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

To: TobagoJack who wrote (17560)	3/30/2002 12:05:51 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

<Hi Maurice, where are you hiding?> Jay, you found me. I have been taking some time off, reflecting and undergoing psychological transformation of some sort. That is of course a constant process, but at times one reaches decision points or major events which precipitate broader and faster thought. Here is some explanation: Message 17263731 It's now a year since I entered this "Great Financial Collapse of 2001" barbeque zone. Partly as a result, I am not barbequed into spare-rib delicacy but have increased my nausages significantly from a year ago. That's because I'm not shy about abandoning previously strongly-held positions in an instant [showing there is no such thing as 'momentum' trading - when the livestock get a glimpse of the abattoir they are not shy about stampeding in an instant]. When I see people preparing barbeque sauce and drooling when they look at me, I check my premises and position. So, I enjoyed ephemeral GG [GlobalCrossing Gloating] rights over you, in a foolish act of superficial technical analysis. That was fun, but certainly not a position worth defending when Lee "Ka Ching" was slamming me shut in his till. I escaped fully intact, by the skin of my teeth. A miss is as good as a mile. I did a doubling of my Globalstar Senior Notes, which was good. I sold half my Tonka Truck full of QUALCOMM at a goodly price. More rapid moves to come!! More reflection to come too. Note that the Dow is still holding firm a year on. Note the correctly-predicted very rapid Uncle Al liquidity measures and interest rate slashing. Note the lack of action on CDMA taking over the world as fast as I'd thought and the resulting rapid abandonment of that leveraged position. Ducking and dodging is essential in the cyberspace world of investing and sniper-scopes. I see Argentina increasing the demand for US$. Uncle Al will have to print some more as people vote with their feet to join the latest global empire, just as they did to join the British Empire - money talks! It's not true that Britain simply took over everywhere by brute force [as some think]. Bribery beats bullets any day. Bribery and bullets work wonders. GeorgeW seems to have a very large stock of both. British "Habeas Corpus" and freedom beat local cannibalistic "Eating Corpses" by a long way, which meant a lot of natives preferred British rule to their local prospects of escaping slavery and helping with dinner. You are correct that Uncle Al said gold is good but he has hopped the fence and is doing an admirable job of defending the full faith and credit of the USA's unbacked currency. That's not an inconsistency in his position. Did you notice the little item about buying shares as a financial management tool? That seems to be very close to Uncle Al thinking of backing the US$ with shares. A dabble here, a billion there and pretty soon they'll have some serious stockmarket assets to back their currency. Competing with Q before it's even born. Not a bad move in my opinion. When Alan Green$pan says "Alas, technology has not allowed us to see into the future any more clearly than we could previously", that's not true in the broadest sense and certainly not inconsistent with his previous comment. It is true that brains and knowledge enables prediction. That's what our brains are for. Our abilities are vastly improved with the cyberspace revolution. He meant the future retains plenty of mystery despite the mass of information available. Conventional wisdom now is that the cyberspace revolution was a fizzer. That is extremely wrong. This discussion is a tiny example of the difference. The torrents of information available at the click of a mouse is of huge importance. His quotes were out of context. Those quotes should not be converted to slogans. Don't let a slogan do your thinking for you. Of course Uncle Al can be wrong. But he is a lot less wrong than nearly everyone else as far as I can see. It is good that he can change his mind - he is alive to the need to maintain a constant watch on operating ideas. Smart folks do like to experiment and they understand that life is a real-time, 3D, non-stop unavoidable experiment, which is never repeated other than superficially. Which is why I say history is no more than a guide to be used exiguously and with causal relationships always to the fore, rather than traditional P:Es etc. Unsmart folks and animals prefer to avoid risky circumstances which require brain horsepower. Animals do little experimentation. Insects just run their hardwired DNA programmes. We are all unsmart folks so even we most daring, intrepid cyberspace explorers who have a slight bonus in IQ are very circumspect about depending too seriously on being smart. But we will do a little bit of experimenting, with the exit close at hand. Uncle Al is experimenting too - as carefully as he can. He has no choice but to experiment - the experiment will roll on whether he acts or not. If he doesn't act, that's the same as being dead, which will collapse the US$ because dead doesn't give a lot of confidence. [Of course I don't advocate acting simply for the sake of giving the appearance of being alive]. Haven't bought the Lexus yet... Mqurice