Bob Brinker said the risk of a recession was very low the month before we now know a recession began. He called the financial media stories "highly suspect."
November 2007 Marketimer, Bob Brinker said: “Despite the efforts of the financial media to suggest that a recession is on the way, Marketimer continues to regard the risk of a recession as very low. We use several gauges to determine recession risk, and we see no evidence in our work that a recession will occur......and we view the cacophony of financial media stories on this subject as highly suspect......"
U.S. recession began in December 2007, NBER says
By Rex Nutting
Last update: 12:15 p.m. EST Dec. 1, 2008
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. economy entered a recession in December 2007, a committee of economists at the private National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday. The economy reached a peak in December and has been declining since, according to the business cycle dating committee of the NBER. The committee does not judge a recession as two consecutive quarterly declines in gross domestic product; rather, it looks at four key monthly economic indicators, including employment, industrial output and sales. Employment peaked in December."
To answer Jeffchristie's question: Yes, Brinker did "rant" about the recession "cassandras" on May 31st, 2008. Here are some excerpts of what he said on Moneytalk -- from my Summary:
RECESSION CASSANDRAS.... Brinker said: “What we have right in here now is evidence that the Cassandras, who earlier this year, were telling us we were in recession – right now they’ve basically – well I’ll be kind, basically, they look like fools right now. Because all that they’ve accomplished with their talk about recession…………all that they have to show for their efforts is that they scared the people who listened to them out of the stock market this past winter……..And probably a lot of those people got scared out near the correction lows. The initial correction low in January, which was successfully tested in mid-March, before the market reversed and resumed its uptrend. And basically, if you were to total up all of the accomplishments of the Cassandras, that would be it – that they scared people out of the market during a stock market correction in the first quarter………..Because they have been unable to present any evidence of a recession."
Brinker's model portfolio dollar values, as of November 30th, 2008, have been published.
* Portfolio I: $166,651 [YTD down 41.3%]
* Portfolio II: $138,520 [YTD down 39.5%]
* Portfolio III: $158,046 [YTD down 26%]
* VTSMX down 41% YTD
"It's official we are in a recession which started in December 2007. Didn't Brinker go on a RANT back in May 2008 claiming we were not in a recession?"