Guru Grades

Ken Fisher Chronicles (Last Updated 6/13/09)

We evaluate here the Forbes.com commentary of Ken Fisher regarding the broad U.S. stock market since the beginning of 2000. Ken Fisher is Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of Fisher Investments, which operates under the assumption that "supply and demand of securities are the sole determinants of securities pricing." They believe that, to add value, "active management...must identify information not widely known or interpret widely known information differently and correctly from other market participants." The table below extracts highlights from his commentary and shows the performance of the S&P 500 index over the 21, 63, 126 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 subsequently proves right (wrong). We conclude that:

• Ken Fisher is flexible in his assessment of market value, keying off potential demand for stocks, globalization and the consensus expert view, which he sees as generally inaccurate. He has been largely clear with his guidance.
• Ken Fisher correctly counseled readers to stay away from stocks from the beginning of 2001 through mid-2002, but was a bit too soon into the market in early July 2002. He was right about general market direction, but overly overoptimistic, for 2004-2007. Since late 2007, he has been over-optimistic.He seems to have understood the bear market of 2000-2002 but not the bear market of 2008-2009.
• Based on subsequent stock market performance and our judgments about his forecasts for overall stock market direction, Ken Fisher's forecasts for the overall U.S. stock market are right about 58% of the time, which is well above average. His sample size is moderate, as is our confidence in this conclusion.

In summary, Ken Fisher is well above average in guiding his readers with respect to stock market timing. Confidence in this conclusion is moderate.

Note that we use the Forbes.com magazine publication dates for the table entries, and they post-date their issues, meaning that Mr. Fisher actually prepares columns at least two weeks before the publication/entry date.

See Mr. Fisher's article "Forecasting (Macro and Micro) and Future Concepts" for his own thoughts on forecasting. See also Forbes Evaluates Ken Fisher's Stock Picking for an assessment of Ken Fisher's public stock picking since 1998.

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.