US money manager Ken Fisher "is everywhere you don't want him to be", says Andrew Feinberg in Kiplinger's Personal Finance. About two years ago he went on a "marketing bender". Now, his "junk-mail packets invade my mail box" many times a year and, "like an annoying jack-in-the-box", he pops up relentlessly when you log on to personal finance sites. This is a campaign that has "all the finesse and good taste of a late-night thigh-and-backside toning informercial". That said, Fisher really shouldn't be ignored. Why? Because he seems to have "uncanny" predictive powers. He turned bearish on tech stocks in January 2000 (two months before they peaked) and was negative on the entire market for much of its three-year decline (from December 2000 his clients held no stocks at all). He then went bullish again in July 2002 ("another good call"). The fact is that during his career "the three times he predicted bear markets we got 'em", says Feinberg. "When he favoured large company stocks over small you could walk it to the bank. Now, I'm a good investor, but I can't make top-down predictions like that." How does he?
Part of the explanation for Fisher’s “rare ability both to select stocks and make astute market calls” can be traced to his family, says Edmond Jackson in The Sunday Telegraph. His father, Phil Fisher, “inspired Warren Buffet”. Buffet has even said that “without altering his style towards Fisher’s qualitative analysis of companies and managers he could never have made his billions”. That said, “part of the attraction of investment is adapting to change” and Fisher is “careful not to get set in the same ideas mould as his father”. So what are the key points of Fisher’s successful strategy?
Be contrarian: When it comes to forecasting the market as a whole, Fisher’s method can sound “frivolous”, says Jonathan Davis in The Independent, but it isn’t. The method basically involves taking a detailed look at the predictions of a wide range of influential market forecasters and “finding the holes in the range of outcomes”. If past experience is any guide, says Fisher, “the one thing you can be sure about is that the stockmarket will not finish the year anywhere near where the majority predicts it will”. This is not only a “well-founded matter of fact”, says Davis, but even has some grounding in finance theory. If the forecasters really are influential, their confidence - or lack of it - will already be factored into the market, so it is impossible for their outcome to be correct at the end of the year. No wonder then that in most years “the consensus opinion is not even right about the direction of the market, let alone the scale of change”.
http://www.moneyweek.com/file/2015/ken-fisher-portfolio-selection.html
Part of the explanation for Fisher’s “rare ability both to select stocks and make astute market calls” can be traced to his family, says Edmond Jackson in The Sunday Telegraph. His father, Phil Fisher, “inspired Warren Buffet”. Buffet has even said that “without altering his style towards Fisher’s qualitative analysis of companies and managers he could never have made his billions”. That said, “part of the attraction of investment is adapting to change” and Fisher is “careful not to get set in the same ideas mould as his father”. So what are the key points of Fisher’s successful strategy?
Be contrarian: When it comes to forecasting the market as a whole, Fisher’s method can sound “frivolous”, says Jonathan Davis in The Independent, but it isn’t. The method basically involves taking a detailed look at the predictions of a wide range of influential market forecasters and “finding the holes in the range of outcomes”. If past experience is any guide, says Fisher, “the one thing you can be sure about is that the stockmarket will not finish the year anywhere near where the majority predicts it will”. This is not only a “well-founded matter of fact”, says Davis, but even has some grounding in finance theory. If the forecasters really are influential, their confidence - or lack of it - will already be factored into the market, so it is impossible for their outcome to be correct at the end of the year. No wonder then that in most years “the consensus opinion is not even right about the direction of the market, let alone the scale of change”.
http://www.moneyweek.com/file/2015/ken-fisher-portfolio-selection.html
