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Pastimes : The Justa & Lars Honors Bob Brinker Investment Club -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: marc ultra who wrote (6660)	7/9/1999 1:32:00 AM
From: Kirk ©	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 15132

Justa re<<<<what has changed between now and then (20 yrs ago) to say that it is not as useful an indicator today as it once might have been? >>>> Marc>> I guess an assumption is being made that this sentiment survey is being uses in more analyst's models then it was many years ago. To determine if this is true I suggest you go to a library with a good financial section and consult the three volume set "PRINCIPIA INVESTORS INTELLIGENCE"<g> I agree with Marc. My cleaver line would have been "the internet" but Marc's is plenty cleaver too. Then you wanted to research a stock, you went to the library and read their annual report...now you check Edgar online by clicking a Yahoo! link. You get links of what analysts think of the company, etc. etc. My point is the survey can react to its results in near real time with CNBC and the internet. Newsletter writers might change their portfolios as soon as they see the survey results so the data is old and invalid a day later, especially if they all were to use the same model! Still, you could probably add this data into a failed model that missed a timing call 10, 20 or 30 yrs ago and back test it and get results that don't pull you out at the bottom as an old model without the data might have, but that was then and this is now (cleaver line #2)<g>. Simpler, what worked backtested to 1929 or 1987 more than likely will not have the same results today as the information quality is so different. Efficient Market Theory says this is already in the price of the stocks as I believe it says all information that is knowable is alread y in the price of the stocks. Of course, I don't believe this 100% and think we can get huge profits playing the over and under shoots as no linear system reacts in zero time to new information. Also, anticipating the new information will always make for stock picking guru's too...like those smart enough to include a small weighting of AOL and Yahoo! in their portfolios 2 yrs ago. [ramble mode off] Kirk out