An open love letter to Ken Fisher
Posted on May 8, 2008 by Richard Beddard
Filed Under Markets |
Still, I couldn’t let his latest column pass without pointing to it, because it’s so unashamedly belligerent:
I get lots of mail from readers - US, UK, even Germany. No love letters - now, mostly hate mail. Folk are personally offended by my bullish view. Great! The more hate mail, the better - it tells me my bet against the masses is right. If everyone were telling me I’m a genius, then I’d worry.
And I can just imagine the hate mail. Particularly this bit, which must surely have come from the UK:
You git! This is a credit crunch
He says we’re not experiencing a credit crunch, which I suppose, depends how you define credit crunch, or to which markets you apply the term.
But there’s no arguing, he’s right when he says:
Here we are… world shares down just 2% for the year. Same with British shares!… World shares are up 14% since mid-March and British shares 15.5%!
And very few people other than Ken would have predicted that six months ago.
From our conversations I know he doesn’t sees himself as a contrarian. Not by design anyway, he doesn’t deliberately take the opposite view. He’s just not swayed by the majority view, and that’s what really winds people up.
He’s arrogant, he’s dismissive, he’s pompous, he’s full of himself, he thinks he’s better than everyone else.
He reminds me that things may not always be how they seem, which is very important, because the last thing I want is to make investment decisions based on the prevailing mood in the market.
So there you go - a little bit of love for Ken.
That ought to get his hackles up.
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It’s quite interesting to note that since the beginning of the credit crisis Ken Fisher has been a perma-bull. Since the article above was written the uk market has fallen 30%. This isn’t to say I don’t take what Ken Fisher seriously. I always read his books and articles with keen interest. But, as a great man once said: don’t follow leaders and watch your parking meters. I’d agree with his recent articles in Forbes (those written since October 2008) that now is a great time to be looking to buy stocks but before then? No.