The National Association of Online Investors is a for-profit association having as its sole mission the empowerment of individuals to make confident and informed investing decisions. The goal is to enable the average person with money to invest to regain control of their portfolios and thus their financial futures. To meet this goal the NAOI creates and markets Investor Education Courses as explained on this site and teaches investing classes at the college level. The NAOI currently has students in all 50 states and over a dozen foreign countries.

The NAOI is completely objective. We provide no specific investment recommendations and advocate no specific investing "style". Our mission is to provide individuals with the knowledge, resources and structure needed to enable them to make these decisions on their own. 

NAOI Founding Observations and Goals

• First, the investing public is far too reliant on third parties for advice. This has left individual investors vulnerable to bias, fraud and corruption in the financial world and has this has cost the public billions of dollars in lost savings. The NAOI was formed to stem this steadily increasing flow of money from average investors to the pockets of Wall Street insiders.
  
  
• Second, the basics of investing are not difficult to master. Too many people believe that investing is best left to professionals because it is beyond their capacity to understand. This is a myth that is perpetuated by many in the financial services industry in order to increase the dependency of the public on their offerings. Investing is NOT beyond the capacity of the average person to understand if presented in a clear and concise manner. The NAOI was formed to develop and deliver investor education courses that are easy to read and that emphasize practical action as opposed to dwelling on investing "theory".
  
  
• Third, online resources exist for free on the Web that give any person with Internet access an incredible amount of power to find, evaluate, trade and monitor investments. Yet the Web presents a chaotic maze of financial offerings ranging from incredibly useful tools to out-right fraudulent schemes. The NAOI constantly scours the Web for the best sites and online resources. Those that we find to be of particular value we reference in our courses as "NAOI Recommended Sites". The NAOI was formed to provide individuals with a "roadmap" to the most effective sites on the Web and to show when and how these resources can be effectively used as a part of a comprehensive investing plan. 
  
  
• Fourth, the individual investor's only effective protection against financial corruption is personal education. The SEC, the Courts, the Congress, fines, censures, legislation, etc., etc. will not clean up the corruption that will be ever-present on Wall Street. Only smart investors making smart decisions will cut off the money flow to those who seek to cheat us out of our savings. There will always be companies seeking to take advantage of naive investors. The NAOI was formed to enable individuals to safeguard and grow their investments through knowledge and personal responsibility - not through lawyers, government regulations or the court system.
  

In summary, the NAOI believes that investing and money management are life-skills are that so important to an individual's security and happiness that they should be taught in every high-school and college in the country. They are not. The NAOI was formed to fill this void. 

The NAOI Headquarters Location
Washington, D.C.