The Wall Street Journal recently caught up with former market timer Jeff Merriman-Cohen, who offers a softer stance on his once-core strategy.

Merriman-Cohen's Seattle investment advisory firm, Merriman Inc., was reportedly a market-timing money-management firm and newsletter publisher when launched by his father, Paul Merriman, in 1983.

For nearly two decades, the father and son team defended the strategy against criticism that it could not be done successfully. He now is increasingly convinced by academic research that basically says in the long run, most investors are best off in stock funds that trade less by buying the broad market and that charge low expense ratios.

"We learned, and we grew," Merriman-Cohen, told the pub. ""I disagree with the advisers that think they have magical systems that can reliably beat the markets. The more complicated [the systems] are, the less likely they are to be effective." 

Edited by: Hung Tran


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