Schiff gets it wrong

[flintlock]

Re: Schiff gets it wrong

Schiff is no different than most Stock brokers. They're all trying to SELL you something that makes them the most money. You have to take everything they say with a grain of salt and consider their motives.

My 77 year old uncle has been a stock broker since the days of Moses. Still works full time. Very wealthy guy. He has my Dad in rip off high load stock funds which of course have tanked. My Dad is 75! He does this to his own brother! I don't trust any of them.

[Guest]

Re: Schiff gets it wrong

Has anyone noticed how few photos there are of Peter Schiff with his mouth closed? He's always talking. Very beguiling talker is Mr. Schiff. Miker, there have been several of us who have been warning you about how beguiling this guy's nattering has always been. You were totally mesmerized by Schiff when you first opened an account there - and that was what? A year ago? 18 months ago? Once your money has been riding on his calls for a while, you start to notice what a remarkably bumpy ride it is. The point to realise about Euro-Pac portfolios is that when they talk about buy and hold, they really mean it.

That means if you get cold feet when a stock like this falls off a cliff and decide to cut your losses - you lose! They don't intend for you to sell positions when they drop 50%. You are supposed to keep your money locked up in these "ideas" for five to ten years to "invest the Peter Schiff way". That's stacking an awful lot of faith in the guy's reputation. As for me, I backed out of that bargain within a year of getting parked in their "ideas", and that was back in 2004 and I've not been tempted to solicit any investing advice from them since. The temptation to throw yourself onto the wisdom of Peter is very strong, because he sounds so self-assured.

In effect when one throws oneself entirely into a Peter Schiff model portfolio, one is paying for that momentary feeling of liberation, like suddenly growing a pair of wings to soar over the markets, thinking "Peter's great ideas are going to sustain me". So one can fling money into his portfolios feeling a sense of liberation due to the rock solid reputation of Peter for audacious wisdom on the markets. But obviously it's your money - if you lose 50% on a stock like this, it will be no great damage to Europac - much less damage even to Peter's teflon reputation as his spin machine powers forwards - stuffing people's mailboxes with emails where various hacks refer to the "great Peter Schiff" now.

Yeesh. I remember when this stock broker was an unknown, back in 2002. The Schiff "aura-machine" powers on. But the financial damage is yours to keep.

1. The ride is a lot less "bumpy" when you're sitting in treasuries and a little gold, like iTulip seems to favor. Maybe iTulip is perfect, but for us mortals we learn to take the bad with the good if it averages out to be a decent return over time.

2. That easy smooth ride could easily have turned into "getting left behind" had they been wrong on their timing. How confidently would you be buying back in today if oil were $150/bbl, foreign stocks were up 30% again, gold was $2000, and treasuries were paying 8% but inflation was still worse than that? Would you rely on 100% shorting stocks to make any money?

3. Mostly what Schiff was wrong on was timing.

4. He wasn't the only one who saw a crash coming but didn't see the deleveraging. Please direct me to the iTulip column that said "buy only treasuries and gold, don't own anything else". I'm sure they probably said it somewhere, but instead of a paragraph we got volumes of stuff we didn't particularly want to hear, so some of us may have missed it. How hard would a "fyi, this is my portfolio" box be to put on the website?

5. It isn't over till its over. Within months or a few years Schiff's investments might be sitty pretty again. Nobody gets them all right all the time. I disagreed with parts of his strategy and avoided it and came out ok. That doesn't make him a charletan or economic idiot.

6. Taking snapshots of portfolios over 6 month periods is what people who sit in bank CD's and treasuries do during downturns, calling everyone else fools. Taking snapshots of portfolios over 6 month periods is also what people who invested in foreign stocks, oil, and commodities, were doing 6 months before that and calling the others fools. Unless one plans on retiring, spending one's money in 6 months, and dying, this isn't the best time frame over which to measure investing success.

7. Unlike iTulip's (maybe too highly) intellectual but charisma challenged and overly verbose founder, Schiff can make a brief, understandable, and coherent argument to normal human beings so that when he's finished they don't turn and go "what did he just say?". He can serve up soup without having to explain to you just how the carrots in it were planted and grown. Much of the criticism here of him seems based more on envy of Schiff's high profile than his message. If someone wants a similar profile, they should learn to get a message accross with as much punch and brevity as he does.

8. iTulip has been more right than Schiff. But virtually nobody knows about its message. So few have benefitted. So who has done more good?

9. The investment business is a nasty one. Lots of babies blaming their advisors when things don't go well, everyone expects to be giving the keys to the kingdom for a 3% commission. If it were that simple, we'd all be rich. But unlike some, guys like Schiff have the cohones to actually make calls and stake their reputations. They don't sit in ivory towers castigating others who stuck their necks out, and only then after the fact writing articles crowing about how right they were. He will crow all day about his great calls, for sure, but he's earned the right to it.

[cardplayer1]

Re: Schiff gets it wrong

"8. iTulip has been more right than Schiff. But virtually nobody knows about its message. So few have benefitted. So who has done more good?"

What good is it when you have your retirement locked up and it's down over 50%? How is that Crash Proof? It'd be nice if he had told people about that possibility before they invested their hard earned money with him. I never got the impression that kind of volatility was possible, until I found out about later, and I had studied his website pretty extensively. Maybe I missed something, but I didn't know that those kinds of swings were part of the Schiff strategy until after the fact of a lot of his clients getting hit pretty hard fairly recently.

That's my main issue with Schift, that I think to some extent he downplayed those risks (maybe subconciously) upfront, and only after the fact did he acknowledge the potential variance involved. With that said, he did inform people of a lot of problems on TV, so at least they shoudn't be surprised that the market is down a ton and that gold held up well. However, that could be said of a lot of people out there that predicted the crash (but didn't get the air time that schift had on tv). Maybe he is a better talker than others, and hopefully his strategy pans out long -term since hasn't so far in the crash.

any thoughts on decoupling?

[cardplayer1]

Re: Schiff gets it wrong

"8. iTulip has been more right than Schiff. But virtually nobody knows about its message. So few have benefitted. So who has done more good?"

What good is it when you have your retirement locked up and it's down over 50%? How is that Crash Proof? It'd be nice if he had told people about that possibility before they invested their hard earned money with him. I never got the impression that kind of volatility was possible, until I found out about later, and I had studied his website pretty extensively. Maybe I missed something, but I didn't know that those kinds of swings were part of the Schiff strategy until after the fact of a lot of his clients getting hit pretty hard fairly recently.

That's my main issue with Schift, that I think to some extent he downplayed those risks (maybe subconciously) upfront, and only after the fact did he acknowledge the potential variance involved. With that said, he did inform people of a lot of problems on TV, so at least they shoudn't be surprised that the market is down a ton and that gold held up well. However, that could be said of a lot of people out there that predicted the crash (but didn't get the air time that schift had on tv). Maybe he is a better talker than others, and hopefully his strategy pans out long -term since hasn't so far in the crash.

any thoughts on decoupling?

One more comment:

Sophisticated sales technique was what I thought I was encountering at Europacific when talking with brokers.

If the people here have great concepts but are not as great at articulating them, they could easily delegate that to sombody, IMO, if they want to for some reason.

I'm more interested in substance over style. Style may very well make brokers more money, but getting the facts right and making the best investment choices obv. makes me the most money.

[metalman]

Re: Schiff gets it wrong

1. The ride is a lot less "bumpy" when you're sitting in treasuries and a little gold, like iTulip seems to favor. Maybe iTulip is perfect, but for us mortals we learn to take the bad with the good if it averages out to be a decent return over time.

2. That easy smooth ride could easily have turned into "getting left behind" had they been wrong on their timing. How confidently would you be buying back in today if oil were $150/bbl, foreign stocks were up 30% again, gold was $2000, and treasuries were paying 8% but inflation was still worse than that? Would you rely on 100% shorting stocks to make any money?

3. Mostly what Schiff was wrong on was timing.

it's all about timing. bad timing = wrong.

4. He wasn't the only one who saw a crash coming but didn't see the deleveraging. Please direct me to the iTulip column that said "buy only treasuries and gold, don't own anything else". I'm sure they probably said it somewhere, but instead of a paragraph we got volumes of stuff we didn't particularly want to hear, so some of us may have missed it. How hard would a "fyi, this is my portfolio" box be to put on the website?

pls direct me to a single column that suggests buying anything else.

5. It isn't over till its over. Within months or a few years Schiff's investments might be sitty pretty again. Nobody gets them all right all the time. I disagreed with parts of his strategy and avoided it and came out ok. That doesn't make him a charletan or economic idiot.

he's not an idiot, he's a well spoken, smart guy, and a press whore whose brother runs a pr firm. he's done well. his clients are another matter, from what i can tell from the wsj article and comments here.

6. Taking snapshots of portfolios over 6 month periods is what people who sit in bank CD's and treasuries do during downturns, calling everyone else fools. Taking snapshots of portfolios over 6 month periods is also what people who invested in foreign stocks, oil, and commodities, were doing 6 months before that and calling the others fools. Unless one plans on retiring, spending one's money in 6 months, and dying, this isn't the best time frame over which to measure investing success.

see charts above.

7. Unlike iTulip's (maybe too highly) intellectual but charisma challenged and overly verbose founder, Schiff can make a brief, understandable, and coherent argument to normal human beings so that when he's finished they don't turn and go "what did he just say?". He can serve up soup without having to explain to you just how the carrots in it were planted and grown. Much of the criticism here of him seems based more on envy of Schiff's high profile than his message. If someone wants a similar profile, they should learn to get a message accross with as much punch and brevity as he does.

janszen's a writer, schiff's a talker. calling a writer 'verbose' is pretty friggin funny.

8. iTulip has been more right than Schiff. But virtually nobody knows about its message. So few have benefitted. So who has done more good?

schiff has done 'more good' if he got more people out of the stock market than itulip did before it tanked, but less for those he got into his trades that lost 50%.

9. The investment business is a nasty one. Lots of babies blaming their advisors when things don't go well, everyone expects to be giving the keys to the kingdom for a 3% commission. If it were that simple, we'd all be rich. But unlike some, guys like Schiff have the cohones to actually make calls and stake their reputations. They don't sit in ivory towers castigating others who stuck their necks out, and only then after the fact writing articles crowing about how right they were. He will crow all day about his great calls, for sure, but he's earned the right to it.

the advisor system is a friggin scandal. ej's smacked them upside the head repeatedly...

are you saying ej hasn't taken strong public positions? are you kidding?

[flintlock]

Re: Schiff gets it wrong

Metalman, with all due respect...

You wave that last 10 year 7.7% annual return like its some windfall. Time was that average is what we all optimistically plugged into our retirement calculations. Now go back another 10 years, or another 50. Hindsight is 20/20. Bruce is right, you can pick an investment window and make anyone look good or bad. How soon people forget the returns that were made in the good years on wall street.

I'd be curious to go back 3 years and look at a Schiff client's portfolio vs a typical Wall Street brokerage firm. My guess is a Schiff client from 3 years ago is a lot better off and was happy he listened to Schiff. I don't think the whole thing has played out yet and a six month window is a bit short to be burning people at the stake. Unfortunately the late comers to the Schiff party got the shaft.

I think the point Bruce was making about the bumpy ride is that sitting in treasuries paying 4-5% isn't going to make a lot of investors happy. Especially when REAL inflation probably exceeds that. It still was the right thing to do, but EJ doesn't have clients breathing down his neck wanting 10%+ returns like Schiff( or any broker). They became addicted to it. Jantzen and Schiff are in different businesses. Its not fair to compare them. I consider EJ a good economist. I consider Schiff a stock broker who knows a little economics. Which in itself is a rare thing.

Truth is, if Schiff continues to screw up and lose his clients money, he won't have any left. No amount of PR will fix that. He won't be able to talk his way around it. I agree most people simply don't need a Schiff or anyone else like him. I certainly don't. I guess I don't watch TV enough, but I really don't see him coming across as this shifty cocky guy that people describe here. Unless you think having the balls to walk into the mass media Lions Den is being arrogant. He made some bad picks( at least they look that way for now) and people aren't happy about it. I can understand that. But did every pick go down 50%? Cardplayer, what portion of your portfolio did these dogs consist of? Did any of his picks go up? Just curious.

My only reason for speaking up for Schiff at all is that listening to him a few years ago is why I finally woke up. Only later did I find Itulip. Hearing about Europac's slick sales techniques is a real turn off and would instantly alert me to take my money elsewhere.

[cjppjc]

Re: Schiff gets it wrong

Schiff is no different than most Stock brokers. They're all trying to SELL you something that makes them the most money. You have to take everything they say with a grain of salt and consider their motives.

My 77 year old uncle has been a stock broker since the days of Moses. Still works full time. Very wealthy guy. He has my Dad in rip off high load stock funds which of course have tanked. My Dad is 75! He does this to his own brother! I don't trust any of them.

Should make for a happy Christmas.

[metalman]

Re: Schiff gets it wrong

Should make for a happy Christmas.

after doing a job like that for 40 yrs or so, they learn...

their job = take your money

your job = don't give them your money

if you don't understand your job and think schiff is some kind of libertarian messiah (isn't that a contradiction of terms?) you deserve what you get.

[Guest]

Re: Schiff gets it wrong

In the words of Samuel L. Jackson, "well let me retort"

1. I owned a lot of gold. It's done ok. I think Schiff owned a lot too. It sure sounded like it was more than 15% of his portfolio personally from what he was saying. I disagreed with owning mining companies due to the variety of risks involved that I was not comfortable with. Same with foreign stocks, as they had had a huge runup. He is likely down with most of them. But that doesn't mean that 8 years from NOW he won't be better off for it.

Your showing a chart of the gold bull run is about as fair as a perma-bull showing a chart of gold 1983-1991 and claiming that as proof gold is dead. My point was that a SIX MONTH window is not a fair one in which to judge an investment strategy. So if a select 8 year period doesn't give the full and complete picture, how can SIX MONTHS or so do it? Was gold "a bad call" because it fell from over $1000 to about $650 in less than a year's time? Why aren't his stock picks accorded the same leniency in terms of volatility? And unlike gold at least they paid dividends while one waited for them to rise again.

2. 7.7% over almost a decade in an era of true inflation higher than that is solid in this environment but it isn't exactly something to brag about. Especially when you factor in the opportunity costs of spending hours and hours each day working doing research to obtain it. That really makes my point about the way information is disseminated here. Most of us have productive lives and jobs and can't sit here pouring over wordy posts for hours a day to sift the gold nugget of information from the posts. Some of us (gasp) don't find this all that interesting. Unlike some I can't whip up the stats but I'm wondering how Peter Schiff's clients did in foreign stocks, gold, commodities, and oil during the same 1998-2008 period? Or does his performance only count when the values drop? Personally, if someone made me much richer for 8 years, then lost half of what he made me (temporarily) in 6 months, I'd be inclined to cut them some slack. Hank Aaron didn't bat 1.000 either. But he had his share of homeruns.

3. Sometimes sitting on the sidelines is bad timing. Right now it looks right. Just because a coin lands "heads" and I called "heads" one time doesn't mean I'm infallible. My point was treasuries and gold looks like a good call now. But 2 years ago it looked like less of a "sure thing" compared to some other choices. But there were even better choices. Like buying more gold than a 15% allocation. The 15/85 allocation in the chart missed cashing in on the huge gold bull market, not to mention oil and commodities. In this case, it was bad timing up until summer 2008, good since then.

4. I recall a "time to short the market" column and many on gold, to answer your question. I can't say about others as many are cryptic as to their whole point. Putting just 15% of one's portfolio from a guy who writes a chapter in a book about gold going to $2500 is a pretty conservative strategy. Talk about playing it safe. But then people rarely get blasted for sitting in short term treasuries during an economic crash. Others tried tactics with more upside and got burned. Just as guys who try to jump buses on motorcycles sometimes crash. But they sometimes hit the landing right and get the glory, too. They don't sit back and say "see, I told you it was dangerous" from the sideline after he's carted off to the hospital and expect to grab the glory for it. The itulip strategy preserved MOST of one's inflation adjusted wealth. That's admirable. And desireable. If you're already rich.

5. It's been claimed by more than one person that the wsj did not accept positive comments in that piece and that they went looking for a negative story. You could tear up just about any broker alive during the last 6 months. A little simple dollar cost averaging would have avoided much of their losses. If they put them in whole hog then they're certainly at fault. But I note no interviews were done with clients from years past who were still way up in their portfolios. Obviously, jumping in at the peak of the market, nobody did well who was in anything paying anything. Even gold is flat for the last year. But what about EuroPac clients who went "all in" in January 2009? They're up! So that takes our "EuroPac bad" window down to what, 3-4 months?

6. Atlas Shrugged or the cliffs notes of Atlas Shrugged. Guess which one probably gets read more and understood better? Ayn Rand was a writer. So was the guy who wrote the Cliffs notes. She got accolades that stroked her intellectual vanity. The other guy got more people to understand the concepts behind the book. I'm just here (and at other sites) to get a summary of what's going on, what they think will happen, and how I can profit from that or at least avoid losing. The rest is just noise.

7. I'm sure a tiny minority of those who heard or read Schiff invest with him. With millions of internet hits his company could not have expanded that fast. So any "damage" seems limited to those who arrived late to the party, chose to deal with his company, and accepted all their advice wholesale, and failed to dollar cost average in over a couple of years. Meanwhile there are a few million youtube hits with his name in the title. I'm guessing he's helped more than hurt.

8. I agree that paying someone a comission to invest your money that isn't related to performance is indeed foolish. So is paying a flat fee to a lesser degree. You want them hurting when you hurt, not gambling with your money.

But you may know so much that you take it for granted about others. Most people out there do not know much at all about economics or investing, much less know what to invest in during a once in a lifetime world-changing economic event. Some went with pricey brokers like Schiff and lost. I didn't. I used what I found valuable and discarded the rest. But just because I'm "up" vs his picks in the last 2 years that doesn't mean I pretend to understand economics better than he does. He's certainly done better than I have since 1998. Can iTulip be sure they have also? I can read a Schiff column and understand it. I can't say the same here much of the time. The site would be BETTER if it had an editor. Sorry if that offends the team spirit.

One thing I've noticed about ALL, repeat ALL, economic and financial forecasters. They have huge egos and are not afraid to crow about when they are right and diminsh what they were wrong about.

it's all about timing. bad timing = wrong.


pls direct me to a single column that suggests buying anything else.



he's not an idiot, he's a well spoken, smart guy, and a press whore whose brother runs a pr firm. he's done well. his clients are another matter, from what i can tell from the wsj article and comments here.



see charts above.



janszen's a writer, schiff's a talker. calling a writer 'verbose' is pretty friggin funny.



schiff has done 'more good' if he got more people out of the stock market than itulip did before it tanked, but less for those he got into his trades that lost 50%.



the advisor system is a friggin scandal. ej's smacked them upside the head repeatedly...

are you saying ej hasn't taken strong public positions? are you kidding?

[Jay]

Re: Schiff gets it wrong

7. Unlike iTulip's (maybe too highly) intellectual but charisma challenged and overly verbose founder, Schiff can make a brief, understandable, and coherent argument to normal human beings so that when he's finished they don't turn and go "what did he just say?". He can serve up soup without having to explain to you just how the carrots in it were planted and grown. Much of the criticism here of him seems based more on envy of Schiff's high profile than his message. If someone wants a similar profile, they should learn to get a message accross with as much punch and brevity as he does.

I'll take smart guy deep analysis any day. It's done me a world of good. When/if a guy like EJ is allowed access to the bullhorn he will be president. None of the powers that be have any interest in itulip being successful. Only in a massive upheaval would the truly educated message get out.

[cjppjc]

Re: Schiff gets it wrong

I'll take smart guy deep analysis any day. It's done me a world of good. When/if a guy like EJ is allowed access to the bullhorn he will be president. None of the powers that be have any interest in itulip being successful. Only in a massive upheaval would the truly educated message get out.

Thank you Jay. Charisma Challenged? Sometimes, it sounds better spoken softly than shouted, as Mr. Shiff is prone to do. When ever Mr. Shiff was on I agreed with his premise. I find it unbelievable only a few people like him and Bill Fleckenstien ever got on TV. I always agreed with Fleck as well. You can see the effort that goes on here to do deep analysis. Will the Ka Poom theory hold up? I don't know. But I'm more inclinded to drink the Kool Aid if I get to look at cool charts and read thoughts I haven't had myself.

[DaveBrown42]

7. Unlike iTulip's (maybe too highly) intellectual but charisma challenged and overly verbose founder, Schiff can make a brief, understandable, and coherent argument to normal human beings so that when he's finished they don't turn and go "what did he just say?". He can serve up soup without having to explain to you just how the carrots in it were planted and grown.

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but EJ's detailed and highly technical commentary is exactly what I come here for. When you're trying to convince me that something completely unprecedented is coming, I'd like to see how you came to that conclusion. I'd much rather be given too much data to support a point than a "here's the summary, don't worry because I've done the research so you don't have to".
Most importantly, I'd rather be made to feel incredibly ignorant and dense (as I often do when reading EJ's posts) than have the information predigested for my convenient consumption so that I can avoid having to actually think. When EJ talks over my head (which is often), my response is to go out and educate myself so that I can understand him. It has served me very well so far.

The itulip strategy preserved MOST of one's inflation adjusted wealth. That's admirable. And desireable. If you're already rich.

So, people who aren't rich prefer to lose their money?

I think you're misunderstanding the purpose of itulip. EJ has never, ever promised to make his readers rich. My personal belief is that anyone promising you that they can make you rich is trying to sell you something. I view Itulip as an academic resource and it is an exceptionally good one.