- Joseph Granville
Joseph E. Granville (born
August 20 ,1923 ), often called Joe Granville, is a financial writer [Joseph E. Granville, "Granville's New Strategy of Daily Stock Market Timing for Maximum Profit", Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1976. ISBN 0-13-363432-9.] and investment speaker. He popularized [Larry Williams, letters toTechnical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities magazine, V. 22:3 (10-14), March 2004 ] the use of "on balance volume ", a technique oftechnical analysis that attempts to predict future prices ofstocks , commodities, and other financial assets traded onfinancial markets for which historical price and volume information is available.Granville is probably best known for his bearish market calls during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, when he claimed that the stock market was headed for imminent collapse. His overall track record, according to the
Hulbert Financial Digest , is very poor.The Granville Market Letter "is at the bottom of the Hulbert Financial Digest's rankings for performance over the past 25 years - having produced average losses of more than 20 percent per year on an annualized basis." [Mark Hulbert, "Gambling on Granville", MarketWatch, March 16, 2005 [http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7B6988BF9A%2D2ADD%2D48F4%2D85CD%2D8D2EC49EC3ED%7D&dist=morenews¶m=archive&siteid=mktw&garden=&minisite=] ]
Nevertheless Granville was known as a great showman [Iain Jenkins, International Hearald Tribune, June 11, 1994 [http://www.iht.com/articles/1994/06/11/mrguru.php After Initial Splash, Newsletter Gurus Don't Seem to Last Long] ] who would emerge from a coffin at an investment conference, or appear to walk across water (at a swimming pool) when meeting clients. According to
Robert Shiller in his bookIrrational Exuberance [excerpt at [http://hir.harvard.edu/articles/print.php?article=1003 Harvard International Review] , Robert Shiller "Exuberant Reporting," Spring 2001.]His investment seminars were bizarre extravaganzas, sometimes featuring a trained chimpanzee would could play Granville's theme song "The Bagholder's Blues," on piano. He once showed up at an investment seminar dressed as Moses, wearing a crown and carrying tablets. Granville made extravagant claims about his forecasting ability. He said he could predict earthquakes and once claimed to have predicted six of the past seven major world quakes. He was quoted by
TIME Magazine as saying "I don't think that I will ever make a serious mistake in the stock market for the rest of my life," and he predicted that he would win theNobel Prize in economics.Yet, Shiller states that Granville's market calls were said by major media sources to have caused large moves in the
Dow Jones Industrial Average onApril 22 ,1980 (+4.05%) and onJanuary 6 ,1981 .References
External links
* [http://www.granvilleletter.com/Joe The Granville Letter]
* [http://www.marketscreen.com/help/atoz/default.asp?hideHF=&Num=75 On Balance Volume]
* [http://hir.harvard.edu/articles/print.php?article=1003 Harvard International Review - Exuberant Reporting Media and Misinformation in the Markets]
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