AlterNet Finance Disclosure Policy
AlterNet believes in transparency and accountability, especially when writing about finance and investments.
AlterNet allows its writers to own mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and individual stocks. We believe our writers are entitled to their own personal financial success, and that the path to financial independence is paved by investments. We also intend for our articles to provide helpful advice, and believe those with experience are better teachers. As Motley Fool adroitly notes, “we believe our staff's involvement in managing their own money is critical to their learning more about the subject and their succeeding in their own lives. And who better to write about investing than those who do it themselves?”
We also believe that excluding individuals who own individual stocks from writing about them is unfair. As the U.S. stock market has historically increased in value by 10 percent a year, our writers should have equal access to financial security.
We do, however, require the following of our AlterNet Finance writers.
All AlterNet employees or contractors writing finance articles (identified by “AlterNet Finance” in their byline) are required to disclose whether they own any stocks mentioned in articles they write at the end of their piece. (They are not required to disclose the underlying stock or bond investments in mutual funds or ETFs, as these may be unknown or part of a larger index.)
Affiliates or advertisers may provide investment advice or investment products. Since we don’t know the investments of third parties, we don’t take responsibility or provide insight into third party companies’ investments. Generally speaking, if you see a financial company or product appear on our site in graphic or video form, they are paying advertisers. Advertisements are typically identified by “advertisement” or “sponsored.”
Trading restrictions
AlterNet has no trading restrictions of its employees or contractors, other than disclosing investments in which they have a position.
Business relationships
Many of AlterNet’s business partners and vendors are privately held companies. However, AlterNet does business with the following publicly-traded companies (this may not be an exhaustive list):
JPMorgan Chase
American Express
PayPal
Alphabet (Google)
Amazon
Microsoft
Apple
Adobe
Cloudflare
AT&T (Xandr)
Rubicon
401k disclosure
AlterNet’s 401k plan is maintained by Ascensus for Vanguard. AlterNet employees’ 401k investments are in Vanguard mutual funds and ETFs. Vanguard does not pay us to mention their products in editorial articles (though they may advertise on our site). We selected them to run our 401k plan because of their low fees and corporate reputation.
All investment ideas and investment advice should be taken as just that — an idea for consideration. AlterNet’s finance writers are not investment advisors and if you’re considering hiring a financial advisor, you can get advice here.
Updated June 2, 2020
