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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (87344)	12/20/2000 9:45:50 PM
From: Earlie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

MB: Actually, I gave up on the funds after having been laughed out of a large collection of ritzy board rooms. Not that I mind, as I'm now emulating you and looking after the needs of some cronies. Lots of fun and no hassles. (g) As an interesting aside, herewith an anecdote. In my discussions with the pension managers, I noted that (a) virtually all of them were "closet indexed" (b) None of them gave a fig about whether they made their clients any money, but were really concerned with beating their competitors by a quarter point percentage gain. (c) The way to accomplish this magical feat? By dodging just one of the many "disaster" stocks that smack their indexed portfolios in any given year (and I had a lengthy list of those that had provided much pain to every one of them over the preceding year). (d) The way to do this? Pay attention to the research of a good short and clear out of just one of the surface skimming missiles that show up on a good short's radar screen. Now here is the fun part. Every one of them asked,.... "So which one do you think will provide wounds in the near term?" Our response,..... "Nortel" (and we had a long list of back-up for the view). As it was the darling of all darlings up here at the time, it was at this point that the laughter commenced. (g) Interestingly enough, several of the top dogs liked the idea, but from there on down, the idea was viewed as a plague. I still remember one of the top guns of a huge pension saying, "I've got 150 analysts here. Do you two guys think you are smarter than all of them?" The provided answer? "If none of them have provided the poop we have just given you, then of course the answer is yes". (g) Best, Earlie

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (87344)	12/21/2000 7:10:56 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Michael, You'll get a laugh out of this. This week's BusinessWeek has just noticed a) that the internet analysts' collective advice of last spring wasn't so good, to put it mildly, and b) the best advice came from smaller brokerages that didn't have an investment banking business to support. They were shocked, shocked to notice the conflict of interest. Does this mean that we're getting close to a bottom, or do we have to wait for another "Are Equities Dead?" cover?