Guest Hosts who should be kept, and indeed should be on more often, include Vince Farrell and Seth Tobias.
I'll second that notion, and add Rick Schottenfeld to the list of guest hosts who should be kept and given more airtime. I will NEVER forget Schottenfeld's Squawk Box appearance a year ago, last January, where he told Mark Haines, point blank, that the days of the "who cares about multiples, buy great NASDAQ stories regardless of their valuations" was about to be over. As you remember, it was at the time when anything with a .com in it's name was skyrocketing...Schottenfeld said, "don't bank on it, those days will come to a screaching halt very soon." Haines looked at Schottenfeld as if he'd lost his mind, and chuckled at his "doomsday say-it-ain't-so" prediction. Yet, a year later, look at where we've come. Schottenfeld made a very gutsy call (given the current situation) and yet he was dead-on right...anyone who heeded his warning saved themselves thousands of dollars. When Tobias or Schottenfeld are on Squawk, I literally take notes on what they are saying...because they speak the truth and pass out salient, valuable commentary. How many Squawk guest hosts can you say that about? Not many, that's for sure...usually the guest comes from the "Touter of the Month" club.
Re: Gustafson, I will NEVER forget him coming on CNBC in the wake of the first Barrons' piece, where Barrons asserted that "The Emperor (CSCO) had no clothes." Gustafson was visibly livid that Barrons had the gall to poormouth CSCO...I mean, how DARE THEY badmouth a stock that he had a big interest in. He railed on Barrons, calling the piece "shoddy journalism," and went on to say that his fund had been aggressively buying CSCO on the selloff caused by the article. He then went on to assert that viewers would be doing themselves a huge favor to pick up CSCO at current prices. At that time, CSCO was selling north of $60...today it closed at $27. Why oh why then, does Gustafson maintain his pompous attitude each time he's on CNBC? Wouldn't it be a better move on his part to give a mea culpa..."boy, I was wrong, Barrons was right...I really blew that call. That wasn't shoddy journalism, rather it was just shoddy research on my part." See, that's what I like about Tobias and Schottenfeld...they freely admit their mistakes. And in this business, everyone makes mistakes. The litmus test is, the jokers would have you believe they bat 1.000, whereas the real pros freely volunteer their blown calls and say, "ok, here's where I messed up, and this is where CNBC viewers can learn something from it."
Another perfect example was the AMZN love-fest last August-September. Every friggin day, we heard about this magical "analysts meeting" Bezos was conducting in September. "Oh boy, you don't want to be short AMZN into this meeting...this stock is going to the moon." Head cheeleader Maria led the charge, giving credence to Bezos himself, as well as every friggin' AMZN shill on the street. The stock was at 40-and change then...look where it is now. Anyone with one iota of common sense knew that the thing was grossly overvalued, yet there was an orchestrated (yes, orchestrated) attempt on CNBC to create a short-squeeze...probably to aid Bezos in an attempt to do a massive secondary at inflated prices to recapitalize the company. Well, the short-squeeze failed (thank God!) and AMZN is now under $12. Has Maria or any of the other toutmasters shown any remorse? Of course not...it's as if it never happened. And if Anthony Noto or any of the other jokers who were leading the AMZN charge 5 months ago wanted airtime on CNBC today, the producers would give them carte blanche to spill more of their vocal feces across CNBC's bandwidth.
It's painfully obvious why CNBC doesn't hold guests accountable for their blowhard ways...because the network would NEVER want to sway from their M.O. of being "Tout TV." To be fair, a lot of CNBC programming is interesting, but a lot of it is nothing more than infomercials for overvalued stocks. And in that sense, there's nothing different from CNBC hawking selected stocks, and the rogue bucket shops manipulating some pink sheet piece of crap. Both CNBC and the bucket shops have the same agenda: find and attract potential bag-holders. |
