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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike M2 who wrote (15213)	2/19/2002 9:28:44 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Hi Mike, ACF Mike may want to be bullish and therefore he is. He is somehow equating simple bullishness with more complicated emotions. I do detect that, gradually but surely, he is becoming less certain, ever so slightly, of what is happening in the market place. There are simply too many bad news pointing to worse trends. He will eventually take corrective action, no doubt, and hopefully before the crowds do. Oops, lead-in over, Vacation Chronicles again, just for a few more days. We visited a retired judge today. The 70-year old man looked, talked and acted 50, lives in a nice little house on top of the hill looking down at the its bay near the small town of Charlotteville. A few hundred very idyllic people populate the town. The town sits on the dividing point between the Caribbean and the Atlantic coast of Tobago. We drove our rented Suzuki jeep for one and half-hours to and then from Charlotteville to the Hilton. The calypso music on the car radio set the mood and the coastal road completed the picture. The road was narrow in places and broken up in other spots. There were some small villages, churches and schools along the way, but mostly just vegetation. We spent four hours talking about everything. The judge had visited the other Caribbean islands before deciding to settle on Tobago. He decided on Tobago because of considerations that include the natural scenery, independent and friendly people, and the still half-hearted tourism industry. We started lunch with stuffed crabmeat in porcelain shell, followed by fresh fish served with fried banana-like fruit (pantin?), salad, followed by tea and fruitcake. The lunch was simple and memorable. The judge gave us the details on living in this isolated spot. The water is collected from rainfall and supplemented by public service truck delivery into six gigantic tanks. The septic system requires emptying out once every 20 years. He has DirectTV and Internet connection, and gets Amazon.com delivery for books. He gets a medical checkup once a year, always healthy, due to easy pace, fresh and healthy diet and air. He will soon have two doctors for neighbors. He does his Canadian banking via the Internet, and gets cash from the Visa Card machine in the small town below the hill. The state of the world and its economy seem mostly irrelevant to anyone living here. I see the possibilities. Tomorrow we will sail on a 50-foot catamaran named Ocean Spirit. We will snorkel, swim, explore, lunch and then nap, from 9:30 to 5:00. For dinner, we will visit with a Japanese relation by marriage. In any case, the next time anyone makes a comment about the greatest country in the world, this child of the Caribbean will nominate Tobago:0) Chugs, Jay P.S. BTW, it appears that Venezuela will follow Enron, Argentina, Global Crossing and Qwest, and precede AMZN and JPM.

To: Mike M2 who wrote (15213)	2/19/2002 10:40:57 PM
From: AC Flyer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Don't get too carried away with one point of agreement. It was news to me that S&P had recently changed to reporting operating earnings. I don't know why they would do this. It's a disturbing move from a well regarded organization. Beyond this, we have very different views. My view, as you know, is that we are experiencing a very ordinary recession which has hit manufacturing hard but has hit housing, construction and consumer spending hardly at all. I believe that we have already seen the trough of this recession and also the lows in the Dow and the Nasdaq for this cycle.