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

To: TobagoJack who wrote (31843)	4/18/2003 9:34:38 PM
From: energyplay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

What does Fernandez want ? A bigger defense budget. Might even signal to his Chinese counterpart that there should be some apppropriate mutual saber rattling before their next budget cycle. Ray should actually comment on this. India has a real threat from Pakistan, and possibly much of the Muslim world. They also need to worry long term about a global hegemon, the US. China would tend to be further down on the list, unless it allied more strongly with Pakistan or the US moved to isolation and China became much more aggresive in regional expansion. Biggest long term issue between China and India would be Burma. Pulling Burma into China's orbit would open up a closer outlet to the sea for much of Southern China, and also improve China's regional defense posture.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (31843)	4/19/2003 12:51:04 AM
From: que seria	Respond to of 74559

Jay, your point about travel applies to the U.S. market too. Folks are speculating that companies may discover through the current situation that one can do business without traveling, and therefore travel (business/commercial) may take a long time to recover; forget tourism for a few years, because the bad global economy will take over from the horrid SARS episode. I don't see a big SARS impact in the U.S. yet, in terms of the willingness to travel, but it will happen if the virus spreads. Meanwhile, we are much farther advanced than your part of the world on the non-disease-induced (i.e., purely financial) decay of the business and consumer demand that nourishes airlines and hotels. Investment implications? Short a proxy for North American travel, if you're in this market. There is no such thing as a "safe short" in this casino market, but looking at the indicators I think USAI could present a wonderful short quite soon. For now, though, it is a mo-mo stock and is in a strong uptrend: stockcharts.com[r,a]wbclyiay[pc13!c26!b200!i!f][vc60][iub14!uk14!lc5!la12,26,9!lp14,3,3!lf!ll14][J11144721,Y]&listNum=9 Buying puts before earnings come out (early May?) seems a reasonable speculation, if you ever buy puts. Collecting premium is usually better, but I don't see how USAI's revenue growth can hold up in this environment. Surely it won't be Home Shopping Network's earnings that does it for USAI? Expedia is a wonderful website, and taking market share in the online travel space, which itself is growing. Rooms.com has done well. Strong performance seems priced in to USAI stock, which to me leaves it ripe for disappointment if it has less than stellar results in just one quarter. They'll try to keep guidance strong now that the hot part of the war is over and summer is about here. I'm actually long USAI via LEAPS (long strike 30 calls/short strike 20 puts), but for the short term I've got May and July USAI puts and am outright short EXPE. It is tracking USAI's price due to the pending purchase by EXPE's majority owner USAI of the remaining EXPE shares it doesn't already own (paid in USAI stock). I may get stopped out Monday on my EXPE if USAI keeps rising. I was too early on EXPE, as usual. It is hard to find a travel stock that has held up enough to justify shorting.