“The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”—Sir Winston Churchill
About Us
Adrian Van Eck, one of the early giants of the financial newsletter business, learned all he could about investing and economic forecasting from some of the most gifted and insightful advisors of the last one hundred years. In 1972, Adrian found himself working on the campus of Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. The college was founded in 1919 by Roger Babson, the first and perhaps most famous publisher of investment advice in the country. After learning all he could from the investment newsletter publishers working on campus, Adrian decided the time had come to begin publishing his very own newsletter. Soon after, the Money Forecast Letter was born.
The letter quickly became a success, mostly because Adrian recognized that most investment advice came from people who fail to recognize the wisdom in the Churchill quote above. By studying the history of money, and the men who controlled it, Adrian was able to foresee with remarkable clarity coming events that took most others by surprise.
His ability to anticipate trends and events allowed him to inform his readers ahead of time about the inflationary crisis that would befall the U.S. in the late 1970s, and the end of that crisis once Paul Volker had been named as Fed Chairman in 1979. He correctly predicted that interest rates would drop in the 1980s while most others were still telling their readers that inflation would persist for years to come. He correctly predicted the start of the bull market during the first term of Ronald Reagan and warned his readers in August of 1987 that “a time out” was coming in the stock market after observing the sudden changes in monetary policy at the Fed.
It was Adrian’s desire to warn his readers of this coming “time out” in the stock market that prompted him to begin publishing the Investment Letter. He did not have to look far to find his replacement as editor. In 1982, Adrian hired a young Babson College student named David C. Jennett – who shared his passion for both history and investing – to help him with his research. When David graduated from Babson in 1984, Adrian gave him a full time job. By 1988, Adrian felt confident David was ready to become editor of the Investment Letter.
It did not take long for David to prove that Adrian had trained him well. His advice helped readers make a killing during the booming 1990s, before growing wary of the rising speculation in the market. David was one of just a handful of people in the investment newsletter community who saw the end of the Dot Com bubble coming; warning his readers to exit stocks in November 1999. Three years later, in 2002, he told them the time had come to get back into stocks, allowing them to ride the new bull market to record highs over the next few years. When the Financial Panic of 2008 produced a sudden drop in stock prices, David told readers who had experienced huge losses not to join the panic and sell after the damage was done. This advice proved valuable when, a few weeks later, the stock market embarked on the longest running bull market in history.
Upon Adrian’s retirement in 2010, David assumed the role of editor of the Money Forecast Letter. He continues to provide readers with unbiased and accurate forecasts that Adrian’s readers have come to expect.