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August 30, 2007
The Greenberg Index
Every time I flip on CNBC lately my friend Herb Greenberg's voice or name has popped up. Heck, twice this week while I was on hold for a producer at CNBC I could either hear Herb's disembodied voice as Muzak, or his name was invoked.Now, I love Herb, and I enjoy my twice weekly on-air Fear & Greed sparring sessions with my regularly-wrong friend, but I've decided to christen a Greenberg Index (tm). I propose that if you track Herb-pearances on-air it's inversely correlated with the market's prospects. The more Herb is on, the worse that usually means the market is doing. At the same time, however, when Herb-pearances hit a near-term high, that augurs a promising future ahead, with the market set to re-commence scaling its usual wall of worry.
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You could do the same with Doug Kass
Of course, as I've written any number of times I started buying mutual funds on October 18 2002....Just didn't buy enough. So careful what you wish for!
Cheers,
Herb
Good point!
You are on to something here. I often noted that when Jim Grant is featured on Bloomberg, Barron's or on PBS, or Fleck or Fred Hickey are in Barron's we are due for a rally. It does work. It's because by the time the media gets around to calling these folks up, the market is down 10% already. ;-)
Herb did you use Yourself as a contrary indicator back in 02? ;-)
Actually, yes and no. No in the sense that I was relying on the Original Greenberg Indicator when I started to buy: People were calling me "smart" and telling me they wished they would pay attention to what I was saying. Yes, however, in that I figured that since I was making this call the market would wind up going much lower after I bought. Goes to show what I didn't know!
Herb
Funny, it does appear that while the news is, well the news, it seems to be just a tad bit out of step with the forward direction. Sorta like an old kung-foo movie where lips move and voice is behind.
I could swear that I saw several Fast Money lips say "plenty of liquidity" just days before the realization that there is a liquidity problem. Seems that guests are chosen for current and backward views rather than forward looking. Probably because it makes for better a better show.
One more lip-sync thought, is it me or did Mozillo (CEO-Countrywide aka Vanilla Ice) tell all of us for months that all was well with his company while he was bailing via a mass share dump?
In defense of H Greenberg: HG has his head screwed on right (lips and voice are synchronized as well) and while a bit too skeptical at times, his analysis is solid. Good man!
Andrew
http://www.thedisciplinedinvestor.com
The day Herb Greenberg turns bullish is the day I will sell all my stocks.