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Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: William H Huebl who wrote (7295)	10/25/1997 10:57:00 AM
From: Joan Osland Graffius	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 94695

Hi William, Priority things first: We got back from the PSU games this week and here in Minneapolis you could think the gophers won their game.:-) We will see what kind of character the kids have in November. We are heading to Northwestern next week. Now this market. You seem to be a rational head. Fortunately, I got out of all margin positions before this weeks meltdown and am holding my long term stock positions, bonds, Reits and a growth fund that is 99% in energy and bonds. Also have short positions in SPY, I have been shorting above $97. Hopefully, these SPY positions will dampen the effect of my long term stock positions going down in a bear market. One thing I did not like was the effects demonstrated in most markets last week after the problems in Asia. We have not seen a meltdown in the US markets, but the real question is will fear set in. The folks on Wall Street that I have confidence in are now cautious. This tells me they don't know what the reactions will be and it also tells me they don't believe they could convince folks to stay in the market. The chief stratigist at Merrill Lynch came out on Monday recommending moving from stocks to US Treasuries, but this week Louis Rukeyser recommended short term investors take profits in US Treasuries at 6.25%. He had recommended some time ago buying at 7.25% and for those with a short term horizon take profits and those with long terms horizons should hang in there. With this data it looks like there is sufficient uncertainity in the near future. I personally do not see a "meltdown" comming from economic factors right now but there certainly is a risk in lower earnings going forward. Currently the market looks like maybe 2 to 3 percent over priced if earnings continue, but if they slow down we could be 5 to 10 percent over priced. It is my opinion the investor is the wild card. Are people going to move their money from equity funds to bonds, or cash. I can not see in the future - darn.:-) Joan

To: William H Huebl who wrote (7295)	10/25/1997 11:08:00 AM
From: Bonnie Bear	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 94695

I think foreign investors that were going to sell have already sold. A lot of the stock market drop overseas was attributed to wholescale dumping of stocks in mutual funds. The dumping of mutual funds has started in earnest in this country but seems to be confined to the tech sector, everybody was hit across the board in the various tech sectors. Japan has a lot of money in the US markets, I really could see them selling out big-time on monday as a result of the shipping thing. re gold: I hold no position in gold, if the gold price is locked down by derivatives as tightly as the S&P is held up then it's dead money and a waste of time to chase it, I'm better off with my cash. It just seems like it should be the price of gold should be nearer to the price of platinum. If the hedge was unwound suddenly then it LOOKS like gold would go up to $420 an ounce and mining stocks would double.

To: William H Huebl who wrote (7295)	10/25/1997 11:27:00 AM
From: tekgk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 94695

The weakness in gold is interesting. Everyone sold because the Swiss were supposedly going to sell 1,400 tons (or so). The press made a big deal about it. The interesting thing was that it was just some finance committees idea. The idea was immediately rejected by the government and won't even come up for a vote. The only thing that will come up for a vote is 400 tones to cover holocaust victims costs. The vote will be in 1999 and the selling won't start until 2000 and will not end until 2010. I hold a very small gold position at all times as insurance (derivatives melt downs etc.). I am always very happy when I am losing money in gold, because it generally means that I making more money elsewhere. I dread the day when I start making money from gold and so should most people. The financial and social implications are very scary. To me it's like house insurance - I don't look forward to my house burning down so I can collect the insurance.

To: William H Huebl who wrote (7295)	10/25/1997 5:02:00 PM
From: Alex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 94695

Hi William: Trader's Committments from Kaplans site............. As of October 21, 1997, released at 3:30 p.m. on October 24, 1997, the commitments for COMEX gold futures show commercial insiders long 102,442, short 87,675; speculators long 13,909, short 43,706. The average historic ratio for commercials is 2:3 long to short; for speculators, 2:1 long to short. Therefore, commercials are substantially more long than usual, and speculators are substantially more short, especially when combined with open interest data released since then, which does not even include Friday's hectic activity. These values became significantly more bullish over the past 2-1/2 weeks, and are now STRONGLY BULLISH.