I agree with your perspective Dan, I never considered JD my best friend, confidant and advisor. I'm only looking at whether I think I'm getting value out of his "research" and "advice" in correlation with the annual subscription price.
As Wren mentioned, because DGE is a closed-end fund, redemptions don't play a role. Also, I presume that he doesn't have the benefit of "new money" when he wants to make a purchase, and thus if and when he makes a buy, I presume there must be a decision of what to sell to get the money to buy. So I realize that as a closed-end fund, he can not fully practice his preaching of "buy and hold."
I often don't have an overabundance of new money myself to make all his strong buys, so I either forego them or trade-off. When JD moves in and out of positions, I read that as his judgment that certain positions are more over- or under-valued versus the others. If I am wrong on this analysis and he does get "new money" from somewhere, then as a preacher of "buy and hold," he should have no reason to sell the positions I mentioned if he still thinks they are undervalued.
When he and Guiness Flight parted ways, it appears that he sold mostly all of the Guiness Flight obscure China/Hong Kong positions and thus had a bit of "new money" to spread out on "our great stocks" and included LCI, Worldcom, Enron and Pixar (and initial positions in Ascend, AXA-UAP and Circus-Circus) as well as some of our more familiar favorites. I'm not disconcerted about this, because he claims he follows some positions for a while before recommending them, so maybe he is taking flyers on these.
My disconcert comes from the unloading of GM, GTE, Kodak, ATT, Nestle and Nike. These positions are all large-cap, blue-chips and represented sizable portions of his 9/30/97 portfolio (over $1M each, some $2M, except for Nike $795,000). The only fact I have is by 3/30/98, they were all gone. And in my newsletters and hotline calls between those dates, he was touting these as strong BUYS. And the CCR - he mentions this one at least once every three calls, yet he had added zilch to his own. Another advisor stated in his newsletter "I like Santander, I've recommended it for years, but it has gone too far too fast, it's overvalued at these levels, hold on if you want, but I'm letting it go." Johnny could say this and leave it up to us as to whether we hold or pull the trigger.
Sorry for the long-windedness, but I'm not leveling accusations, I'm trying to process facts. I want to know which positions he puts his money with and which he might just be publicly touting so he keeps getting the corporate jets and cozy accomodations when he visits the companies. The figures are from reports filed with the SEC by Dessaur & McIntrye Mgmt, which you can access on the SEC's EDGAR database or get from a broker or investor relations of the fund.
And finally, while it may be interesting to hear Johnny D's take on this, what can he tell me that isn't Bill Clinton double-talk. I'm dealing with facts here, not rumors. To use a crude analogy, if I find my girl in bed with another, I don't need an explanation to color what I see. I will still listen to his advice, I'm just evaluating whether I want to continue paying for it. |
