POTO,
I am equally prepared to see another 8-10% market gain, but as you know I don't believe it plays out that way.
Happy holidays POTO, and may 2016 fulfill your dreams.
Your friendly foil,
Igy
POTO,
I am equally prepared to see another 8-10% market gain, but as you know I don't believe it plays out that way.
Happy holidays POTO, and may 2016 fulfill your dreams.
Your friendly foil,
Igy
My best to you and yours, Igy.
I'm hating on Flagpole because he is a self-satisfied simple-minded fool, who is the exact opposite of his self-image.
He seems as though it would be possible to have meaningful discourse with him, but in truth that's impossible. It's like trying to talk to a dumb machine. Regardless of whether or not he actually believes firmly what he says, he lacks the intellect required for exploration and play, even within his tiny sandbox. He will never evolve; he will never have anything of actual interest to add to any experience, apart from those things which are slavishly mechanical and therefore widely available, but which may not already be known by someone.
He is an imperious, dogmatic, and arrogant little man. Again, if his situation turns out well, it will be despite his best efforts.
Maserati wrote:
if his situation turns out well, it will be despite his best efforts.
wrong
he is using time-tested strategies.
if his situtation turns out well, it will be because he studied the past and decided his best bet was to use strategies that have worked.
If he succeeds it will be because he made the right decisions based on the right information.
Am I the only one who read that post and thought Maserati was describing himself?
agip wrote:
Maserati wrote:if his situation turns out well, it will be despite his best efforts.
wrong
he is using time-tested strategies.
if his situtation turns out well, it will be because he studied the past and decided his best bet was to use strategies that have worked.
If he succeeds it will be because he made the right decisions based on the right information.
Wrong. Nobody exists in a vacuum, and nobody is omniscient. You have also just exhibited that self-aggrandizing fantasy of direct causation. Give me a break.
Do you guys really think that you "have it figured out" if you are lucky enough to make good? That's completely absurd. Your situation holds only so long as conditions permit. The only long-term strategy of survival is humility and flexibility--and I mean flexibility in advance, so that you actively prepare for the possibility that you're wrong, or that at some point in the future, you will be wrong, using either your current or your future tactics.
I can't believe the hubris on this board...and from people who aren't even beating inflation this year! Incredible. You should hear yourselves.
You guys need to travel. Meet people of all sorts. Learn that things change, and that you have been lucky to have been in essentially a static situation for quite a long time. Learn that sometimes, trouble finds you, whether you like it or not. How many times do the classic bits of wisdom have to be repeated to you before you learn, things like "the best-laid plans of mice and men..."
Flagpole and agip are to much the gentlemen to say this, but I'm not: Maserati, you're a real douche.
JFC.
Much of what you say in this post should be addressed to yourself. YOU have figured it out? YOU are ominiscient? WE are hubristic???
You are perhaps in the top 10% of hubristic people I've ever commmunicatd with. And with zero results - just your airy claims of massive successes.
The idea of a passive, diversified portfolio is in many ways the opposite of hubris. By owning it you are saying "I don't know what the heck is going to happen, so I'll spread my chips around in ways the past would suggest gives me the best balance between risk and reward. And then the invisible hand and human ingenuity will move those chips around.
YOU are saying you have some kind of massive understanding of the world, you KNOW that what worked 10 years ago won't work in the next 10 and that you can accuratly forecast the future.
"Massive successes"? Really? Exactly WHERE have I claimed that? Nowhere, that is where. I claim to have beaten the markets during periods when the markets weren't doing much of anything, i.e. in the last 2 years. I have NEVER claimed massive successes, unless you want to count the 30+% market year, and I have clearly stated that had nothing to do with me in particular, that a rising tide floats all boats.
What is the matter with you guys? You have a bad stretch and you go to pieces, inventing fictions to try to raise yourselves up by trying to, wrongly, knock me down?
Once again, all I have done is avoided the major meltdowns, something I have found quite easy, by exiting the markets appropriately, and when out, pursuing other investment opportunities which also require infinitely much more work to manage than just buying a diversified portfolio, hence the increased gain relative to the markets during those periods. I have NEVER claimed to be omniscient, quite the opposite: I have claimed that money must be worked in order to produce a return, and if the markets aren't working it properly, I will.
"Spreading chips around" includes a LOT more than what people normally think of as a "diversified portfolio", which is why I encouraged Flagpole to continue to keep, and work, his client list.
And lastly, I never said that I know that what worked 10 years ago won't work in the next 10. I said that people who firmly believed that it would, are anachronisms, belonging to an earlier era, and have not adjusted either their thinking or action to the current and coming era. What is laughable is not necessarily your strategy, but your certainty that it will be effective--and because of that certitude, the strategy also takes on an air of woe.
You guys are squarely in the "Who could have seen THAT coming?!" camp, with which I am having to deal these days. While I couldn't care less about your individual welfare as I know nothing about you, I don't like to see those closer to me fall behind. You do play the part of the classic "useful idiot", and are certainly responsible for significant inertia in the markets, which contributes to stability, which is useful in some measure. For that, you have my thanks.
But when you read into what I wrote things that are not there, but that are instead revelatory of your mental or emotional state, it is time for you to take a look in the mirror.
You bemoan others putting words into your mouth while constantly being guilty of the same. You are a hypocrite.
That doesn't make it any less true.
A good summary of John Hussman's current market views:
Who?
If you want to know who, look up the Hussman Strategic Growth Fund or any of his others on Morningstar. From the time that I went long on 6/22/2009, Hussman has LOST 33% of his customers' money in the 4th biggest bull market in history. This is incompetence on the Peter Schiff scale, and I fail to understand why anyone would place any value in what he says or invest any money with him. He has simply been dead wrong for years.
If you want to see the views of someone who has been right all that time, here's Laszlo Birinyi:
Biriyni give me a break. Hussman admits to his mistake in 2009, he does so in the piece I just cited. Furthermore, he has a record of being right in 2000 and 2007, and a written record going back two decades. Discount his views at your own investment peril.
Igy
Laszlo Biriyni December 27, 2007 market prediction wrong by 50%:
Like many things, the back test is a factor of your point in time. This survey in 2011 ranks Birinyi as one of the worst market predictors:
http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/05/ranking-gurus.html#.VoExcWt5mSM
All of this just supports the fact that you cannot consistently accurately predict the markets.
Big,
Short term predictability yes. There are several valuations models that have around 90% predictability over longer time horizons: Tobin's Q, Market cap/Gross Value Added, Shiller CAPE 10, and the Buffett Indicator.
Igy
Ghost of Igloi wrote:
Big,
Short term predictability yes. There are several valuations models that have around 90% predictability over longer time horizons: Tobin's Q, Market cap/Gross Value Added, Shiller CAPE 10, and the Buffett Indicator.
Igy
except for the inconvenient fact that if you followed the CAPE you would have been out of the market for the last 25 years. During which the Dow went from 2800 to 17,000
Igy come on - the CAPE has no predictive ability except maybe when it spikes up to 30 or 40, indicating a mania.
http://www.businessinsider.com/image/525be48769bedd2b1184c27c-800-544/cape-3.jpg