Bob Brinker Testimonials ONLY (no Discussion)

» DellaO - Dija's Brinker Testimonial

Hi all,
To the disappointment of some, I am back on Suite 101! I have retired, and have been busy moving. Bekins is very slow and I spent 10 days in limbo awaiting my belongings, including my WebTV. However, I have kept up with many of the posts via the local library computer. I tried to post once but for some reason it didn't go through.

I have read that some of you have opined that I left this board due to my disenchantment with BB. While I AM somewhat disenchanted with him, I have him (and luck) to thank for the fact that I have retired at age 61, even though I did not "wake up" to the fact I had to do something until 1993. At that time, I had a desire to retire at a relatively early age, but I had relatively little money. Brinker, through his show, got me interested in investing, and gave me the courage to invest as heavily as possible. I had been investing 6% of my salary into my 401K, just enough to get the 3% match, but thanks to him, I upped it to the max and switched from 50-50 to 100% stocks. I had quit investing in IRA's because they were no longer deductible, but he convinced me to start investing in non-deductible IRAs. In addition, I saved as much as I could, and put it into stocks outside my tax-sheltered savings. Luckily, I caught a bull market. However, I listened and read a lot, trying to learn as much as I could as fast as I could.

There were many bears out there, and they were very persuasive. Brinker, however, convinced me to remain heavily invested. Without him, I surely would have become more cautious and cut back on my equities. I know, he said people nearing retirement should be 50-50, but I was behind, and needed to "push" it. He gave me the courage to do that. In Jan. 2000, he turned bearish, and I slowly began to reduce my equities. By Aug. 2000, I was down from about 90% to less than 30%.

Now, I am very happily retired, and living in a city I have always wanted to live in--Las Vegas. It's relatively cheap to live here, and there is a lot to do. Plus, I love the hot summers. I am very tired of the Northern California cold.
I owe some of it to myself, a lot to luck, and a lot to Brinker.

I DO agree with a lot of the criticisms of Brinker. He spins, he hides, and he has made some ghastly mistakes. His radio program has become a waste of time because of his "hiding." I quit subscribing to his newsletter. I have bought one stock since Sept. 11. I am now around 32% equities despite the market drop.

I AM beginning to wonder if Will is right about BB's QQQ call being mainly a "hedge." I don't believe it was, but it's possible. The same goes for TEFQX.

My confidence in Brinker HAS deteriorated. Still, unlike you Willbots, I recall all the good calls. 1998. Y2K, when he urged everyone to stay in, even when many were expecting a market selloff. Etc. Etc Etc. Even Utek, he got people out at $27. What is it now?

Despite his recent errors, despite his horrible reactions to those errors, I still believe the man knows what he is talking about. Everyone in this field makes errors. I think he makes fewer than most. His reactions to them are the real problem.

But when, and if, he says to go back to 100% in the market, I WILL listen. No, I won't go 100%. I am retired and I need to conserve what little I have (If I live to be 85, I could be in trouble, but my genetics say I won't live that long! -. But if he says to go to 100%, I WILL increase my equities to 40%, maybe even 50%, depending on other factors.

I AM a little disillusioned. But I have not written him off as many of you have. I DO think much of the criticism of him is overdone. Some of the critics are as good as--or better than--Brinker when it comes to "spinning" the truth.

http://www.suite101.com/discussion.cfm/i...

-- posted by DellaO

» DellaO - History of the Brinker Boards and Dishonest Bob

Dan's arrival and exit reminded me of the old days on Brinker's site. I've seen people who claim that it was rabble rousers like Rande and Kirk and Della and I that caused Brinker to stop those discussion boards.

Just to set the record straight, all of the above mentioned people had been gone for several months prior to Brinker's decision to shut down the discussion boards. Just in case anyone is laboring under such a false assumption it might be good to remember just what transpired.

In early 2000 I went to Brinker's site for the first time. Brinker was a guy on the radio who happened to be on the local station whenever the cardinals, Rams or Tigers were not playing. Over the years I had caught his show on a lot of afternoons while doing stuff around the place or driving. He gave very sound general advice about investing. In a while I think anyone listening to his program could answer 90% of the investment questions that came throught he show. It is really "Investment 101" . His take on most of these issues was the same thing you read in any financial book or magazine. The only difference was his insistance on marketiming.

Most of the time Brinker claimed that it was a choice whether to invest in stocks during a bear market or simply go to cash and invest at the bottom of the bear market. In the days before the internet, his jibberish could change from week to week and with time whatever he kept saying became the truth.

However I paid close attention during the mid 90s when people would ask him about his marketiming. When asked if he had ever went to cash usually Brinker would say "We've been bullish all through the 90s" --yet I realized the bull started in 82. I was suspicious in the fact he did not answer the question.

Then one time when asked that question by someone who brought up his record in the late 80s when he went to cash at the wrong time --88 after the 87 fall and stayed not fully invested through 91 on the eve of the Iraq war--Brinker said:

" Well since then we have changed our model and backtested it and the new model would have not made that move and we would have been fully invested".--- A bell went off.

Now I'm just an ole country boy. I don't claim to be bright like many on the net. But I had heard Brinker avoid answering that question about ever having been bearish by saying "Our model has been bullish all through..yada yada yada. And now with a caller who remembered what Brinker did in the late 80s and early 90s--he claimed his model was new and improved and when back tested it would have worked.

Well that was a little suspicious. Maybe a year or so later, again we had no net and there was no Brinker bots or Brinker critics, nor was Bob posting under aliases scamming UTEK and his own abilities those days, he said something quite different.

A caller brought up his exact conversation mentioned above when Brinker was scaring people about the possibility of a new bear market--probably in 96 or 97. The caller said "But Bob you back tested this model and it would have worked in the late 80s when you went out of the market right?"

Brinker said " No, it would do no good to back test a model. You know the results so it would be useless."--- oops that's strange . Only one of those answers could be the truth--we did or we didn't backtest.

So when I saw on AOL that Brinker had made a call in early 2000 I went to his site. I signed in under my own name and simply asked a question. I believe it was something like this:

"For the time I've been listening to Brinker and especially the last several months he claimed that his model was either bullish or bearish. If it were bullish he would be 100% in the market and if it were bearish he would be 100% out of the market. I heard Bob claim on the radio that he is "not bearish" but that he has taken 60% of the monies out of the market. Can anyone explain why he is doing something different than what he said he would do?"

I was called everything except a nice person in a very short while. A fellow named Rodney Dietert who stalked me for several years was particularly hateful along with a critter called "Joe Previte" who I later found out was Brinker's alias on his site.

The venom for a rather important question was strange. I was offended and thought that there was something not quite right. So not being very bright, I simply tried to get along and asked more questions. I was neither rude nor hostile in tone. I was not however intimidated. I began to get many emails telling me that I had better lay off because Bob monitored the site.

I made many friends--and a few enemies, largely from their perspective not mine. You see anybody that didn't toe the line Brinker led a jihad against them. At the time I was totally unaware of Brinker's malicious posts on Yahoo and Silicon Investor. I thought he was a big shot radio host and manager--not a two bit shyster who prowled the internet hawking a stock in which he had a conflict of interest and trying to sell everything from newsletters to Tshirts and bumperstickers. At that time it was golf balls--which I found odd as well.

Things went on for months. I remember seeing a guy named Rande on that site. He would post stats on the market and links to finanical resources. Seemed an ok guy with some knowledge. Soon after I arrived I saw there was a rift and that Rande had been banned from posting. There was some discontent but not from me, I had just noticed the guy was posting. I recall a guy named Poohbah John answered someone's question about what happened to Rande. He claimed that he was caught doing a pump and dump scheme on Brinker's site and that is why he was booted. I didn't know one way or the other. But it didn't square with anything I had seen.

It is funny when you look at what Brinker was doing with UTEK that one of his bots would claim that someone was pumping and dumping. Here is a partial compilation of Brinker's posts under his alias on Silicon Investor touting UTEK when he had it as his ONLY BUY and never told anyone that UTEK WAS PAYING BRINKER IN AN UNDISCLOSED RELATiONSHIP.

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk...

Anyway as time went on I found Brinker to be quite dishonest. I recall how every week he would tell people who would call in during early 2000, that his model had nothing to do with the Nasdaq--and yet Brinker claimed to have particular expertise in technology investing. At the time the Nasdaq was about 40% of the S&P 500. And yet Brinker claimed that the fall in the dow stocks that occured during Jan 2000 was exactly what his Model was talking about. I recall very well how Proctor and Gamble and Phillip Morris, stocks that I owned dropped and Brinker would claim that is just what his model was calling for. Every week he would talk about a dow stock under siege and the pathetic performance of the dow.

Ironically he was pumping the B2B sector hard at the time and TEFQX fund in particular.

I recall in I believe it was Feb 2000, when on Friday the market had the biggest one day rally in history. The dow went up 500 points. Brinker had been talking about the market--the dow exclusively--every week, explaining how bad the dow was doing and giving the % drop several times an hour. However with the market popping up 500 points the day before his show and it was the big news item of the week--Brinker in 6 hrs of broadcast never mentioned the stock market and talked only about real estate and oil prices.

I knew then that this guy was a scamster. Over time it became very clear that there was a few members of Brinker's site that could indeed be described as a cult. Many had picked up on Bob's attitude under his aliases on Silicon Investor and his own site and his combative personality on the radio that often showed intolerance . Brinker with his boy Bobby Jr. began removing posts that showed the truth. More people fell by the wayside. Many of the regulars were my friends still.

In fact as I recall on the night Bob had a new alias of "Bill Erickson" and was going after a rather innocent post of mine like a drunk madman, I recieved an email from a dear friend from that site. She told me that Dan had told her that I had better watch it because he was sure that the poster that was harranging me was Brinker himself.

That night my screen name was used by "someone" to post a bunch of filthy stuff that was in no way anything I would post. I sent an email to Junior asking that they be removed and for an explanation. There was no response. I began posting under my own screen name on a Sunday morning and my posts would "disappear" yet the imposter with my exact screen name's posts were allowed to stay. Many regulars there saw what was going on and objected.

By afternoon I was unable to access the site and all of my real posts were removed. The offending posts were allowed to stand until the site disappeared.

Della spoke up and she too was banished shortly thereafter.

I then knew that Poohbah John had been lying about Rande and that it was a thin skinned Brinker who didn't want to have his scam exposed that was behind the mischief.

Contrary to popular myth Brinker never shut down the site until many months later. As you know Brinker made that ill fated QQQ call in Oct 2000. I believe I "left" in July. Rande probably something like February or March. Kirk was not posting on his site at all. Della went shortly after me.

In the fall of 2000--probably sept or Oct. Brinker made his discussion thread "open to subscribers only"-- I guess it is like the current site Dan was miffed about. At any rate, you had to PAY BRINKER 185 bucks a year to post on his site. However after the QQQ call headed south, those subscribers wanted to know what to do. Soon Jr. was working around the clock deleting post after post asking legitimate questions about a very reckless, ill concieved and poorly communicated trade for a huge amount of one's portfolio. People paying Brinker were being BANNED FROM POSTING. People who said something really bad were sent their money back and told they could not subscribe anymore. LOL -- what a hoot.

At any rate ONLY SUBSCRIBERS were able to post on his site and it was a circus. On Christmas eve 2000--5 months after my name was stolen on his site and I made my last post, Brinker dropped all the discussion boards.

Now Brinker also began a "bulletin site" on his board at the same time frame. It required the same subscriber information to access it as did the "for subscriber's only bulletin boards".

Brinker stated through Justa (a hatchet man for Brinker who was allowed to have his own thread on Brinker's site after outing Bob as "Don Lane" on another site) on Silicon Investor that Brinker had to shut down the discussion boards because so many people were calling the office to gain access to the discussion boards that it tied up their employees.

Brinker repeated that lie some years later on the radio. As Dan Gibbons knows after it went to subscribers only, there were only a few posters . In fact there were never great numbers of posters. I'd imagine if there were more than 30 different posters in any week it would be a stretch. So Brinker LIED AGAIN.

Furthermore, the same information was needed for access that that "bulletin" site and later the "online newsletter", which would cause many more people to call the office to get their subscription info.

Anyway for anyone who cares, Brinker was simply a thin skinned bully who was worried about covering up any mistakes and selling newsletters and stocks in which he had a conflict of interest.

Many who know the truth refuse to admit it.

http://www.suite101.com/discussion.cfm/i...

-- posted by DellaO

» BrianMcG - Better off

In response to message posted by Will_L:

I found your post very interesting. The step-by-step journey of a Brinker listener who turned into a Brinker critic, and why and how that happened. My journey must have been somewhat similar to yours, although I expect that I didn’t pay as close attention as you, and I came to the Brinker discussion board late. I do remember the Justawerkinstiff thread. Justa posted with what seemed to me the air of a Brinker insider. He or she (I wasn’t sure which) seemed to have personal knowledge of what Brinker was going to do, or how Brinker made his decisions. Or at least he or she wanted to create the impression of some sort of inside knowledge. I also remember the mysterious disappearance of posts critical to Brinker (one minute they were there and a half hour later they were gone). I also remember when Brinker closed the boards to all but Brinker subscribers, and finally when he shut the whole sorry board down. I guess he found even the subscribers an unruly lot.

I let my subscription to the Marketimer lapse in January 2000. In fact, the January 2000 issue with its now-famous “strategic asset allocation” call (later misrepresented as a sell signal) was my very last issue. I had already become fed up with Brinker. The fact that that issue arrived in my mail box fully two weeks after it was discussed on the radio confirmed me in my decision to call it quits with Brinker.

I had already come to the conclusion that there was something phony about him. Oh, I don’t deny that the man is gifted. He has a good radio voice and presence. He speaks with an air of authority which people who know little or nothing about investing find reassuring. They want to hear somebody who is never in doubt about what he says. And when I was a novice investor, it seemed to me that he had a lot of valuable information to impart. After several years of listening, I cam to the conclusion that much of what he said was repetitive. I also became sure that much of what he said was just plain wrong. The post by Dan G about Brinker’s miserable misinformation on the effect of depreciation on the sale of a rental property is only one of many, many examples where Brinker’s ignorance was passed on to listeners, again with a good radio voice and presence and a never-wavering air of authority.

I remember one time in the 90's when he received a call asking about living trusts and their uses. It was obvious to me that he knew nothing about living trusts but wasn’t willing to admit it. He wandered through a rambling answer that said, in effect, living trusts didn’t have much use in investment decisions. I knew enough about trusts to recognize this as rank misinformation. A week or two later, Brinker delivered a little monologue about living trusts, explaining how they are used and how effective they can be in planning an estate to maximize investment gains, manage assets during life, and transfer assets after death. He had obviously cracked a book on the subject since he first muddled through the subject on the air. He has made many similar gaffes, all with his usual air of authority and omniscience.

I don’t listen to Brinker any more. I haven’t received a Brinker newsletter since January 2000. I reduced my equity allocation in February 2000, according to my own schedule and my own percentages. I didn’t invest in the QQQ’s when Brinker issued his infamous “act immediately” bulletin. I feel I am better off.

                  Kirk  S&P500  NASDAQ  BRKA
2YR: 12/31/2002   +69%   +41%    +63%   +23%
4YR: 12/31/2000   +35%    -3%    -12%   +26%
6YR: 12/31/1998  +160%     7%     -1%   +27%