I am sure that most of the value focused investors in Australia is familiar with one of the better investing magazines on the topic available, Intelligent Investor. Even though not always fully agreeing with their takes on things, I too count myself amongst their keen followers. Looking at their approach in retrospect I realized that two major issues I have with this media are first their ridiculously high subscription fees and lately somehow more and more of those “we told you so�? type of articles.

The pricing
One thing to clarify right from the start – I am not and have never been paying subscriber of the Intelligent Investor however I have read a large number of their trial editions, free articles etc. Hence may obvious bias as I may be missing on some of the additional perks a paying subscriber could have been receiving.

So looking at their subscription fees on their official subscription site one is presented with following:

• 6 Months (12 issues): online version $345 / postal version $375
• 1 Year (24 issues): $545 / $595
• 2 Years (48 issues): $995 / $1095

Keep in mind however, that, to may best knowledge, Intelligent Investor is still not one of your regular “over the counter�? magazines you could pop up into your local newsagent for. The only way you can become a regular reader is to become a subscriber. Now, say you have all the available cash on hand, decide to go for the most value for your money and pay $995 for 2 years subscription of their online version. Each issue will than cost you more than $20. Try to compare that to few of the similar Australian printed magazines within same category:

• Money Magazine:
  over the counter $6.50 / discounted 24 months subscription (22 issues) $99
• Australian Property Investor:
  over the counter $8.95 / discounted 24 months subscription (24 issues) $139
• Financial Review’s Smart Investor:
  over the counter $7.95 / discounted 24 months subscription (24 issues) $155
• Investor Weekly:
  over the counter $10.30 / discounted 12 months subscription (48 issues) $495

(all the above information sourced from isubscribe.com.au)

So the Intelligent Investor’s least attractive design and quality of print will set you back at least twice as much money any of the others, above mentioned investing magazines would have. Yes sure you may argue that their “news hole�? is the biggest one amongst the listed (ie. not including any adds in the magazine) and that their value focused reporting/tips may bring you, arguably, the highest investing returns. Well, I think that few medium sized adds in order to lower the sales price per issue would not hurt. And as to the value creation to its readership: perhaps the jury is still “out there�?. I know of no reliable comparison tool which measures such value making claim between different media outlets.

The “we told you so�? style reporting
Again fairly subjective and biased judgement of mine is somehow telling me, that in this highly competitive part of the media industry, “blowing one’s own horn�? in order to keep and/or increase the readership numbers may be necessary. To me, this factor became even more obvious in the recent reports covering the latest volatile pricing movements on the Australian and world share markets. Somehow it seems that the guys over at Intelligent Investor’s Bondi Junction offices had known it all before ahead and if you are one of the few naughty readers not acting on their advice and hence losing some of your money than, of course, you have only yourself to blame.

All and all though, the occasional free report coming out in the regular Intelligent Investor’s newsletter will definitely rank highly on my reading schedule. While I still do consider it one of the Australia’s best, I am not so certain that its subscription pricing makes them a true value pick of the Graham/Buffett style.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Australian stock, My View. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.