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« Fear, Investors, and Marketing | Main | The GDP Litmus Test »

April 29, 2008

Comments

Jeff

Greenberg reminds me of Alan Abelson from Barron's who thought the DJIA in 1983 was overvalued at 1100. He was, and is such a bear, that he missed about 10,000 points in the rally. My really bearish friends always forget about the historic 9% upward drift in the US stock market.

Good post, by the way.

Jeff

John Forman

Great post. Your later points about journalists becoming analysts are ones that are particularly relevant from my view.

I'm a stock market analyst by day and sometimes get interviewed for articles by reporters. I watch them quite frequently take a viewpoint and then pick the quotes from folks like myself to support it, instead of doing it the other way around as they should (assuming you even think there's value in listening to professional commentators at all). It's a disservice to say the least.

As for Herb, I respect his ability to stand up to the punishment he regularly receives, but his common man views highlight just how ignorant and easily manipulated the public can be on subjects.

Keep up the good work,

John Forman
Author - The Essentials of Trading

adam warner

not disagreeing with your take, but to me the problem is less with Herb and more with Financial TV. We have a very specialized biz and very few of us could talk with any particular expertise on every single subject. Yet they bring Herb and assorted others on for long segments and just take it as some sort of fact that if they are intelligent, they have an insightful and accurate opinion on every subject. And what Dave said above too, everyone also has to become either a monolithic Bull or Bear, and their take on every subject has to fit into that mold. Not a whole lot of value-added there.

David Merkel

Well, Greenberg will be going back to research, and that will hopefully re-rail him.

It's a danger for any of us if you get a following to stray from your core competencies... even generalists have to take a step back and stay that they don't know a given area deeply, and tread lightly.

Luskin is an interesting character, though, and I remember that occasionally back in the older RM days, he and Greenberg would lock horns -- bull and bear. Luskin eventually melted down on the RM CC on 6/7/01, OpenMarkets soon after, and Greenberg went from RM to Street Insight, but found he missed dealing with non-professionals, and jumped to MW.

I had many good e-mail exchanges with Greenberg in the early days, and one with Luskin too (over why dividends are beneficial). They're both bright guys, no doubt, but being predominantly bullish or bearish tends to make me tune out, because I know their story already.

Thanks for the post.

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