Author/Editor
Chris Weber
Description
Go anywhere newsletter, follows Chris Weber’s portfolio and typically includes advice on gold, foreign stocks, bonds, etc.
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4.2
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Anyone who can not select individual securities during any kind of market is not doing his reader a service. Peter Schiff can tell me to buy gold and he does on television for free.
I HAVE READ THE LAST 4 ENTRIES SINCE MY LAST COMMENT WHICH WAS OCT 1ST AND THEY ARE LAUGHABLE! I TOO SAT IN THE BLEACHERS READING WEBERS ADVICE AND THEN I JUMPED INTO THE FRAY WHICH WAS LAST JANUARY. BY LISTENING TO WHAT CHRIS HAD TO SAY, I AM NOW AHEAD YTD 29.5% AND COUNTING. IT’S RATHER HUMEROUS READING THESE NAMBY PAMBY SIDELINE GENIUSES CRITICIZE CHRIS WEBER WITHOUT PUTTING THEIR MONEY WHERE THERE PENS ARE AND GETTING INTO THE GAME. THEIR LOSS, OUR GAIN! SEMPERFI!!
I’ve subscribed to Chris’ letter for between 4-5 years (I can’t recall the exact length) which I feel is enough time to form an opinion and perhaps address a couple of the questions/criticisms from previous reviewers. It’s funny, being a subscriber to several letters, this is the only one that I feel the need to review/defend which should give one an idea of the high regard in which I hold it. While I am a “real person” and paying subscriber, the anonymity of the internet makes these claims dubious at best, so I’ll leave it to the readers of this critique to accept it for what it is. Also, I’ve never met nor corresponded with Chris directly (though would likely very much enjoy/benefit from such interaction should it ever occur). There seem to be two major questions regarding Chris and his letter.
1) The reviewers above (one an English PHD no less) whom posit that the large block of reviews in February 2009 are all the same person or group of people, thus doubting their veracity.
2) Questions regarding Chris’ buy/sell recommendations, the timing of each, most specifically as they relate to stocks.
One of the nice things about Chris’ letter is that every single letter/alert dating back to June 2001 is posted on his website. As such, I thought I would go back to a few of these letters to seek answers to the above. With regards to point #1, from Chris’ February 16, 2009 letter
“Rate My Letter Warts and All”
“There is a sort of “consumer’s report for investment newsletters to be found at http://stockgumshoe.com/reviews/ . It is meant to be reviews “by investors, for investors”. You may find it of interest, and if there is something you want to say about my letter, say it. Don’t worry…I can take the knocks….. There are places on this website to rate my letter on things like “Customer Service”, “Value for the money”, etc. Feel free to state your views.”
While the above certainly doesn’t prove that each reviewer is authentic, it at least provides a reasonable reason as to why so many reviews are clustered in late February 2009 timeframe. Could it be that most if not all of these reviewers are simply happy subscribers who wanted to share their positive experience with Chris letter (just as I am)?
On the second point, from Chris’ November 21, 2007 letter (make sure you read that date again) titled
“Stock Market Bear Signal, Everyone Out”
“…to me what happened today is a very serious thing. I have had a small amount of my holdings in stocks, and after today I am getting out of much of those… A stock market fall— which seems very likely now—can take all stocks with it…We may be entering a very scary period for many markets, so it is important to stay safe …NOW IS THE TIME TO ERR ON THE SIDE OF CAUTION AND SAFETY (the bold and emphasis is Chris’).
With regards to buying back into the market, I will refer the prospective subscriber to Chris March 16, 2009 letter titled “Is this the long awaited bear market rally? The shorts get killed…” and his April 15, 2009 letter titled “Getting the most out of the bear market rally.”. While I will not belabor the reader with quotes from either of these letters directly, I think the titles give some indication as to the content. Between these three letters one gets some sense of Chris’ market prowess.
Now, on to my own opinion of Chris’ letter, it is quite frankly different than any other letter I currently or previously have subscribed to. Rather than hyping the next way to turn $5000 into $1,000,000, Chris focuses on the big trends and macro fundamentals and rides them until he feels that an inflection has occurred to alter the trend. This has led him to be heavily invested in precious metals over the past decade give or take. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether or not this has been a positive recommendation given this sectors performance relative to returns that could have been achieved in other areas (stocks, bonds, etc). Chris does not recommend a new purchase every month; his letter is not geared towards traders or those in need of constant action. Rather, he uses a strong understanding of market history (which is always interesting), fundamentals and a bit of technical analysis to make rather infrequent buy/sell recommendations and ride them until something meaningful changes in the trend. Overall, during the time I’ve subscribed, Chris has certainly been correct on all of his major market calls and hasn’t missed a single major one (and there have been some big ones the past few years). Should a reader of this review decide to subscribe to Chris’ letter, I would recommend taking some time to read some of his back issues (particularly around pivotal market moves)to get a sense of the analysis/filters that he uses to interpret the market.
In closing I have a couple of thoughts. First, to those reviewers who have never subscribed to Chris’ letter, you have nothing to add of substance, either positive or negative. It is a disservice to Chris’ work as such positive reviews clearly aren’t based on reviewer experience and are thus disregarded, while negative reviews never lose their sting. Secondly, anyone who loves learning about and participating in markets and has a passion for them (as I do) can only be drawn to Chris’ story and want to learn how he accomplished the things he did (and continues to do so). For such individuals, I would give this letter my highest recommendation, it is the best overall value and has provided the best return/capital preservation of any I subscribe to (and as stated above, I subscribe to quite a few).
Best Regards.
I have been a subscriber for about a year. I find Mr. Weber’s newsletter to be informative and interesting. I would describe his investing style as conservative, he doesn’t constantly go in and out of investments. When he recommends an investment he reminds subscribers to set trailing stops in case things don’t go as planned. At the end of each newsletter is a review of active investments and their performance since recommended. I am very pleased with the results I have experienced based on Mr. Weber’s advice. I plan to continue my subscription.
For one thing, Weber’s newsletter is now being touted by the hucksters at Agora. They don’t reveal his full name, instead mysteriously referring to him as “Christopher”, a man who has put out 11 great “Prophecies” in the last 20 years, ALL of which (no less) have come true. According to the undisputed scumbags of the investment world, Agora, Weber lives in hotel rooms and has no home…..this apparently makes him appear more mysterious. Their rant is filled with words like “He Divined” to imply that Weber is some sort of gifted physic, rather than a run-of-the-mill investment advisor who may or may NOT have anything valuable to say. To compound this fraud, Weber is on this forum himself posting a number of reviews, which can easily be verified through IP address checks. All told, a very shabby operation, and his affiliation with Agora is in itself all the reason you need to stay WELL clear.
Dear everybody,
I am a real person, a German living in Thailand.
Ten minutes before I found this review page I subscribed to “The Weber Global Oportunities Report” as newsletter number 26 in the last 2 years (number 25 was Gumshoe-Irregular, sorry, very late). Then I read through all your postings for 3 hours and waited for the promised Weber-email which never arrived. Now I hope that my credit card account is not debited.
According to all your comments the Weber is at least good for the overall picture, so I hope that he gives me the signal when the gold bull market comes to an end. I know by myself then what I have to do.
Now I am looking forward to the time in 3 or 4 years when I will have cancelled all other newsletters and keep the Weber alone.
Richard
I have recently subscribed I have not got any information so far, neither my User name and password . Enrique Gutierrez M.D.
Same here, I’ve recently subscribed on 3rd February 2011 and have not yet receive any username or password. Sent an email to their customer service and still have not receive any reply.
The Weber report is the most interesting and informative letter on finances that I have ever read…i am a new subscriber, but i have gone back and read every issue carefully…it is certainly not for those that think they will be millionaires in five minutes…but in 5 years you’d probably make it. His linking of money over hundreds of years to the various countries involved is fascinating…it always helps to know where youy’ve been before you know where to go…Keep up the good work Chris….
paid up subscriber. excellent newsletter. i’ll be a subscriber for a long time. never had any problems getting letter. very informative and good picks.
I subscribed to the Chris Weber Global Newsletter in Feb 2011 for $250. Every month they are SUPPOSED to send your monthly password to enter the website [the password changes monthly and you have to get it from the Chris Weber Organization or you don’t get in the site] I have YET to get my password…not ONCE have they sent it to me. I have done what they say by making sure they are listed in my contacts list…STILL no password. I have complained for several months now [it’s June 2011 at this writing] to no avail. Their customer service [customerservice@weberglobal.net] did send me one month’s password after a complaint, but other complaint emails that I have sent drew no assistance…or password.
BEFORE YOU SUBSCRIBE TO THESE PEOPLE…KNOW THAT YOU MAY HAVE DUMPED $250 FOR THE POOREST CUSTOMER SERVICE EVER. BEWARE…
Since posting my June 20th review, the people at Weber Global have made significant progress in solving the “I can’t seem to get my password” problem. At least, it appears so for now. I did get my password for June and promises of future passwords on time. At this point I’m MUCH more comforted that they will come through with an appropriate solution.
The customer service people have come through as I have gotten my password on time this month. Looking forward to Mr. Weber’s insights and vision of the times we live in.
How can Charles Miller rate performance as 5 star when he’s had less then 1 month to review. 1 to 5 star on customer service? Sounds fishy.
The only difficulty I have had with Chris Weber’s twice monthly newsletter is that I have not followed his thinking more. Had I done so, I would be far richer today! Not to say he is always spot on, but he carefully thinks out his position and and explains it in plain language. I have bought some of his suggestions which turned south, but since I use tighter stops, I actually made small profits. Conversely when he has suggested that something might go down, I have not always followed along and have lost money as a result. Can’t blame him for my incorrect moves. All in all, I find his newsletter one of the few that are worth paying for.
To me, Chris Weber is one of my mentors. One of the main investment voices I listen to and respect. He is very conservative. He can go through months of newsletters without a trade recommendation. He does not attempt to cater to anyone’s expectations of “hot stock picks.” I have purchased some of his suggestions and they are doing well. I don’t take all of his suggestions but I use Chris’ wisdom so I can make wise decisions in terms of riding this gold and silver bull market, which Chris is rather expert at. I would not use this newsletter as my only form of investment guidance, however, I also would not be without this newsletter as part of my team of investment mentors. And by the way, I have never had a single problem with passwords or customer service. And Chris has even answered questions I have asked him. Could not ask for better customer service.
I am a paid subscriber to Chris Weber. I am renewing today. His advise is excellent. He always gives backup plans in case his recommendations tank. He is very realistic. Also he warns to get out, which other newsletters seem to miss. Sometimes he says “You might want to take some profits on that one”, and you really do have to do that. He doesn’t have a crystal ball, so when he recommends to “lighten up” on something, you really have to do that.
I have only been a subscriber for a couple of months,and I have only read three editions,but so far,I have been disappointed.There have been few new picks during that time,and those that there have been have been income oriented – which does not suit -okay,that’s not Chris’s fault.But he seems afraid to recommend anything new that is likely to produce a capital gain.He is happy to list some of his old picks as ‘holds’ but not ‘buys’.Also,he doesn’t sound particularly positive or enthusiastic about anything.So his report hasn’t been of much use to me so far.
It’s time to part company. As Weber explained a couple of years ago he decided to change how he makes (or doesn’t make) recommendations. He seemed to start stumbling, not sure what the letter was supposed to be about or how to say it. Sometimes the letters seem like an afterthought slapped together at the last minute. The letters have been more coherent lately, but sometimes he doesn’t seem to remember what he said or didn’t say. As time went on I began to notice inconsistencies and on occasion downright ignorance.
The good:
Weber seems to have a knack for spotting secular trends. He got his readers into gold very early in the bull move and he gave a warning to get out of stocks before the recent crash. Unfortunately, other than the occasional recommendation here and there, he kept his readers pretty much out of the subsequent massive market recovery.
Learning how he thinks about investing is worth the price of the initial subscription. Go back and read the old letters with benefit of hindsight and see how he thinks about investing. There are some very good principles there.
Some readers complain that he doesn’t have new ideas in each issue. I consider this a good thing. Too many people feel like they have to have their money constantly in play. I like how Weber sticks with an idea until the idea is no longer good, holding on despite price action (although he does use trailing stops quite a bit). I also like his attitude that sometimes cash is a good place to be. This isn’t fun or exciting but it is a good way to patiently build wealth.
The bad:
Sometimes Weber seems to toss out investment ideas that he doesn’t understand. Even worse, when they don’t behave the way he
thought they should he blames the investment vehicles rather than his own misunderstanding. This is a disservice to his readers. Since this is a serious accusation to bring, I will go into detail to explain the basis of this opinion.
Some examples:
1. Weber recommended trying to short China using FXP, which places daily 2X bets against FXI, a composite of the 25 largest and most liquid Chinese stocks. Unfortunately FXP didn’t do what Weber thought it “should”, which was to go up as the Shanghai dropped.
FXP did what it was supposed to – it inversely mirrored FXI on a *DAILY* basis. Unfortunately a leveraged inverse ETF that places daily bets can have severe tracking error due to the math of daily compounding. When the market is volatile the ETF can even perversely go the opposite of the intended direction.
Weber fussed about how FXP didn’t perform the way it “should” (actually he has done this repeatedly). Per Weber: “You see in the Chinese general market how far the stock market has fallen since 2008 and yet this “Ultra-Short” FXP has only gone down. The only safe thing to do with FXP is to short it! You look at this and just are disgusted with the modern financial and investment world, at how sleazy it all is.”
No it isn’t sleazy. He just don’t understand it: FXP doesn’t track the whole Chinese market (which has done much worse than FXP) and it is NOT a long-term trading vehicle. For an explanation of why leveraged ETFs don’t behave the way Weber thinks they should see http://www.proshares.com/funds/performance/the_universal_effects_of_compounding.html
2. He showed similar ignorance with his recommendation of DGP for the “Making Up For Lost Time” portfolio. He was upset because it didn’t behave like a long term leveraged bet on gold. When the fund didn’t behave “correctly” he whined about how these funds don’t perform they way he thought they should. DGP places DAILY leveraged bets and thus will have tracking error of the underlying asset, as discussed above.
This is what he wrote when he removed DGP (and its silver counterpart AGQ) from the portfolio:
“Making Up For Lost Time Runs Out of Time: Sell DGP and AGQ. DGP, the leveraged gold ETF, rose by 10.9%. I don’t understand this: Spot, physical gold rose by 10.2% last year. So shouldn’t a double leveraged gold fund rise by at least 20%?”
“There have been imbalances with these for years. . . But the action of these ETFs adds insult to injury. Gold rose, but the leveraged gold ETF did not rise twice as much. But the double silver ETF fell by much more than it should have done.”
He even suggested that the SEC investigate these ETFs. Similarly misguided investors actually sued ProShares and the case was properly thrown out of court. Read the prospectus and understand what you’re buying!
Perhaps he still doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, which explains why he still rants against them. If, however, he has come to understand the mechanics of these leveraged ETFs yet persists in providing misinformation to his readers that is an unconscionable violation of his subscribers’ trust. Ignorant vs dishonest: not a good set of choices.
For someone who doesn’t trust GLD to own gold, he is remarkably nonchalant (or once again, perhaps unaware of the risks) about putting his readers into ETNs like DGP. ETNs are only as safe as the company that issues them. They have more counterparty risk than ETFs and the vehicles he was recommending were using leverage to boot.
3. Weber will make recommendations based solely on price action. He recommended UNG as a play on natural gas, pretty much based on the price action of natural gas.
There was complete lack of consideration of the fundamentals of natural gas, such as the huge stockpiles of gas, the price being so low that rig counts were dropping, that plants were converting to gas from coal, and at what point gas would be a good buy after all the weak producers had been shaken out. By contrast, read the thoughtful analysis by Wolf Richter on his blog. I took a pass on this one, which quickly hit the recommended trailing stop.
OTOH, sometimes it works, like when he recently recommended GDXJ. In this instance I felt there was a real basis for this idea (there was a wide divergence between bullion and “gold in the ground”) and dove in.
4. In another letter he recommended PCRPX as a commodities play. It seemed to me from the discussion that he really had a poor grasp of the product, which is very complicated. Some of the distributions are not taxed as dividends but as ordinary income – a fact that he was apparently unaware of and that was pointed out to him by a subscriber. Once again he chose a product based on derivatives that would have tracking error. In addition, a large portion of the fund was in cash and bonds – not commodities – and the expense ratio is hideous.
5. Last year Weber started a portfolio called “If we copy Japan” (IF?!). He recommended some mREITS. In a previous letter he ridiculed these products but then later recommended them. The rationale for purchase seemed to be that since these companies owned MBS and the Fed was likely to buy MBS this was a play on both further QE and also on the Fed buying MBS. He seemed to imply that we should own these stocks because they own what the Fed wants to buy.
From the March 1 letter:
” There is a stock with the symbol of NLY, Annaly Capital Management, whose purpose is to own mortgages, and usually mortgages that may never be paid off”.
This was simplistic and incorrect. Simplistic because NLY does own MBS but the business model is far more complicated than what Weber described. mREITs make their money by placing highly leveraged bets on the spread between the short term rates at which they borrow and the yields they get from owning MBS. They are not in the primary business of trading MBS.
Regarding the risk of repayment, NLY buys agency-backed securities.
Weber’s flawed analysis was laid out in the May 16, 2011 letter. He basically lumped mREITs into the same category as Treasurys, thinking that if the Fed bought MBS these mREITs would do well.
Per Weber: “For REITs, I don’t go by yield. The reason I bought them is that I think the Fed will buy these types of assets in its monetary policy, in an attempt to keep the stagnation from getting worse.”
August: “But the danger of these is if interest rates start to rise. In this way, the REITs are like long term bonds, only with higher but less dependable yields.”
This is pretty much completely backwards. Actually, in a ZIRP world the higher the long end yield the better the mREITs should do, which is the opposite of what Treasury prices would do. The Fed’s actions in recent years have markedly narrowed the yield spreads that mREITs thrive on and one should therefore not be surprised to learn that many mREITs have cut dividends.
These stocks have probably done well not as a “The Fed will buy MBS” play, but as a “People are being pushed further out onto the risk curve chasing yield” play. Why else would the prices of these stocks go up as the dividends dropped?
It’s technically true they could transiently boost cash flow by selling their MBS holdings, BUT only by selling their current higher yielding holdings and then reinvesting in lower yielding new securities.
The mREITs he finally settled on (after being prodded by some readers to make changes in his recommendations) have generally done well in terms of price appreciation, but this is a case of being “more lucky than good” since the underlying rationale was based on complete misunderstanding of the business model.
Note that after QE3 was announced mREITS dropped like stones in a matter of weeks and dividends are expected to decrease. This was to be expected.
Another risk of mREITS, not discussed at all by Weber, is that should short term rates go up these companies will get chopped off at the knees.
6. Recently Weber started publishing a simplistic signal for buying gold based on COT reports that a reader sent in. This has been tried ad nauseum. There are web sites all over the Internet trying to do this. In a singular demonstration of uncritical thinking, Weber published this so-called signal without even backtesting it.
The signal also doesn’t say when to sell. What is the use of a signal that only tells you to buy? I decided to backtest it and found it to have no utility. It did not outperform simple monthly dollar cost averaging.
The enthusiasm for the COT signal IMHO reflects a serious lack of critical thinking and analysis. Although the COT signal did go off in May and August at good prices it also gave a buy signal in February at over $1700.
The signal said to buy at the peak in early 2008 and failed to give a buy signal later in the year at the trough. In fact, after the buy signal in early 2008 the next buy signal wasn’t until 3 years later when gold had nearly doubled from its 2008 lows! What were you supposed to do for those 3 years? Build cash? Sell? Keep buying? Weber didn’t say. What is one supposed to do with this bizarre signal system?
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. As the reader who “invented” the signal said, when there is a buy signal “eventually” gold goes up. Well, in a secular bull market any random buy signal will “eventually” pay off when the trend is
up.
If you want to follow COT try Harvey Organ’s web site for a much more sophisticated discussion.
Blowing smoke, amnesia, and other assorted issues.
1. In one letter he said, “I lived through real manipulation, with the London Gold Pool that tried for years to keep prices at $35 per ounce.” The London Gold Pool ran from 1961 until it collapsed in 1968. I would estimate Weber was in kindergarten when it started and about 6th grade when it ended.
2. The legend of Chris Weber I see on the Internet is that he started with $650 that he made from his paper route (Back then newspapers cost 10 cents. That’s a lot of newspapers and $650 then would be about $4,000 now) at age 16 and was a millionaire by age 20.
Going from $650 to $1M in 4 years is a 525% annualized rate of return or over 150,000% in 4
years. The Quantum fund under Soros and Rogers had a 4,200% return over 10 years. I recall reading somewhere that Weber said
he used quadruple leverage. Who gave a teenager with $650 a margin account? I suspect there was an adult in there somewhere.
I don’t know what to make of this. Maybe it really happened but it’s tough to swallow.
In the final analysis, whatever back story he wants to present is unimportant other than as a marketing tool. Like the standard disclaimer says, past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. It’s what he says and does now that matters to his readers.
3. In March 2012 he announced that he was selling half his bonds. He mentioned it twice after that in subsequent letters.
However, on June 6, he said, “With these long term bonds, I have yet not sold any, and for now plan to keep holding”.
4. In a recent letter he talked about his corn recommendation. I went back through the newsletters and couldn’t find anything about corn.
In one of his letters he said he forgot what he wrote right after he sent it out. I believe it.
5. Sometimes his observations are woefully superficial. We were recently treated to a “boots on the ground” report from Spain, wherein he noted that when he went out to restaurants at the seaside resort where he was staying everyone seemed happy. There is a lot of misery in Spain, but probably not among restaurant customers at fashionable seaside resorts. Not
long after this Pollyanna observation, Spain erupted into riots and talk about Catalonia’s secession.
6. Recommendations are often based on “feelings” like his recent observation that “I sense a bubbling caldron underneath this
market”. I want to see some sort of rationale underpinning the opinion. What do you learn from someone’s “feelings” other than that they keep you hooked on the newsletter? You have to keep subscribing to get the hunches I suppose. Once again, his instincts in certain areas have been profitable but I need more than feelings to justify an investment.
7. There is no consideration given to taxation. Physical gold is taxed as a collectible at 28% no matter how long you hold it. Certain vehicles such as GLD are also taxed like physical gold. GTU and CEF, OTOH, can be taxed at the long term capital gains rate (currently 15%) if the proper QEF forms are filled out annually (failure to do so can be very painful though – make sure you talk to your tax advisor!). IMHO this is an important factor in choosing investment vehicles for gold. You shouldn’t give tax advice in an investment letter but you can certainly point out important tax matters to be taken up with
one’s accountant. Since much of the letter is devoted to gold investing, one would think this might come up from time to time. One would be wrong.
8. Weber rarely, if ever, provides an allocation target, leaving it up to the reader to figure it out. Since you’re on your own here, your performance may not track the average of the recommendations.
9. Weber once suggested that his readers put reviews of his letter up on Stock Gumshoe. Although he couched it carefully to talk about both the good and bad, if you were a current subscriber chances were that you held a good opinion of the letter. The people who didn’t renew never got to see the request for reviews. I consider fishing for reviews to be questionable business ethics.
Summary.
Overall, I think you can do a lot worse in terms of investment letters. During the course of my subscription I’ve learned a lot from Weber but also many others (John Mauldin, Grant Williams, Mike Shedlock, etc – all free) trying to understand what is going on in a post-2008 world. I have outgrown advice based on hunches, and don’t trust his advice beyond the areas where he has demonstrated solid performance and understanding of the assets to be acquired.
I doubt Weber will be recommending any more leveraged ETFs. As Mark Twain said, a cat who has sat on a hot stove will never do it again, but the trouble is he won’t sit on a cold stove either.
The recent offer for current subscribers to renew at a significant discount might be a sign that others are seeing diminishing utility as well and that readership is dropping. I was amused to see the COT signals offered as a “bonus” for renewing.
That’s by far the most helpful, most fair and most detailed review of a financial newsletter that I have ever read. It#s also the most saddening. It seems that Christopher completely lost his way over the years (or the way before was pure fiction?). I subscribed to his newsletter for a couple of years and parted ways about a year after gold had crossed the $1,000 mark because I found his newsletter to get less helpful over time and some of the issues that you, “So Long”, described started to emerge around that time. Sad to read that they got a lot worse .
Sth must have happened to him – what you describe is not the Chris Weber that I came to “know” (through his newsletters). I mean, learning about the mechanics of a levered ETF BEFORE recommending it to your subscribers should be the most basic due diligence level of them all. I cannot believe that he would invest his own money without making sure to understand the product first. So did he recommend it without buying it himself?
That said, even apart from the obvious issues that these levered ETZFs suffer from, the mere approach to lever up to “make up for lost time “(in reality: make up for a missed trend) runs contrary to everything I thought Chris stood for.
Same with this bs CoT strategy. How on earth can a man like Chris jump on that without throughöly investigating every signal first?0 It’s almost as if either the newsletter writer before 2007 was telling pure fairytales or that his investing personality changed in an extreme manner.
That he would finally enlist with the Agora scammers, well: that is one heck of a downfall.
The most pressing question to me: Is the Chris Weber after 2010 the real chris Weber and was everything before just fiction and fairytales? Or did he change by 180 degrees? Given how rarely people change that radically, I have to believe that either much of the stuff That he wrote before 2007 (and later referred to) was made-up. Or that thge newsletter writer after that period, especially after 2010 isn’t the same person as the real Christopher Weber.
Weber has a solid track record of identifying big, long-term trends. Readers who followed his advice on gold several years ago have made a lot of money. He also advised his readers to get out of stocks before the financial crash of 2008, and back into stocks near the 2009 bottom. A truly impressive record. He doesn’t make monthly ‘picks’; if he thinks the best thing to do is nothing, he says so. That’s good.
Lately, his newsletters have seemed less coherent, and he completely missed the current stock-market rally, apart from a handful of drug company stocks which he recommended. He says he still has 75% of his net worth in gold. Since about January 2012, the stock market would have been a much better place for your money, and it probably still is.
However, nobody can be right all the time, and he could still turn out to be right about gold and silver.