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Joe, You mentioned BFT as one of his winners. Let's look at it. But first I want to concur with Wren that I too sold SME before Dessauer advised doing so precisely because I went in to my local Service Merchandise and saw that the floors were dirty, the merchandise shoddy-looking, and the number of customers paltry considering that it was the holidays, and so I sold it. Like George Bush who never entered supermarkets, I doubt that Dessauer went into Service Merchandise. But I digress. Back to BFT. Again, this was a spinoff from Bally, and I credit Dessauer for advising holding it. But this stock went from 12 to 37 in less than a year. That's more than a triple in less than a year, and all on expectations. It was losing money throughout most of that time, and just barely posted a profit in the last quarter (a profit that was questioned by some because of accounting irregularities). This is the only publicly-traded gym stock there is, and I think a lot of brokerage houses were pushing it just for the lack of an alternative in that industry. Now, you know that a triple in less than a year all on expectations is not a normal thing to happen, and I should think that selling half your holdings would have beeen a prudent thing to do. (I didn't own this one, but I was paying attention to it, and caution flags were going up all over the place for me) But let's say that wasn't Dessauer's investment style. Fine. But to encourage fresh buying when it was well above 30 all because "it was heading to 60", I thought that was absolutely insane. And Dessauer has done that, time and time again. He recommended fresh buying of Comshare at 29 (now it's 3, I think). He first recommended Core Labs (CLB) in the high 20s when it had risen from 12 in less than a year, and he even admitted that it was selling for a ridiculous P/E, but that "the total capitalization of the company was only 500 million". Well big deal, that's no way to determine the value of a company. It eventually fell all the way back down to 12, although recently it is back up to 17 or 18. Actually, I don't doubt that it's a good company, but it was way overpriced in the high 20s, and Dessauer should have known that. I'm telling you, if Dessauer ever had it (good investment sense), he's lost it, and we would all be wise to dismiss him. |
