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

To: AC Flyer who wrote (36067)	7/14/2003 2:49:44 PM
From: Seeker of Truth	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

AC(Why not DC?) Flyer, I don't agree that we are all bearish zealots here. There's you and Maurice who are never pessimistic. The disputes are refreshing. Did you ever see a real bull market that lasted much more than one decade? I saw one in Japan, starting in 1965. P/E's were mostly single digit. Yields were higher than inflation. The population was saving like crazy, not spending like crazy. The stock market was unpopular. Something like these conditions also occurred in post World War II U.S. Another depression was widely presumed so the stock market was unpopular etc.etc. People worked hard and saved as much as they could. The situation of the present in the U.S. doesn't look at all like those. The stock market is still largely popular. Saving isn't popular. Single P/E digits on a stock price would be quite suspicious. Balance of payments are a gigantic enough problem; forget about the huge public deficits. (If you can.) Can one make some money these days in the stock market? I think one can, but preferably outside the U.S. In the U.S. the stocks look most vulnerable. Most of us zealots would turn about on a dime if you could show that the situation is basically favorable.

To: AC Flyer who wrote (36067)	7/14/2003 5:58:59 PM
From: maceng2	Respond to of 74559

I am here to tell you it ain't so. Somebody ought to tell these wussies to stop copping out.. news.ft.com Record numbers exit industry By Simon Targett Published: July 14 2003 5:00 \| Last Updated: July 14 2003 5:00 Nearly half of the UK-based fund managers and analysts who left their firms last year abandoned the investment industry altogether, according to figures compiled by Watson Wyatt, the pension fund consultancy. The loss of professional talent has been caused by a cull of staff by companies desperate to cut costs during the bear market. But it is raising fears among investment advisers that retirement funds' efforts to solve the pensions crisis - by improving investment returns and attracting more savings - could be undermined at a critical time. Watson Wyatt found that about 440 stock-pickers and analysts left their jobs in the UK divisions of 25 of the world's leading fund management businesses. Of these, about 200 were not hired elsewhere in the industry. Nick Watts, head of Watson Wyatt's European investment consulting business, said: "This is extremely worrying because it is happening at a time of crisis for fund managers and pension funds. If it continues, it would be very bad news for investors such as pension funds which need access to good investment skill as never before." He said it was not clear that the jobs were being shed in a rational way. Executives were under pressure to take short-term action to cut costs indiscriminately. The figures are based on a survey of the 4,000 investment professionals working in the UK-based businesses of 25 global fund management firms with approximately £5,000bn of assets. It has been conducted for seven years, but it has never been published until today. Watson Wyatt has decided to divulge the contents of its survey, hitherto regarded as commercially sensitive, in order to draw attention to what it regards as a staffing crisis at the heart of the fund management industry. The firm found that 11 per cent of fund managers and analysts moved jobs last year. Its figures do not include the loss of marketing and other ancillary staff not directly connected to the core investment business. The "churn" rate was nearly twice the proportion recorded in 1996, when Watson Wyatt first started tracking fund managers' careers. Of the displaced group, the 55 per cent who found jobs in other traditional fund management houses was the lowest recorded figure in the seven-year history of the survey. In 1997, 68 per cent were re-hired; in 2001, the total was 64 per cent. The 45 per cent that did not return to the mainstream investment industry is much higher than in 1997, when the figure was 30 per cent, with 2 per cent entering the hedge fund sector. More than a third of the leavers sought a career break or a career change, while people in the "not specified" category included those who had been made redundant and who had not yet found their way back into the industry. Previously, the biggest threat to the leading firms was hedge funds, which have poached some of the best fund managers in the business. This reached a peak in 2000, according to the survey. Now, however, this leakage of top talent has slowed: Watson Wyatt's sample of firms did not lose a single person to hedge funds in 2002. Reasons for this change include: the decision by mainstream firms to let their top staff run hedge funds and the increasingly bleak climate for launching boutique businesses. Watson Wyatt's data match the anecdotal evidence gathered by the big City headhunters. Emmanuelle Arthur-Michels, a fund management specialist at Russell Reynolds, the City headhunter, thinks that UK businesses could shrink by another 20 per cent over the next three to five years. "In the past, top investors might have left [the big firms] to set up hedge funds. But they are now more likely to leave the industry altogether. "Some people who are being forced out will end up in the booming outsourcing industry. Others, who are rich enough to leave the industry voluntarily, have ended up in farming." telegraph.co.uk

To: AC Flyer who wrote (36067)	7/15/2003 1:42:07 AM
From: TobagoJack	Respond to of 74559

Hello ACFlyer Mike, I make all kinds of statements to get your blood going fizz and pop ;0) <<zealotry … ideology … punishment>> … but you may be reading too much into postings, perhaps because you suspect that physical laws can in fact be applied to financial markets driven by fundamentals, perceptions, and psychology. You know, bigger the bubble, louder the pop, higher the rise, longer the drop … <<I am here to tell you it ain't so>> … I eard you, many times, and if you are wrong, what would be the consequences? We only need to discuss the possibilities, issues, and consequences, while time sort out the actual outcomes. As to … <<Well, it's true that my laissez-faire 100% long, boring value-oriented US equities portfolio is within spitting distance of its all time high, reached March 2002 or thereabouts, but...>> … in my own case, I am way beyond my previous all time highs reached at each of all-time high points :0) … and so I will continue to do what I have been doing, planting a seed here, harvesting a flower there, and removing a weed here and there. I am as curious as the next investor electorate on what the future may hold for investors/speculators, and I am prepared to be very wrong. Stranger things have happened before. We can not both be very right. Are you prepared to be very wrong? Chugs, Jay

To: AC Flyer who wrote (36067)	11/24/2004 5:25:24 PM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hello ACF Mike, <<... go ahead, hold those gold stocks and sundry bearish positions>> An update ... Message 20799664 and a followup question ... <<I am prepared to be very wrong ... We can not both be very right. Are you prepared to be very wrong?>> last asked here Message 19110621 Chugs, Jay P.S. We are still doing this script Message 20799576 ... once you accept this script, much of the ambiguities will clear up and you will feel that your path to salvation is more illuminated