Fleck has been putting out these "the world will stop spinning" messages for quite a while (MANY years). One day he will be right and claim a 100% batting average, but the reality is that there have been numerous "experts" throughout the 90s who have predicted that the economies of the world and the stock market will crash together and they have collectively (to this date) been WRONG. Following these guys (and gals) over the last decade has been an excellent way to diminish the value of your portfolio (or at least not increase it very much). By the way, along with his general "the world is ending" message, Fleck has a thing for battering Intel at every opportunity.
Over the years, some people have made extraordinary powerful reputations by calling a pullback or downturn (Joe Granville and Elaine Garzarelli come to mind). Problem is that after that one call, most of these one hit wonders are hardly better than a coin toss at predicting the future movement of stocks and stock averages.
The problem for me with Fleckenstein's arguments is that they were equally valid a year ago, two years ago, etc. In mathematical terms, the market is a multi-thousand dimension space and people who claim that one or two dimensions explain everything are battling an awful lot of realities that don't show in their models. As I said one day, he will be right, the market and the economy will turn down and, if that day is anytime in the next three or four years, he will say "I told you so". |
