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

To: TobagoJack who wrote (44186)	1/2/2004 9:04:04 AM
From: Ramsey Su	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Happy new year Jay, regarding 2004 scenario and its potential impact - atimes.com I think Bush has no chance of a second term if Iraq drags on, that is why they are planning a quick exit strategy. It is unlikely that there will be enough stability for oil to be flowing regularly, unless it becomes a total religious state. Unfortunately, that is a high probability. So my guess is if oil prices go down, it will not be because of supply from Iraq. Ramsey

To: TobagoJack who wrote (44186)	1/2/2004 7:26:48 PM
From: gumnam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

<<My answer to my own question, which also answers my pal’s question, is we cannot know what will happen, and we only know when we do know, when it happens, if it is not forestalled by other happenings, and so we must not make one-way bets to the extent that we cannot afford to be wrong.>> This is correct - and well said. Best you can do is based on available info and, 1) draw out either the likely scenarios and then use the best instruments that benefit in that scenario (e.g. Natural resource stocks in a commodity boom) or 2) find the really cheap scenarios and buy some instruments as lottery tickets ( eg your Arg stocks or Pakistan stock) Obviously we could be wrong in identifying the likely scenario or the cheap scenario and suffer accordingly. But it would be real sad if we identify the scenario correctly (maybe out of luck or maybe brilliance) and then choose the wrong instrument to express that view. So we make the right call intellectually and end up with a loss or suboptimal returns to show for it. I have done this several times at work and sometimes in PA. This is always my worry especially since this is the ONE factor that you can control with deeper thinking. Predicting is much more difficult. This is what I was addressing with my comments about inflation and bank stocks. Cheers Gumnam