My August 2010 Investment Portfolio Review documented investors waving of white towels. But there’s more, much more…
Yep, Tony Robbins is still alive, last seen in August doing a monologue on the pending apocalypse. He must be financial expert now. What’s next? An investment newsletter? Would be good if he could pronounce Ber-NAN-ke correctly. Damned that teleprompter!
As if that’s not enough, member John sent me something he got from Motley Fool:
Dear Determined Investor,
Albert Edwards, an investment strategist for the French bank Société Générale, predicts a “bloody, deep recession” that will spur a stock market collapse of at least 60%. Edwards is a perma-bear and a sourpuss, but people are listening. He recently performed his song and dance to a crowd of hundreds, according to an article in The New York Times. No wonder The New York Times also exclaims, “Small investors flee the stock market.” And the respected John Mauldin predicts “a challenging environment for the next 6 to 8 years.” And what if Edwards is right? Are you prepared for the next 60% crash? What if he’s only half-right? Certainly it would be better to be safe than sorry.
John observes, “A lot of the letters I scan are lately saying short something if for no other reason but to just to get some practice. The Motley Fool letter was about wanting you to learn to short their way. It seems to be all the vogue in the last month or so. Short short short…. we will even give (sell) you short recommendations. It is a new trend for me any way. Usually they are telling you about secret stocks that are set to go up 300% over the next year just as their recommendation (or at least one of their 20 recommendations) did this year. Forecast a lot and often you are bound to hit something. I guess the short idea is playing off the rampant fear found in small investors at the current time. Oh and why not gin up some fear as we ask you to buy into our short system while we are at it.”
Well said.
One more. Some guy named John McClure sends me spam every month, but this time, on August 26, the subject line was Cash Is Less Painful Than Doing Something Stupid. He normally crows about the performance of his portfolios, but in this email, there was a ditty:
A Quick Performance Update
To improve the consistency of producing this letter, I am going to pull performance updates out of this letter and send a dedicated performance update out once a month to clients and interested parties. We will continue to provide links to our normal performance reports, which can be found in the top right hand column of this letter. However, our traditional performance section updates will soon take on a consolidated and enhanced format.
Right.
Lets just say I am no fan of the motivational speaker business. Tony Robbins, is a top performer in that business. When I saw this the other day, I thought that he might have concluded it has become harder to sell his motivational speaking tours and so he is branching out his business model.
I’m just saying, he seems to have noticed (news flash) the baby boomers are getting older, therefore there is less aggregate demand for stuff including motivational speakers, there is a huge De-leveraging process happening (again less money for motivational speakers), and the stock market cycle has stopped going up. So he tells you to get out, but where are you really to go and then what? His behavior seems to say, take your marbles and fly to your off shore home? Gee thanks.
Where can we short Tony?
OK, the gig is up. I am the real Tony Robbins and I have so much stinkin’ money already I don’t even think of the stock market. My pilke has been in Munis since 1999. Suckers.
The funny thing is that Robbins quotes the late John Templeton (approx 21:40) who counseled to buy when everyone else is panicking…
I wonder what Sir John would be doing today.