lanac - Kurlak's record is spotty. A while back (pre-split) he emphatically downgraded intel when it was 50 then belatedly issued a buy at around 75 (a few weeks later). He was roundly criticized for that sequence of calls by Louis Rukeyser on Wall Street Week, at the time.
This is not an isolated case of error. He has been goofy about Micron too. That doesn't mean that he is right or wrong today (even a stopped watch is correct twice a day). It does mean that he is more than capable of error. He has been a better predicter lately. His problem is that he uses one measure of current shipments very extensively (from article on him in Fortune a while back) which is simply blind to future events. He is also what I call a straight line analyst. He takes the last two data points, draws a straight line and extrapolates. In technical terms he uses the two most recent data points to predict the future. Unfortunately, such crude methods are useless in volatile situations (or when exogenous events such as when Micron got whomped by Asian memory chip capacity coming on line or the Pentium became REAL popular or Windows 95 forced a lot of upgrades or Win NT 4.0 came out).
I always listen to what he says and then do my own analysis. In stable situations, his methods are useful, but he had a fairly low batting average on certain stocks (Intel, a highly volatile issue, among them). IF, on the other hand, you are an Intel bear, than anything he says is gospel, destined to be 100% accurate. But you wouldn't be so foolish as to take Kurlak as gospel. If you were, you are poorer than you could have been. (I may be wrong but I think he was poor on AMD too). In baseball it's great when a .350 hitter is at the plate. In investing, it's less thrilling.
Thanks for posting about Kurlak. One more data point.
Best regards and good investing,
Burt |
