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

To: energyplay who wrote (62032)	4/15/2005 9:43:53 PM
From: Slagle	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Energyplay, Mowhawk Carpet (MHK) is another stock I am short and shorted more today. I worked in the carpet business for years and know the landscape pretty well, though I've been away from there for a good many years. The tufted broadloom carpet industry (the wall to wall stuff that is in most new homes) was invented in North Georgia by men of my fathers generation. The tufted stuff had pretty much totally displaced the woven goods decades ago though woven goods are making somewhat of a comeback. Years ago there were hundreds of individual manufacturers but now there are just a handful, of which MHK is the biggest. The second largest mill, Shaw Industries, was bought by Warren Buffet several years ago and is more conservatively operated. MHK just built a new 27 acre under one roof shipping facility and aquired a big wood flooring outfit in Texa, probably with MHK stock. The "wall to wall" tufted carpet business tend to trail the construction business by a few months, at least it did years ago. In other words, when a building construction slowdown happens, general construction slows first and then a few month later the carpet business begins to slow down and the mills scramble to cut expenses and reduce inventories. If things still work like they did in the 1980's if these homebuilders begin to build fewer homes then a few months later the carpet biz will really slow. Good short? Slagle

To: energyplay who wrote (62032)	4/16/2005 4:35:35 AM
From: Taikun	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

EP, I noticed some of the Canroy pipelines/utilities seemed stronger than the O&G names. One way to play the oil sands in a stable way is pipelines. Do you own any? What do you think? I rotated into a few like PIF.UN. These charts look fairly good also: BPT.UN, NPI.UN, ALA.UN, CF.UN I already have so many puts/shorts on homebuilders/financials I am looking for a stable place to put money and I think the utilities will be alright provided the Fed rate doesn't go up much more from here. On additional problem though is the weakening Loonie with this sponsorship scandal. Cheers D