Surfer, no, I won't flame you, but I will say that if you are looking for guidance on short term trading, then Bob is not the man for you. He does not advise people to jump in and out. Why is that? The only possible reason is that he knows his limitations. As he has said more than once on the program, "The market has never consulted Bob Brinker."
Nevertheless, when the market was at 9300, he was advising people to adopt less risky positions, by adjusting their stock/fixed-income allocations in line with his guidelines, and by advising those who had substantial gains in individual stocks to reduce their holdings to 4% based on current value, instead of the initial purchase price. For people with new money, he was advising dollar-cost-averaging over twelve months. Once the market was down by 7%, yes, he said put it all in, but those people are now only down 13% instead of 19%, and since he does not recommend using margin, and he does not recommend stock market investments for funds which will be needed in the near term, none of them will be forced to sell at these levels.
Many of us appreciate this gradualist approach. He does not attempt the impossible, but rather counsels us to take moderate actions based on relative risk levels. This greatly upsets those who are looking for a steady stream of dependable buy and sell signals. Bob is not in that business, and I believe that is why those who have followed his advice conscientiously over the last ten years have done well.
To answer your question, the people he is telling to buy are those with new money to invest. For the rest of us, he is saying, "Don't panic and sell out at the bottom." If he's wrong about being near the bottom, then I guess Surfer will have turned out to be a better market timer than Brinker, and we can all start listening to your radio program! |
