While grocery shopping, I noticed the cover of this week’s Barron’s magazine. The cover article, “The Long View,” asks, “Is this bull run for real? Yes, say portfolio managers in our Big Money Poll. They expect the Dow to be up 7% by year end and 17% by the middle of next year.”

Yeah. Because these guys have been so good at calling stocks up until now. Last I checked, almost nobody predicted the total collapse of the American economy, and the people who did predict it got laughed off of their pundit-chair. Check out this video.

Please note that every. single. thing. that Peter Schiff says in this video came true, and other analysts were literally laughing at him. Now I’m supposed to believe they can call the Dow down to a percentage point?

Oh, and can you say “conflict of interest”? Lemme see. Portfolio managers say they expect the Dow to go up. And how do portfolio managers make money? Gosh, they make money when you invest with them. But you won’t invest with them if you think the Dow is going to go down. Gee, what possible reason could they have for saying the Dow is going up?

Seriously. Why does anybody listen to these people at all?

For more examples of bad advice, see Why the Real Estate Boom Won’t Bust and other funny books still for sale on Amazon at Boing Boing, Joshua Levi’s “Still For Sale” collection at joshualevi.com, and “Expert” But Bad Financial Advice Turns Off Decision-Making in the Brain at Discover Magazine.

Edit: Now here’s an example of a financial adviser I’d listen to. Results speak for themselves.