Moneycode25.com (Cult Marketing)

God’s Financial Horizontal Passing Game

The Christian Right is repellent. This is something the Republican Party knows in its core. For every Bible thumping wing nut you attract, you repel two  members of the general public. The only advantage catering to this moralist minority is that they are twice as likely to participate in the political process than the average citizen.

It’s a statistical chimera, with the true results buried within category definitions and population overlays. But the conclusion is obvious and close enough to the truth on the ground to be actionable.

Beyond the political calculus, the Christian Right is a distinct culture. It has literature in all genres. There is a look and an agreed standard of comportment. It has its own music. The group is less clinging to regions or defined by education level or even by race than most would suspect. Economically they shade no better or worse than the average Joe in average times.

They do constitute a market unto themselves, with specific channels of promotion. And it’s a somewhat mature defined market. There are any number of proven postures tailored to reaching them, a whole cascade of ‘the phrase that pays.’

Moneycode25.com is a financial advice vehicle which is being specifically pitched at the Christian Right. Its appeal is chock full of custom ordered tag lines. Advertisements have recently aired for Moneycode25 on news stations and talk radio.

Moneycode25.com’s pitch is that its operator has discovered a magic system for creating wealth plucked from the pages of the King James Bible.  Through following a simple system, supposedly secretly adhered to by many millionaire investors, you too can ethically build a substantial fortune.  The radio advertisement directs avid listeners to a website. This website itself is—SURPRISE! SURPRISE!—more marketing. The actual product isn’t what one might expect and it isn’t actually called Moneycode25. In fact, there is no moneycode, no magic system plucked from the Bible and any pretense towards ethics is add-on eyewash.

That’s what we in Ajax Telegraph Land call a TwoFer: both a potential scam and a potential cult.  The good news is that Moneycode25 is nowhere near as bad as I suspected it might be. It is neither a scam by any classical definition nor is it overtly the conduit to participation in a proprietary religion. End of endorsement.

Unfortunately, it’s not very good, either. It’s nice to see that the field of Christian Right Financial Planning has advanced beyond the selling of gold coins. The appearance of this appeal is a step in the right direction.  And it isn't so much that Moneycode25 is in any way unsound, but rather that there is no there there.

Moneycode25 is itself an advertising vehicle, a product pitch in website form. The “25” portion of the name is meaningless and was added on—probably to secure the domain rights at an affordable level.  What Moneycode25 promotes is Ultimate Wealth Report, itself a product of long time wing nut marketer Newsmax.

Newsmax itself is a shabby operator, often pretending to be the fair and balanced version of Time Warner. It’s the K-Mart knock off of Fox News. This time they are pretending to be financial gurus—or they’ve hired someone to play the role. That said, Ultimate Wealth Report is a step up from their usual shoddy offerings.

The front man for Ultimate Wealth Report is, at best, an enthusiastic hobbyist.  That’s actually his own claim, delivered aw shucks style. He’s just a good old boy, with none of them fancy Ivory tower credentials. He don’t hang out on no Wall Street. Prior to being called by the Lord to promote financial increase to the masses, he was called to preach in more conventional venues.

On top of not having any credentials, he also has no real track record. After months and months of publishing and numerous weekly podcasts, this guy can claim to have been right exactly twice. And that’s stretching it. His other claims are equally nebulous. He helped guide his father’s 401K out of a lull over an undisclosed period. He went from making $15,000 a year to giving away up to $50,000 a year. Product claims don’t get any more meaningless than this.

This is the best Newsmax can do. He does clean up nice. He hits his mark. He knows his lines. He seems sober—at least on television. I highly suspect that his appearances on financial television have been bought and paid for.  This would not be unusual in and of itself. Most financial touts are paying for the privilege of talking at the talking heads above the stock scroll.

What does make him somewhat unusual is his thorough lack of qualifications as an expert.  This man wouldn’t even be considered an expert witness on the subject of investing in civil court.

He’s also no genius. His mysterious Triple Pronged Approach is disclosed as being nothing more than an amalgamation of three very well known and widespread forms of analysis. None of these systems is perfect and none of them have been proven predictive. (Hint: no system works.) At best, they are predictive for forecasting what other  people using those systems may think.  How he triangulates between the three isn't explained. It doesn’t matter. It’s all unreliable bafflegab and poop to begin with.

On top of that, he’s not going to teach you how to work this system. None for you. Too complicated for your feeble mind to comprehend. Instead he’s offering you a subscription to his wonderful tip sheet. But wait! There’s more! You also get his video podcasts. Plus some books. All for the price of a full tank of gas.

Some of the groundwork information he provides is quite sound. On the other hand, if the maxims wonderboy is spewing are news to you, you do not belong in the market. He doesn't quite go with “buy low, sell high”, but it’s pretty basic stuff. Overall, he’s preaching what they call in football a horizontal passing game.  He keeps you from making mistakes and chasing phantoms. You will be invested in Blue Chips, period. None of this will keep you from being wiped out by the defense—in this case, negative economic forces. The down side is that he has mitigated your upside. You don’t throw bombs, you throw for first downs. The strategy is stupid, unless you’re already rich. If you are this risk averse, the stock market is not for you.*

I fear that the stock market is simply not for most of the people he is out to reach. He is also giving some exceptionally bad advice, including seemingly advocating buying stocks on margin. This is a bozo no no, except for the well to do.  Ditto options trading. Even sophisticates screw that up on a regular basis. Moreover, the stock market is simply out of reach for people with fixed incomes, credit card debt or those who have less than a quarter of their earnings left after food and shelter are accounted for. No one should be pulling a Jim Cramer and living in their car while shuttling off monies to brokers.

Bottom Line: Ultimate Wealth Report is a valueless product, a well packaged and well targeted ball of nothing. For the price of a full tank of gas you can subscribe to all of the mainstream financial magazines. You’ll then have as much of the advice as you care to read, provided by real experts.

*Owning individual stocks is probably not for you. Invest in an EFT. These are available through most brokers.

(Full disclosure: Ajax’s own self-traded IRA is doing swimmingly. I’m not at guru level… yet. For the mean time I’ll remain a hack.  Thank you.)