Joe F. Rocks!
Growth Stock Investor & Market Strategist

The Origin of Joe F. Rocks! Growth Stock Investor & Market Strategist, Some Interesting History, Interactions with Famous People, and Lets Get Some More Publicity

This is a quick first cut (created 2-28-04) for this page, so please keep that in mind.

How did "Joe F. Rocks! Growth Stock Investor & Market Strategist" come about, arise, whatever? Well, the name for this site was largely an accident. I was working on a site called "The Enlightened Analyst" in the late 90s and it was taking too long to complete so I thought "why not just start a test site and learn from my mistakes and then launch "The Enlightened Analyst""?

I also considered using "Doctor Stocks." However, Dick Davis (there's more than one analyst by this name I think) owns the stockdoctor.com domain and is called ConfirmatoryAnalysis.com. Jerry Favors owns the Stockdr.com domain and is also called StockDr.com so "Doctor Stocks" was too similar to those two sites.

Since I had used (and still do) the alias Joe F Rocks on message boards for years I thought it would be a potential choice because I had significant name recognition. I mentioned on one message board that I was launching a site called "Joe F. Rocks! Growth Stock Investor & Market Strategist," I provided the URL (http://www.JoeFRocks.com/), and the domain name got more than 100 hits before the site was even launched. That was a sign of things to come.

A few months after I had launched "Joe F. Rocks! Growth Stock Investor & Market Strategist" I started getting many favorable e mails from readers and I stuck with it.

During the bubble (that I now know was a very long term cycle peaking) in 1999/2000 I was basically a naive lemming, a "yeahoo" (a word I like to use that basically means naive), etc. and I really thought a new "superboom" era had begun. Most of the CEOs at the top internet/telecom firms like Cisco were saying they could see no slowdown in sight (Trees are growing to the sky, right!). It turns out that most (at least a large %) of Cisco's earnings at that time came from selling stock options on their stock.

I believe there were multiple quarters back in the bubble where Cisco was really largely deriving earnings from financial activities (selling stock options on their stock). Interestingly, now (2004) companies like GM and GE are largely financial firms. A big chunk of GM and GE's top line (revenue) and bottom line (earnings) is derived as a result of financial businesses like GMAC or GE Capital. I'll have to get percentages for that.

When I started this site I was NOT much of a market strategist/market timer. I was aware of Investor's Intelligence survey of Advisor bullishness and I had heard of VIX but I was pretty much a (naive) clean slate. VXN and QQV were new indicators as of early 2001 so they didn't even exist when this site was launched in early September 2000 on Labor Day. If I could have gone into a time machine and seen what I would accomplish (largely) with my work at "Growth Stock Indicators" I would have been amazed.

"An unusually large rise in complacency portends strength" and "an unusually large rise in fear portends weakness" AND, somehow, I chose (it appears) the % at which a decline/rise becomes unusually large correctly in my first attempt (> 6%), at least for the XAU Put/Call Ratio and for implied volatility indicators such as XAU implied volatility, VIX, VXN, and QQV. For Commitments of Traders (COTs) reports data I consider a change > 10% to be unusually large and it appears to be a good choice but it may be finetuned (I don't have as much confidence in that level).

A rise in fear or complacency tends to be contrarian (portend strength for a rise in fear or weakness for a rise in complacency) however, unusually large changes cause indicators to portend the opposite of what they normally would because probably "something's up" and there's a legitimate piece of info that enough investors/traders are acting on that causes a normally contrarian indicator to become non contrarian (they know what they're doing for a change).

Most sentiment indicators are contrarian with an exception being AAII % of Investors bullish. It's ironic that AAII % of Investors bullish is non contrarian but Investor's Intelligence survey of Advisor bullishness is contrarian. Investors polled by AAII are usually correct and the 100+ newsletter writers polled by Investor's Intelligence are usually wrong.

Interesting tidbits/things to consider:

!. Corresponded with Elaine Garzarelli (famous partly for calling the 1987 crash) late 2002/early in 2003 via e mail ( we exchanged a few e mails). She was bullish and I was bearish because of the intermediate term cycle high on 12-2-02. That intermediate term cycle bottomed in mid March. I'll have to check back with her, get her thoughts, and post them here. I saw her on TV recently.

2. Lou Reykeyser may have read this site because someone from Owingsmills, MD was reading my site for a while. I asked Marty Zweig (who had e mailed me asking me to return to a message board because he liked my work) to tell Lou about me/this site and that I wanted to be on his show. His show is the Super Bowl of TV investing shows IMHO (in my humble opinion.

3. Please E mail CNBC (especially Lou@CNBC.com for the "Louis Reykeyser's Wall Street" show. (Get addresses for all shows: this is a note to myself) asking them to have me. Lou, please get well. If I'm on your show I want YOU to be there.

4. Jim Rogers (legendary investor/trader who used to work for/with George Soros) may read my site because someone with a Rogers.com IP reads my site now/recently. I did send him an e mail but he merely sent me a message or two about his new book and didn't really correspond with me.

5. I also have "corresponded" with Marc Faber of Barron's Roundtable fame. I asked him a question (regarding the likelihood of mainland China's bubble bursting in the near future) which he didn't answer but he did respond saying he would check out my site/work. I don't know that he did.

6. Vegas meet (at a Restaurant)? Please send me an e mail at JoeFRocks@aol.com if you're interested in a Vegas meet. I'll bring numerous charts and we can have a great discussion (for free). It will be a pay your way situation because if this site and my work haven't helped you substantially, why would you want to meet with me? I envision this as being a relatively small group of 10 to 20 people discussing market strategy, market timing, cycles, indicators, the major averages, precious metals and precious metals stocks (sector more so than picking stocks), etc. It won't be much of a stock picking discussion because that's not a part of my work. There might even be (probably not) other analysts there but it will be a Joe F Rocks! centric meeting.

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