Charles Biderman: TrimTabs Investment Research Market Timer Worth Listening To?

Charles Biderman, whose firm is TrimTabs Investment Research, is often on the cable news networks, particularly CNBC. His firm purports to know where the best places are to invest through their following of money flows of different investor groups.

I get asked from time to time by investors what I think of his predictive advice. Usually, investors who believe in market timing gravitate towards pundits like Biderman.

His PR folks inundate me with press releases. From that perspective I can tell you that I find Biderman and his research to generally be shallow in nature and full of hyperbole designed to attract the attention of media producers and other media folk who like negativity and extreme predictions.

In fact, I highlighted one of his late 2008 press releases in my piece, "How Economic Hyperbole Gets into the Mass Media: An inside look at how the media is pitched negatively hyped and inaccurate economic news."

As for his "insights" gleaned from his money flow tracking, check out the following short videos which demonstrate that he has been wrong in a major way at key points in recent years.

From September, 2007 as the first signs of a credit squeeze were appearing and global stock markets were peaking, Biderman was strongly optimistic and bullish in this CNBC interview:

In this March, 2009 Bloomberg interview, when global stock markets were bottoming or had recently bottomed, Biderman was gloomy and bearish:

And, in this August, 2009 Bloomberg interview, Biderman declares the rally is over and is again proven wrong: