Marc Gerstein

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters: Objective vs. Subjective Trend Perceptions

I notice from your disclosure that you're long GMCR. I am too.

I wonder, though, if this is such a good case study for the price-study protocol you're in the process of presenting. This is a fairly straightforward company and the qualitative reasons for the price movements are quite easy to identify. And although we don't know what will happen going forward, it's very easy to articulate a couple of fundamental questions that will make or break the stock in the coming months.

This isn't so much an issue about GMCR as it is a philosophical consideration: when to use technicals and when to use fundamentals (and when we need them both). I would suggest that the need for any sort of technical analysis, trend analysis, etc. is inversely related to the clarity of the qualitative price drivers.

Just wondering . . .