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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Knighty Tin who wrote (237694)	4/25/2003 3:41:55 PM
From: Mark Adams	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

I actually proposed a roving senior population could avail themselves of a distributed, assisted living facility complex, with units in various places like Afgahnistan, Vietnam, Thailand and so forth. They get to travel, spending 90-180 days per locale, at a cost low enough to afford on their SS checks, while local get an opportunity to be employed at higher wage scales. Of course, the members of the BBR thread didn't express a high degree of interest in fleshing out or funding this business plan. <g> Been trying to sort out what we see today. Both Corporate officers and Consumers appear to expect sluggish to slower times ahead. ie- expectations are lower. Meanwhile, surging liquidity seeking yield is now funding companies previously starved for financing, granting them a lifeline, and credit spreads are narrowing. Longer term CD's maturing should continue to support a declining risk aversion as the desire for return on capital displaces return of capital. The low vix/vxn seem to suggest we may be in the doldrums- where the markets do little to nothing for an extend period of time as a potential slugish economic recover gains footing. I took a look at the CRB chart- and see a massive W on the five and ten year charts- it seemed to hit upside resistance and dropped back to the 200 day moving average, where it found technical support. I am not a chart reader. But in looking at the pretty picture, I noticed the peak in the CRB seemed to be around the same levels the CRB traded over the past decade. This suggested to me that the run in commodities might be over, and that besides zero's, that was the place to be last year. What was interesting, is that the CYC and FPP indexes don't confirm the rise in the CRB. They tended to mirror, though imperfectly, the CRB in the W formation seen in the longer time frame, until the recent upleg. This caused some head scratching. I then got an urge to see if I could view a chart of the CRB adjusted for the changes in the value of the dollar. I hypothesized that the reason the cyclicals didn't seem to be moving up with the CRB had something to do with a declining dollar vs demand induced pricing increases. While I haven't figured an easy way to adjust the CRB for changes in the dollar, I did peak at the charts of the EUR and CDN vs USD, and found that the move down in the dollar does resemble the move up in the CRB. Of course, this is just a casual glance- no serious number crunction effort as of yet. So what does this CRB/cyclical 'non confirmation' mean? I suspect that our FIG may not include a dollar adjustment, thus may have overstated the inflation prospects going forward 12-18 mths ago, and that while every visit I make to the store seems to confirm increasing prices, the reports of the battle between inflation/deflation are still mixed. And that the CRB induced rise may make new highs if the dollar remains trending lower and global growth does pick up. Trying to pick out a clear picture going forward, the most dominant theme seems to be yield seeking and a sluggish but generally improving equity environment. Barring outliers like SARS/terrorism. BWDIK?