Wanted: A stock market guru

I’d like to help propel some willing guru-in-waiting into the limelight, so if you have nominations for Guru 2008 (think “American Idol”), tell me who and why.

What the stock market needs right now — more than confidence in the banking system, more than assurance that we’re not headed toward a depression and more than lowered interest rates — is a good, old-fashioned market-timing guru.
We need someone with the Answer, an expert who predicted the bust, climbed the mountain and returned with the Truth — someone who knows exactly where the market is going and when it’s going to get there.
Where, oh, where is today’s Elaine Garzarelli or Joseph Granville? They timed previous plunges and became the go-to gurus for months.
Except for one observer, whom I’ll get to in a minute, no one stands out as having been right about the timing and depth of the current mess.
Erudite, nuanced James Grant has been telling the world for years that the debt-crazed financial system was careening out of control. But he never did tell us exactly when the house of cards would collapse, and now that it has, he’s too intellectual and not sufficiently bombastic to serve as our mass market predictor of the Dow or the S&P 500.
Jim Cramer, on the other hand, is over the top.
His non-stop rants, his ubiquitous presence on television and his recent ill-timed warning to get out of stocks altogether are unbecoming of a true market-timing guru.
Forget the wirehouses. There’s no one around anymore like veteran Morgan Stanley strategist Byron Wien, who now strategizes for an institutional money manager.
In January, by the way, he predicted a recession — as well as an Obama victory. We’ll see about that in a few weeks, but even as a guru emeritus, old Byron still has that prognosticator mojo.
The closest we have to a star in this market maelstrom is Dr. Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist and consultant.
He has been right on the money about predicting the failures of banks, the collapse of credit and the slowing economy.
Mr. Roubini’s Turkish-Israeli-Italian accent gives him an air of sophistication that is icing on the guru gâteau. All that’s missing are specific market calls, which he’s unlikely to provide since he’s more concerned with international finance than with particular stocks.
For now, that leaves us guru-less when we need one the most.
I’d like to help propel some willing guru-in-waiting into the limelight, so if you have nominations for Guru 2008 (think “American Idol”), use the comment feature below to tell me who and why.
Don’t worry, I’m no Simon Cowell, so the judging won’t get nasty.
Soon, I’ll let you know who the next American Stock Market Guru will be.