Any of you heard about the latest from Weiss? It is the Foundation Alliance where they use the research done by the Dewey Foundation that predicts the up and down cycles of stocks. I have just started subscribing to it on a 90-day trial run and so far, out of 5 recommendations, four are in the green and one are in the red.

Hi Will, yes, anyone involved in the MCP has been deluged with FA hype. Can you tell us about how far ahead (%) the gainers are? Thanks.

Post edited 7:57 am – July 30, 2009 by ex-mdcp

Will… if you do not mind, keep us posted.  I am curious as to how it works out.

At least Larry contains his loses which is good versus Claus that has mental stops at 30-40% loses…. and even then.  

Surprising that Claus doesn't cut losses in his financial short position as it's been trending down more steeply for a couple of weeks. That's at least two fundamental investing dictums that he violates: "Don't fight the trend", and "Cut your losses". So much for his claimed "flexibility". He's about as nimble as a supertanker.

The Reviews page was talking about the following and I thought I'd comment.

On 7.26 Dave said "I am surprised that MAM got in trouble with the feds because virtually ALL investment newsletter services do exactly what MAM was doing they provide stock or other investment advice/picks to their subscribers. That's what we pay them to do. How anyone could misconstrue such advice as being PERSONALLY TAILORED investing advice I cannot imagine, but that's what they got in trouble for."

See  http://www.sec.gov/litigation/…..a-2525.pdf

Also, what Martin and Larry got in trouble for then that is of interest today is the claims of profits made in their solicitation materials that did not match actual results (paragraphs 12-16).  One of Martin's voluntary remedial efforts, as a result of the SEC probe, was to provide Trading Histories for each premium service, which are published on his website (pg.7).  And being compelled to mend his behavior was expensive, costing just over $2.1 million dollars in settlement fees to the SEC (pg.8).

On 7.26 Dave also said, "Re blog censoring–this is a very common practice in private blogs. It happens routinely and daily in the reader "comments" which follow online newspaper articles …" 

Yes, newspaper and other quasi-public online blogs are monitored, for legal protection of the owner of the site.  However, the MDCP blog is indeed private in that only the members and administrators have access to it.  Also, the blog's 'Terms and Conditions', 12 paragraphs of legalize, was not added to the blog until 3 months after inception, around the time that criticism was bubbling to a boil.  One of the 'regulars' referred to the T&C as being mostly boilerplate … which excludes 'inappropriate' comments or materials; claims ownership to all blog comments and forbids blogger from republishing them elsewhere; claims the right to republish blog comments for its own purposes; and excludes sarcasm toward Weiss personnel or products (and here I had to scrutinize my own blogs and decided that mine were a 3rd cousin twice removed from sarcasm and therefore qualified as bonafide satiric literature).  Dave is correct that while blog hostility has increased,  censorship and complaints about censorship has decreased … ever since the T&C was instituted.  BTW, the same T&C were tacked onto Martin's public blog and anyone interested can go there and read it.

From the cease and desist order:

"6. Between at least September 2001 and December 31, 2004 (the "relevant time period")………"

"14. ……….during the relevant time period, many subscribers who followed each Weiss Research trading recommendation – as Weiss Research encouraged its subscribers to do – experienced overall returns that were substantially lower than Weiss Research’s profit examples and most actually lost money." (emphasis added).

Aside from the ethics and legalities, the question for investors becomes: armed with just the above information, why would anyone plunk down money for this "service"?

Have a good weekend.

Just visited Martin's website and MDCP is not included in the premium services.  Wouldn't a cost of $1500 to $3500 qualify it as premium?  And now that one or more trades have been sold, its trading history should be available for public viewing.  A week ago Thursday, 3 days after reco #9 was sold, the MDCP 'open' portfolio had been adjusted down to show the sale, but the 'sold' portfolio was empty.  Reco #9 was a partial sale, so could this be the reason the sale is not shown in the 'sold' portfolio?   Is MDCP a premium service?  If it isn't, what is it?  Is there a technical loophole involved?  i.e. since MDCP is Martin's personal   $1 million dollar portfolio and we thousands of members are "just along for the ride", does this disqualify MDCP from being a premium service and required by the SEC to show its trading history?  I'm having some difficulty making sense of this. Any suggestions?

This is HMS Martin calling    … — …       … — …    Hello   … — …    HMS Martin calling MDCP  … — …    Anyone there?   … — …    Hello    … — …  Hello?   … — …   May Day  May Day   … — … 

Could someone who is still a member of MDCP look in the website at the 'Quick Start Guide' to see exactly how Martin is describing this portfolio and the members relationship to him/it.  Did anyone save the promo lit?  Details re this conundrum in post 133.

Details from a saved email:

7/10/2009   Intent to Buy: 48-Hour Head-Start Alert!    Dear Member,  We have a new portfolio addition and this is your notification – your 48-hour head start.  On Tuesday afternoon, July 14, we will BUY ZZZZ, for our Million-Dollar Contrarian Portfolio. The amount will be approximately $195,000 worth of ZZZZ, or 20% of our current portfolio value.  But you should NOT wait until we buy. You should take advantage of the opportunity to make your purchase BEFORE we do, and you have two full trading days to do so.

So… the 'we' and 'our', though plural, seem to indicate Martin, singular.  However, the 'we' and 'our' also includes the thousands of members to whom this 48-hour alert is addressed and to whose individual email boxes the alert has been sent. The portfolio on the MDCP website is Martin's (and members can set up their 'shadow' portfolio on the MDCP website to track and compare with Martin's.)  Facsimiles of Martin's brokerage statements and buy/sell confirmations are posted here as well. 

These Alerts are clearly and definitively telling members to buy the reco.  We can, of course, take or leave these recos, since the decision to buy or not to buy any advisor's recos is ours; but if you don't buy the recos, or if you're second guessing Claus stock picks and are taking a wait-and-see approach, or are waiting for the tea leaves to settle, why continue to be a member? 

Does any of this clarify if MDCP is a premium service?  If it is, the service and its trading history should be on Martin's website. 

BTW, in this alert, well documented as always with charts and convincing arguments, Claus discusses 6 'clear technical sell signals' in support of buying reco #9.  As these 6 signals proved to be false, which necessitated the sale of reco #9 the following week, these signals are worth a close inspection, and I'll get to them in another post. 

Paragraphs 20-22 of the cease and desist order (link is in post 129) deal with the auto trading that ceased in 2006 if not sooner and therefore does not apply to MDCP.  What puzzles me is why MDCP isn't listed on Martin's website along with the other premium services.  MDCP sold its first holding on July 20 and now it has a trading history which, according to the SEC order, must be made public on Martin's website.  It appears to me that MDCP is not Martin's 'personal' account, an account that the members are watching Claus manage for Martin, which might by some miles-long stretch of the legal imagination exclude it technically, but is a paid subscription service, i.e. premium service, no different in operation from any of the other dozen premium services.  The fact that Martin was investing his own $1 million dollars, a lollapalooza of a marketing hook that was hugely successful in attracting subscribers, does not make MDCP a new species of investment service, one exempt from the SEC ruling.  If MDCP is a premium service, as the SEC would no doubt deem it to be if asked to take a look, then Martin had best lose no more time in getting MDCP listed on his website right alongside all the other premium services.

But now I'm beginning to think I'm splitting hairs, making a mountain out of a molehill, a tempest in a tea pot, a lot of sound and fury over something that may not be very much more than nothing.  Sympathetic thoughts toward Martin, unhappily stuck in the sticky goo that MDCP has become, are bubbling to the surface.  Maybe tomorrow when I visit Martin's website I'll see MDCP right up there with its brethren and realize that attending to this administrative detail just took a little longer than expected and it's me that needs to develop a tad bit more patience.  On the other hand, if I don't see MDCP up on his website real soon, well … hell hath no fury like an ex-MDCP member scorned.

Well today my friends was another great day here at the MCP. One of our inverse ETF's  hit an all time low closing at a loss of over 38%, while two other fabulous positions are moving dangerously close to a 20% loss! Claus is happy because one gold stock we have a 2.5% portfolio position in is up 14%.

Let's do the math.

gold stock (2.5% of portfolio)  = + $1.14  [+14%] Original cost = $1.00 gain/loss = +$ 0.14 – GAIN

inverse ETF(10% of portfolio)  = + $(2.48) [-38%] Original cost =  $4.00 gain/loss = – $(1.52) – LOSS

Difference of profit/loss between biggest gainer and biggest looser in portfolio equals a loss of $ -1.38  LOSS

gain/loss ratio = -1.38/+0.14 = -9.2 to 1 or we loose $9.20 for every $1.14 we make based solely upon the single best performing stock with the MCP allocated percent of total portfolio value versus the worst  single performing stock with the MCP allocated percent of total portfolio value. This number can and will change daily.

In the case of the MCP the trend is down.

Hard to fathom why Claus stays in the inverses. The only rationale that makes any sense (IMO) is that he thinks the next leg down in the market would be so swift that his 48-hour delay to get into inverses would be too costly. But he has denied that this is the reason. I wonder how many subscribers have sold the inverses on their own. Lots, I hope. So gold and the miners are at last creeping up a few percent…even if the gold bugs are right and gold goes to $1300, since the start of the MCP there have been dozens and dozens and dozens of stocks in China and elsewhere in the world, and even here in the US, that have doubled, tripled, or more. The MCP is, IMO, nothing but a breathtaking waste of investment opportunity over these few months. Claus seems blindered. No doubt Martin's father, were he alive today, would be playing the heck out of this bull market, regardless of its nature. Martin sure ain't the old man, is he?

> never ever heard of Martin

That's it. Ah well, what's done is done. There are always more opportunities…just far fewer of them.

By my calcs based on just the share prices, the financial IETF is down 25%, the tech IETF is down 14%, and the market IETF is down 19%. As many others have pointed out, a reasonable money manager would have stopped everyone out before any of these values were reached.

Yes, I was only looking at the stock prices at the start vs. now.

Meanwhile, take a look at today's message from Claus–boy what a turn-around. He's now a bull. He says "But for the medium term, I suggest considering short-term weakness as a buying opportunity." Note that 'medium term' means a few *quarters*. That's a very long time. What does this mean for the MCP portfolio??

At the time Marty's contrarian profile product was being promoted, there may have been a record number of individuals who felt economic collapse was inevitable or likely, myself included. Many people were just frustrated and confused and didn't know what to believe. Among the problems with MDCP is that it wasn't really contrarian at all.