In the October 2012 issue of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, the Investor Advisory Service and its solid performance record was featured in an article entitled "Where to Get the Best Stock Research."
"Unless picking stocks is your full-time job, you can probably use some help finding attractive opportunities or getting a feel for what makes a company tick. But with everyone from Jim Cramer to your broker vying for your attention, you face a surfeit of options," the article begins. "Here are our reviews of a few sources you may be considering."
In the "Newsletters" category, the writers of the article list three subscription services they think are worthy of consideration by individual investors, including IAS:
"[Mark] Hulbert also maintains an honor roll of newsletters that have produced above-average returns in both bull and bear markets for more than ten years. Investor Advisory Service is the top performer since Hulbert created the list in 1998; it has returned 10.2% annualized over the past ten years, compared with 6.3% annualized for the S&P 500.
"The newsletter is published by ICLUBcentral, which also sells stock analysis software to investment clubs, but its analysis comes from Seger-Elvekrog, a money manager based in Novi, Mich., that oversees about $300 million. Scott Horsburgh, president of Seger-Elvekrog, says his team looks for firms with sustainable, double-digit earnings growth and stocks whose P/Es are below their long-term average P/Es. The aim is to pick stocks that can double in five years. 'We look often and buy seldom,' he says."