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To: reaper who wrote (206458)	11/22/2002 10:54:12 PM
From: Win-Lose-Draw	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 436258

ok, my sweetie and i were tooling 'round town today, and we have price decreases to report. hub-centric? maybe. then again, maybe not. Oilily's prices on childwear are down, got a dress from this season for 30% off. perhaps because we were the only customers in the store? Zoe's price on a table we've been drooling over for 2 years is down ~20%. perhaps because we were the first (potential) customers they'd seen in nearly two hours? anyway, we didn't buy it, waiting for another 20%. Fleuvog shoes are ~20% cheaper today than they were 18 months ago, at least the models we were looking at. yes, we were the only people in the store there too. got a pair of men's Ferragamos at Neiman Marcus for $75. $75!!! supposedly because they were the last pair, but when i said at that price i'd buy another pair a second pair magically appeared. Toscanini now serves all-you-can-stomach chai for $2 with your evening ice cream. Tealuxe doesn't look like they've dropped prices, but their new menus are printed on really shittly looking paper compared to what they used to do, so that's gotta be worth something. and yes, we were the only people in there perusing the new menu. and oh yeah, just switched my T-mobile plan, more minutes and cost went from $69 to $39 a month.

To: reaper who wrote (206458)	11/22/2002 10:54:23 PM
From: NOW	Respond to of 436258

to that i will add that whilst in Bali recently, i learned that the Balinese are damn fearful and angry over their handicraft markets being undersold substantially by the Chinese...

To: reaper who wrote (206458)	11/22/2002 11:45:18 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

I notice the rents in Santa Clara appear to be way down from a couple years ago. They more or less tripled from when I lived there in 1990-1992 till 2000. Now, they're merely 100-125 percent higher. I think to approach the 4 percent inflation that the Fed has been tracking the rents they probably have to stay flat another 10 years. I do notice that the housing inflation around here where the prices have gone up 40 percent since 2000 in Reston/Herndon appear to be offset by the low cost of housing in Southern Virginia. I have no trouble finding SFHs out there for $ 25,000 to 75,000. I love the country, but I understand that with the 7-10 percent unemployment in that area it may be hard to sell out if I reconsider my move. As for the health club, the price went up about 12 percent this year. Oddly enough, it hadn't been rising much the last several years. The name brands seem to be trying to hit the $ 300 price point now for the personal computers which was previously the sole domain of emachines. I plan not to get anymore pc's that use shared dram. I did eat out at a KFC last week. my mistake. I noticed the 3 piece meal no longer has two side orders, but one. So I shelled the extra buck for the mashed potatoes. I would say the price decreases at the apparel stores and the consumer electronics have gone deeper than they were earlier this year i don't see that many discounts for the running shoes I buy since I buy the top end. if i want to buy the low end, they're always cheap regardless of the economy. also was looking at road bikes. same. top end has gone up about 20 percent to $ 2800 since i bought mine five years ago. would add that several of the components are higher or next level than the ones on my bike. they've introduced some better models at $ 4000 and above price points.

To: reaper who wrote (206458)	11/23/2002 12:01:40 AM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

move to NYC and then we will see ------- aside what you need daily and can not live without ? food - UP Healthcare - Major Up Housing//Rent - Major up Insurance - UP Ground Transportation - UP Car Rentals - Major UP Airline tickets - steady Sun Spark ? who needs it ? TV set once in 6 years Video games who needs it ? refined aluminium - ? don't use it but prices of aluminium goods - flat ....... and yes was at Discount store etc. prices flat hotels/ vacations once a year down 5 to 10% gym equipment ? once in 6 years

To: reaper who wrote (206458)	11/23/2002 12:48:48 AM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

Options Speculation I have not seen numbers like these before (at least not for a long time) Enormous bets on the QQQ. Check it out for yourself and see. quote.cboe.com Make sure you have all as opposed to current box clicked. Remember that each option represent 100 underlying shares, 100-1 leverage on a QQQ bet. I count over 1 million OPTIONS on each side. That is a 100 million share bet on each side. 100,000,000 shares of QQQ are bet in december options, on each side. At $27 per share that is $27,000,000,000 bet. Is this lunacy or is this normal? (Note this is not really accurate cause the QQQ is not going to zero tomorrow unless the world blows up and then who cares, but I think you get the idea of the magnitude). This happens month after month but this month is really really obscene. Is there any wonder that extremes get stretched one way and oversnap the other. As long as money keeps pouring in, someone has to keep buying so they do not lose their ass on covering 100,000,000 shares of QQQ. I do note that max pain is slowly creeping up here. It was a solid 24 a week or so ago, a couple days ago it was a 24 25 26 tossup (with 25 the favorite). Today it is a 25-26 near tossup but closer to 25. As long as it keeps rising, bulls are in contol and 1 million puts are going to money heaven. 1 million puts. Am I in fantasy land or is this absurd? OTOH close to 500K calls are going to finish ITM IF we were to close right here. Already we can see that someone is going to make out HUGE regardles of what happens here. At QQQ 26 a mere 150K puts more or less will be ITM and about 300K calls will be ITM. That would expire 1.5M out of 2M total options worthless. I am going out on a limb here. Not sure exactly where maximum pain will be, but I bet for the first time in a long time, we close right smack dab on it. M

To: reaper who wrote (206458)	11/23/2002 10:18:09 AM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

reap, I agree except for airlines. This may be just one case, but I'm taking an unwanted trip to Hartford next week. My cheap but powerful firm is paying and their pet travel agent is buying the tickets. She called to tell me that my ticket would cost $1150. I was hoping that would get my co. to cancel the trip. So far, no luck. But I was struck by the fact that when there are few flights available, the airlines are still able to raise ticket prices. So, they are still predatory, but they have fewer opportunities for predation.

To: reaper who wrote (206458)	11/23/2002 1:19:37 PM
From: ild	Respond to of 436258

I think it's important to mention that deflation is a real killer when you are leveraged with fixed rate debt. From Bill Gross: Deflationary fears are all the rage these days. Almost all of Asia is deflating and the prices of goods at retail are down across Europe and in the U.S. as well. Services and - in America - housing prices expressed via "equivalent rents" are all that's really keeping us above the line. Oil prices, sure, but that's a wartime, not a longtime bias. Deflation, of course is not necessarily an evil thing as George Bush might phrase it. We had deflation during much of the nineteenth century and did just fine economically, thank you. But deflation combined with too much fixed rate debt can be an economy killer. It means that companies and individuals (not most governments with domestically owned bonds) who lack pricing power may be unable to make interest payments that were contracted on the assumption of an ever increasing stream of revenue, income, or wages. Even a narrowing "margin of safety" as lenders would phrase it, as opposed to an outright inability to service interest payments can be an assassin, because it forces lenders to restrict debt refinancing which leads to cost cutting, layoffs, and an accentuation of the original deflationary impulse. Debt and lack of pricing power is a dangerous combination. Gasoline and a match fall into the same category. pimco.com Great discussion on deflation: Global: A Conversation with Franco Modigliani Stephen Roach (New York) morganstanley.com EDIT: I'm so big fan of Steve Roach that I made my own index of his stuff so I can search for an article (like the one above) It's temporary URL at my home server is trit.org trit.org - for 2002 Let me know if somebody likes this idea so I'll publish permanent URL here

To: reaper who wrote (206458)	11/23/2002 3:59:20 PM
From: orkrious	Respond to of 436258

reaper, MTG had a 5% move up on Friday. Their 10Q was filed, but I didn't see any "good" news there. there was this Losses and expenses for the third quarter were $175.8 million, an increase of 61% from $109.4 million for the same period of 2001. but I would have thought it would go down 5% on that, not up. did you see anything the shorts wouldn't like? tia ork

To: reaper who wrote (206458)	11/24/2002 3:23:36 PM
From: cfimx	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 436258

go do a survey and ask 1000 people anywhere in the U.S. Ask them do you think it costs more to live now than last year, or less? 9 out of 10 will tell you MORE. I haven't heard one person say, gee things are so much cheaper, isn't life grand?

To: reaper who wrote (206458)	11/25/2002 11:21:32 AM
From: yard_man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

>>how about a TV?<< Don't have a cow ... I bought one. <vbg> Not gonna use it for anything, except junior's GameCube, though -- but you are right -- a similar television, I bought in 1991 (which I wound up getting rid of) -- cost around $300. Picked up something that is similar this week for $109 at WMT. But that is sooooo "rear-view" mirror, Reaper. I am sure we are going into an unparalelled economic contraction -- but there'll be some things that go up drastically in USDs -- especially items for direct consumption -- electronics?? other "durables" -- don't know. Housing prices will have to go down on a relative basis -- they are peaking as a fraction of total income, IMO.