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Strategies & Market Trends : The New Economy and its Winners -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (7115)	5/23/2001 6:26:44 PM
From: craig crawford	Respond to of 57684

William, The only thing is, I'm sensing that real-estate will only do well if the economy does well, just like your tech stocks. I actually believe that even if the economy turns around here many of your tech stocks will be underperformers going out 5 or 10 years. Like I said, I don't know much about REIT's (except that Ken Heebner is a big fan of them), but I get a sense that they are just big beneficiaries of lower rates. Isn't it kind of late in the cycle to be playing those? I'm looking for plays that will do well even if we have a protracted downturn, and I get the sense that commodities are the way to go. We had a depression in the 30's and commodities boomed. We had rough economic times in the 70's and commodities boomed. We are going to go through rough economic times in the next 10 years. I want investments that will do well regardless of what the economy does. You have to look for stuff that is so cheap and has been overlooked for so long that supply and demand are out of whack. I know there is a standard argument that says that commodities will falter if we delve into recession because demand will plummet, but I don't think that's the case. I think the 30's and the 70's proved the opposite. I think if the economy worsens for several years people will flee paper assets and they will have to plunk their money elsewhere. When they find out how scarce commodities are becoming because they have been overlooked, the money will flow there. Of course if one is wrong and worldwide economies boom, the demand for many commodities will skyrocket anyway. I guess the only reason to be bullish on commodities is if you think they are becoming scarce and supplies are low. If they are scarce enough and people NEED them, they will be forced to pay whatever the market will bear. For instance we NEED oil, gas, electricity, & coal, so even in this near recessionary environment these resources aren't falling. Major car manufacturers NEED platinum and palladium for catalytic convertors to lower emissions for all the gas guzzling cars Americans love to drive. When the supply from Russia dried up, prices skyrocketed from the low one hundred dollar range for Palladium to almost eleven hundred. Look what happened to titanium stocks like RTI back in 1994, when after several years of pure punishment and a 1 for 10 reverse split (I'm not joking look at the chart), everyone decide they wanted titanium in their golf clubs. quote.yahoo.com Well let me tell you. People NEED wheat, soybean, corn, cattle, sugar, etc. They don't NEED much gold except when they have no faith in government to maintain a sound currency. I suppose one of the reasons gold and gold stocks have had a bounce lately is the growing feeling that they can't trust Greenspam to stop running the printing presses. He just can't stop printing money.