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

To: Math Junkie who wrote (1628)	12/11/2001 10:04:39 PM
From: Math Junkie	Respond to of 10065

This is for S. Lee, who asked on the AMAT thread whether Brinker's newsletter was worth subscribing to. Rather than stir up a hornet's nest over there, I will post my answer here. I have subscribed since about 1996, and have info from earlier periods from posters I trust. What I believe to be the case is the following: He went bullish in August of 1982, which was the start of the secular bull market that lasted at least to the Winter of 2000. He got out of the market after the 1987 crash, which was obviously a mistake. He has said that he subsequently modified his model to incorporate what he learned from that period. In any case, in the following years he started getting back into the market, reaching a 100% invested position at the start of 1991. He remained 100% invested until January of 2000, when he went to 60% cash, which was darn good timing in my book, although you will find people who criticize him for being early, and also for not going to 100% cash. He further raised cash to 65% in about August of 2000, but then he blew it in mid-October of 2000 by recommending that subscribers place from 20% to 50% of cash reserves, depending on one's risk tolerance, into QQQ, for what was intended as a short term trade on a countertrend rally that he was forecasting. The rally fizzled before it reached his target, and the trade has turned into a long term hold, awaiting market recovery. At the present time he appears to have given up on trying to give short-term trading advice. In spite of this faux pas, I still subscribe because I believe he has a good grasp of the fundamentals, and if I had never heard of him I almost certainly would have been worse off. The reasons he gave for his intended short-term trading recommendations make it clear that he was using different methodology from the model that he uses to forecast bull and bear markets, so I still regard it as possible that the model may prove to have value. However that is by no means proven at this time.