The Investor Advisory Service provides updates to subscribers in several formats.

Keeping subscribers informed about changes that affect companies covered in the Investor Advisory Service is part of the mission of the newsletter. We provide these updates in a number of ways.

“News Alerts” are sent about individual companies and are primarily informational. They are generally triggered by major news coupled with a large one-day price move for a followed company. Often in these cases, subscribers who own the stock will see that its stock has gone up or down and wonder what’s going on, so the emailed alerts are intended to provide the background on these situations.

Occasionally, we send “Sell Alerts” on covered stocks. As with “News Alerts,” these are usually triggered by major news about a company, but in the view of our analysts the stock is best sold sooner rather than later. Most sell recommendations are not emailed to subscribers as alerts, so recommendations that are emailed should be considered to have higher priority.

Four times a year, we send subscribers “Interim Updates.” These are prepared during earnings seasons in between regular issues and include companies that have reported since the preparation of the most recent issue. Updates may include sell recommendations, but typically are just made up of informational news items about followed stocks. Updates do include revised buy prices for reporting companies.

Often, investors wait for earnings reports to come in before making a buy or sell decision, so alerts and updates allow subscribers who are on the fence to have the knowledge to make decisions about their personal portfolios before the next issue arrives.

With our long-term discipline, it's usually not essential to take immediate action when bad news affects a stock. When negative news is announced that affects a company, by the time individual investors hear the updates, professionals have already taken action, and the stock's price has already been driven down. At that time, selling will only come after most of the damage has been done, which means an individual is selling at the bottom.

Instead of a knee-jerk reaction, a better approach is to take the time to re-evaluate the company before making a sell decision. If a sell is determined to be prudent, there is little additional downside that comes from waiting; if holding is the indicated action, then not selling at the bottom can mean that returns will be improved by holding through tumultuous times for the stock.

The Investor Advisory Service stock newsletter has been named to the Hulbert Investment Newsletter Honor Roll for the 13th consecutive year for outperforming every up and down market cycle since 2002.

For more information about the Investor Advisory Service, to download a sample issue, or to subscribe to the best investing newsletter in the U.S. for long-term consistent returns, visit Investor Advisory Service.