for projects requiring knowledge of a broad range of subjects.  I’d like to say that no problem is too tough for me to take on, but that’s probably not true.  I have solved many tough problems for life insurers and investment firms, though.

Friends help in other ways also.  I have an article coming out in MoneySense magazine in November; an editor came to know me through RealMoney and my blog.  I am friends with a number of public insurance management teams.  One of them has granted me an interview in October; we will see where that leads.  My friends from my corporate bond management days are helping me as best they can; I need all the help I can get.

That’s what I am up to now, aside from seeking for venture capital for a friend, and aiding other friends in their business pursuits.  Oh, and seeking out other writing assignments.

A special thanks to the 22% of my audience that hails from outside of the US.  It surprises me that I have many readers in Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, China, Uruguay, France, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, South Korea, India and Taiwan.

Now, about future blog plans.   Here’s what I have coming up:

• Build out my books page, with book reviews, complete with a little Amazon store.
• Articles: How markets and traffic are similar, When to be flexible versus rigid, hidden correlations in strategy, problems in academic finance, rescuing Capitalism from capitalists, and more.  Also more articles that answer reader questions.
• My usual coverage of current topics, particularly when things are hot.
• One more thing: a stock picking contest, akin to the Value Line contest done in the mid-1980s, with a prize to the winner.  This contest will test skill in picking stocks, rather than luck in trading, as so many contests do.  Sponsors are welcome to apply, otherwise the prize will come out of my pocket, which means it won’t be large.  A sponsor will receive free advertising on my site for the duration of the contest.

Finally, thanks to all my readers who take time to read what I write.  It is a pleasure to produce content for you, and I will do my best for you.

I have often wondered what I would do if I no longer had my trading restrictions, and could invest in financial stocks freely. I no longer have to wonder. As of this morning, I have bought shares in Safety Insurance, Aspen Insurance, Lincoln National, and (what else?) Assurant. They replace the following names in my portfolio: Allstate (waving a fond farewell… but I’ll be back), Noble Corp, and SPX Corp. I will be exiting Lyondell when the arb premium gets a bit tighter. Also, I had two rebalancing buys Tuesday Morning — I added to positions in Lithia Motors and Cemex.

Why do I no longer have restrictions? My employer and I parted ways amicably. I would recommend their services to anyone who wanted to invest in such a hedge fund, but I increasingly found that wanted to do something closer to what I like in investment management. Much as I like analyzing the insurance industry, I’m better at managing broad market equity and bond assets.

So, for the first time in four years, I’m looking at business opportunities. I’ve got a number of them that I am considering, including writing more, setting up my own investment management shop, or working with someone else that I might be compatible with. Do you have any suggestions for me? At this point I haven’t eliminated anything, so if you do have an idea, please e-mail me.

This is bittersweet for me, because I genuinely liked the people that I worked with. That said, I was planning on leaving no later than March 2009 (because of vesting), so this accelerates what was already being considered. This blog was initially developed for this possibility; I just did not expect it to become live only five months after the start.

PS — One of the losses that I feel immediately is the loss of my Bloomberg terminal. I’m going through withdrawal. I’ve used Bloomberg terminals for 15 years now, and given the variety of work that I have done, I know all eleven of the yellow keys to some degree, and I am an expert on eight of them (all except Money Markets, Munis, and Preferred Stocks). I am fitfully learning to do without, but am looking forward to having one back, because I can do snazzy things with it.

Full Disclosure: long AHL SAFT LNC AIZ LAD CX LYO

An old boss of mine once said that in the investing world, it paid to do favors for people, because you can never tell what good will come from it. I have read an advance copy of Timothy Sykes’ forthcoming book, An American Hedge Fund.

Aside from our common love of investing, it is hard to find similarities between Mr. Sykes and me. He trades rapidly and aggressively; I trade infrequently. He relies on momentum; I resist momentum. He became a professional investor early in life, and has always worked for himself; I became a professional investor later in life (38), and have always worked for others. Loss control for Mr. Sykes is a fast hand on the sell button (or the buy button if he is short); for me it is diversification, margin of safety, etc.

I have always maintained that there is something to be learned from analyzing those that do not invest like I do, particularly if they are successful by means that strike me as unlikely. I learned seven lessons from the book:

1) One thing that I share with Mr. Sykes is understanding where my edge is. Early on, Timothy Sykes figured out that he had an advantage in analyzing the technicals in micro-cap stocks. He pressed that advantage assiduously, and did exceptionally well, though with significant pullbacks.

2) Another thing that I share with him is that I don’t give up easily. He persevered through some drawdowns that would make most people give up.

3) The book helps reinforce the lesson of sticking to your edge. If you’re a momentum guy, don’t try to be a fundamental investor, and vice-versa. Once you know your edge, stick to it. If you don’t, your results will likely suffer.

4) Another lesson that the book holds is the psychological differences in running other people’s money. It ain’t easy; risks that you are comfortable taking for yourself, you might not be comfortable taking for others.

5) As a professional, one must investigate the carrying capacity of the edge that you employ. How much money can you run before your strategy stops working?

6) Is a great investment strategy and track record enough to start an investment firm? Early money is hard to come by. There are many who contribute only when a firm is obviously successful, and few that will contribute to a fledgling firm. Also, good fund marketers are hard to come by at a reasonable price, if they exist at all. So far in my life, I haven’t met one.

7) The last lesson: do what you are good at; do what you love, but recognize realities. There are times when opportunity knocks, and times when it doesn’t. Pursue the advantage you see in front of you, until a better advantage presents itself.

In summary, I enjoyed An American Hedge Fund. Through the lens of Timothy Sykes, I got to see the creation of an investment process, a hedge fund, and all the difficulties that go along with it.  The book is available for purchase at Amazon.com.

This is the last numeric post at my blog.  After I write this, I will switch over to posts using the date and title to create the URL.  I liked the numbers, because it gave me a sense of progress, but my posts will index better with words rather than numbers (hat tip to Dr. Jeff Miller).  Also, the numbers are a little artificial, in that anytime I upload a file, it uses up a number, so this isn’t exactly my 200th post (more like number 160); it is just number 200 the way Wordpress counts it.

The Aleph Blog is now five months old, and in some ways the blog has exceeded my expectations.  I never expected to get as large of a readership so fast, and I did not expect to get picked up so much by other bloggers and blog aggregators. The response has been gratifying.  What can I say but I’m humbled by it all.

Now, I wish I had more time to blog.  Blogging must sit behind God, family, church, and work for me.  That said, I am trying to put out quality original content, trying to make sense of confusing markets in an era of securitization and derivatives.  Also, I’m eclectic.  I cover a wide area of issues in markets and macroeconomics, and you get to watch my portfolio moves for the three portfolios that I run.

I’m open to advice on where to go from here.  This is what I am presently planning:

• Expand the blogroll to better reflect all that I read.
• Build out my books page, complete with a little Amazon store.
• Activate Feedburner.
• Send polite notes to just a few more bloggers who might not know about this new blog.  The best articles page is a simple thing to point them to.
• Articles: I’ve got one coming soon on the VIX.  Others that will come: How markets and traffic are similar, When to be flexible versus rigid, hidden correlations in strategy, problems in academic finance, rescuing Capitalism from capitalists, and more.
• My usual coverage of current topics; maybe some book reviews.
• Add something that verifies my performance, so that I can mention it here.
• One more thing: a stock picking contest, akin to the Value Line contest done in the mid-1980s, with a prize to the winner.  This contest will test skill in picking stocks, rather than luck in trading, as so many contests do.  Sponsors are welcome to apply, otherwise the prize will come out of my pocket, which means it won’t be large.  A sponsor will receive free advertising on my site for the duration of the contest.

I view this blog as an option on a business.  That option may come into the money or it may not.  For one thing, it is my guess that I will not get a newsletter off the ground.  I have interest from maybe 25 readers, and I would need 100 to make a go of it.  It is somewhat more likely that I may gain other employment, particularly if my friend’s health insurance company gets venture funding.  That is by no means certain, though, so I am open to other job possibilities so long as I can do them largely from my home?  Need an equity or bond manager in an institutional setting?  I have done well with both.  Do you have a wealthy friend that would like to seed a new manager in exchange for preferential terms?  E-mail me, please.

Finally, I want to thank those who helped me get this blog moving.  Thanks to Charles Kirk, the guys at Abnormal Returns, James Altucher, Barry Ritholtz, the guys at Seeking Alpha, and Roger Nusbaum.  You’ve sent the traffic my way, and thanks.  Also thanks to Bill Luby, Dr. Jeff Miller, James Kingsland, Richard Todd, Value Blog Review, and the Unknown Professor.  Finally, thanks most of all to my wife, children, and Jesus.

I would be nowhere without my readers, particularly those who comment.  If you have suggestions for me, send them my way.  I write for all of you; your opinions help direct my writing.

Every now and then I do a post to talk about the blog itself, and my future plans for it.  While talking with an old friend of mine, who founded and majority owns a company that makes the best commercial lawn mowers in the world (full disclosure: I own a little less than 1%), I told him about my blog, and he thought it made perfect sense for me to do it.  Regardless of the eventual result, he said that I was building my brand.

I never thought of it that way before, and much as I like contributing to RealMoney.com, I am putting more of my thinking, and the better part of my thinking here.  So where am I going with the blog in the near term?

• Finishing off the portfolio reshaping.  RealMoney will see the results of this second, and the blog first.
• I have five news compendia posts coming on Economic Theory, Macroeconomics, Speculation, Derivatives (yes, Bear, subprime, and more), and Miscellaneous (the grab bag).
• I also plan on improving some of the permanent pages, particularly my bio, fleshing out the investment books that I have learned from, and fleshing out my investment performance, so that I can publicly display it to readers (I’ve had a great last seven years).

Now, my ultimate goals are to either start an investment newsletter or start my own investment shop.  I have described what I would do on the following permanent pages (newsletter — investment management).  So far, I have gotten about 20 bites on the newsletter, but I would need a minimum of 100 to make me quit my job to do that.  As for investment management, I am actively interested in any seed investor that would be willing to fund me.  Aside from that, I am still working with a fellow who is looking to revolutionize the health insurance industry, who if he gets funded, would like me to be his CIO.  We’ll see.

Because my main calling is to be a good husband and father, I can live with delays in my longer-term planning; things are going well.  I also have a calling to my church, which is having its annual meeting this coming week.  I can’t tell whether I will be posting more or less while I am at the conference; I’ll see what I can do.

Regardless, have a great week as the second quarter finishes up.

It is my goal to make this blog more enjoyable and usable for my readers.  To that end, today I added some code that adds recent comments to the sidebar, and allows users to subscribe to comments on a post if they like.

Future enhancements that are likely coming:

1. More books and more commentary on my books page, plus links to Amazon (whether I make money off it or not).
2. Update of the major articles list.
3. Addition of a polls feature.
4. And internal enhancements that will enable me to better monitor my site.  Please note, I will never sell the e-mail addresses of those who register on my site.  I live by the words of Jesus Christ, who said, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  People hate having their e-mail addresses sold; I hate it when it happens to me.  I won’t do it to my readers.
5. Some way of tracking my portfolios, apart from what I am doing now at Stockpickr.com, so that I can comment on my performance as needed.

Now, if there are other features you might like to see, let me know, and I will do my best to see if I can provide them.

I have added a few features to the blog for syndication purposes.  You can now get my RSS feed via e-mail through Feedblitz.  You can also get the RSS feed through MultiRSS, which handles all popular RSS feed readers/aggregators.

I have also added new methods to help me understand what aspects of the website get the most use, so I can understand what people like to read and what is less interesting.  Eventually, I will add some advertising to my blog to help defray the cost, and enable me to have some compensation for providing content.  Not that I plan on blogging full time, but if I were writing a newsletter, having a blog that throws off a reasonable amount of revenue would help make ends meet as I build my business.

Again, suggestions are most welcome in terms of format, design, article topics, etc.  I enjoy it when people comment on my blog, so please feel free to do so.

This is post 100, as Wordpress counts. I am going to take a brief break from writing about the markets to write about the first two months of blogging.

First, this blog is not what I would like it to be yet. I have many more things to build out, but given my responsibilities as a husband and father, I can’t go overboard. I have to serve my employer as well, and for that matter, Realmoney.com.

Speaking of RealMoney.com for just a moment, this blog might not have come into existence were it not for the example of Barry Ritholtz, the encouragement of Cody Willard, the encouragement of various readers at RealMoney, and the neglectfulness of one of the editors there, who I made the offer to of a blog/newsletter, and after promising to get back to me, he did not get back to me. After three-plus years of writing there, I expected more. (Particularly since Jim Cramer was kind enough to recommend me to the editor in question. Anyone who thinks Cramer controls the editorial side of TSCM doesn’t know what he is talking about.)

Many, but not all of the things that I used to write in the Columnist Conversation are now getting written here as a result. I am internally debating as to where to put my comments. Here I might get some compensation for them, whereas at RealMoney I don’t get any compensation. I’m grateful to Cramer and RealMoney for the opportunity, but with work getting busier, it is easier for me to blog at night, rather than writing in the day.

Friends help in blogging. I particularly want to thank James Altucher, Roger Nusbaum, Jeffrey A. Miller, Bill Luby, and Abnormal Returns for the help in getting noticed. I also want to thank the editors at RealMoney who put up with me mentioning my blog several times in the first week of its existence.Business opportunities come as you blog. Newstex is indexing the content of my blog for its readers, and I get a percentage of the revenues. A fellow trying to start an individual health insurance company wants me to be his chief investment officer; first let him get assets to manage, and we can discuss it (It is a very interesting opportunity). Insurance Journal is using some of my insurance posts. I signed up early with Seeking Alpha and Technorati to increase my visibility. I’ve talked with some value investing blog aggregators, but nothing has come of it really.What I would love to be able to do would be to work from home. My commute is horrible, and I would like to spend more time with my family. I have about 20 takers if I started a newsletter, but that’s not enough to get off the ground. I would need at least 100 before I would start doing a newsletter.

Ability to reference free articles that RealMoney has syndicated to Yahoo!, etc., has been another source of exposure. All in all, I’m happy with the first two months, and am looking forward to yet more fun with my readers and collaborators. Do you have feedback for me on what I have been doing here? E-mail me, or just post a comment to this article. Above all, thanks for reading!

PS — If you like what I write, recommend me to other well-known bloggers. If you like how I invest, and you have a wealthy friend who might like to seed a low risk equity manager, recommend me to him. Thanks again.