This profound treatise about Bob Brinker, written by pen-name, "FAILED PLANS" just arrived here at the Blog. It is a masterpiece of thoughtful comments about Brinker and what he and his family may be facing now.
One might find themselves feeling sorry for the Brinker family, e.g., both Bob Brinker's, but remember that many of their followers may also be impacted muli-generationally -- and they are the victims, not the Brinker's.
[I do not know the real identity of this poster, but I can attest that everything he/she said is accurate.]
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Bob Brinker's Problem
Having followed this guy for a long time and having gone from thinking he was simply a little arrogant but savvy to thinking he was just quite arrogant and clueless; this has to be a huge ballbusting problem for a guy nearing his seventh decade on the planet.
Of course nobody knows what truly goes on in someone else's household/family, but it is obvious things are not going well for the Brinker clan.
Besides wanting to be a big fish on the little pond of afternoon weekend radio; Brinker yearned to be taken seriously as a market guru. The posts of Don Lane claimed that he moved markets, and that letting out snippets of his rag would result in the edge to be lost as all "investmentdom" . It is so laughable these days to look at those old posts and see old Don Lane berrating other posters for mentioning some peripheral thought or some name of a mutual fund in his most recent Marketimer as though they were letting the great unwashed masses in on a critical secret to achieve "critical mass".
Alas the BS detectors went up on many of us in watching his conflicting tales of his moves in that 2000 "I am not bearish" decision to lighten up coupled with a "ACT IMMEDIATELY" to buy QQQs in the 80s (still holding and years away from becoming whole 9 years later). But others refused to look at the evidence of deception. They continued to "dance with the one what brung ya". Indeed they went to wild extremes to castigate those who pointed out the inconsistancies and unbelievable machinations of Brinker.
It set up some time consuming (wasting) back and forths over the merit of Bob Brinker's marketiming prowess. Over the years, more and more fell out of the camp of believers and moved on. But there is still a small (tiny handfull) cadre of either insiders or diehards (deadenders? to quote the former secretary of defense) who still put great credit in what Bob Brinker has to say.
More people over the last year have contacted me to say "You were right", than all the years combined in reference to Bob Brinker's marketiming ability.
These days of course, he doesn't mention the "proprietary marketiming model" that was front and center in each hour when he was claiming he could predict the stock market with amazing accuracy.
You haven't heard about that "great call" in 2003 to buy in the S&P (the call was quite ambiguous in the newsletter as it did not say to buy but wait for weakness) . That call was made in the 800s. The market today closed at 680 with Brinker holding and 100% bullish ever since March 2003.
The long list of " go all in" calls from the high of 1565 all the way down to today's 680 is embarassing to anyone defending the guy and to the guy himself. It shows like others have claimed that all that BS about being able to "identify correction lows within 3% with my proprietary timing model" was just that-"stuff" made to sell newsletters to the clueless.
So though the great damage is to those who followed Brinker's calls to throw more and more money at this market as it cratered is the most distrubing; the toll it has to have taken on him and his family personally is likely quite great.
I saw someone on another thread express sympathy for him. That comes quite difficult for some of us who have seen him in all of his nastiness up close and personal under aliases on his olde website, when we KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was a scamster.
The bizzare claim that the bear market ended in 2006--mentioned without explanation in 2007 a year after the "claimed" fact, shows the depths of silliness and also the huge warning anyone thinking this guy had a clue was given.
But Brinker himself has to be devastated. The guy who claimed the financial networks would give his signals if they were to get out by loose lipped subscribers in his fantasy world --realizes that he is at best irrelevant to the financial press and media and if known and studied would be a bad joke. There will be no peer recognition of his abilities in his life.
Although no one is privy to the family conversations it seemed obvious that his son who seemed the apple of the father's eye gave up on a career that went nowhere in the IT world and attempted to get "experience" in the financial tout sheet selling world. Junior, who bragged on his stock market trading expertise and seemed behind the old B2B thread on his fathers long defunct website that likely caused the old man to trump up the worth of a loser fund called TEFQX. During those highflying tech days Junior claimed he had no interest in the financial rag selling business. Alas it seems that the web page hosting business was not as lucrative as first thought and out came a rather bizzare newsletter devoted ot fixed income investing.
There has been apparently quite an effort to morph the Sr. with the Junior with the dropping of middle initials and suffixes. It seemed to one who had watched the Brinkers since there days on their old website that Junior who had no financial advisory experience and eschewed the idea years ago, was now wanting to build up a resume to take over Marketimer. His adpad website seems to be static or in decline.
Now with this terrible performance by the claimed marketiming skills of Bob Brinker "sr", there is likely little interest of current subscribers in paying for a service that has kept them hopeful and fully invested in the worst stock market decline since the great depression.
So the plan (if I am correct and there was one) to have Jr. take over this gravy train that was the marketiming newsletter and use the fixed income newsletter as a bio, has fallen on hard times.
The only way to continue attracting new subscribers (not even Hulbert Hubris will fool people subscribing to his monthly jive as the market has lost over half of it's value to renew) is for the older Brinker to stay on the radio and attract a whole new group of subsribers, to screen or edit out miffed current or former subscribers every weekend.
So you have the hopes and dreams of both generations greatly impacted by the truth about marketiming ploys and schemes. It's good for the general public, sure. But it is a shame for the family. One can hope, that they were smart enough not to take their own advice with the investments.
March 5, 2009 1:30 PM