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Pastimes : Home on the range where the buffalo roam -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sig who wrote (7941)	6/25/2002 11:31:22 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 13815

A Barton Biggs Interview in the recent issue of Barron's... --------------------------------------- Barron's: Rumor has it you've turned bullish. Why? Biggs: Things have worked out much as we thought since January. But we're either at or close to an important bottom, and the selling has gotten overdone. Sentiment has gotten too depressed. Valuations have become somewhat more attractive both in the U.S. and around the world. So I think we're setting up for a rally that lasts for a couple of months and takes the S&P up roughly 15% and the Nasdaq up 30%. And it takes a lot of these busted stocks up 50%. Q: But the market overall is not out of the woods, is it? A: No. There are still a lot of problems. But there are some fundamental reasons to think the market will rally, not just the fact that valuations are cheaper and the market is oversold. We've got at least three, probably four, quarters of favorable earnings comparisons ahead. Inflation is still very low. The Federal Reserve is still very easy. The U.S. and world economies are not going to fall apart. Is it going to be a slow, sluggish recovery? Yes. But real growth will be 3% in the second half of this year, and S&P earnings will be up 20%-25%. We are not into a new bull market, but we may well have hit the bottom of the trading range. Beyond this rally the market will just mill around, but within an environment of 2½%-3% inflation, because the Fed errs on the side of ease. To a certain extent it's a stagflation-type environment of relatively sluggish growth, a little increase in inflation and Treasury rates rising one-half to three-fourths of a percent. Q: So no new lows for stocks? A: A lot depends on whether there is another bolt from the blue, be it a terrorist attack that disrupts the economy or some kind of financial accident. If not, we're close to the lows. Q: Investors aren't acting that way. A: Individuals probably will sell into the rally. The institutions don't know what to do. They are trying to figure out how to justify 9%-return-on-asset assumptions. There aren't any big, liquid financial alternatives to get you there. They are going to have to be more aggressive asset allocators, selling stocks on strength and buying on weakness. Q: What should they be selling and buying now? A: Technology, media and telecom are all going to do pretty well, particularly names like AOL Time Warner, Nokia, EMC and Cisco. The same with some other busted stocks, like Tyco International, and groups like pharmaceuticals around the world. Abbott Laboratories, Merck and Pfizer are the good ones, and Schering-Plough and Bristol-Myers Squibb are the troubled ones. But the drugs are starting to look like value. I still like natural gas -- Burlington Resources and Phillips Petroleum. The financials will rally, but should be underweighted in the future. There are still more bodies to come up from the depths. All the losses haven't been recognized yet. Q: Some foreign markets are putting the U.S. to shame. Will this continue? A: International markets are going to outperform the U.S. Once you add in a declining dollar, foreign markets provide the American investor with 7%, 8%, 10% more per year than the U.S. That's probably the strongest trend of all. The dollar will fall another 5% before the end of the year and another 5% in the first half of next year. So we'll see the dollar down 20% over the next three years. Non-Japan Asia is the best place to be. I would invest in funds that specialize in Asia and the emerging markets. There's nothing the matter with Japan, either, though the turnaround is very slow. Q: That's for sure. Thanks, Barton.

To: Sig who wrote (7941)	6/25/2002 11:38:13 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 13815

<<...just cannot seem to recognize or appreciate each day how much we have and how well off we are regardless of money...>> Great perspective Sig....We clearly need to count our blessings. regards, -Scott btw, many of us had quite a ride with DELL, some tough and expensive learning experiences, and now we are in 'the rebuild mode'...I remain cautiously optimistic and see great things out there on the horizon...=)

To: Sig who wrote (7941)	6/25/2002 1:35:51 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 13815

Portfolio pain spreads on Main Street -------------------------------- Commentary: Investors favoring independent voices THOM CALANDRA'S STOCKWATCH: Portfolio pain spreads on Main Street By Thom Calandra, CBS.MarketWatch.com Last Update: 10:58 AM ET June 25, 2002 SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Anecdotal signs are growing that the American investing public is near a breaking point on the stock market. Saddling retirement account losses of 50 percent and more since the March 2000 peak, U.S. investors are slowly acknowledging their portfolio pain. "We're starting to see individuals accept the bad news about their market returns, and that's a first step," said Richard Gotterer, senior vice president of investment strategy at Gibraltar Bank Wealth Management. "They're lowering their expectations." The share of U.S. mutual fund assets held in retirement accounts amounts to about a third, according to the Investment Company Institute, the fund industry's trade group. With four of every five mutual funds in the red this year, that's more than just nail-biting for those who retire in 15 years or less. "We are now in a very prolonged bear market, and I see no short-term relief in sight, or long-term relief for that matter," says Kerry Carmichael, an Arizona lottery winner whose investing strategies are profiled in "How America Made a Fortune and Lost Its Shirt," newly published book by CBS.MarketWatch.com. Main Street investors are looking away from Wall Street and toward independent researchers to decipher what will almost surely be a third-straight losing year for stocks. "Richard Russell (editor of the Dow Theory Letters) thinks we are in the second or third inning of this bear market, and that the decline in the indexes has much further to run," says Michael J.Walker, a certified financial planner. "He also thinks that it may take several more years to reach the end of this bear. If he is right, it will be the story of the decade. The amount of financial damage to small investors would be unimaginable." By some accounts, stock-market investors this year alone have seen more than $1.5 trillion erased from their portfolios. Russell, the newsletter editor and a big believer in gold, earlier this month catalogued the performance in each of the 20 most widely stocks in Merrill Lynch accounts. Many were down severely, led by AOL Time Warner (AOL: news, chart, profile), AT&T (T: news, chart, profile) and AT&T Wireless Services (AWE: news, chart, profile), which have lost as much as 55 percent since January. "Somewhere ahead, as night follows day, the public will turn bearish," writes Russell. "I don't know what will turn them bearish. Crushing losses have not turned stockholders bearish. Terrorism has not turned them bearish. Talk of a bear market, which few people seem to believe, has not turned them bearish." Indeed, many individuals recognize the sky is falling but prefer to believe the stock market will stage a rebound in coming (pick one) weeks, months, years. (See our Top 10 Wall Street Myths.) "The recent past hasn't been a happy time for a lot of investors. We've all been hurt to some degree by the recent turn of events in the stock market, and while I continue to believe in the stock market's ability to help me plan for my retirement and continue to dollar-cost average even during the worst of times, there are a lot of really scared people out here that feel as though money invested in something as bland and sturdy as an S&P 500 fund (SPY: news, chart, profile) will eventually all just go away, evaporate -- never to be seen again," says investor Ray Carlson. Investor Jim Rose says pragmatic investors are waiting, rightly, for the floor to fall from the stock market. "You won't have to ask anyone when the real bottom takes place, it will be obvious," Rose says. How America Lost Its Shirt "How America Made a Fortune and Lost Its Shirt" examines the portfolio pain of ordinary Americans, and the fading hope Main Street investors hold for a stock market recovery. Steve Gelsi is the author. Thom Calandra is the editor. See more about the book. Thom Calandra's StockWatch appears each trading day. © 1997-2002 MarketWatch.com, Inc.