If you spend a few minutes on my site you’ll probably find yourself looking around for the “catch”.

In other words, with all this great information, awesome stock-tips, real-time buy recommendations and interesting company exposés, there must be a catch, a call-to-action, a “partner” site, a “free offer” or something, right?

Wrong.

The Reasons Behind PeakStocks.com

I decided to address these concerns to hopefully provide a deeper insight into why I started PeakStocks.com and what I hope to accomplish with the website.

PeakStocks.com was launched in late October, 2007.

At the time of the launch, my reasons for creating this website were to exercise my passion for stocks, research and investing, all-the-while helping others do the same and learn more about taking control of their money and investing future.

A quick look at the “About This Site” page will tell you all you need to know about what I intend this site to be, and provide you a little more insight into who I am.

But beyond that, I wanted to make it clear why the information on this site is free for the time being:

• I need to prove myself: Although I have a great track record for picking stocks and doing my research, it’s hardly believable to others out there if I just spout off some random gains and great picks that I could have made up or materialized out of thin air.

Therefore, I scrapped all of my past results, started totally from zero, and decided to build that same track record over the course of the next year and beyond.

On a public stage like this, with my trades verified by a 3rd party, I’m either going to sink or swim.

• This takes time: Discovering and researching stocks takes time. It isn’t every day that you find a great undiscovered stock with amazing growth prospects that you want to hold for years to come. Thus, it’s going to take time to build up the PeakStocks.com portfolio.

In addition, because I adhere to the philosophy of never buying a full position of a stock all at once, there’s also a time-lag from the start of a buy recommendation to when a certain stock is no longer desirable from a risk/reward standpoint and becomes a “hold” in my portfolio where I am no longer recommending new money be put into that certain stock.

This is good news for my readers because it allows you to purchase shares right along with me and not miss the boat entirely on all the great companies that I’m going to be recommending.

Is This A Pump-And-Dump?

I have to laugh at that terminology. It’s what they call the spammers and message board posters that tout a penny or small cap stock in an effort to get the stock to rise quickly, so that they can “dump” their shares for a nice profit from their “pumping” shenanigans. You know, like those annoying SPAM messages you get in your inbox about the next great stock.

I hope that from my well thought-out research reports, to my in-depth blog postings, to me owning shares of every company that I recommend, it goes a long way in proving that everything I recommend I believe in as a company and as a business, NOT as a stock.

In addition, I have taken measures (like providing a risk rating for all stock recommendations as well as having my trades tracked by an independent 3rd party) that go the extra mile for full disclosure and being 100% honest and forthright in my picks, why I bought the companies in my portfolio, the potential risks involved, and my investing thesis.

If you take just a few minutes of your time and read any posting, about any company, or any of the other articles on the site, you can see that I put a lot of time and effort into my selections and the reasons behind them. This is a passion of mine, and I would be doing what I am doing regardless of the number of people that knew about it, or any compensation that I would get for doing it.

Will It Be Free Forever?

The simple answer is probably not.

Once I develop a track record and prove myself over time, I think that my style of investing will be very appealing to many of you out there.

It’s a hybrid approach of buy-and-hold, with prudent risk-taking on small and micro-cap stocks.

Therefore, I think that it’s only fair that if I am proving that my style of investing far surpasses the overall market’s returns, I should be compensated for my time and effort in finding, researching, and ultimately, telling you when to buy and sell these companies.

How will I monetize PeakStocks.com?

In short, I don’t yet know.

Some ways that might play out are:

• Advertising
• Revenue sharing/cross-promotion with partner sites
• Subscriptions
• Money management

Out of all of these possibilities, the one that intrigues me the most is a hybrid between subscriptions and money management.

For example, say you knew nothing about stocks and investing, and didn’t want to know. You just wanted someone to manage your money that would get higher returns than the overall market for the riskiest portion of your portfolio.

I have been exploring options that would allow you to set aside whatever amount of money you are comfortable with, and buy stocks along with me but without you ever having to do anything. I wouldn’t actively be managing your money like a fund, but your actions would reflect mine in real-time.

Another example is allowing paid subscribers to the site to get access to my real-time buy recommendations and research reports before anyone else, etc.

The Bottom Line

Remember this as you read through my site: Regardless of whether or not I had a website/blog to share my thoughts and investing ideas with others, I would be doing EXACTLY the same thing that I am doing now for PeakStocks.com for myself!

I started this website because I figured, what the heck, if I’m going to be doing this amount of work and research anyway, I might was well share it with others at the same time.

Ultimately I don’t know in which direction the site will go, but I wanted to be up-front and honest with my readers before you start getting suspicious as to my motives and intentions for touting the stocks that I recommend, and wondering how the heck this guy makes any money from all the work he puts into this site.

In the end, I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, so the proof will need to be in the pudding, but I believe that over time, my results will speak for themselves, and the rest will follow in a natural and honest way because I am doing this not for the money, but because I love every second of it.

Sincerely,

Chris Fernandez