Ralph, I want to, because I think he has good information that can be useful to investors, and I now this is true because my portfolio has the gains to prove it.
But please don't suggest that people should be "smart enough" to
know when to heed Dessauer's advice and when to ignore it.
Why not? Did JD ever say he was going to manage your portfolio for you? No. Asset allocation is up to you, and it's a very important part of investing (and drinking) to "know when to say when". In your example of JD encouraging us to "if you already own it, to buy more", he is answering an unspoken question. For you, the question is, "JD, I already own CPPKY, but I have some free cash and paper losses, what should I do?", whereas to me the question is "I've bought CPPKY in the past, and it's gone down.. is it still the value you thought before?". My understanding of what he's being asked doesn't imply an unending buying cycle, just his opinion of the relative value of the stock at that point in time. There's a big difference.
Just because he has a standing buy order on a stock and it falls to
whatever price, doesn't mean that he deserves credit for making the call.
Are you joking??? So the only time any investment advisor ever can take claim to being correct is if immediately after he tells us about a stock it starts climbing and never comes back?????? Please tell me you're not serious. Nobody can guess day to day or month to month fluctuations in individual stocks... I give JD full credit for stocks that subsequently drop prior to rising, but if you only want to invest by using your 20-20 adjusted hindsight, be my guest...
You mentioned his winners, like STD and CCI, but considering that his "investment style" does not include protecting profits, look how much of the profit on those two stocks have been bled away. Do you really think they are examples of good portfolio management?
The fact that you don't understand this point, again shows me that this is not the investment discipline for you Ralph. STD and CCI are prime examples of JD's methodology. It's only now, in hindsight that you can say "Well, I should have placed stop loss orders on STD..." but what if after STD traded through your order and sold you out of your position, it had bounced to new higher levels? You'd be there with your "locked" in profits, and I'd have even more. Every situation is different, and I prefer to actively choose when to get out of stocks. Since my STD is a very long term investment, what do I care that it's come down (and since started to bounce), other than it has given me a chance to take advantage of the situation by buying more if I so choose? Oh, by the way, losses aren't losses until you sell... investing in individual stocks with a long term horizon means just that, being able to roll through the dips and never know they happened.
et me give you an example about Asia. When LSI was in the 20s, he told us to buy it because it would not be affected by Asia, "there is no glut of LSI chips" etc. etc.
And he was right. Just in case you missed it, the semicon. industry is currently in the longest slump in recent memory. Everyone is taking it on the chin. Asia has had a secondary effect on LSI, in that the average joe on the street doesn't have the confidence to go out and buy a new DVD machine, but that hardly makes LSI's prospects any less attractive 5 years down the road. As for JD's call in the 20's, LSI's CEO made the same call with his own money, so why should JD be singled out for misjudging the impact?
I don't see how you can say that his misjudgment of the Cendant fiasco was "debatable." What is to debate?
The debate surrounds which Cendant you were investing in 6 months ago... the company that exists today, or the one that will exist 2-3 years from now. JD wasn't selling you the first, he was selling you the second, but your vision doesn't appear to extend that far. And yes Ralph, the long term will vindicate him... that's the point.... that's how JD and many of us invest.
By the way, I've been hearing from quite a few people on my e-mail. Many report the beating they took on Singer. Keep in mind, that was a round-tripper for Dessauer with over a 50% loss from his starting price. Do you know that he featured it prominently, extensively in one of his promotional mailers, and a lot of people acted from that alone. I guess you could say that it was a Dessauer loss that they got to have for free. I'm sorry, Dan. Although I am positive that you are a really nice guy and decent human being, I honestly feel that you are in denial about John Dessauer.
I can personally sympathize on Singer... I bought some too in the 20's, and sold in the teens when the situation made me uncomfortable. However, if people are losing money investing on nothing but the information in a promotional mailer, they have need to shoulder a large amount of that blame themselves.
As for being in denial about JD, I come back to reality... I have gains in my portfolio that are directly attributable to investments JD pointed me towards. They outweigh the negatives by a large margin. I also have benefited from his economic analysis of the US and global markets (even with his miscalculation on the Asian impacts). Denial to me would be more like trying to make JD's long term investment strategy the villain when you are buying and selling over a short time frame... now which of us does that sound like???
DWB |
