Barron's takes a swipe at the Tres Amoebas: "Calling All Addicts By Alan Abelson" (you guys have been royaly scooped, you should get out in the real world once in a while)
Or If you took the Three Amigos brains and put them in a sombrero, it would look like a peyote button floating in the Rio Grande
Or Hurry up with that oil change, wouldja?
Abridged version:
"The frothing passion for equities sweeping the nation was neatly captured in a
couple of Wall Street Journal pieces last week. One featured three amigos
who, whenever they could steal a moment from their chat rooms and day
trading, repaired cars (they logged onto the Internet with a PC dragooned into
the grease pits for that very purpose). After a fatal initial success, they were
relieved of a good chunk of their play dough, including a sum set aside by one
of the trio to pay for his coming marriage, honeymoon and dream house. The
romantic spirit may still exist in the Age of .com, but it doesn't necessarily
flourish.
The other, putatively happier, story starred one Big Dog, as he likes to be
called by his fellow punters on the Web. Big Dog is 6-feet-5-inches and
weighs 370 pounds but, according to an habitue of the chat rooms, who is
evidently an anatomist by training: "If you placed his (Big Dog's) brain on the
edge of a razor blade ... it would look like a Tic Tac on a four-lane highway."
Despite -- or possibly because of --
this cerebral minimalism, Big Dog has
attained riches running into the millions,
at least on paper, by virtue of his
holdings of a little dog that's traded on
the Bulletin Board. The Bulletin Board
is where stocks go if they fail to qualify
for the Nasdaq (if you can imagine such
a thing).
Our own small contribution to this
rapidly building lode of lore is a barber
who has taken to buying and selling stocks by cell phone while in the very act
of practicing the tonsorial trade. Shave? Um, no, thanks.
For spectators like ourselves, it's all great fun and games. We know how it'll
end: with the Three Amigos under the car, Big Dog back hawking vinyl
coatings and the barber getting the haircut. But when?"
The whole enclilada:
"Their passing was barely noticed. No eulogies spoken, no tears shed, not so much as a murmur of regret uttered.
Yet for the better part of this century, they were an integral part of America's
landscape, familiar to denizens of sparsely settled rural expanses and urban
dwellers alike. Last week, all across the country, where once they proudly
stood and peddled their wares, suddenly there was a void.
The subject of these somewhat wistful lamentations is, of course, the cigarette
billboard, the habitat of such beloved beings as the Marlboro Man and Joe
Camel. As part of the devil's bargain cut by the tobacco moguls and the
attorneys general of 46 of our sovereign states, it has been banished from this
blessed land forever.
Besides depriving the populace of the comforting presence of a manly friend
like the Marlboro Man and the kiddies of that irresistibly cute Joe Camel
(always so willing to share a giggle and a smoke with them), the end of
outdoor cigarette advertising is obviously bad news for the billboard
operators, who are seeing a wad of revenues suddenly go up in a puff.
But not to despair: We think we've hit on a way for them to recoup their
grave loss.
If they're no longer permitted to appeal to people with a three-pack-a-day
habit, how about shifting their efforts to another and much faster-growing
bunch of addicts-stock buyers? Not only is the stock-buyer market
exploding, but thanks to options lust and an ever-more-cuddly relationship
with Wall Street, Corporate America is champing at the bit for a new way to
tout its stocks.
For starters, the billboard proprietors might tap into that thoroughly hooked
subspecies of stock buyer -- the storied Internet day traders. Manic types
who'd go absolutely wild over, say, Amazon Man. A suitably androgynous
figure (to glide over the gender confusion; amazons usually aren't men), sitting
tall astride a mount of books and CDs, nonchalantly counting a huge stack of
million-dollar bills.
Wow! Despite its tasteful subtlety, the message, we haven't a scintilla of
doubt, would be a knockout. And Amazon's stock would go to -- we're
starting an office pool, so pick a number, something, we suggest, with four
digits.
Or, by way of another example of potential billboard power, just display Joe
Yahoo's puss -- but be sure to do justice to that heroic nose, decked out with
flaring nostrils and flanked by vast jowls -- along the country's myriad
highways and byways and yahoo! the stock's a 10-bagger from here.
Guaranteed.
The frothing passion for equities sweeping the nation was neatly captured in a
couple of Wall Street Journal pieces last week. One featured three amigos
who, whenever they could steal a moment from their chat rooms and day
trading, repaired cars (they logged onto the Internet with a PC dragooned into
the grease pits for that very purpose). After a fatal initial success, they were
relieved of a good chunk of their play dough, including a sum set aside by one
of the trio to pay for his coming marriage, honeymoon and dream house. The
romantic spirit may still exist in the Age of .com, but it doesn't necessarily
flourish.
The other, putatively happier, story starred one Big Dog, as he likes to be
called by his fellow punters on the Web. Big Dog is 6-feet-5-inches and
weighs 370 pounds but, according to an habitue of the chat rooms, who is
evidently an anatomist by training: "If you placed his (Big Dog's) brain on the
edge of a razor blade ... it would look like a Tic Tac on a four-lane highway."
Despite -- or possibly because of --
this cerebral minimalism, Big Dog has
attained riches running into the millions,
at least on paper, by virtue of his
holdings of a little dog that's traded on
the Bulletin Board. The Bulletin Board
is where stocks go if they fail to qualify
for the Nasdaq (if you can imagine such
a thing).
Our own small contribution to this
rapidly building lode of lore is a barber
who has taken to buying and selling stocks by cell phone while in the very act
of practicing the tonsorial trade. Shave? Um, no, thanks.
For spectators like ourselves, it's all great fun and games. We know how it'll
end: with the Three Amigos under the car, Big Dog back hawking vinyl
coatings and the barber getting the haircut. But when?
What makes the question all the more tantalizing is the market's odd
behavior these past few weeks. Odd in the sense of unusual. For while the
mania investors have come to know and love remains in full rage, the market
has been exhibiting what looks suspiciously like signs of sanity.
One man's sanity, to be sure, is another man's short sale. But we take the
rather sudden broadening out of investor interest to include scores and whole
sectors of stocks that have long languished simply because they're out of the
loop or not on the Web as a hopeful indication that a remnant of reason has
somehow survived on Wall Street.
Welcome as it is to troglodytes like us, the return of the living dead --
commonly known as cyclicals, whose ranks are swollen with small-caps and
other untouchables -- has also, frankly, been a source of bemusement. Just
about the last thing in the world we expected was for the mass of stocks to
come alive without the overpriced, overhyped, overowned favorite few
getting their comeuppance (or, more accurately, their comedownance).
No particular comfort, but we're not the only ones thus confounded. Any
number of Street seers also anticipated that the split in the market would be
resolved by the leaders retreating rather than, as has happened, the laggards
bounding ahead. When we queried a sampling of them last week, they cleared
their throats and then solemnly proceeded to explain the quixotic action by
either unclearing their throats or steering the conversation to Kosovo (which
more than one conflated with Kokomo).
Last week, we relayed the cynical view -- which our extended trudge through
this vale of tears compels us to equate with the correct view -- of the revival
of the cyclicals and small-caps. Namely, that it sets the stage for the final act
of this most magnificent bull market. That everyone who has failed to take the
plunge, conspicuously including the hordes of value players who have been
huddling fearfully on the sidelines these past three years, will be sucked in.
After which, of course, the world ends.
Scary prophecies are inherently attractive and this year more than ever, with
the millennium looming. But we don't think it's quite the time to head for the
storm shelter. The cyclicals have been in hibernation an awfully long time and
they don't look as if they're eager to roll over just yet.
One thing for sure: They've popped with a vengeance. Caterpillar, for
example, as Merrill Lynch's chief investment strategist, Charles Clough,
observes, wiped out two years' worth of decline in a single week. And while
by no means universal, that sort of move hasn't been a rarity, either.
What makes the question all the more tantalizing is the market's odd
behavior these past few weeks. Odd in the sense of unusual. For while the
mania investors have come to know and love remains in full rage, the market
has been exhibiting what looks suspiciously like signs of sanity.
One man's sanity, to be sure, is another man's short sale. But we take the
rather sudden broadening out of investor interest to include scores and whole
sectors of stocks that have long languished simply because they're out of the
loop or not on the Web as a hopeful indication that a remnant of reason has
somehow survived on Wall Street.
Welcome as it is to troglodytes like us, the return of the living dead --
commonly known as cyclicals, whose ranks are swollen with small-caps and
other untouchables -- has also, frankly, been a source of bemusement. Just
about the last thing in the world we expected was for the mass of stocks to
come alive without the overpriced, overhyped, overowned favorite few
getting their comeuppance (or, more accurately, their comedownance).
No particular comfort, but we're not the only ones thus confounded. Any
number of Street seers also anticipated that the split in the market would be
resolved by the leaders retreating rather than, as has happened, the laggards
bounding ahead. When we queried a sampling of them last week, they cleared
their throats and then solemnly proceeded to explain the quixotic action by
either unclearing their throats or steering the conversation to Kosovo (which
more than one conflated with Kokomo).
Last week, we relayed the cynical view -- which our extended trudge through
this vale of tears compels us to equate with the correct view -- of the revival
of the cyclicals and small-caps. Namely, that it sets the stage for the final act
of this most magnificent bull market. That everyone who has failed to take the
plunge, conspicuously including the hordes of value players who have been
huddling fearfully on the sidelines these past three years, will be sucked in.
After which, of course, the world ends.
Scary prophecies are inherently attractive and this year more than ever, with
the millennium looming. But we don't think it's quite the time to head for the
storm shelter. The cyclicals have been in hibernation an awfully long time and
they don't look as if they're eager to roll over just yet.
One thing for sure: They've popped with a vengeance. Caterpillar, for
example, as Merrill Lynch's chief investment strategist, Charles Clough,
observes, wiped out two years' worth of decline in a single week. And while
by no means universal, that sort of move hasn't been a rarity, either.
Perhaps, however, the most telling piece of bearish evidence adduced by Mr.
Clough resides in the accompanying chart, lifted from his commentary. What it
depicts, he explains, is a dramatic reversal by the Fed "of last autumn's
liquidity flow," the liquidity flow, we would interject, that made the world safe
for Internet traders.
As you can readily see at a glance, growth in M3, an encompassing measure
of money supply and, in his words, "a proxy for banking-system liabilities,"
enjoyed an explosive rise between the summer and fall of last year. More
specifically, from a 4% annual rate, the expansion of M3 zoomed to an 18%
annual rate.
As you can also see with another glance, growth of M3 has been in a steep
decline since the fall, a decline that shows no sign of letting up. This means
that such growth will soon hit the low single digits.
Sums up Mr. Clough: "The long uptrend in M3, which began in 1994 and has
supported both the economy and stocks since then, has been broken."
Maybe someone should speak to Mr. Greenspan. Soon.
interactive.wsj.com
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