Earlie, What is funny, now they ALL are probably thinking about shorting Nortel. I agree completely about the wrong-headedness of pension and hedge fund managers with their closet indexing. But it seems to be a losing battle. A battle I've been losing since 1979. That was the beginning of my antipathy toward Abby Joseph Cohen. We had lunch when she worked for T.Rowe Price and I had a resume in there. She mentioned that their Income Fund was a performance leader at the firm. Instead of keeping my mouth shut, I noted that it had lost 7% in the past year and sucked wind, or words to that effect.
"But it beat 3/4 of its competition," she said, shocked that I would consider -7% to be poor performance.
Sometimes, I just don't speak the same language, which I call "esperanto de goofball." <g> T. Rowe was not one of the firms to make me a job offer. Duh!
I hate it when folks ask me if I think I'm smarter than the analysts. I feel it is like asking me if I think I am smarter than a sea urchin. Though I do think "smarter" is the wrong term, as that is usually associated with IQ, and many analysts have very high IQs. I don't know what the correct term is: Less lazy, not co-opted, experienced, a cranky old contrarian. Yeah, I think they'll buy into that last one. <g> |
