Crawford Crash

[hellstan]

Will Crawford Perspectives do it again ?
Crash between May and November 10.
http://www.crawfordperspectives.com/

[pksubs]

Re: Crawford Crash

Will Crawford Perspectives do it again ?
Crash between May and November 10.
http://www.crawfordperspectives.com/

what gives ? Astrology to predict markets now :confused:

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Crawford Crash

How to make great predictions by astrology, divination, oracles, and prophets:

Step one. Throw dart into wall
Step two. Paint bullseye around dart.

[sunskyfan]

Re: Crawford Crash

Oh, you forgot number three which is the special glasses to see the paint ... then you have the Goldman-Sachs model of business.

[jacobdcoates]

Re: Crawford Crash

step 4: throw all logical thinking in trash can behind you

[GRG55]

Re: Crawford Crash

step 4: throw all logical thinking in trash can behind you

And somebody out there has a better idea for how to do it in this market...:p

[Minion]

Re: Crawford Crash

And somebody out there has a better idea for how to do it in this market...:p

I just read something yesterday about "follow the guru"..... you basically copy what a proven sage does in the markets. In engineering we call this "empirical analysis" - find a trend, measure its variance, and extrapolate its future using statistical analysis. It works as long as major changes do not happen (FED events, armed conflicts), although a proven investor would have experience adapting to such things. It probably explains why when hiring professionals (that are not so easy to get rid of) employers want 5 years experience in a given field, beyond the education. They want near certainty of success...

http://moneymorning.com/2010/04/01/follow-the-guru-2/

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: Crawford Crash

A couple of comments on Arch Crawford found here http://www.cxoadvisory.com/gurus/Crawford/

From Peter Brimelow in MarketWatch (12/24/09): "Arch Crawford's Crawford Perspectives (down 7.2% according to the Hulbert Financial Digest compared to a gain of 27.10% for the dividend-reinvested Wilshire 5000 Total Stock Market Index), was the top performing letter in 2008. ...Crawford lost money this year...11th from the bottom... Crawford has had a checkered -- but by no means catastrophic -- career, and the letter probably should be credited with its strong medium-term record, up 6.95% annualized over three years against negative 5.73% annualized for the total return Wilshire 5000."


From Peter Brimelow in MarketWatch (1/9/09): "Over the past 12 months through Dec. 31, Crawford Perspectives is up a remarkable 50.755% by Hulbert Financial Digest count [compared] with this year's 37.2% loss for the dividend-reinvested Dow Jones Wilshire 5000. Over the past three years, the letter has achieved a 6.75% annualized gain, vs. an 8.4% annualized loss for the total return DJ-Wilshire 5000. Over the past five years, the letter has achieved an annualized 0.37% gain, vs. a 1.7% annualized loss for the total return DJ-W 5000. ...over the past 10n years, Crawford Perspectives has achieved an annualized loss of 4.7% vs. a 0.6% annualized loss for the total return DJ-W. ...over the entire 20 years that the HFD has followed it, it's underperformed the market."


From Peter Brimelow in MarketWatch (7/3/03): "Crawford has...negative 7.4 percent annualized over the past three years versus the market's 9.7 percent loss...he made money (4.7 percent) over the past 12 months, whereas the market lost (7.2 percent). And, according to Mark Hulbert, Crawford's market timing has also had streaks of success extending for periods of several years."

Thanks, hellstan, for sharing Crawford's January comments.

Regardless of what one thinks of Crawford, to me a question worth asking is: could he be correct?

I began to pay any attention to stock markets in late 1986, and whatever were my sources of information, they were minuscule compared to what is available to me and everyone via the www.

For a while, the past year has "felt" as I vaguely remember 1987 having "felt." It seemed no one I read then felt there was any basis for the equity markets appreciating, yet it just kept on going up, until it then crashed.



One call sticks in my mind from the recent past, IIRC, was a comment by Jeremy Grantham who suggested perhaps 1275 for SPX before it ran out of gas.

Another guy I read who has a technical bent (more a look at momentum indicators than anything to do with charts) is and has been strongly bullish. Dan Sullivan is the guy, and in his last newsletter from just two nights ago he commented "If ever there was a bull market that was not getting respect, this is it."

If I have read anything is several years with which I agree, it is Sullivan's comment. Respect!, shit most of what I read is pure scorn and derision of the markets' moves.

It also keeps cropping up regarding the amount of flows into bond funds and the amount of money coming out of equity funds, and these comments have been around for most of this year (IIRC). From David Rosenberg's note yesterday:

"We should add that the latest fund flow data still shows American households selling into the equity rally and continuing their rebalancing efforts into the underwieght position in fix-income securities. The latest ICI data for the week ending March 24 showed that US equity funds posted a net $926 million outflow while retail investors ploughed another sizeable $8.74 billion into bond funds (on top of the $9.24 billion the week before). "

And as I wrote, it seems to me similar comments stating decrease in equity positions and increases in bond positions have been around two or three months, and when was the last time that retail/small investors were correct?

Personally, I am more long a lot of stuff than anything else, not because of the least conviction that the equity markets have a firm foundation to be appreciating, but rather I've been longish because the trend has been up.

I believe I note even Bill Gross was saying buy stocks, and two nights ago Peter Brimelow commented on the Aden sisters being "increasingly convinced that the economy is rebounding and the major trend for stock markets around the world is up." That was via marketwatch.com

I would post the link but something is messing with my "paste" function.

I think it is good that there appears to be a lot of bearishness and that the few comments I read here are always negative. Eventually, if the market, despite poor fundamentals, continues up it will suck people into it unless human nature has changed.