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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: grusum who wrote (6865)	2/3/2004 5:15:29 PM
From: russwinter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

<then wouldn't PMs be a good investment?> I know you've followed me for several years, and I'm sure you noticed one important thing that has tended to make me successful? I tend to be ahead of the crowd (sometimes I've even looked stupid for awhile, I'm sure you'll agree, since you were an eyewitness?), and I avoid crowds. That's really hard right now. About the only thing that really stands out as grossly overowned and vulnerable (given my view of the world) and where I'm out of crowds are short financials. I'm short tech too, but haven't been alone, and that's why it's been a problem for me I'm sure. Retail shorting is in the clear I think. Among the train wreck, or crack-up boom theme, energy still makes the most sense. It had a nice play in Dec.- Jan, and now a correction, but it is still underowned and unappreciated. So I'm willing to trade that some, because the risk-reward is good IMO. If I'm wrong there is a good fallback level. Although I see a real inflationary outburst, gold stocks are a different animal. Besides the reasons I just posted, Message 19765061 they got very popular and frothy in the fall. The amount of long hedge fund position is (or was, we will see next Friday's COT) rather shocking. Even as much as the specs piled in, the yellow dog really got bogged down at $410-$420. You'd see 150,000 specs longs, then 160,000, then 170,000, and POG would move about five bucks. That just didn't impress me. The stocks were distributed, and now you have a rollover. There is stale money in gold now, and I think it needs to come out first. Here's some names I'd love to buy cheap again, but not now and not with these charts: stockcharts.com[l,a]daclniay[pd20,2!b50][vc60][iUb14!Lc20]&pref=G stockcharts.com[l,a]daclniay[pd20,2!b50][vc60][iUb14!Lc20]&pref=G Maybe in this crazy environment those seeking Mises real value will just stop the slide right here, especially if the Fed fiddles? I wouldn't be terribly surprised if it did. And for those like JW who feel the Fed just fiddles and fiddles while Rome burns, go for it, but for me it doesn't quite feel right yet. I feel a little too much moral hazard with going with the constant easy Al playbook. It's another of those old stale overworked themes. When I hear it, I feel like saying, "Gee, tell me something that everybody on the planet doesn't already believe, you know that Fed Funds will be at 1.25% next fall, because Bernanke's an idiot and says so?" But feel free to bet on that, who knows? Since I think the Fed will be a tad more aggressive than that, perhaps when the Fed does it's first token rate hike this spring, it will flush out gold specs. Or maybe they can talk them out, that would be something! I would be astonished if that happened. Thinking ahead, gold could be an interesting vehicle to play a slow Fed. I'll start chiming in on it again, I promise. I guess I'd characterize what's going on in gold as a correction in a bull market. If the CBs don't act decisively to deal with the inflation breakout I see, then gold might get set up for the monster move. Right now though, I'm focused on all the after hours red in tech, licking my chops more and more on the shorts I've been piling up. Now if they'd start rotating the developing carnage in tech into retail and financials I'll really be a happy camper.