Maoxian - a Swami from Beijing?

Swami Syndrome: A proclivity for predicting the future coupled with a blinding disconnect to the fact that a coin toss (or the proverbial monkey) would be more accurate than your lame prognostications.

Early in 2007 Chairman Maoxian from Beijing stepped tentatively into the Swami for Hire arena by making this generous offer to his readers:

Chairman Maoxian’s Boring picks

This is the Beijing Swami’s self-deprecating description of them:

1. These ideas are extremely boring

2. These ideas won’t win you any friends at a cocktail party.

3. These ideas will definitely not make you rich quick.

He offered to export 15 trade ideas from China, in exchange for American dollars (which were worth a whole lot more back then). And in his own funny way he included a no money back, zero guilt clause for comedic effect. He described them basically as battered down value, long term plays. We can tell that he was extremely confident in them (hence the first time request for $$$$$$). OK so let’s check in to see how he’s done after several months. Here’s some data on the 15 picks (visit his excellent site for traders - a fine read - and send him a bone if you want the ticker symbols)

Lăolao!!!! - 3 winners and 12 losers. He’s got a couple strong winners there, but otherwise he’s taking quite a pounding. Let’s look at a chart to see how his picks have performed against the indexes (yeah, he owns the CMF tan line, the one that seems to be looking for a lost contact lens).

And here’s some further, rather depressing data:

We will check in again on these picks next year, and plan to take note of the Beijing Swami’s dollar death spiral prediction in a future post (he’s been all aces on that one so far). A few questions remain:

Question 1: Do we implore Swami Maoxian to provide a new list of ideas asap so that we can short the hell out of them? Naaa, that’s completely unfair. The above is just a tiny snapshot of the Swami from Beijing’s prognostication prowess.

Question 2: Why didn’t the dollar bashing Beijing Swami ask for his payment in Euros?

Question 3: Do we load up on the picks from this list that have been battered down the most? Hmmm, when my Whole Hog play pans out perfectly (as of course it will) I will be checking back on this list again.

-- Filed November 23, 2007 at 6:45 am