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

To: gumnam who wrote (38817)	9/25/2003 12:41:12 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 74559

TEOTWAWKI: This is going to sound real radical, but one need to step back, turn the construct around and give it a hard look. Obviously there are some (very brief) bright spots in today's overall dark landscape during which one can gain by inflating. But to be at the right spot at the right trime before the market is flooded is impossible. Our economic life has always been based on inflation: going up, growing and increasing. More is better than less. This has shaped our mindset and it is next to impossible to think otherwise. Cuts, going down and decreasing have never been part of our mindset. It must be from now on. This is deflation time! That means we should be thinking on how to pay less, rather than how to earn more!!! It is the only way to protect of the standard of life we have got used to. There is nowhere to hide against the deflation tide. We need to learn how to live with it. Try protecting wealth with wheat. Try! We go to the lab, genetic engineer a transgenic wheat and flood the market with it. We slaughter all the cows using that immense land and use the land to plant the stuff and flood the market with it. Tuna cans? We start farm fishing Tuna and flood the market. There is not way to protect wealth. It is going down, any way or another.

To: gumnam who wrote (38817)	9/25/2003 2:49:41 AM
From: TobagoJack	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hello gumnam, The journey towards <<TEOTWAWKI>> is to be savored, and the crossing over of TPonRr (the point of no return) is to be celebrated. TeoTwawKi should not be feared, as in guarded against, but anticipated, as in prepared for, as one should for a free-for-all orgy of bacchanalian festivity. We must believe in our own ability to take advantage of the coming opportunity to become undeservedly wealthier with practically no risk. Believe, get in tune with the Force, and we shall. Chugs, Jay

To: gumnam who wrote (38817)	9/25/2003 3:05:41 AM
From: energyplay	Respond to of 74559

Not all non financial assets will increase in price. Just some of them. Pick the right ones requires luck, and diversification (smattering of everthing else) is a great idea. Also, as Jay has pointed out TEOTHWAWKI is a Process which will go on for a number of years, not an EVENT. I expect some items to peak early in the process (gold, oil), some toward the middle (wheat) and some towards the end (useable machine tools, cement, clear lumber) One example that occurs to me : Around 1905, a large pearl necklace was exhanged for a mid size apartment building in Manhattan. (East side, I think) Pearls were seen as exotic and extremely valuble, comparable to emeralds. Even as sson as 1950 it would take several hundred equivalent necklaces to buy the same building. Today, it would take serveral thousand... So I see gold and other hard assets as an answer, not THE answer.

To: gumnam who wrote (38817)	9/25/2003 7:35:53 AM
From: Seeker of Truth	Respond to of 74559

The problem is that when we own a future contract, we don't own today's wheat or copper, we own that of tomorrow. Inflation has typically already been priced in. So where is the possibility of gain? It's not against the dollar or gold that we want to be ahead, it's against the general market anticipations. If we could just buy today's copper or wheat and store it safely in (where?) our garage, that would be a different matter; that would presumably gain us protection aginst inflation, that is until the wheat spoils. But buying or selling the futures is on the average profitable only to the brokers. The pros use it as insurance protection. Take the Canadian oil/gas trusts. They regularly hedge. On the average they don't make money from these futures dealings. But it helps them borrow money and it stabilizes the dividends. If they were rich enough not to hedge they would make still more money but their returns would vary more chaotically.