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

To: cardcounter who wrote (30416)	7/31/1998 3:18:00 PM
From: Terry D	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

CC - Modern Portfolio Theory The source of several Nobel prizes for the Chicago School of Biz. Another indictment. Several of these guys can be found actually running money at John Merriwether's bond quant/arb shop - Long Term Cap in Greenwich. t d

To: cardcounter who wrote (30416)	7/31/1998 6:13:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

CC, Good post. Let me see if I can argue with some of it. Furst, yoor spelink does madder heere. -g- Especially if you root for the dog arsed Cow-Kissers football team. I have always made the connection between TA and astrology and looking at bird guts or measuring bumps on skulls. I am glad to see The MTA has also finally connected those dots between the various superstitions. -g- I would be willing to bet that, in the future, each of the signalling triggers will be as accurate as a coin flip. And, ex selectiveness in picking dates, I believe they have been so in the past. So far, I have yet to see a TA or an academic do any scientific study showing these things work using a double blind technique, i.e, coin flips, as their control. The fact is, market makers and specialists use the current TA scams to trap unsuspecting investors into issues. They know where the moving averages are, so they signal a little breakout to sucker folks into buying their inventory, then they rape them. Odd you should mention Bill O'Neill. This is a man who totally washed out of equity mutual fund management in the 1960s because he used TA to burn up his shareholders' money. He also started a fund a few years back and had some guy who won an investing contest manage it. I haven't seen it listed anywhere lately, but it was a high risk, low return fund when I did watch it. Back when Joe Granville was still relying on charts rather than saying anything to sell his newsletter, he made the comment that we must be near the top if Bill O'Neill is starting another fund. Billy is about as far from a money master as Michael Jordan is from a baseball superstar. -g- That the fundamentals are not all known is the entire raison d'etre of sites like SI. It was obvious, at least to me, that all the fundamentals were not known on MU at $95 or Presstek at $100 or GZTC at $4. It is not just a question of reading facts. It is the intelligent interpretation of those facts. Using the Micron example, everyone (well, everyone except the Wall Street analysts -g-) knew the Asians were building lots of fabs. They just didn't interpret the impact of that supply correctly. Interpreting the facts correctly is pure fundamental analysis and it does work. BTW, the trick is, you have to be right, and most analysts cannot take that risk. Unless they are teaching different things in college than when I was there, they didn't teach fundamentals in the investment courses. What they taught was Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), which says there is no use in studying fundamentals. And, they are right. There is no use for the academics to do so, because they aren't smart enough to interpret their way out of a paper bag. -g- My point would be that TA is not a rigid science and, is no science at all. It is not even an art. It is more like drawing the face on the back of a matchbox. John Train, author of the first Money Masters, issued a challenge for TA types to prove their "science" by allowing him to pick stock charts, then eliminate the dates and the names of the companies. Then the squggly line folks could tell him what was going to happen to the issue over any period they chose. That was issued 23 years ago. So far, no TA geek has taken up the challenge. Why? Because they KNOW it is nonsense, but, like Linus and his blanket, they want the charts to tell them to do what they want to do anyway. -g- Sorry, I don't know where you can get a complete bb listing. Take Care, MB