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To: PaulM who wrote (46373)	12/29/1999 9:15:00 AM
From: lorne	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 116984

ECB gold assets fall after sale, foreign exchange up slightly Frankfurt--Dec 28--Total gold assets were down 91 million euros on the week at 114.745 billion euros on Dec 24, the ECB said Tuesday. The decline of 91 million euros corresponded to a sale of 10 tonnes by a euro-system central bank, the ECB said. Foreign currency assets registered by the European Central Bank System stood at 236.9 billion euros on Dec 24, up 100 million on the week, the ECB said in its weekly financial statement. (Story .782) Gold bars sold in China for the first time in 50 years Shanghai--Dec 29--Gold bars are being sold in China's eastern port city of Shanghai for the first time in 50 years, the official Xinhua News Agency reported late Tuesday. Under the authorization of the People's Bank of China, the central bank, China Gold Coin Parent Co., a state-owned precious metals firm, issued the gold bars as a millennium commemoration. (Story .10893) crbindex.com

To: PaulM who wrote (46373)	12/29/1999 10:07:00 AM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 116984

<<Is topping off your gas tank somehow supposed to be an extreme measure? >> Like I said the other day, I just love it how these guys are smarter than the entire engineering staff of Ford Motor, who say in my owners manual to keep the tank "as near full as possible during cold or wet weather". The book says it is to help reduce emissions, improve performance, & reduce water condensation.

To: PaulM who wrote (46373)	12/30/1999 11:06:00 AM
From: Alex	Respond to of 116984

There is bull in the market ... piles of it By BRIAN HALE NEW YORK Friday 31 December 1999 Like most manic phases, 1999 was a year marked by confusion or denial and as the year ends many Americans are convinced it was a wonderful year even though it was woeful. For the bond market, it was the worst year since 1994, with Treasury bonds showing a net return of minus 1.82 per cent and corporate debt faring little better as the Federal Reserve began increasing interest rates, and yields rose as the prices of fixed-interest instruments fell. It was even more dismal for most of the sharemarket as the bear market that took hold in the first half of 1998 worsened again after the evaporation of most of the brief flight-to-quality-induced partial recovery following 1998's Russian/Long-Term Capital crisis. The new century is starting with two-thirds of all stocks listed on the New York and Nasdaq stock exchanges down by more than 20per cent from their 52-week highs and almost half down by 30 per cent or more. The stocks of more than three-quarters of the 500 companies that make up the SP 500 Index have declined by 10 per cent or more from their highs; well over half of them have dropped 20 per cent and more than a third have lost 30 per cent of their peak value. This picture is not as bad as in October 1998 when average declines were deeper than in the 1987 sharemarket crash but most American investors (and many overseas) were as oblivious to the real state of the markets then as they have been all year and are now. The underlying reason is simple, an incredibly narrow focus on the level of the most-watched equity indices - the Nasdaq Composite, the SP 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average. All have soared as most stocks in the market have faded because the methods used for compiling the indices enable them to be powered by a relatively small number of stocks. Unfortunately, the daily celebration of the latest record highs on the indices has not just elevated investment to the top of the pops (the financial news channel CNBC easily pipped CNN in the fourth-quarter TV ratings) but has given speculation a free hand and helped to inflate a huge bubble in Wall Street sharemarkets. In short, it has been a bumper year for day-trading, technology/Internet shares, public listings, the indices and Wall Street bonuses but an even bigger boom year for staying in denial and helping to sustain the myth that the long-dead bull market is still here. As the indices scaled fresh heights in the run-up to Christmas, for example, the myth-makers preferred not to notice that both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq advance/declines lines were far below their levels in January and that more than 1100 stocks on the NYSE alone were setting new lows for the year. This focus on the surface rather than the substance has helped to fuel more surface movement. Sustained by an endless stream of advertisements for equity funds, online-trading companies, traditional broking firms or investment banks, financial Internet sites or image-building technology companies, the euphoric media blitz in 1999 helped to sustain another surge in online broking. The Yankelovich Partners consulting firm estimates the number of "investors" trading online doubled during the year to nearly two in 10, with the total estimated number of online brokerage accounts reaching 3.1million. From a business perspective, this can be seen as a revolution that has sparked the rise of new technology networks invading the long-guarded territory of both the stock exchanges and the companies around them as well as revolutionising trading hours, which seem headed for 24 hours a day. From an investment perspective, the sweep of history has been far more narrow. Most people trading online are not investing in any sense: they are trading the technology, Internet and telecommunications bubble stocks like punters backing horses. A lot have not reached the trading levels of day-traders but many seem to be making that migration despite warnings from the Securities and Exchange Commission that nearly all will lose their shirts. One reason is that the keys to investment were thrown away in 1999 even by the professionals. Values, ratios, balance sheets, price/earnings ratios were dumped in favor of momentum - buy what is going up/sell what is going down. That, in turn, worsened the impact of the small number of strongly rising share prices on the indices and encouraged a spiral of further momentum investing in what has proved a dwindling pool of stocks. Every upward move forced reweighting by indexed equity funds and the impact was magnified by the concentration of non-indexed funds on momentum stocks. The chief economist of Deutsche Bank, Ed Yardeni, says in recent meetings with fund managers he found a remarkable consensus that the US market is experiencing a classic speculative bubble. But, he says, they are ending the year "buying more of the tech stocks that they believe are grossly overvalued (because) they think they have no choice and they've been forced to trash their valuation disciplines and play the momentum game". Estimates of the number of US equity funds that will have returned 100 per cent in 1999 range as high as 190 - an incredible result but a sign of the concentration on a small pool of stocks. The bubble-boosted indices are ending the year with the Nasdaq Composite up 83 per cent, the SP 500 19 per cent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average more than 25 per cent. But strip out the bubble stocks and the result is vastly different from the top to the bottom of the market. With technology stocks removed, the SP 500 was flat for the year, while the Russell 2000 (which tracks the smallest 2000 companies in the market) falls into minus territory rather than its bubble-boosted 16 per cent gain. The best overall measure of the market, without stripping anything out, say the purists, is the Value-Line Index. As the three most-watched indices ended the century at yet higher record highs, the Value-Line was down by more than 3 per cent for the year. While most companies' share prices have fallen despite solid track records, sound balance sheets, good records for earnings and growth in earnings, the newcomers, who generally lack anything apart from annual losses larger than annual revenue, have boomed because they are in the bubble sectors. All this leads many experts to predict that the bubble will burst in 2000 but the question is whether anyone will want to know when it happens. theage.com.au