Brinker's Bull Market Turned Bear

What if Bob Brinker proclaimed a secular and cyclical bull market, a "favorable" outlook for 2008, predicted new highs, forecast the S&P at 1600's, kept all Model Portfolios 100% invested with stock market allocations.................................and a bear came to visit?

According to CNBC headlines, the Dow and Nasdaq are officially in bear market territory and the S&P 500 Index is inches away.

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Brinker lowered his "all in" buy-level from mid-1400's to low-1300's. We are now at the mid-1200's. What's next?

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EDIT: Almost immediately after I posted the S&P Chart, these questions and comments were posted:
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shadowclone said...

Well, what can I say? Bob missed it completely and now we all lost 10-20 percent of our wealth. Did any body hear him on Money Talk this last weekend? What explanation did he give? Or did he just completely avoid any discussion of the stock market?

July 2, 2008 1:52 PM

Bluce said...

He's been avoiding it for months now, save for an occasional irrelevant comment.

July 2, 2008 2:03 PM

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Here is what Brinker said on May 31, 2008:

STOCK MARKET BEARS.... Brinker said: “So what we have here basically, is an example of false prophets and it’s sad. And the reason it’s sad is the damage done. Think of the people that are looking today at the market, S&P at 1400 and they’ve been scared out of the market in the first quarter by these bears………It’s just amazing and yet these people are out there, and these people are not happy, I’m sure, to find themselves out of a rising market since March. To find themselves looking for ever lower prices when in fact we’ve had the opposite.

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We’ve had the market rising since mid-March. It’s rather significant when you stop to think about it. If you go back to mid-March and you take a look at the S&P 500 Index since mid-March, right now you have a total return, including cash dividends of about 10 1/2%.....................So it’s fair for you to say to the Cassandras, where is that recession, where are those millions of lost jobs, where are the two quarters of negative real GDP growth? Where’s the bear market? …………The answer is, they blew it! That is the answer, they blew it. They got caught up in their own negativity and they pronounced that it was all over, it was going to spiral downward and there was no end in sight – and they got it completely backwards. Truly amazing to see, and sad to see the people that are harmed by such unjustified negativity.”
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Honeybee EC: Beginning the first week in June, Brinker began to connect the stock market directly to the price of oil on Moneytalk. He began to lay the groundwork for blaming the stock market correction on the oil-"wild card."

Finally, last weekend, he said it in plain English. He called it a "direct correlation." If you listen to Moneytalk, you can draw your own conclusions about his claim as to what he has been saying all along.

Brinker called a market bottom and a new buy level, bashed the bad news bears and said the market was in an uptrend. THEN, the market has the worst June in over 50 years and Brinker now says the following:

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Brinker said: “Here on Moneytalk, if you have been with us, you know we have been talking about the importance of oil prices and energy here on our Moneytalk broadcast. And we see the importance of oil prices in today’s economy --we see it with a direct correlation. We saw just this week between rising oil prices and the stock market, with the S&P 500 trading at 1278 at this juncture. And we look at what’s happened to oil prices and they spiked to a new all-time-historic-record on Thursday and Friday, closing on Friday a little above $140 per barrel."

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Kirk Lindstrom posted these important statistics in the comments section:
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Correction Statistics for 07/02/08

S&P500 Chart
Last Market High 10/11/07 at 1,576.09
Last Market low 03/17/08 at 1,256.90
Current S&P500 Price 1,261.52
Decline in Pts 314.57
Decline in % 20.0%
Max Decline 20.3%
This means the correction from intraday high to intraday low is 20.3% and we are currently 20.0% off the peak.
The decline in the S&P500 from the closing high to the closing low is 19.4%

DJIA Charts
Last Market High 10/11/07 at 14,279.96
Last Market Low 06/27/08 at 11,214.37
Current DJIA Price 11,215.51
Decline in Pts 3,064.45
Decline in % 21.5%
Max Decline 21.5%
This means the correction from high to low has been 21.5% and we are currently 21.5% off the peak.
The decline in the DOW off the closing high to the closing low has been 20.8%

NASDAQ Charts
Last Market High 10/31/07 at 2,861.51
Last Market Low 03/17/08 at 2,155.42
Current NASDAQ Price 2,251.46
Decline in Pts 610.05
Decline in % 21.3%
Max Decline 24.7%
This means the correction from intraday high to intraday low is 24.7% and we are currently 0.213191637 21.3% off the peak.
The decline in the NASDAQ off the closing high to the closing low has been 24.1%

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Bob Brinker's Moneytalk Discussed Here and Around the Net

Bob Brinker, host of Moneytalk....what's the latest scoop? The following comments are in addition to all the excellent posts in the "comments" section of my June 28-29 Moneytalk Summary at bottom of this page:
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Written by InvesTing:
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"Ah Trend, when someone shows your alibi for Brinker game, you call it babbling?

Babbling is what Brinker did this weekend after being so terribly bullish just a few shows ago with oil prices within a skosh of current prices--he excoriated those idiots who didn't understand that the market was behaving perfectly as he knew it would and that those who were bearish should be 'embarrassed'. He BABBLED on and on about how much harm their negativity was doing to investors who listened to them. To prove his point he bragged that the market was 10% off those March lows and was relentless in bashing those who were bearish or cautious. The storm was over according to Brinker in that show-that "successful test in March of the January lows" made everything hunky dory. Now oil was about 130 something a barrel and the effects of that pricing on gasoline was known by even the most dim wittted. The dropping real estate prices was well known and is unchanged. The unresolved credit crisis was known and nothing has changed.

Well now the market is flirting with bear market territory here with the dow entering a bear on Friday and the S&P and dow inches away.

Did Brinker admit he was WRONG to be so dismissive of those who saw continued problems and were bearish? Did he admit they were right to be so and he was WRONG? Did he explain to the audience all the hubris about "the successful test of the January lows" was just babbling?

No--of course not. What Brinker did this weekend was cop out. He is like the kid who was responsible for misbehaving in class and when zeroed in on by the teacher--points his finger at some other kid who just happens to be convenient.

He never mentioned the BEAR word but claimed "like we have said right here high oil prices will have an effect on the consumer and on the stock market"

Whoa Nellie--Nothing could be further from the truth. That was a BIG OLE LIE. Brinker indeed was sanguine at worst and gleeful at best over high oil prices right up until the last week or so. He would brag on it's effect in stopping inflation and never hooked it up with stock market levels EVER before.

What changed? THE MARKET WENT IN THE EXACT OPPOSITE DIRECTION THAT BRINKER SO ADAMANTLY PREDICTED--that's all that changed.

Everybody else in the world seemed to be quite concerned about the effect on the economy--but Brinker who was calling for mid 1600s right around the corner on the S&P.

Well when the market tanked and Brinker should be "EMBARRASSED" he weasled. He now claims that the market is totally at the mercy of oil prices.

He carefully allowed two callers to ask about the stock market--and then cut them off so no specific or embarrassing questions could be asked. In both instances then he FLIP FLOPPED from his bullish BS and said.

"Well the stock market movement is dependent upon oil prices"

So there you go--with 130 something dollar oil anyone who wasn't bullish was an idiot. With 140 dollar oil the market is totally dependent upon the price of oil.

What changed? The MARKET TANKED and Brinker needed an alibi. It shows you how bogus the whole marketiming crappola of his is.

Now I don't know and neither does Brinker if the market will find a bottom and go up or whether it will tank another 10% or more from here. The difference is that Brinker is positioning himself so that whatever happens he will spin it to have predicted it. Total BS"____InvesTing
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Bob Smith replied to Honey's post on Jun 29, 2008 at 8:37 AM
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I was interested to read Brinker's thoughts on the lack of speculation in the oil markets:
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"Brinker spent the remainder of his opening monologue talking politics and explaining why he does not believe that speculators are to blame for rising oil prices. He ended his monologue by saying: “But I thought it was fascinating to watch congress go through this – it’s almost like play-acting when you look at it – almost every day this week demonizing these so-called speculators, when in fact, they know full well, they’ll never be able to show any proof of this. And even if they could come up with something in the United States, they’d still have an enormous problem which is oil’s a global commodity, it’s traded all over the world. The United States does not have jurisdiction on speculators in London or anywhere else for that matter outside of the United States of America.........."

There are articles coming out daily that detail excessive speculation in the oil markets. Here is one I recently read:

"The most surprising e-mail came from Chris Cook, a former director of the London Petroleum Exchange—now ICE Futures Europe. Cook wrote: "I am convinced there has been manipulation of the Brent Complex [the term that defines North Sea Brent crude prices] by ICE members for the last 10 years at least. I think it is quite likely that the Brent forward price is being kept artificially high—which does require deep pockets and accounts for the continuing barrage of Goldman [Sachs] forecasts and much of the other oil market hype that passes for news."

http://www.businessweek.com/print/lifestyle/content/jun2008/bw20080626_022098.htm
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Kirk Lindstrom (Silicon Valley, CA) replied to Bob's post on Jun 29, 2008 at 9:00 AM

To say there is not "manipulation" or "speculation" in the oil markets is foolish. Nobody complained when speculators thought oil was plentiful and would only pay $20 for a futures contract on a barrel of oil to be delivered in the "future."

I'd not be surprised to learn that a good deal of the hostilities in the Middle East are FUNDED by those who control the oil so they can profit from the price gains that come from fear of further violence.

For example, is is FAR MORE PROFITABLE for Iran to say they want Nukes than to actually create jobs in their economy since the fear of conflict with Israel drives the price of their oil up which they can sell to the West at super high prices in an attempt to bankrupt or at least harm their economies.
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Jim Firestone replied to Kirk's post24 hours ago

I totally agree. I couldn't believe Brinker said there is little, if any speculation in oil. Remember last week when oil inventories came out, they were better than expected, so the price dropped. But the very next day an oil minister from OPEC "speculated" that oil would go to $170 a barrel. The futures traders instantly bid up the price of oil based on the "speculation" that he may be right. Also, as you suggested, whenever there is saber-rattling in the middle east, traders bid up the price based on "speculation" that supply may be disrupted"......More of this discussion at Facebook Brinker Forum

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Sea-biscuit wrote:

"Big deal! Here is what I said on this very forum about 6 months ago (1/15/08) :

It is time for you Brinkerbots to start cooking up excuses again if we have a bear-market this year!

I have said how silly it is of Brinker to say that higher oil prices are good for the stock-markets because they allegedly lower the inflation rate. I have asked the obvious question that if people pay more for gas and have less money to buy other things, what happens to the earnings of the companies that sell those other things!

It doesn't take a genius to ask such an obvious question, but it would take a moron not to ask it.

Only now, AFTER a near 20-percent haircut in the market, is your Brinker getting around to explaining that high oil prices would mean lower earnings for many non-energy companies... Sheesh!"