barbaral (12/02/82)
For the person who asked about investment newsletters, there is an article on them in current issue of Changing Times, December 1982.
CSvax:cdb (12/04/82)
I once read a book titled something like "The Rogues of Wall
Street". Its (supposedly non-fictional) premise was that many market
newsletters are a racket involving variations on recommending stocks you
have large positions in, etc. Obviously, the SEC would be interested in
this sort of thing - in fact, they got some of the culprits in the book. My
point is that it is probably better to stick to the better-known letters
with track records published by someone else that can be trusted.
A second point is that the stock market is like other forms of
gambling - one person's opinion is often just as good as another's, since
none of them have any deterministic way of predicting the market's
movements. Try "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" for more of this kind of
thing. Would you pay someone to advise you how to shoot craps? If you did
you'd be ahead this year over taking Joe Granville's advice.
Don't get the idea from the above that I'm down on the market in
general. I'm 100 percent long right now and have done quite well in the
current bull market (like anyone else that was long in practically anything
as of last August). About 20 percent of my portfolio is in speculative
issues, which I define as companies which have not shown a profit in the
last two years (Chrysler, Tiger International). I have nothing against
gambling - I just don't believe in calling it something else because it's
for higher stakes and is legal in Indiana.
Carl Burch
cdb@purdue
pur-ee!purdue!cdb