Abby Joseph Cohen - The Liar -- trotsky (), 09:57:01 08/16/06 Wed
the woman has incredible chutzpa, that's for sure. she's rewriting history live on TV as we speak.
I too watched Abby pump and my jaw dropped as she lied with the best poker face ever about her 2000 success - This morning Phil said to short the sp500 when he saw she was on CNBC as a KEY contrarian indicator - he said they only bring her on when its time to PUMP and DUMP. I emailed ted david (like ricky bobby) and told him this was the straw that broke the back - AJC should never be allowed on TV ever again - they should be ashamed and they should be sued.
money.cnn.com
March 28, 2000: 6:45 p.m. ET
Reduces stocks in model portfolio to 65% due to higher stock prices
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Influential strategist Abby Joseph Cohen sent a chill through the stock market Tuesday after she told her clients to trim their stock holdings and bulk up on cash.
In a research note to clients, Cohen, one of Wall Street's biggest bulls, said she expects stock prices will continue to grow, but at a slower pace. Therefore, she said, investors should reduce their exposure to stocks and keep a little cash on hand. The move, which many investors viewed as a sign of waning optimism, sent stocks tumbling with the Dow industrials falling almost 90 points and the Nasdaq composite falling almost 125 points.
"She's the best known market guru, and she's been right for a long time," said Larry Wachtel, market analyst at Prudential Securities. "She represents a major power on Wall Street, and she's earned her respect."
Cohen, the co-chairwoman of Goldman Sachs' investment committee, said in her report she was reducing the equity exposure to 65 percent from 70 percent to "reflect the recent gains in the prices of stocks and long-dated government bonds." She raised the allocation of cash to make up the difference.
Her model portfolio now stands at 65 percent stocks, 27 percent bonds, three percent commodities and 5 percent cash.
Cohen said the shift was due to concerns that the market's rise in the past few weeks has left certain sectors with little room to advance. Chief among them: technology stocks."For the first time in a decade, our model portfolio is no longer recommending an overweighted position in technology," she said. "Many of the technology shares were given the respect they deserve over the last 18 months, and are no longer undervalued."
"Overweight" means that Goldman's portfolio carries greater exposure to a sector than the broad Standard & Poor's 500 index. Cohen held her recommended exposure in technology and telecommunications stocks to 35 percent of a stock portfolio, while those sectors represent 42 percent of the S&P 500. The sector most overweight, Cohen said, is now financial stocks, including banks, credit card lenders and insurance companies. Basic materials companies and energy stocks also have a heavier representation in her model portfolio.
Cohen kept her year-end target forecast for the S&P 500 at 1,575. On Tuesday, the S&P 500 closed at 1,507, down 16 points. As recently as January, Cohen reiterated her view that U.S. equities will see strong growth in 2000, driven primarily by earnings and cash flow.
money.cnn.com
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Abby Joseph Cohen, one of Wall Street's most influential strategists, reassured investors Monday that they should not be put off by recent market volatility -- and should hold on to stocks because growth remains strong.
In a note to clients, the Goldman Sachs investment strategist left unchanged her targets for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones industrial average, forecasting gains in the months ahead -- just one trading session after those indicators plummeted.
Cohen sees the S&P jumping to 1,755 by year-end, a 7.2 percent annual gain. The Dow is forecast to finish 2000 at 12,600, a 10 percent jump for the year. Her S&P target for spring 2001 is 1,625, up 20 percent from current levels.
In keeping her targets unchanged, Cohen said Wall Street's recent selloff had nothing to do with changing fundamentals, such as earnings, inflation and Federal Reserve policy, Cohen said.
Instead, she blamed the rout on "market factors," a reference to psychology and momentum.
Cohen's projected gains would pale to the performance of years' past. The Dow surged 25.2 percent in 1999, a record fifth year in a row that the blue-chip index posted a double-digit percentage gain. The S&P 500 rose 19.5 percent last year.
This time, analysts said the recent comments by Cohen (pictured left) had no market effect -- unlike four weeks ago, when her recommendation that investors decrease technology holdings roiled the markets.
Still, stocks rose Monday as investors decided whether or not to continue the recent Wall Street slump.
Cohen's optimism is reinforced by expectations for strong first-quarter earnings. With less than a fifth of companies on the S&P 500 reporting, more than 70 percent have beaten expectations. Only 10 percent have reported profits below forecasts. First Call/Thomson Financial expects actual growth among S&P companies to come in around 22 percent compared to year-earlier figures.
"We expect 2001 to be yet another year of profit expansion, albeit at a slower pace," Cohen said.
Inflation is expected to drift higher, but Cohen does not see "dramatic acceleration. Headline inflation data have been skewed by the surge in energy prices. This has already begun to abate," Cohen said.
And the Fed is expected to raise interest rates, but that has been factored into her equity market projections.
Finally, Cohen suggests investors may want to seek stocks cheapened by the rotation into technology issues. She sees opportunities in real estate and investment trusts and corporate bonds, whose yields have widened despite solid corporate earnings and cash flow.
Cohen wasn't the only analyst issuing reports Monday. Seeing opportunity following the recent sell-off, Thomas Galvin, chief equity analyst at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, upped the stock percentage in his firm's model portfolio to 90 percent stocks and 10 percent cash, eliminating the 15 percent in bonds.
"We continue to view most stocks (excluding dot-coms) as cheap, with an S&P 500 median (price-to-earnigns ratio) of roughly 15 times 2000 estimates," Galvin wrote.
While Galvin is cautious about dot.com stocks he sees more reward than risk in technology shares.
"Over the next 12 months, we believe the Nasdaq has 200 points of downside risk and 2000 points of upside potential, creating a ten-to one-ratio of reward to risk which makes this an opportune time to be aggressively buying stocks," he said
Cohen raises S&P target
March 21, 2000: 7:25 p.m. ET
Goldman's influential strategist looks for 7 percent gain in index
money.cnn.com
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Abby Joseph Cohen, co-chair of Goldman Sachs' investment policy committee and one of Wall Street's most influential market strategists, said Monday that she has become more bullish on the U.S. stock market.
Cohen said she expects that the Standard & Poor's 500 Index will close above 1,575 in 2000. Last December, she forecast that the S&P 500 would close above 1,525 this year. The change means she now expects the S&P 500 to finish 7 percent above its 1999 close of 1469.25 The index closed Tuesday at 1493.87
Cohen increased her estimate for the profits from the 500 companies that make up the S&P 500 Index to $56 a share from $55 a share previously. She introduced an S&P 500 earnings target for $60 a share in 2001, although she did not set a price target for the index that year, a spokesperson for the investment bank said.
Cohen was not available for comment. She made the forecasts on a conference call with Goldman Sachs' sales force after the market close Tuesday, the spokesperson said.
Cohen has been ranked the top portfolio strategist three years running in the Institutional Investor survey and as the ninth most powerful woman in the world by Fortune magazine.
Last December, Cohen told CNNfn that the financial services industry and other "industrial cyclicals" are the most likely areas for growth this year.
atozinvestments.com
Back to Abbey Cohen. I know I shouldn’t pick on Ms. Cohen, but anyone who earns millions of dollars for her advice should either get it right or publicly admit “I don’t have a clue”.
In the May 22, 2000 issue of Business Week Magazine, she predicted “the end of 2000, the S&P 500 index will be trading around 1575 … it should reach 1625 in the spring of 2001”
The index dropped of course, and today, July 19, 2002, the S&P was at 860.
Her prediction for the Dow at the end of 2002 is 13,000. Today it dropped to under 7900.
No matter how knowledgeable these people may sound, you can get just as good a prediction from a psychic by calling one of those 900 numbers. A stock market expert’s predictions are nothing more than a simple guess, and your guess is as good as theirs.
"Personally, I think everybody who predicts the future with a straight face should be required (by federal law) to change out of the business suit, wrap him/herself in a gypsy shawl, wear one of those pointed wizard's hats with a picture of a crescent moon on it, and make conjuring sounds over a crystal ball. That way, everybody would know exactly what's going on and how much credibility to give the answer."
Robert N. Veres, "The Vision Thing" in "Investment Advisor" RR (June 97) |
