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About TheCenterLane.com
TheCenterLane.com offers opinion, news and commentary on politics, the economy, finance and other random events that either find their way into the news or are ignored by the news reporting business. As the name suggests, our focus will be on what seems to be happening in The Center Lane of American politics and what the view from the Center reveals about the events in the left and right lanes. Your Host, John T. Burke, Jr., earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College with a double major in Speech Communications and Philosophy. He earned his law degree (Juris Doctor) from the Illinois Institute of Technology / Chicago-Kent College of Law.
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Pay Close Attention To This Man
January 11, 2009
For several years, I have enjoyed following MSN’s Strategy Lab competition. Strategy Lab is a stock-picking challenge. They select six contestants: some seasoned professionals, some amateurs and occasionally, one of their own pundits. Each contestant manages a mock, $100,000 portfolio for a six-month period. Sometimes, the amateur will out-play the pros. I always enjoy it when the “conventional wisdom” followed by the investing herd is proven wrong by a winning contestant, who ignores such dogma.
Our current economic situation requires original thinking. Following the conventional wisdom during an unconventional economic crisis seems like a path to failure. While checking in on the Strategy Lab website, I noticed an original thinker named Andrew Horowitz. Mr. Horowitz is a contestant in the current Strategy Lab competition. He is the only player who has made any money at all with his imaginary $100,000. Andrew’s portfolio has earned him 13.44 percent as of Wednesday, January 21. His competitors have been posting dismal results. One of the regulars, John Reese (nicknamed “Guru Investor”) is down by 41.55 percent. I think I’ll steer clear of his ashram. The others currently have losses roughly equivalent to Andrew’s gains.
Andrew Horowitz is the president and founder of Horowitz & Co., an investment advisory firm serving individual and corporate clients since the late 1980’s. He has written a book, entitled: The Disciplined Investor. It is focused on his experiences and what he has learned from twenty years in the investment advisory business. He has been featured and quoted regularly in the media, including such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Barron’s and Reuters. He also has a blog website with the same name as his book: The Disciplined Investor.
His recent article for MSN caught my attention. It is entitled: “Why invest in this market anyway?” He began this journal entry discussing a “consider the source” approach to evaluating the advice given by those currently encouraging people to buy stocks now, while they are “cheap”. His “where do we go from here” discussion resonated with my belief about where the stock market is headed:
Mr. Horowitz also made a point of emphasizing something we don’t hear often enough from those media darlings entrusted to preach the gospel of the brokerage firms:
In an era when we are bombarded with investing advice from a multitude of “experts” appearing on television and all over the internet, it becomes difficult to distinguish a good signal from all of the noise. One’s ability to give good investment advice in a bull market does not necessarily qualify that person to be a reliable advisor in the current milieu. The performance by Andrew Horowitz in the Strategy Lab competition (so far) underscores the value of that old maxim: “Money talks and bullshit walks”. I’ll be paying close attention to what he has to say as we make our way through the treacherous economic times ahead.