I think that Niles believes that he is correctly predicting the future. The edge that he has is that his numbers have been more than accurate over the last few quarters. He obviously has sources that are feeding him the script for announcement day. His prediction for the future batting average is very suspect. It turns out that they don't keep good statistics on Wall Street, and unless it's Professor Irwin Fischer {he wound up losing his home in the crash, but Yale University bought it and rented it back to him} saying that stocks have reached a permanently high plateau in Sept of 1929, you can go on and on and on with wrong picks and still get quoted as a stock market "expert" - see Fleckenstein or Biggs or Abelson or Kurlak or Klauer or ...
Though, come to think of it, Elaine Garzirelli got a poor rep after correctly calling the Oct 1987 crash and then almost nothing else correctly. And I think Gail Dudack just got chucked from the Wall Street Week group of elves for being so consistently wrong. Some of the wrongies are permabears, some have a thing about a company or an industry or the current string of up years, but all are pretty inflexible atheorists. Reality and results are unimportant to idealogue politicians and Wall Street theorists.
If Wall Street is nothing else, it's become the Church of What's Happening Now. Trends don't have to be based on reality or results, just that if everyone is betting on Pogo Stick stocks, it's probably a good idea to join the parade and start hopping until sanity returns. Trend following has been wildly successful. If IPOs are working, hop on that. If the drug stocks are working, jump on them. Forget valuation and buy if it's a dotcom. I must admit that there's a nasty voice in the back of my head that says that these "everything up big" days have to come to an end, but it has proven near impossible to tell when the game of musical chairs is gonna end. As they used to say on Hill Street Blues, "Be careful out there". |
