Guru Grades
Gary Kaltbaum: An Edge for Investors? (Last Updated 3/10/10)
As suggested by a reader, we evaluate here the accuracy of Gary Kaltbaum's outlooks for the overall stock market at TradingMarkets.com, available since May 2005. Gary Kaltbaum is an investment advisor and nationally syndicated radio commentator who believes his job is "to interpret market action based on price and volume adding in a little bit of sentiment." The chart below extracts highlights from his commentaries on the direction of the overall stock market and shows the performance of the S&P 500 index over the 5, 21, 63 and 254 trading days after the publication date for each item. Red plus (minus) signs to the right of specific items indicate those the market subsequently proves right (wrong). We conclude that:
- Some of Gary Kaltbaum's commentaries offer no clear market outlook. Those that do tend toward very short-term outlooks, and we grade accordingly.
- His outlooks are often difficult to grade both because they are vague and because market volatility can make very short-term forecasts look both right and wrong.
- During the period covered by this evaluation, Mr. Kaltbaum seems more expectant of bad times than good. He calls bear markets three times (5/11/06, 3/5/07 and 1/7/08).
- Mr. Kaltbaum sometimes makes complex forecasts which prove to have both correct and incorrect components. In such cases, we evaluate the forecast with "0" and grade him both right and wrong.
- Our judgment is that Gary Kaltbaum has been right in his outlooks for the overall stock market 53% of the time, above average. His forecast sample size is moderate, as is our confidence in this conclusion.
In summary, Gary Kaltbaum's technical analysis yields an above average stock market forecasting record. Confidence in this conclusion is moderate.
See Guru Grades for a snapshot of the accuracy of various experts in predicting the U.S. stock market, including links to evaluations of the commentaries of other individual market pundits and gurus.
