You should point this out to http://wealthmagazine.com. They have a service they sell, where they train you on how individuals can time the market. You take a course they offer then buy into their online tool and start timing the market like the big boys. The course is all about how to effectively use their tools.
I went to a seminar that had some big names, Terry Bradshaw, Colin Powell, Gulliani, Bill Cosby. It was very entertaining and basically free. In between the speakers they sold you really hard on various things. Wealth Magazine had what I feel was the most aggressive sell.
They did the standard look at this 69 year old women who has consistently beat the market. If she can do it so can you. Well if I put 20 million monkeys in a room there will be a few who consistently beat the market.
This is the basic pitch
Their tools will show you where the big boys are moving their money. Because they are constrained by certain covenants they cannot move their money fast enough, but you can. When you see the money start to move out of one asset into another jump on it. The tool will also tell you if a stock is under valued (I guess no one else has this data so it stays undervalued?)
They made a killing that day. As I am sure they do in all of these events.
You've pointed out the exact nature of the problem. They made a killing that day, and they probably will continue to make a killing as long as naive investors believe they can beat the market (whether with timing, or security selection, or both).
The only way around this is to educate investors about things like this. Because let's be honest: those guys at Wealth Magazine (at least the ones running the place, I presume) know full well their customers are wasting their money. But the fact is, it's revenue for them, and as long as that spigot is still flowing no way are they going to bite the hand that feeds them.
It's a conflict-of-interest situation, rather than a lack of knowledge on the part of the folks selling these financial services. You can be sure the guys (and they're usually guys) at the top aren't buying funds based on advice from Bill Cosby (no offense to the actor's other skills).
I went to a seminar that had some big names, Terry Bradshaw, Colin Powell, Gulliani, Bill Cosby. It was very entertaining and basically free. In between the speakers they sold you really hard on various things. Wealth Magazine had what I feel was the most aggressive sell.
They did the standard look at this 69 year old women who has consistently beat the market. If she can do it so can you. Well if I put 20 million monkeys in a room there will be a few who consistently beat the market.
This is the basic pitch
Their tools will show you where the big boys are moving their money. Because they are constrained by certain covenants they cannot move their money fast enough, but you can. When you see the money start to move out of one asset into another jump on it. The tool will also tell you if a stock is under valued (I guess no one else has this data so it stays undervalued?)
They made a killing that day. As I am sure they do in all of these events.