Motley Fool on Alan Abelson

I recently read the book RULE BREAKERS, RULE MAKERS by The Motley Fool, and one part of it I found pretty funny but didn't include in the review I wrote for Ezine Articles is that the Gardners made fun of the editor of BARRON'S, Alan Abelson, for her persistent bearishness. I was reading BARRON'S around that time (the book was written in mid-1998), so I know exactly what they're talking about.

I will put in a disclaimer now that I don't know what the Fool now say about the late 1990s boom. This book is an example of it, since they tout high tech stocks and also say that they ignore Price/Earnings or P/E ratios. I will say that it may be unfair to judge their current advice by what they wrote during the dotcom boom. They were caught up in it, and so were many other people.

Alan Abelson of BARRON'S was never caught up in the dot com boom. He was predicting stock market disaster years before the boom officially began. I don't know what he wrote about the bust of 2001, or what he says about the market now that it's gone past the boom's peak.

But it's also true that if you'd invested according to Abelson instead of The Fool you'd have missed out on the dot com boom -- and also kept your money through the subsequent bust.

To be fair, if you'd bought the company that pays dividends that they recommend -- Coca-Cola -- you'd have been paid a lot of nice quarterly checks. It's their enthusiasm for some high tech stocks that looks like part of the boom mentality now, with the benefit of 2007 hindsight.



Motley Fool on Abelson
Motley Fool on Abelson