Daniel, now I am more convinced than ever that you are deluded about Dessauer. Unless you honed in on his winners, your gains over the last few years are less than what they would have been using an index fund, and Hulbert bears that out over any time frame you care to mention. And you just don't get it about Cendant. If he recommended it at 24 and it drops to whatever (7 is the recent low I think), can't you see that it would be misleading and deceptive for him to claim "I recommended Cendant at 7". He hasn't done that yet with Cendant, but he has done it with Bally, claiming that he recommended Bally at 3 and it rose to such and such, whereas he actually recommended it at a much higher price. Let's say Bally rose from $3 to $27, a factor of 9. But if he recommended Bally at $14 and it fell to $3 and then rose to $27 that's not even a double. Big difference. The fact that you were still recommending it at $3 doesn't matter one lick. The little guy may have already bought it at $14 and doesn't have any money left to buy it at $3. But never mind good Dessauer stock vs bad Dessauer stock. Let's just talk honesty and integrity. Are you comfortable that he raves about his Wall Street Week portfolio when it's doing well but says nothing at all about it when it's tanking? After all, he always announces it in a big way with a lot of fanfare at the beginning of the year, and he recommends buying the stocks in it. Doesn't he think we would be intereted to know how it is doing? Isn't it an insult to our intelligence to think that we are going to overlook his not mentioning it, and what, just forget about it? Are you comfortable that he started a "million dollar portfolio" with lots of fanfare years ago, one that I'm sure people acted on, and just quietly dropped it since it has done so poorly (Comshare, Monaco, PMRX, etc.)? Are you comfortable that every three months he provides a table of his recommended stocks but says nothing about how well they have done? Al Frank in the Prudent Speculator reports every single month on every single stock: when he advised purchasing it, the price at the time, the current price, and the percentage gain or loss. The math is all there. Every single month! Dessauer obviously doesn't want to report the numbers (as if we can't figure it out ourselves).
As far as what Dessauer meant when he said, "If you own CPPKY, buy more!" don't you try to interpret that in your own way. It means what it says- don't put your spin on it. If, as you say, he was trying to just say that the stock was still a value and a good buy, then that would be true whether one owned the stock or not. C'mon Dan, it's bad enough he's a sophist; don't you be.
A woman wrote to me last night saying that one time on the hotline he pushed Novartis hard, which had come down- according to him because of a change in the exchange rates. She checked it and found out that there had been little change in the exchange rates, but a major brokerage house had downgraded Novartis- which Dessauer hadn't mentioned. Recently, in the newsletter when talking about the collapse of Fletcher Paper, he said something like, "we have made money in Fletcher Paper before." I went back and checked and I can tell you for certain he has never made money in Fletcher Paper-- unless he sold it short and didn't tell us. It was priced at $23 when it split from Fletcher Challenge and it has been nothing but downhill ever since. And though I have mentioned it before, I feel compelled to say again, because others have written to me about it, that the way he exited from Pokphand was absolutely cowardly and self-serving to the nth degree: tiny print, last page, a quick little ditty with no admission of wrongdoing, and poof, it's over. Good thing the new subscribers won't have to hear any more about that. Wipe the sweat off your brow, Dessauer. It was a slap in the face to the people who have been buying shares in that company for years on his recommendation to be told, "better sell because information about the company is hard to come by". What a disgrace. I have nothing but contempt for him for having done that. Believe me, that was the last straw for many people, including some who never bought Pokphand but were watching it. You don't get it Dan. This isn't just about money. There isn't any of us who are going to take it with us when we die. This is about being honest, being above board, having integrity, taking responsibility for your actions, and above all, keeping good faith with the people who trusted you. I'm sorry Dan; it's not just that he's not a good stock picker; in my humble opinion he is not a good person and that's why I am asking people to stop sending him $200. |
