This is getting to be a bit too much.
First off, you could take the greatest money manager in the world and find 5 or 6 stocks that bombed on him or just plain didn't work out.
Everyone has their losers. Anyone who claims they don't are lying. The fact that a few of Brinker's touts haven't worked out doesn't make him a bad money manager, it just means he's human like the rest of us. So I think it's unfair to cherry-pick 3 or 4 of his duds and use that to make a case for him being a louse.
I think people take shots at him because he is a little pompous on his shows. People need to realize that you need a bit of pompousness to keep your listenership...face it, how long would you stay tuned in if Bob's underlying theme was "I'm just a regular guy, just like you, and here is a list of my losers to show you that I am no better than the next guy..." Yeah, I get a little turned off when I hear him talk about his super MSFT call each week or when he slams a caller's mutual fund comparing it to his Vanguard World Index fund, but that's just Bob being Bob--which people obviously like since his ratings are so high.
As far as the earlier allegation that he hopes to somehow drive the market higher to maintain his listenership, I strongly disagree. In fact, the best thing that could happen to Bob's ratings is if the market experienced a very sharp selloff. When the market keeps working itself higher and higher, "the Average Joe" gets a false sense of security. "Why should I listen to Brinker...everything I buy keeps going up, successful investing is easy, why should I listen to anyone for that matter--everything I buy goes up." If we had a sharp selloff, his listenership would go up because people would tune in to find out what was on the horizon. In the current market conditions, everyone thinks they are Peter Lynch, but if we corrected 15-20%, people would realize how little they really know about the market and would tune into Brinker and other shows to learn.
I'm certainly not the biggest Brinker fan, so don't discount my comments as being "more propaganda from another Brinker cult member." I strongly disagree with him on some issues (hey, I'm a broker--what can I say). But I do listen to his show whenever I can, because it is entertaining (hearing him dress-down the naive callers is always funny), it gives me a chance to hear what "Joe Public" is thinking (which gives me a better perspective of what my clients are thinking about) and I always manage to learn something new.
Just because some of his picks haven't worked shouldn't discount the fact that his show is probably the most informative financial radio show on the air today. You can argue that some of his picks aren't so hot, but no one can admit that, after listening to his show, they didn't pick up some additional knowledge about investments and the market.
Gary |
