A family member died recently, and I’m helping out with some of the executor stuff. It looks like the bulk of investments were held with Fisher Investments. I’m extremely familiar with Phil Fisher (father, outstanding investor, considered one of the founders of growth investing) because I’ve read all of his books and writings, but I have no real insight as to Ken Fisher (son, current named principal of Fisher Investments), his investment style, performance, firm orientation, etc. I’m currently reading up on the dude’s Forbes columns and other writings. It looks like Ken Fisher has gotten a tremendous amount of mileage out of his dad’s outstanding performance - you see him weighing in on CNBC, quoted in the Journal, and so on. However, I can’t find any real discussion of his investment prowess. By all indicators, I would assume that his performance is pretty pedestrian - otherwise, it would have been touted in one of the firm’s massive advertising campaigns. Anyone either work/worked for Ken Fisher, met him or read his stuff extensively, or have any insight as to his money mgmt style/firm culture? All opinions welcome. Thanks in advance.
My coworker worked under Ken. I don’t know about your concerns above, but my coworker left Fisher in a hurry. Apparently, Ken is a big @$$hole.
I read one of Ken’s books (The only three questions that count) and stopped about 1/2 way through. His statistical criticism of the use of P/E ratios demonstrated that he doesn’t understand statistical issues very well. His general advice about making sure you’re not thinking like the crowd was good, and he had some good analogies that make it easier to do that, but the advice was hardly unique.
Stay away! http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-07/kenneth-fisher-s-firm-must-pay-retiree-376-000.html If I were you I’d read “Investor’s Manifesto” and do it yourself by building a Vanguard portfolio or find a DFA advisor… I think its in most people’s best interest to do this.
@Bchad- Thanks for the info. Yeah, I read a column or two in Forbes today from Fisher about his work with the price/sales ratio and was struck by the fact that he NEVER mentioned capital structures. If you are valuing equity using only P/S without accounting for different levels of leverage, every highly levered company will appear ‘cheap’ according to the ratio. I was struck by the lack of emphasis on this point, so yeah - similar feeling to you, I thought that he either didn’t understand the importance or was a sloppy writer. @CFAvMBA - excellent info. It’s always interesting to hear about firms run as autocracies. I’ve now heard from a few sources that Fisher Investments basically is a one-man show, and Ken Fisher is happy to keep it that way. I always get a little weirded out when I read about a large firm that basically has one top dog who never mentions a right hand man or his staff - it screams that the firm either doesn’t have a succession plan in place or that the successors/staff are wildly underappreciated / possibly underprepared should something happen to the principal. @Systematic - thanks for the info, but I am familiar with the Sharyl Silverstein settlement, as well as the recent news on Fisher declining to disclose their auditors. I am also comfortable building my own portfolio and am a huge proponent of fee-only financial planners. As I alluded to in my initial post, I am only helping out with a portion of the estate stuff - I am not going to be managing this account, so I’m not too interested on reading up asset allocation and scenario analysis (though I may check out the read another time). Anyone else with insights? Would be particularly interested in anyone who’s read lots of Ken Fishers writing/books or worked doing any research for the firm.
I was googling some info about Annualities (for my L3 studies) and now I keep getting this annoying banner ad with Ken Fisher saying “I hate annualities and so should you… come here for more info blah blah”