I don't think Ken Fisher will be to worried by the comments ANYONE makes in any forum, newspaper, mag etc about his investing ability. He tends to forecast pretty well in bull and bear markets. Nobody is right all of the time. Some of his bigger calls; Sept 89 - Japanese market is about to suffer a huge downturn. April 90 - 90's will be America's decade. Jan 91 Small caps will otperform. Dec 93 Avoid emerging markets. Jan 95 Stock up 20 -40% April 97 Mega caps to lead final stages of bull. Oct 98 Don't let them scare you out of stocks March 00 Tech to fall 45% in 2000. Dec 2000 Bear MArket, go to cash. March 3rd 03 Market to be up 35% in 03 Feb 04 Should be up 20% in 04 Jan 05 Stocks are the place to be. Feb 06 A repeat of 06 i.e be in stocks. Jan 07 Be in stocks In 08, he has remained bullish but it's important to note that his clients ( I'm one) are having good relative performance. As someone said earlier, he's not concerned about short term. Plenty of other investment managers outperform him in the short term, but for the chunk of money I have with Fisher, it's the next 5-15 years that concern me. In that sense, I'm only to happy to stick with a "confused" Ken Fisher. CHeers
I know that Buffet lent his USG shares to Icahn to short, not sure if that is still in place but no reason that I know of why that has changed.
Ken Fisher is the king of marketing. Does a financial magazine exist that has not had a Fisher advertisement in it at some point in time? His head has been buried in the sand for two years straight. Last September he was urging people to invest in Asia right before it plunged. The Fall 2007 Rally Ken Fisher 09.17.07, 12:00 AM ET Don't let this fall's rally whiz right by you before you take a close look at stocks from Asia. The midsummer correction--at one point on Aug. 16 the Morgan Stanley World Index was down 12.5% from its 2007 high--provided a great time to get into stocks on the other side of the dateline. If you don't own this region, now is the time to get in. When the rally resumes, Asia will lead. These stocks are to this market what tech stocks were to the mid-1990s. What makes me so sure that we're in a rally, not a long-running decline? Four things. The first has to do with the shape of a bull market termination. The final peak does not arrive sharply. It tends to have a gentle upward slope, as the final but diminishing round of suckers is drawn in. And then the decline (usually) begins with a gentle slope, too (October 1987 was the exception proving the rule--over almost instantly), as some buyers continue to come in even after the bull market is over. The bull market leading up to the July 16 peak was too sudden and the plunge too sharp to presage a real bear market. Second, bear markets don't start from old news. In this case the old news is that many subprime borrowers are going to default on their mortgages. While this misfortune is still unfolding, the basic facts have been out for a while. A fundamental rule of markets is that old news runs out of power. It takes new information to move stock prices. Third, it usually takes a severe credit crunch to set a genuine bear market in motion. This credit crunch, at least for corporate borrowers, is not severe. You measure crunch by the spread in yields between junk bonds and Treasury bonds of like maturity. In 2000 that spread widened by three to four percentage points, a harbinger of both a broad tumble in stock prices and an economic contraction. In that case, moreover, the widening spread came atop rising Treasury interest rates--weak corporate borrowers had two strikes against them. Contrast that with what's happening now. Junk spreads widened by only a percentage point before going back the other way, and much of the widening was from a fall in Treasury rates, hardly bearish. This is a phony credit crunch. Fourth, the media always jump on a short-term correction but rarely wake up to a long-term bear market in its early phases. One form of this media attention is trotting out the perma-bears to deliver their "I told you so" speeches to the tv cameras, with scenes of the New York Stock Exchange running in the background. Generally speaking, the friendly interviewer conducting the show neglects to ask the bear when he first turned bearish and how much the market is up since then. As with all corrections, a few months from now we will be wondering what the fuss was about. And Asian and Indian stocks will be much higher. Here are six I like. China's Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical (57, SHI) sells chemicals (such as the raw materials for plastics) into the Shanghai region. The stock is down 25% since May, but if the global economy remains strong, it should bounce back nicely. Sinopec Shanghai sells at 60% of revenue (which will be $6.5 billion this year) and about nine times what I think it could earn in 2008. Huaneng Power (41, HNP) is one of China's largest power generation firms, building and managing power plants with interests in 34 generating stations, 17 of which are wholly owned. The stock is a pure play on China's growth yet at 15 times trailing earnings isn't pricing in much growth. India's Infosys Technologies (45, INFY) is the classic offshore outsourcing firm. It offers a full array of data processing services, from help desk to system design. Down 26% from the peak, it should bounce back. At 20 times 2007 earnings it's affordable. The Indonesian telecom firm PT Indosat (36, IIT) has leading shares in both wired and wireless connections in its home market. The potential is surely greater than is implied by the P/E of 15 (against hoped-for 2008 earnings). Recently privatized (2005), near-monopoly Chunghwa Telecom (16, CHT) is a similar story for Taiwan. Having fallen 16% this year, it's too cheap at 13 times trailing earnings. As the world market bounces back, I expect Chunghwa to ring, too. South Korea's LG Philips (22, LPL) may be the world leader in liquid crystal displays, including the kind that go into TV sets. It combines growth with an earnings turnaround that still is early but coming on strong. At 18 times this year's earnings (and 1.3 times revenue) this leading technology firm has a great future.
Here is another gem from Fisher. The strength in homebuilder stocks proved that there were no problems in housing? He should never be mentioned in the same breath as Buffett. The same is true of Miller who recently placed a big bet on FRE which will prove to be yet another disaster. Housing Boom! Kenneth L. Fisher 02.26.07, 12:00 AM ET Don't buy it. For months now the debate has been over whether America will have a hard landing or soft landing, the answer hinging on how big 2007's housing disaster turns out to be. Well, there won't be any housing disaster. We won't have a landing at all, soft or hard. Right now the U.S. and global economies are both accelerating. You can see right through the housing crash story by looking at the prices of housing stocks. The market knows what the economic worrywarts do not, which is that the housing sector is already making a comeback. In the last six months housing stocks are up 24%, well ahead of the overall market. If housing were destined to fall apart in 2007 these stocks wouldn't be so strong now. Did you know that housing sales are up in the last few months, not down, and that inventories are lower than six months ago? We're accelerating, not landing. This is true not just in housing but also pretty much across the board. The consensus forecast is for single-digit S&P 500 earnings growth tied to a slowing economy. Disbelieve it. Experts' forecasts have been too low for four years and will be now. First, the accelerating economy will deliver earnings that exceed expectations. Second, the analysts polled for these consensus numbers never factor in the effect of corporate purchases of stock for cash. Whether a company is buying in its own shares or taking over another company, the acquisition of equity stakes (if done cheaply enough) raises earnings per share. Not since the late 1950s have sustained fundamentals (low long-term interest rates and low price/earnings ratios) so strongly favored corporations shrinking equity. My firm's count of last year's buybacks and takeovers, less new stock issuance, was $585 billion, or 4.5% of gross domestic product. That will be even higher in 2007 as more players learn this game. Along with sales growth comes productivity growth. Companies are hiring but not in proportion to the gains in their top lines. The result is higher productivity, which feeds into rising profits and living standards. The Federal Reserve probably won't cut interest rates soon, but it doesn't need to. The economy is humming along without any artificial boost. This is a time to own stocks. Here are some companies that will participate in the prosperous economy of 2007: Home builder Pulte Homes (34, PHM) is the second-largest U.S. homebuilder and in the top five in three-fourths of the largest markets. But its stock has lagged recently. At 11 times 2007 earnings and 60% of annual sales it's far too cheap. If the hysteria over the housing pullback has taken a toll on your courage, try Toll Brothers (34, TOL). It's half of Pulte's size, more expensive (per dollar of earnings) but less risky. It's the largest vendor serving the affluent end of the housing market, where qualifying for a mortgage is less of a hurdle. It sells at 19 times depressed earnings that will bounce back by 2008. Yet another builder worth owning is Beazer Homes (44, BZH). At $5.5 billion in sales it's the same size as Toll but offers both more potential reward and more risk. It focuses on the Southeast and West Coast, which evoke fears of overbuilt condo markets. Beazer shares fell 35% last year, putting them at 30% of annual sales and 18 times depressed earnings. Too cheap for a well-managed company like this one. Oil may rise, oil may fall. Either way you can win with a pair of stocks ideally bought in tandem. One is the Norwegian energy company Statoil (27, STO). What's keeping the shares cheap? Investor misgivings about the holder of a 71% stake (the Norwegian government), the company's recent purchase of Norsk Hydro's energy business and regulatory issues delaying the startup of new projects. But this is a good company, soon to be the world's largest producer of offshore oil and gas. It's cheap at 10 times likely 2007 earnings and 90% of annual sales. But falling oil prices help U.S. fertilizer maker Agrium (35, AGU). Its product line is boring--ammonium nitrate, phosphate and potassium fertilizers. A stronger corn planting this year could boost revenue. Still, no one sees this company as a reverse energy play. It takes a lot of energy to mine potash and phosphates; the nitrogen fertilizers come from natural gas. Falling prices for oil and natural gas will help Agrium more than they will hurt it by depressing the demand for corn ethanol (and thus for corn fertilizers). Buy Statoil and Agrium together. Your mini-hedge fund should do well no matter which way oil go
I dont think its pathetic, but reality on how even those who seem educated, experienced and informed about the market are really not much better then some guy in his underwear at home in his small one bedroom apartment in Virginia on an IB account with the time 5 seconds behind.
If a rookie were to lose 25% to 50% of assets, recovery would be difficult if not impossible. If Fisher or Buffett were to do the same thing, people ignore it and say the usual B.S about concentrating on the long-term.
Apparently fisher lives in a world where people dont need loans and banks dont fail. hes just another lucky manager who happened to find the right strategy for the right market. buying dips and being bullish in the biggest bull market ever works, when the game changes he gets crushed. well, guess what the game changed, equities will go nowhere for years and he will keep scratching his head and calling for $30 oil
Fisher: "I'd bet we're most of the way through to the end of this bear market. And after bear markets end, the initial upswings come fast and steep. It would be risky to get out now and end up being whipsawed--that is, exposed to most of the decline but absent for most of the recovery. Now is the time for patience." Translation: I f*cked up big time and now my clients should suffer through the rest of the bear market.
Correctamundo! If he bails now, clients will actualize what are now paper losses, and will NOT like it... and by giving them this line of spew, he "keeps hope alive"... and clients nervously hang in. One can make an argument that we are MILES away from the bottom.. both in price and time...