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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (62237)	1/26/2001 6:28:22 PM
From: Mark Adams	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

note that the South African mines have ample room to expand production I thought BHP was a player in developing PGMS in Africa. But I think it was a mine closer to Madagascar. As for Tantalum, wouldn't the excess capacity in cellphones wipe that shortage out? Did Tantalum get substituted due to the high cost of PGMS? Steel was on my list of excess capacity, and with higher energy costs in the US, it probably makes sense to export more of it's production. I was hoping a lower dollar would provide welcome relief to the domestic producers, and actually own some. Of course, the durable goods slow down is going to clobber them far worse than the decline of the dollar would help, I suspect. I've heard mutterings about Nickel rising, related to stainless production, but didn't follow inco closely enough to determine if that was a production cost issue or demand. I here the oil refinery bandied about quite frequently. Yes there are no new refineries in the us. But there are in the caribean. I think the cost of environmental compliance has encourage production to move offshore- so unless we look at capital investment in refineries with a global perspective, we aren't getting an accurate picture.

To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (62237)	1/26/2001 6:51:56 PM
From: Mark Adams	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 436258

Ok- I have a tendency to act like a deer in the headlights when unexpected things happen. I understand creating scenarios of possible outcomes, and appropriate actions to take in advance allows one to respond quicker. Last fall, I created a matrix. I was concerned about the dual impact of higher interest rates and higher energy costs. It looked something like this: Fiscal Policy Tight Fiscal \| Loose Fiscal No tax change \| Tax relief Monetary Policy \| Cash \| Retailers, Consumer spendng imprvs Higher Recession \| tax cut offsets higher energy or No Change Lower Home Prices\| Hurts investments Deflationary \| ----------------------\|------------------------ Bonds \| Looser Banks/Finance \| Foreign Currency, Swiss/Euro? Lower rates Retailers \| Gold HomeBldrs \| Inflationary This assumed energy would stay near $30, and actually is somewhat in error in retrospect. But it served well during the past few months. These new scenarios are not well understood. I think we could ignore the first two, as they paint with too broad a brush. a) An inflationary recession/depression, where the declining value of the dollar increases costs for both corporate and personal consumption, and debtors load is alleviated by cheapening the currency. Savers loose, cash is trash. But real goods don't produce income and are likely to depreciate too. Real estate could produce income, but is also likely to decline in at least some markets, especially CA. b) A deflationary recession/depression, where the collapse of prior credit excesses wipes out capital, reduces demand, creating a vicious circle. Cash is king- it would seem regardless of clownbux or foreign. c) A mixed environ, with deflation and collapsing debt where excess capacity exists, inflation where malinvestment prevented appropriate capital investment. The Inflation in Energy provides a negative feedback by drawing consumption away from other areas, aggravating the deflation and debt issues. So, to play these scenarios, must identify where excess capacity exists. I'd like to propose stock brokers and financial intermediaries. Sectors exhibiting Inflation: Energy Base materials- ie CU,NI,AL Transcontinental shipping? (lower demand offsets capacity restraints?) Sectors with excess capacity Autos Food? (farm production in excess of needs?) Steel PC Mfg Semiconductor, esp DRAM CellPhones Bandwidth

To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (62237)	1/26/2001 6:53:16 PM
From: KeepItSimple	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

>(the EU has allocated 63% of its budget to ag subsidies for instance). No way. Really? Wow. What a fucked economy.

To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (62237)	1/26/2001 7:23:37 PM
From: ild	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

Heinz or anyone, is there any trading proxy for BKX? Desirably with options. Thanx, ild

To: pater tenebrarum who wrote (62237)	1/26/2001 9:21:08 PM
From: Fun-da-Mental#1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Heinz: "near zero investment in mining" - as an ex-prospector I can vouch for that! Up until last year I worked in mining geophysics. The company I was at was slowly losing people by attrition and not replacing them. By the time I left there were only half as many people as when I started at the company five years ago. There were about ten of us wandering around a big empty office. The only thing that kept us going was our competitors going out of business! It was like a bunch of survivors on a life raft waiting for somebody else to die so they can pick their bones. Somebody would say "did you hear so-and-so closed?" and then there would be a lot of excitement as we rushed over to their office to pick up furniture and computers for pennies a pound. There would be one guy left saying sure, take it all, less stuff for me to carry. A few years ago there were about ten airborne survey companies. Some of them went bankrupt, and then the rest got bought out by a Dutch marine engineering company named Fugro which most of us had never even heard of before. Now there's Fugro and maybe two other small companies hanging on. By the way, our best customers were Barrick and Goldfields. They still have lots of money to throw around. People on this continent seem to think Goldfields is a small company, but it's not. It just looks small from far away! We never heard from Anglo, but I think that's because they do all their work in-house. I think Anglo is underrated because they work in secret rather than trying to promote themselves. But look at their profit - wow! I don't know why, most of our business was from gold mining companies, despite the pathetic state of the gold business. I guess there is something alluring about gold, people keep trying to find it, even when they'd be better off looking for palladium or lithium or even borax. Maybe that's why I'm a bear - the business I come from has been in a ten-year recession already! Fun-da-Mental