Suze, Dave, Rick, et al.

[clifp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Onward Dave - like Clark - prefer Ric - don't know Suze - the horror, the horror

Pretty much spot on with me also. I did listen to Ric once or twice had no lasting impression.

My favorite is Bob Brinker, who's advice I think is probably most appropriate for forum members. Especially those of you who are also dirty market timers, flexible reblancers.

I don't listen to Kramer every day,more like once a week. But once you realize all the antics are just show business and keep the ratings up. I think the guy does decent (albeit softball) interviews with CEO which I find valuable. Kramer also periodically does some pretty fine educational shows where he discuss individual sectors, or also thinks like fundamental vs technical analysis. If somebody want to start buying individual shares, I think you could do a lot worse than listening to Kramer everyday.

[zesty]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziggy29 Just ignore his comments on investing (expecting a 15% return long-term in a stock mutual fund).....

Yeah, Dave tells people to expect 12% returns and that they can safely withdraw 8% per year in retirement.

Umm, I guess he has never run Firecalc... it's stupid.

[gardenfun]

I haven't had cable for over 2 years. Reading all these comments about Suze, Dave, Ric, etc. makes me think I'm not missing much.

But I do miss Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser. We watched that as we first started building our little nest egg in the early 80's. Thoughtful and often funny discussion of the market.

[tinlizzy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zesty Yeah, Dave tells people to expect 12% returns and that they can safely withdraw 8% per year in retirement.

Well that explains some of the things I hear at work!

I loved CNBC when they first started. They had a show called Steals and Deals that I watched religiously when I was first married. I learned you could order carpet wholesale from GA and did just that. Had it shipped up north via. Roadway for $27 - dispatched my husband and neighbor to pick it up. I still have the bill of lading - instead of the first dollar I ever earned - it symbolized the first dollar I ever saved.

That was the problem for me and will eventually become a problem for all of the followers of Dave, Suze, etc- the saving came easy but the investing was difficult to learn because there were so few sources of information. Maybe their mailbags are full of "what do I do now?" letters?

[Sarah in SC]

Gumby that is easily the most interesting thing I've read all week. Thank you very much for sharing it. Your example reminds me a lot of the Freakonomics guys who wrote a lot about unintended consequences of plans that sounded really good at the time.

[Huston55]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2B I'm probably more conservative than Dave. Debt is never good for the individual just because it increases personal risk. The only exception could be for a loan necessary to fund a lucrative profession such as being a doctor although from a purely financial standpoint there's probably more money in being a plumber. A home loan is acceptable if it is well within one's ability to pay for it. The home loan still has risk because I once lost a job and faced the possibility of personal bankruptcy because home prices tanked just as I lost the job. I think Dave's 3 to 6 month emergency fund is too optimistic. I think the typical person needs a 12 month cushion as a minimum.

Evidently more true than most may realize. A Doctor (specialist) I see related to me that he's calculated he'd be better off had he gone from high school to become a California prison guard, than to medical school and practice due to the current business model for doctors. He related that his share of overhead for a multi-doc practice is mid-$100,000s/yr and that he has to see 20 patients a day just to break even. Of course, that doesn't account for whatever med school debt he's paying. Makes me feel privileged to get more than 15 mins a visit.

[mpeirce]

In order of admiration:

Bob Brinker I spent many a weekend afternoon listening to him on "Sunday drives" back in the 90's. He's pretty much the reason I'm primarily an index investor these days. He seems a little off his game the last few years, but I still like to hear his economic insights.

Dave Ramsey I agree his investment advice is weak, but people don't really listen to him for that. He's really good at getting people to think hard about their lifestyles based on debt and concrete ways to fix it. For many folks easy credit is very bad trap that's hard for them to escape.

Ric Edelman I've always been leery of him after hearing him talk about using second mortgage money for investing. He did stop talking about this stuff after the mortgage meltdown...

Suzy Orman The few times I've heard her she kept talking about improving your FICO score. Seemed like the wrong thing to focus on for people having debt problems. Maybe she's the anti-Dave Ramsey?

[brewer12345]

Quote:

Originally Posted by clifp I don't listen to Kramer every day,more like once a week. But once you realize all the antics are just show business and keep the ratings up. I think the guy does decent (albeit softball) interviews with CEO which I find valuable. Kramer also periodically does some pretty fine educational shows where he discuss individual sectors, or also thinks like fundamental vs technical analysis. If somebody want to start buying individual shares, I think you could do a lot worse than listening to Kramer everyday.

OMG, you really think this? Cramer is about the worst thing you could watch if you want to pick stocks. Worse than clueless. Like much of the media, when he starts babbling about a sector I know very well it is truly apalling to see how uninformed he is, yet the minions who watch this crap eat it up and make wildly stupid trades. Many a Cramer-induced wave of buying or selling by the clueless has afforded me wonderful opportunities to take the other side of the trade.

[ziggy29]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 2B I think Dave's 3 to 6 month emergency fund is too optimistic. I think the typical person needs a 12 month cushion as a minimum.

I tend to agree, at least in this economy and this job market. I think 3-6 months was adequate (say) 15+ years ago but many, many people are unemployed longer than 3-6 months these days. In the depths of the mini-depression five years ago, I was paranoid enough to stockpile about 4 years of expenses into savings (and investing the rest). The funny thing is that by the time I started getting less paranoid, I was laid off -- and that stash of cash (combined with DW's new ministry job) made it really easy to sleep at night even with the loss of my income.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gumby I faced this same dilemma when I was in law school eons ago. At Yale, we had a very strong clinical law program. Among other things, they represented tenants in eviction proceedings. Very intelligent, very inventive and very dedicated law students would appear in court and raise innumerable legal obstacles to the eviction proceeding, with the goal of keeping the tenant in the apartment as long as possible .... I hypothesized that while the students participating in the clinic felt good about what they were doing, they were not actually doing good. So, along with two of my classmates, I researched the state of the rental market in one of the worst slums of New Haven to test my hypothesis. ... ... the costs associated with trying to evict a tenant represented by the Yale clinical program would often result in negative returns to owners and that they would often respond by selling the property to one of the small but growing number of real slumlords who could better afford the overhead associated with legal proceedings. The conclusion of our research was that the clinical program was creating the very monsters they were purporting to slay, ...

That's a great example of the unintended consequences, and unfortunately probably pretty common.

Quote:

Needless to say, our project was not popular in some quarters.

Now that is sad. Confronted with facts, these obviously intelligent people just had to stick to their dogma. That's the opposite of 'education', IMO.


-ERD50

[Ready]

I don't understand why people are so down on Suzy Orman. I enjoy watching her show every week. I may not always take her financial or investment advice, but I think she does a good job of educating people on the importance of saving for retirement and not buying things you can't afford.

If nothing else, just seeing the financial stats of the people who call in to the show is a weekly reminder of how fortunate I am to be FI and able to ER, and not saddled with the burdens these people have of debt, job losses, under water mortgages, and bad relationships. I feel very luck to be me after watching her show each week, and if that isn't worth an hour of my time, I don't know what is.

[clifp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by brewer12345 OMG, you really think this? Cramer is about the worst thing you could watch if you want to pick stocks. Worse than clueless. Like much of the media, when he starts babbling about a sector I know very well it is truly apalling to see how uninformed he is, yet the minions who watch this crap eat it up and make wildly stupid trades. Many a Cramer-induced wave of buying or selling by the clueless has afforded me wonderful opportunities to take the other side of the trade.

Yes I do. He give CEOs opportunities to explain some fundamentals about their business, while also asking them about what drives margins, competition and threats in their industry. I watched much of his series on biotech, and I thought was a pretty good introduction to the basic stages of biotech companies. He didn't give specific recommendation on biotech stocks, other than identify which ones he owned. But if you listened to the series you'd at least know the difference between device maker, and early stage biotech, and late stage.

His are you diversified obviously doesn't go far enough since it is limited to 4 or 5 stocks, but at least the approach is right.

Now you are right his stock picking track record is pretty poor if you just blindly buy and sell when he tells you.

There is big gap between what you an know as investor and what I know, but there is an even larger gap between what I know and the average investor. I went to a couple of my mom's investment club and I think plenty of individual investors have no clue how to read a balance sheet or income statement. I think listening and reading his books would teach you that stuff. While you can certainly argue that if you have don't know your way around a balance sheet, you should only invest in index funds that isn't how the world works.

[tinlizzy]

Jim Kramer was a very successful hedge fund manager.

I don't like his show, it's too loud for me.

When he first arrived on TV I googled his name and ran across posts on finance forums from the past that referred to him as Mr. Kramer, when he was still running his hedge fund. He was obviously well respected at the time.

How did the others earn their spots as finance gurus?

[Onward]

I watch him fairly regularly. I find him extremely entertaining and extremely dangerous to the average investor.

But what the hell. Booo yaaaa!

[samclem]

A big +1 for Clark Howard. He gives primarily consumer-oriented advice, but his simple guidance on saving and investing is always spot-on. His web-site is good (looking for a cheap cell phone plan? Tips on saving money on travel? etc--it's a good first stop).
I think he's also got a lot of integrity and I've seen no hint of conflict of interest. He doesn't have sponsors that he pushes listeners to use (camouflaged as "impartial advice"). He writes books and tells listeners about them, but even then advises people to see if they can find them free at the library or tells them to look for them on sale.

[ER Eddie]

Dave was very helpful in motivating me to get out of $40K in student loan debt. I used to listen to him all the time. He has great advice about the dangers of borrowing and living beyond your means. I generally like his style, though he can be a little too biblical at times. I only learned recently about how "off" his investment advice is. That surprised me. I never listened to him for that, though. Once I got out of debt and started piling away the savings, I stopped listening regularly. He was an inspirational motivator in those first few years, though, and I definitely credit him (partially) for where I am now.

I don't trust Suze Orman, for some reason. Seems like a huckster or salesman.

[Gumby]

The young wife and I have always been LBYM types, but it was this book more than anything else that really got me off my duff in 1995 with respect to retirement planning.

The Retirement Myth: What You Must Know Now to Prosper in the Coming Meltdown of Job Security, Pension Plans, Social Security, the Stock Market, Hou: Craig S. Karpel, Craig Karpel: 9780060171421: Amazon.com: Books

[nvestysly]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Onward I watch him fairly regularly. I find him extremely entertaining and extremely dangerous to the average investor. But what the hell. Booo yaaaa!

There was a time when I thought Cramer was a complete nut! For years I didn't watch his show. A relative gave me one of his books and I found it a little on the questionable side.

Only recently have I watched his show on a regular basis. After a while I was able to overlook his showboating shenanigans and began to see he has some good ideas. I'm still not a fan of the idea of Mad Money (speculative money) because I think all money deserves my undivided attention and should be dedicated to long-term goals - not short term gains.

I guess I'm finding myself halfway into the Booo Yaaaa camp - with the other half saying caveat emptor.

[gindie]

Dave - Wonderful debt advice, terrible investment advice. Listen/watch his show almost daily (he now has free, live video streaming of his show). Am motivated by the 'debt-free screams' of folks who have dug themselves out of large amounts of debt. Last week, a guy had paid back $2.3 million!

Clark - spot-on consumer advice

Ric - Has a firm grasp of issues beyond just investing. Interesting perspective on how one should have the largest mortgage they can afford and not be in any hurry to pay it back.


Another person that I like to watch is Consuelo Mack. She does a weekly show called Consuelo Mack WEALTHTRACK: The right track to your financial health. : WealthTrack for PBS and all her interviews are on the web. For those who enjoyed Louis Rukeyser, this is an interview show much in the same spirit (in fact, I believe she was the host of Wall Street Week in its last days).

[jazz4cash]

Quote:

Originally Posted by brewer12345 .... when he starts babbling about a sector I know very well it is truly apalling to see how uninformed he is.....

You are exactly right....he interviewed our CEO when the company went public and he sounded like he knew the business well to outsiders, but for those of us in the business, it was nonsense. Our CEO just kinda nodded in disbelief.


I do enjoy watching Cramer's antics, but I can only take small doses. He he is part of the CNBC infotainment machine.