Most short-sellers and hedge fund managers prefer to stay anonymous, but Bill Fleckenstein has never been one to run with the crowd.

If he has an opinion about the market or economy, his readers will hear about it. For the past seven years Fleckenstein has produced an online column for TheStreet.com, and these days he also writes the aptly-named "Contrarian Chronicles" on MSN.com. He sees Alan Greenspan as leader of the most incompetent Federal Reserve in history, views banks as "sheep" that invest in one problem area after another, derides popular financial TV as "bubblevision" and describes people who buy on every market decline as mindless "dipsters."

Oh, he also manages money. Fleckenstein Capital started in 1982, and since then its founder has been bullish and bearish on almost every type of investment at one time or another. He set up a short-only fund in 1996 because he thought the market was turning into a "speculative performance derby" that would turn out very badly, though he was off by a few years. Fleckenstein says he plans to return to the long side of investing when it's safe to be bullish.

In some ways, he still maintains that hedge fund reticence. Even though Fleckenstein has been writing for the Internet since 1996, Fleckenstein Capital didn't have a Web site until this year and it remains devoid of anything that would even hint at the company's specific positions; it exists mainly to publish answers to reader questions.

Fleckenstein received a degree in mathematics from the University of Washington. He worked for the Kidder, Peabody and Co. investment bank from 1979 to 1982, when he began Fleckenstein Capital. He merged his company with Olympic Capital Management in 1990 and re-established the firm under his own name in 1996.

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Dobell covers education services, publishing companies for CS First Boston. He currently follows 15 companies, including Scholastic, publisher of the Harry Potter books -- the topic of our June 13 program.

Not that he's all that enthusiastic about his sector at the moment. According to First Call, he has the equivalent of "hold" or "sell" recommendations on 12 stocks. The only stocks he currently rates as "buy" are CCC Information Services Group, which publishes software for auto insurance claims; eCollege.com, maker of products for online learning; and West Corp., which makes call center systems.

As for Scholastic, he has had a "neutral" rating and $29 target price on the stock since February.

"The stock could benefit from the June release of Harry Potter 5, but we advise investors to wait for progress on cash flow and returns before paying more than the high $20s for Scholastic shares," Dobell wrote in April. "Scholastic is a stock we like for a number of qualitative reasons(brand, market share, franchise, etc.) but we're less enthusiastic when it comes to the quantitative side of the story. ... We struggle to understand why the company spends so much yet incremental profitability remains relatively low from year to year."

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Massik has extensive book publishing and Internet experience. He spends much of his time on electronic distribution, Internet software, and e-commerce. His consulting credentials include previous experience as a management consultant with Ernst & Young. He was the Vice President for Product and Content at Topica, an email list hosting service provider and content portal. As director of product Marketing for Travelocity.com, Massik was responsible for all website and e-mail content for the company's destination guides.

He received a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a master's from Stanford University.

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Some people call her Queen Elaine, but she might be better described as a prophet rather than a monarch. Her record of market timing has been impressive:

• Called the bear market bottom in 1982 on the same day as the renowned economist Henry Kaufman.
• Called the top and bottom of the bear market within weeks in 1984.
• Predicted with market crash of 1987, correctly turned bullish in February 1988.
• Predicted the bear market of 1990.
• Called the short bear market of 1998.
• Warned of an increasingly overvalued S&P 500 in late 1999 and early 2000.
• Correctly called a pair of bear market rallies in 2001.

Institutional Investor named Garzarelli to its All-America Research first team 11 times for quantitative research.

Garzarelli predicts the direction of the stock market using a benchmark of 14 indicators. Her favorite sector right now is materials and industrials, and her favorite stocks include General Electric, Intel and Alcoa. She also favors housing-related stocks such as Maytag and Leggett and Platt. Garzarelli believes Chevron and McDonald's could be good investments for those who want to take advantage of the falling dollar. She sees a pair of cigarette makers, Altria and RJ Reynolds Tobacco, as sources of dividend income.

What to avoid? Garzarelli is telling her clients to say out of consumer non-cyclicals that aren't economically sensitive, like cosmetics, drugs, food, and household products.

Garzarelli has degrees in economics and statistics at New York University. She holds a doctorate from Drexel University.

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