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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alex who wrote (43000)	10/15/1999 12:46:00 AM
From: The Barracuda™	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116764

Jim Grants comments on gold Uncertain value " 'Markets love certainty,' Jim Grant explained to the attendees of the first-ever Grants International Conference. "They abhor uncertainty. If you give markets certainty, they will gorge on it. Certainty elicits excess, which then challenges every contrary-minded person and causes them to be early and unhappy.' Though Grant was speaking in parables, the audience was given to understand that gold's lengthy bear market was one particularly notable excess born of certainty. Gold was sold to excess thanks to the seeming certainty that central banks stood at the ready, like volunteer firemen, to extinguish any spark from the metal that could become an incendiary financial market force. The banks' continuous physical sales and unremitting gold leasing produced the universal expectation that gold could never mount a substantial rally-a certainty with which speculators fell in love. A cottage industry emerged to facilitate forward sales, then short sales, then short sales of derivatives, then structured naked option straddles on derivatives etc. The oldest form of money became the newest form of risk-free speculation...until it wasn't. On September 26, when the European central banks pledged to restrict sales and curtail leasing, gold became money again. Even the shorts were forced to believe it. Certainty has been removed. Contrarian investors are less unhappy. "

To: Alex who wrote (43000)	10/15/1999 1:22:00 AM
From: Ahda	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116764

Hi Alex Richard is probably upset about the price of gold today. I am very uncomfortable about AG speech more so, when he refers to knowledgeable investors because there are many people who are not knowledgeable. The ones that are truly aware see a cap on price and a base that should form at some point where revenues do not take the form of spinning of a division or two, rather create profit. Stock price is no longer a pe base but a cash flow base and Mr. Greenspan has a problem and he knows it. So many things are happening now with tech that at somepoint someone is going to say it is costing me to much to compete. Our base is no longer a base this isn't a railway we are building but the net, exploration of space that is filled with constant problems, rapid movement and obsolete all in one minute . You can't have cost control in this field you have to have constant credit cash flow. Too many people don't really realize that increased cost of debt decreases the future profit and too much easy debt creates an attitude of okay it is tech it is going to make it. Well many tech entities won't. Had a huge discussion with friend who philosophy is it went down it has to come back up I said why? He said well look the company it had revenues of x dollars true it had but its product is not so unique anymore and it doesn't now it is struggling to make a profit. Greenspan know this tech era of ours is transitory what is worth 100 dollars today could be zilch worth tomorrow. He is faced with if I raise the rates I could create havoc on tech America who is changing by the minute and needs cash flow. If I don't I could have inflation whoosh to the sky . What you can do now is limited in my mind. Hindsight says to me, you should of controlled the dollar then . Foresight says to me that this mania has taken from us a conservative financial thought process which means debt that has a high probability of financial long term return.