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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 (12023)	2/19/2000 9:36:00 AM
From: Allan Harris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15132

Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Greenspan. When it comes to fine-tuning the economy's growth rate, past history shows that monetary policy is a blunt and clumsy tool, one that has produced at least as many failures as successes. cnbc.com A

To: marc ultra who wrote (12023)	2/19/2000 4:15:00 PM
From: Gary D	Respond to of 15132

Marc: "If I remember correctly Bob hasn't taken off for quite awhile. Unless someone knows otherwise I suspect he may be off given the 3 day weekend." I was also thinking it likely that Bob would take off this weekend--but he's on the air. A true "working stiff".

To: marc ultra who wrote (12023)	2/20/2000 8:26:00 PM
From: marc ultra	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 15132

Anatomy of a sell signal. Well done or less well done? Unless I missed something, today, one month after the so called "strategic asset allocation", was the first day that Bob finally said flat out his model gave a bear market signal. I can't say this is academic because over on BB.com for instance when I said 5% upside and 20%+ downside is a bear market signal from his model several sharp people argued he was not calling for a bear market but simply reducing risk. Similar discussion on just what the heck his model was saying has gone on here. Bob however carefully avoided the issue of what exactly his model was saying until today. So why did he in fact dance around that precise question until today? As I said at the time one factor might have been the reality involved in calling for 0% US equities hit him in the face when it came to give advice to act on. Forgetting she was flat out wrong, we have the Garzarelli example of the telephone and fax alerts of "sell all US equities now" which caused the willy nilly selling by small investors with no regard to tax consequences. But still what would make Bob not want to use the term bear market or go to 0% US equities or more importantly say out front off the bat the timing model has given a bear market signal. I think the likely answer may be what happened after his model turned bearish. The first group that gets action is accounts under money management. That means him and Sheldon Jacobs have to urgently decide what specific action to take. That specific issue of a bear call while assumedly decided in principle a long time ago was never tested in reality as far as I know. So the money management clients have all these huge built in capital gains I assume. Also looking at his own situation where undoubtedly taxes are a big issue Bob may have thought there are certain things he wants to hold. Then realizing all his followers by newsletter or radio are about to be hit with this news what should he do? Well he conveniently figured out this little 40-60 calcuation where you are greatly protected while still capturing a little upside which he didn't really expect and this was something that could be finessed far easier and without desperate followers throwing their portfolios into huge panicky dislocation. As to money management Sheldon certainly would be agreeable and as to Bob if he is right he's a hero whether he's 40-60 or 0-100 as has already been confirmed by him jumping to #1 in timer's already thanks to his bearish call. What criticism could we have, well if his model did give a bear signal he could have simply said it while recommending his less extreme position and let people make up their own mind how they want to handle it knowing he was reccomending 40-60. In other words he could have not been so damn careful about using the specific words "the model is calling for a bear market. Of course he can say well when I say 5% upside and greater than 20% downside I obviously was looking for a bear market. Or was it an intermediate correction signal which he said in the past would get him out of the market since it often degenerated to a bear market signal. Last week I think he told somebody in the fall 1998 intermediate correction you would have liked to have had some cash on the side to put in at the bottom. So after years of saying the model is king and he will not interject himself into decisions but use his model, reality told him to interject himself and not talk about the SPECIFIC call by his model. I think his approach will likely do the greatest good for the most people while doing the least harm assuming the call is correct. There are however a lot of sophisticated people here who have believed in the model and would like to know the specifics of the model while getting his strategy. Marc

To: marc ultra who wrote (12023)	2/22/2000 5:20:00 PM
From: marc ultra	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 15132

OT ENMD update. Stock has now moved into the 70's with a 7 point gain today while most biotechs sharply correcting. There continues to be rumors leaking out that good things are happening in the Endostatin PI cancer trials. By the nature of the drug as an angiogenesis inhibitor and the trials, nothing official may come out until late in the year. I am posting on this here occasionally as this may become a huge medical story as well as a stock story. I have no first hand knowledge of what is going on and am making no recommendation concerning the stock which now represents about 18% of my financial assets Marc