Tom, Wow, LaFountain blistered Kurlak's lies about market share fairly strongly. Of course, anyone with a hand calculator knows that most of what Kurlak says belongs on Fantasy Island instead of Wall Street. And I was saying the same when he agreed with me. His fundamental research skills simply do not exist. Still, it amazes me that this is one of the few pieces (along with Fred Hickey's monthly wake up call newsletter) to not treat these Merrill inventions as gospel.
The bad news is, Dominick and Dominick is a dinky firm, only those seriously interested in company fundamentals (about 10 pct. of all stock investors and probably only 1 pct. of Micron bulls) would actually read a trade mag, and when Kurlak gets caught in one lie, he simply moves on to the next one on his list of touty concepts. The other bit of bad karma is that Kurlak has been highly rewarded for making up "facts" and other analysts have not only not exposed him as a yahoo, most are following his example.
I remember those bad old days well, having been an analyst at Waddell and Reed at the time. If anyone had brought lousy research like Kurlak's current crap into that salt mine, he would have been run out of the building wearing a suit of tar and feathers. I wonder if they are still as tough down there? I remember how they used to cheer anyone who could get a woman analyst from Wall Street to cry, unless, of course, she was a looker. -g- MB |
