December 22, 2009

Canadians who watch BNN will recognize Larry Berman as the technical analyst who has his own BNN show and predicts where stock prices, commodity prices and stock market index values are heading.  Not only will he forecast whether a market index is going up or down in the near future, he will provide targets for six and twelve months for example.  Larry Berman, co-founder of ETF Capital Management, appears regularly on BNN so he must be an expert right?  Following is Larrys bio from the ETF Capital Management site:

Larry M. Berman is a Co-Founder of ETF Capital Management, and brings nearly twenty years of industry experience to the role of Chief Investment Officer. Larry has been consistently ranked as one of Canada’s “Top 3 Analysts” according to institutional investor surveys.

Larry began his career as a Toronto based investment advisor in 1989 and completed a technical internship in New York with the Market Technicians Association (MTA) in 1994, where he studied the techniques of many top Wall Street technicians. Prior to founding ETFCM, he was Chief Technical Strategist and Managing Director for CIBC World Markets since 1997. Larry was a senior technical analyst for Thomson IFR in Boston and senior technical analyst and trader for Marleau, Lemire Futures in Toronto

Larry is a Chartered Market Technician (CMT), a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), and is a US registered Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA).

Larry is the primary author of the textbook for the technical analysis course offered by the Canadian Securities Institute (CSI), which is the primary source of education for technical analysis in Canada. Larry is past President of the Canadian Society of Technical Analysts (CSTA), past Vice-Chairman (Americas) of the International Federation of Technical Analysts (IFTA), and is currently the President of the Market Technicians Association (MTA). Larry’s opinions frequently appear in the media, and he is a featured weekly on BNN’s (formerly RobTV) Berman’s Call.

Larry graduated from York University with a BA in Economics.

Larry Berman has more credentials than perhaps any other Canadian technical analyst and since he is an expert then you should listen to his forecasts and invest accordingly should you not?  I assume that Mr. Berman applies his own technical analysis to his Global Portfolio Solution fund .

As we did with our comparison of my most conservative leveraged ETF models against the OLeary Global Equity Income Fund, lets assume that on January 01, 2008 you had $100,000 to invest and you had to choose between investing in Mr. Bermans Global Portfolio Solution fund or investing as per my models.  Surely you would choose to invest in Mr. Bermans fund because he is an expert right?

On November 30, 2009, your $100,000 investment in Mr. Bermans Global Portfolio Solution fund would be worth $83,550 according to data on the Globe and Mails web site.  However, had you invested as per my Canadian model (HXU/CMR) your investment would be worth $124,800 or had you invested as per my US model (QLD/Cash) your investment would be worth $161,300.

This isnt an attempt to discredit Larry Berman but rather another example of the value experts sometimes provide their television viewers.

For a more recent view of the performance of my Canadian leveraged ETF models click here and for my US leveraged ETF models click here .

If you enjoyed this article and want to get future posts by e-mail, enter your email address: