Dark “Star”

Can’t say surprising, but it is upsetting. Here’s an article on Lenny Dykstra and his stock picks. Manipulation goes on all the time, but it’s still discouraging to see the extent of it. – Ilene

Dark "Star"

Courtesy of Adam Warner, Daily Options Report

"Now, there are probably four or five people in the world who, if they sent me an e-mail, told me to learn a stock, I would actually take them seriously… [Lenny]’s one of the great ones in this business. He’s one of the great ones."

Jim Cramer

Hold onto your chairs, we have some shocking Lenny news here, via Forbes. Seems (sigh) that Lenny may not actually be the brains behind his own picks.

Another reason Doubledown might have gotten cold feet about publishing Dykstra’s investment gems is buried on page 15 of its countersuit. There, Doubledown claims, "At Dykstra’s insistence, Doubledown began negotiations to pay Richard Suttmeier, a stock analyst, to provide Dykstra with research assistance for the Dykstra Report and who, upon information and belief learned subsequently, provided Dykstra lists of recommended stocks daily."

Who is Richard Suttmeier? A market strategist for financial Web site RightSide Advisors and formerly a contributor to RealMoney.com, a subscription Web site owned by TheStreet.com.

Suttmeier, 64, says he got his Wall Street start trading Treasurys in the 1970s. He later bounced around second-tier investment banks and landed at RightSide in 2006.

Suttmeier says that after he did a television appearance several years ago he received a call from Dykstra. "He wanted to learn how to read a [stock] chart," Suttmeier says. "I taught him."

The two men have kept in touch ever since. Suttmeier says Dykstra calls from time to time asking where to add to positions. Suttmeier also e-mails Dykstra a spreadsheet of stocks each morning but denies that he picks stocks for the former ballplayer.

"I am not his brain," Suttmeier says. "Dykstra makes his own trading decisions."

Dykstra, who speaks in a slow drawl and now sports a hefty paunch, likewise denies that Suttmeier is picking his stocks. "It’s a bald-faced lie. Not even close," he says during a brief interview.

Not even close? FORBES compared Dykstra’s buy recommendations as they appeared on TheStreet.com from Apr. 1 through May 1 with those in Suttmeier’s weekly Sector Report during the same month and before. Among Dykstra’s 17 buys, 11 had appeared days earlier in Suttmeier’s newsletter.

Yes, very shocking. I referenced it here and here last year.

Here’s the really great part. You can subscribe to Suttmeier’s Sector Report for $300 per year, or pay Lenny $995 per year to convert those picks into DEEEEEEEEEEP form two days later.

How bad was the cribbing? Forbes finds some examples.

On Apr. 1 Suttmeier distributed a "model portfolio" featuring GPS gadgetmaker Garmin (GRMN). Two days later "Dykstra’s Deep-in-the-Money" column on TheStreet.com recommended Garmin calls.

Suttmeier put out an updated model portfolio Apr. 5. It listed 20 stocks, including Boeing (BA) and Nvidia (NVDA ). On Apr. 8 Dykstra recommended Boeing and on Apr. 10 Nvidia.

On Apr. 14 Suttmeier released his third updated model portfolio of the month, with 23 positions, including General Electric (GE) and Sigma Designs (SIGM). The next day Dykstra told readers that GE was a "team worth backing." On Apr. 16 he said he was looking for good beaten-down companies and that "I have found one in Sigma Designs." Dykstra did not respond to requests for comment on his April picks.

Look, we kid about Lenny over and over again. But we’ve had some serious analysis of his nonsense. And it best it was misrepresented, hyperleveraged garbage where the only "value" anyone found was that if you actually held onto the hardly obscure names he liked for 4-6 month’s. Not 1 hour and doubling and redoubling the bad ones, and then not including any under water position in his "scorecard". And it was well known Suttmeier was his source of these names, I mean c’mon, did anyone really think Lenny’s sitting there poring over charts looking for hidden nuggets?. So I’m sure Lenny will stop just copying it that blatantly, and may generate additional sources now with which to crib although just using a simple database search could probably yield dozens of Famous Names With Lousy Charts for him to try to scalp $1 "wins" would suffice.

So congrats to TheStreet for hitching up to the Lenny wagon, and good luck.