Who was president when Bob Brinker last issued any kind of sell signal?
It happened in January 2000. Brinker sold 60% equities from his model portfolios, recommending the money be held in money market funds. (He raised another 5% cash in August 2000.) That was the last time that Brinker ever recommended selling equities and raising cash to buy back at lower prices.
So does that make Bob a buy-and-hold advocate? That depends on what your definition of is is....errrrr, sorry, that was someone else. But you guessed it -- it was President Bill Clinton.
Birdbrain said:
"In the April 1 2003 Kiplinger article:
(Bob) Brinker predicts market timing, in general, will be more valuable in the future. "The buy and hold days are over" he proclaims.
And what has been Mr B been doing in the over eight years since?
Altogether on three...1..2..3
BUYING AND HOLDING"I did a search for the article that Birdbrain wrote about. It's very interesting to see what Brinker said about buy-and-hold stock investing one month after he returned all 2000 cash reserves to fully invested.
Back then, Bob was touting his market-timing skills and riding high, but in 2007-2009, he missed the worst bear market since the Great Depression and rode it down fully invested. How ironic that during the ensuing eight years from 2003, he did exactly what he said "was over." Here are excepts from the 2003 Kiplinger article about market timing:
"While market timing has been in disrepute for many years, Brinker, who has been in the investment business 35 years, says that's only because of the long bull market. Brinker predicts market timing, in general, will be more valuable in the future. "The buy and hold days are over," he proclaims."Here are excepts from a 2009 Kiplinger article titled: "Can You Time the Market?"
"Newsletter editor and radio host Bob Brinker, for example, correctly called the market top in 2000 and turned bullish not long after the bottom in late 2002. But he didn't get out of the way of the 2007-09 bear market..."Brinker largely maintains his reputation as a market-timer (in spite of the fact that he has not changed his fully invested equity allocation in eight years) by repeatedly declaring stocks "attractive for purchase" at various levels. Like Bill Clinton, he sees a lot of attractive (market) bottoms, but hasn't got any cattle in his hat to take advantage of them... (Sorry for the mutilated metaphor.) :)
