Mr. Fleming is cautious; I don't know his track record, but can't find anything to argue about in his analysis.
Mr. Middleswart is bearish, but has no credibility when he says that "Historically, these stocks trade at book value or below" - which has only been true during bear market periods or selloffs, and even then (such as in late summer of 96), many still traded above book value.
Mr. Pang was cautious, but has little credibility for me due to his track record at Smith Barney, where he missed the previous move up after the selloff of 96, so I'm not counting on him to help me figure out when the next move up will be.
My money's on Cary's suggestion - Mr. Morgan is the person to pay attention to, and he'll be giving us his thoughts very soon. In the meantime, I find Carl Johnson's comments on Infrastructure much more credible. He missed the beginning of the move up last year, too, but he talks a lot with the companies, understands the business intimately, and puts his suggestions into a portfolio that you can follow so you can see his track record - and it's pretty darn good. I suspect Cary's is a little better, even, and I'll bet if you went back over these three guys' recommendations over the past year and put them into a portfolio and tracked how it did, they wouldn't have done nearly as well. They are running with the crowd right now, and an analyst can't get nailed too badly if he makes the same mistake everyone else made - but they don't help us much, either.
Bob |
