To All, Barron's review. In general, an average issue. 1. Once again, the letters are the best part and I am not even in this issue <G>. Wayne Crimi writes a great note to lead off, slam dunking the silliness from Tom Galvin in last week's The Trader column. He nails the permabulls very well with his common sense arguments. Then, Larry Dixon ends the letter section with a remembrance of a cartoon from the 1960s that lampoons conservatives and their lack of compassion. It shows Barry Goldwater telling those who lived in slums: "If you had any ambition, you would inherit a department store." <G> One can almost use the same cartoon for Stevie Forbes, except Steve is nowhere like the conservative force Goldwater was.
2. Stephen Leeb has a confusing argument in the Market Watch section. He mentions that higher bond rates are a sign that Japan is coming back. So far, I agree. But then he says, "A stronger Asia goes hand in glove with a vigourous US economy." Uh, since when, Stevie? When Japan was strong in the 1970s and 1980s, they were taking global market share from the US. Bigtime. When Japan fell apart, the US took global market share from Japan in the 1990s. Yes, both the American economy and the Japanese economy were strong in the 1950s, but, at that time, they weren't really competitive. Dumb argument.
3. The Roundtable installment was boring this week. The only interesting comments were those by an inappropriately testy Art Samberg. He snapped at Kate Welling and fellow roundheads a couple of times for no reason, or, at least for no reason that could be found in the text. Art had the best performance of the group last year, buying garbage at the top and watching it go higher. He is trying the same thing this year. He loves Dell, which is "7 1/2% of a market that will grow at 16% next year." Two problems with that argument. First, Dell is selling at 75 times eps, so you need something besides those industry growth rates to make it a good deal. Secondly, the industry isn't going to grow 16% this year. Just as it didn't last year. He is a believer in the Y2K "everyone has to buy new boxes" scam. Wrong. He is also a fan of Home Depot, as if it isn't overpriced enough now. This guy seems to like whatever went up yesterday and buys into every sucker story out there. However, to his credit, he has a large number of shorts in his portfolio which he decides not to mention. Even the level headed Mario Gabelli was joining the herd on some of these overpriced POSs. However, Samberg made one good comment that out of the 100s of Internet stocks only 5 will be around in 10-15 years. And he buys index puts under his fluff portfolio. So, he is not a complete maroon. <G>
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