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

To: TobagoJack who wrote (47977)	4/4/2004 8:52:08 PM
From: energyplay	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 74559

Note that Nikkei is up 1% as of Monday morning...easy to buy/sell as EWJ Japan iShares ETF. Also I will be looking at the closed end Japan funds. I'm listening to 1812 overture while my wife feeds me an occasional spoonful of Coffe Heath Bar ice cream....planning to refi the house at lower rate,take some money out for royalty trusts and metal stocks.... life is good. Hope you are well.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (47977)	4/4/2004 10:36:24 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Jay, I agree with you that life is a process, not an event. Mountaineers climb the mountain, hang around at the top for a relatively brief time, take a few photos then climb back down. Getting there is half the fun as they say. More than half really. Collapses are processes too, though usually marked by an event, such as the precipitous collapse of October 1987, which I watched in real-time, with a sell order in, with some awe. For years now, I have watched this script unfold and so far, other than the time it has taken for each section of the script, and the amplitude, it has gone just about as I expected [though I hadn't realized just how many Biotelecosmictechdot.com companies had nothing going for them as I hadn't studied many of them at all]. We have gone well into the megapixelation process of new $$ by Uncle Al KBE and the slashing to zilch of interest rates, we have gone down the big dipper in the stock market and have come out the other side, with many people financially and even literally destroyed at the bottom [I know of one person who died at his own hand with the market's demise a major contributing factor to his decision]. We are now at the currency grinding against currency stage, which I had also envisaged and are proceeding through the savers paying for the profligate process, which is traditional. We seem to be largely in agreement. I even have, for years, worried about the possibility of a colossal and stupendous collapse, complete with financial reset and mayhem as globalized integrated systems fail and mob-ruled governments exacerbate the problems with foolish and self-destructive decisions. But I decided in the late 1990s, with fingers crossed, that we would actually weather the storm and the then Uncle Al without the KBE would be able to perform as expected, avoiding a deflationary, cascading, self-perpetuating implosion. My main fear was that when the crunch came, which it did in Y2K and 2001, the margin-propelled and financially leveraged and market clearing delays would result not be able to cope with the onslaught. If the 11 September attack was made a year earlier, I think they might have achieved the most spectacular event in war in human history with a global financial collapse to go along with the Twin Towers. Fortunately, over the previous year, there had been enough market clearing that people had made substantial adjustments already. A few years on, as you say, there is still plenty of adjustment to be made and we are not out of the woods, which is why interest rates are STILL near zero. Until we have interest rates back up where they belong to justify people holding fiat currencies [most importantly the US$], I will keep my fingers crossed. Because we have got past so much already, I'm hopeful that we will navigate through the last of the process and enter the realm of Globalized nirvana. If everyone abandons Iraq to civil war, mayhem and carnage, it won't be a very big deal. For a decade we've done without Iraqi oil. Another decade won't matter. Oil prices can go to $50 a barrel and people can cut their consumption. Alternatives can get a turbo charge. Photovoltaics can proliferate faster than WMDs. Crops can be converted to ethanol. Cyberspace can replace personal movement. NZ is a keen supporter of UN processes, and for three centuries now has supported international civilization, so I don't think there'll be an abandonment of Iraq if the UN maintains it's attention. <...After meeting with visiting Australian Opposition leader Mark Latham, she told reporters that New Zealand may then look at further ways of helping Iraq's return to full sovereignty. "In the case of New Zealand, with the commitments we have made to the international effort against terrorism and the reconstruction of Iraq, we have tended to take ... decisions which have a time period on them," Ms Clark said. "But we may then come back and do the same thing again at another point when we have force regeneration." New Zealand has already used this strategy with its Special Air Services forces in Afghanistan, which were withdrawn and later redeployed....> NZ isn't a very big deal militarily, but every bit helps. So, overall, no worries mate! Don't worry, be happy. Mqurice

To: TobagoJack who wrote (47977)	4/4/2004 10:57:11 PM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 74559

Oct. 03 to Oct. 04 is an athypical period. Figures must be Ebnroned, facts must be distorted, the masses have to distracted in order for elections to be won. Malaysia, Philipinnes, US, Germany, Spain, Indonesia... All over the world countries have to go through a period of artificiality for elections to be won. In the case of smaller countries the problems are contained inside it without much effect outside. The problem is the US. It is too big! Its articiality spreads over the rest of the world's economies. We have to wait until election results are defined and them the script plays on.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (47977)	4/5/2004 1:01:42 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 74559

Suspicion of early jobs data leak fuels probes By Jennifer Hughes in New York Published: April 5 2004 0:18 \| Last Updated: April 5 2004 0:18 A time span of just two minutes is being investigated by US regulatory bodies, after unusual trading activity in the minutes preceding the release of Friday's employment report sparked suggestions the data were leaked ahead of time. It was the second set of data to come under suspicion this year after the University of Michigan announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was looking into the early release of its sentiment survey in February. Any trader with the knowledge of either report ahead of time could have made a killing. On the release of Friday's payrolls report, bond yields surged and the dollar leapt 2 cents against the euro. In the interbank market, where most foreign exchange trading takes place, currencies are usually traded in lots of one million. In theory, buying $1m ahead of the numbers and selling at the peak would have netted a $20,000 profit. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have both said they are "looking into" the rumours of early disclosure of the numbers. Other bodies, such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade, are also expected to launch probes. How the jobs report could have been leaked is the matter for debate. Security at the Bureau of Labor Statistics is extremely tight in the week preceding the release and very few statisticians working on the numbers have access to the whole report. The only advance copy goes to the president's council of economic advisers on Thursday evening. The labour secretary is not briefed until 8am on the day of the report - the same time that accredited journalists are locked incommunicado in a room with the data for half an hour. There was speculation that a report by Reuters with a timestamp of 8.28 was the leak. Reuters denied it and said its report had been released only at 8.30. The timestamp, it said, came from a faulty server. The DoL is particularly sensitive to issues of timing since it recently spent $500 on a new clock. Journalists are only allowed to open a telephone connection with their offices one minute before the official release time - they must speak in English - and the transmission of their stories may only begin as the report is published. On Friday, the Department of Labor said there was "no evidence" the report was leaked prematurely. But traders said the level of activity and the moves in currency and bond prices suggested someone did have advance knowledge. Rick Klingman, head of Treasury trading at ABN Amro, said he had "never seen a move like that" so close to the data's release. "It traded like the report was leaked," he said. Robert Sinche, head of currency strategy at Citigroup, said: "If it was concentrated in one market you could think it was someone taking a speculative position, but we saw action in both currency and bond markets." Traders said someone would have needed nerves of steel to put on speculative trades in the minutes leading up to a report that had loomed so large in the markets' psyche all week.