it's one dope. here's a poll. they say they plan to raise equity allocation to 75 percent from 69 percent.
ragingbull.lycos.com
Abelson
ragingbull.lycos.com
a portion of the latter article:
Michael O'Higgins is one of those rare money managers who, as he puts it,
is making "decent money this year." Since his portfolios are up, on average,
nearly 19%, we'd have to say his performance is a bit more than decent. (Not
a few of his counterparts, who aren't exactly burning up the pea patch, might
view it as positively indecent.) Actually, Mike has been racking up crackling
good showings most of the past five years.
Mike's eponymous firm is O'Higgins Asset Management, and he runs it out of
Miami Beach. He's the inventor, if the name sounds familiar, of the "Dogs of
the Dow" approach to investing (which holds that last year's big losers are
likely to be this year's big winners). He toyed with the notion of branching out
into the "Dogs of Nasdaq," but worried that the neighbors would complain
about the size of the kennel.
The ingredients of his superior returns so far in 2002: He has been short the
S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 and long a package of gold mining stocks. He
remains bullish on his gold shares and he's very much still bearish on the
market. He reckons the popular averages could drop another 35% before
they hit anything that resembles a real bottom.
In a dispatch we received last week, he observed that "the conditions
preceding the big slide late last summer have returned."
More specifically, insider sales are running comfortably above 4-to-l over
insider buys, using an eight-week moving average. Wall Street strategists
again are recommending that you commit nearly 70% of your hard-earned
money to stocks, after lowering suggested equity positions to 64% in
December. And the OEX Volatility Index has slumped to the low 20s from its
September 20 high of 49.
"It looks like," Mike says, "we are setting up for a pretty sloppy spring and
summer." Not, in our jaundiced view, anyway, an unreasonable prospect.
He thoughtfully appended some confirming material to his note, including
Vickers Weekly Insider report. What we found especially noteworthy here
was that the preponderance of insider selling over buying was especially
pronounced on the Big Board, where, over the past eight weeks, the ratio in
favor of sales has run nearly 5-to-l. In contrast, on Nasdaq, buys command a
less 2-to-1 advantage.
Vickers draws the unexceptional inference that since the bulk of Nasdaq
purchases are of companies way off from their highs, it's possible that these
beat-up numbers are where the bargains are. (However, it quickly cautions to
give junk stocks a wide berth.) Obvious but interesting, and if we were of a
stock-buying disposition, Nasdaq certainly would rate a glance. |
