Was BlackRock's Permabull Bob Doll Fired For Stealing Financial Models? by Tyler Durden
Two weeks ago, when we remarked with great satisfaction that Wall Street's original pentagram of bull had now been cut to three, with the departure of BlackRock's hypermabull Bob Doll, we had one lingering question: why would a strategist, and not a trader, leave Wall Street in the "prime" of his CNBC prime-time years?
After all, it is not like Doll ever was right, or was judged by the quality of his predictions - if that was the case he would have been fired years ago.
Basically, there was a big question mark surrounding this departure.
Today, we may have gotten our answer: as Reuters reports, it appears Doll may have been dipping into the wrong model. Financial model that is.
From Reuters:
"In January, BlackRock Inc made a significant, but easy-to-miss change in the fund literature for three of its mutual funds... This year's fund literature said the investing model used "quantitative factor models generated by third-party research firms."
Typically such a change indicates a shift in a fund's methodology. But there was no shift in the investment process.... the new description came after the funds' board of directors learned that the investment models used for Doll's funds were never proprietary and had been based on other firm's models, according to two people familiar with the situation.
Doll was not the one who alerted the company about the issue, they said. The two people did not want to be identified because they were told about the situation in confidence"...
'The change was made just months before 57-year-old Doll, a regular on CNBC who is best known for his annual predictions and perennial bullish outlook, announced his retirement. Doll's last day is June 30."
While we respect Reuters attempt at political correctness, we are somewhat more blunt when we ask: was Bob Doll "told to quit" after it became clear, from other sources, that
he was incapable of even constructing the simplest financial model on his own and had to "borrow" others'?
In other words: not only did Doll never have an original idea, he couldn't even come up with his unoriginal ideas on his own.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/was-black ... ial-models
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"