Fabian History Repeats Itself
The Fabian philosophy has born many a great market call over the years. To give you a little sense of how good these calls have been, I’d like to share with you a short list of what my family calls — great moments in Fabian history.
July 1981: The Fabian Plan issues a bear-market sell signal. The sell followed subscriber profits of 40% during the preceding 14-month buy cycle. The bear market that followed registered a drop of 27% in the Dow Industrials. This plunge was the first bear market that Fabian subscribers would avoid. At that time, money funds were paying a whopping 18% annually — accompanied by a nationwide inflation rate of 20%.
September 1982: The Fabian Plan issues a new bull market buy call that generated returns of 45% in the next 15 months.
June 1985: A buy signal is issued for the newly created International Plan. This buy signal lasted more than two years and produced gains in excess of 140% in international funds. At that time, the U.S. dollar was in a major bear market that provided a strong tailwind to international investments. This uptrend in international markets ended with the 1987 stock market crash.
October 1987: A sell signal on Oct. 15 warned subscribers to move into the safety of the money funds. Four days later, the market experienced its biggest, single-day decline ever. Fabian followers walked away with gains of 23% in calendar year 1987.
August 1990: The Fabian Plan issues a new sell signal, as Kuwait was invaded by neighboring Iraq. This geopolitical event instigated a global stock market bear that would end only after an American-led coalition of 80 countries booted Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. We were only out of the market for three months before issuing a new buy signal that led to a 34% gain during the next 18 months.
January 1995: After a year in which the Federal Reserve raised interest rates four times and when most economists were predicting a recession, the Fabian Plan identified a new uptrend that kicked off a bull market run in the late 1990s. During the next five years, the Fabian Plan produced annual gains of more than 20%, led by the technology stock boom and the proliferation of more than 10,000 mutual funds.
April 2000: The Fabian Plan issues a new sell signal for stocks as the NASDAQ market began to fall. A decline of more then 70% ensued during the next three years.
January 4, 2008: The Fabian Plan issues a new sell signal for stocks well before the bear market selling of 2008 intensified. This call put subscribers into the safety and security of the money market. While most investors tossed and turned at night, subscribers to this service slept like babies.
August 2, 2011: The Fabian Plan issues a new sell signal for stocks. On that day, the S&P 500 index traded at 1,260. Six trading days later, the S&P had fallen nearly 10%.
The big takeaway is that the Fabian Plan isn’t some here-today, gone-tomorrow gimmick. The Fabian Plan has worked for longer than many stock brokers out there have been alive. And, with a strong adherence to tradition and a constant attempt to learn from the past, we are going to continue making great calls for another three decades.
Jim Woods is a 30-plus-year veteran of the markets with varied experience as a broker, hedge fund trader, financial writer, author and newsletter editor.
His books include co-authoring, “Billion Dollar Green: Profit from the Eco Revolution,” and “The Wealth Shield: How to Invest and Protect Your Money from Another Stock Market Crash, Financial Crisis or Global Economic Collapse.” He’s also ghostwritten many books and articles, as well as edited content for some of the investment industry’s biggest luminaries. Read more about Jim Woods.
