Guru Grades

David Nassar: Is He Market-wise? (Last Updated 6/2/07)

As suggested by a reader, we evaluate here the market commentary of David Nassar via MarketWatch for November 2004 through May 2006. David Nassar is the chairman and chief executive of MarketWise.com, "a company built by traders and investors offering quality university level education with enduring benefits." Their mission is "to support traders and investors in their quest to achieve financial freedom and success, while sharing the passion and trading skills of our instructors with our students." The table below extracts highlights from his commentary 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 that the market has subsequently proven right (wrong). We conclude that:

• He uses a combination of fundamental factors and technical factors to derive his forecasts, leaning substantially toward the latter for short-term predictions.
• No commentary from Mr. Nassar is available over a period when the stock market has significantly declined. If he has a bullish bias, it would not show up in this sample.
• He sometimes also speculates about the prospects for sectors, commodities and individual stocks. We do not evaluate those specific recommendations.
• Based on subsequent stock market performance and our judgments about his forecasts for overall stock market direction, David Nassar is right 68% of the time, a very good accuracy rate. His forecast sample size is moderate, but the sample period is short, so our confidence in this conclusion is low.
• David Nassar's column has been discontinued. We retain this completed record for historical reference as part of an overall analysis of guru accuracy.

In summary, David Nassar has had a good feel for market direction since late 2004. Confidence in this conclusion is low.

See Guru Grades for a snapshot of the accuracy of various experts in predicting the direction of the U.S. stock market, including links to evaluations of the commentaries of other individual market pundits and gurus.