Is Gold Quest Business worth doing?

If greed and fear are the main factors in spot gold pricing, would blog listing greed/fear factors be saleable?

• This would be a daily blog, on a subscription basis, listing greed and fear factors operational at the time of publication. It would retail for around $50 per month. It would arrive by e-mail to subscribers, or on their kindle machines. It would contain only non-insider information. No information from inside any gold mining firm. No information from insider any bank. Everything would be public data, but on a global basis, so when you get your e-mail, you get a greed book with every factor listed in order of importance, and you get a fear book with every factor listed in order of importance. You are supposed to combine this information and analysis with your own insight and knowledge and develop a competitive trading edge that is personal and that gives you a fair advantage in the spot gold market, as a bullion trader, or as an ETF trader, or as a futures trader (calls and puts). Would people pay $50 per month for this? How about if it included bulletins in real time for major greed factor or fear factor events? How much would the competitive advantage be worth to the average bullion trader, handling say a moderate portfolio of assets. How about if the first 100 subscriptions were sold at a discount premised on the idea of giving honest endorsements that could be used in advertising (affidavits, but where the ads would just give the first name of the customer -- like Bill from New York, or Sally in Paris). Let them buy 6 months for half price -- see how the endorsements come in --- if they are good, pick out the best ones and use them for marketing. In the second year, if the business is still up and running, new customers pay $1,200 per year. Old customers get a one year extension on their original price ($600/year). In the third year, same thing, price doubles for new customers, all old customers pay last year's price. So new customers in the third year pay $2,400 for the year, and all the old customers pay $1,200 for the year. This is a pure service. There is no product. There is no anti-trust law that applies. Whatever pricing power exists is there because the service works well and people make money using it. The pricing power should be exercised strongly until it starts to result in a sub-optimal number of customers. The free cash flow should be used to hire more global research personnel to monitor greed factors and fear factors in real time, especially when the spot gold market is closed. So the morning report has huge competitive advantage impact on those who receive it and read it. They have to see the money they are making --- show them the money!! That's the world we live in today. OK good -- my question is how powerful is this business model? If the person starting the business was an MBA/JD with 30 years experience trading gold, and the service was really very good, is there a better way to get the business up and running? Does anybody have a suggestion for a publisher besides Kindle, Google, Sony, Yahoo, and Microsoft?

• Answer:

  First of all, I can't believe I actually read all that. Your idea has a lot of merit in it. The big, gigantic, gargantuan, titan-sized problem of course is your effective analysis of all the factors involved in greed and fear. I believe that such information would need to be real-time for short-term traders and on a weekly basis for long-term traders. Again, the biggest problem is that pretty much every news item would affect fear and greed, and the affect is different on everybody. An effective method of analysis is not easy to come by. Another thing you need to solve is trust. You have an MBA/JD and over 30 years of experience trading, but so what? In an industry where everybody puts forth their all and only the geniuses shine, those credentials of yours form a foundation but you can't build your house on them. You need to be able to convince the largest trading companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and others to use your service. Because what you are doing has never been done in a truly effective way, you will see skeptics everywhere. It will be hard to sell. Which leads us to price. Starting off, you should mention to your prospective clients that you are offering a limited introductory price. Don't give them the idea that your service is cheap. They need to know it is cheap only for now, and they should take advantage of that. Once you have credibility, I imagine that a reasonably effective real-time analysis would be worth upwards of $5,000 a month. A very effective one could be worth upwards of $500,000 a year. Remember that greed and fear are the main driving sources of prices. The better your method of analysis and ability to explain said method, the more you can charge. This is an enormous undertaking.