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

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (14464)	2/28/1998 9:20:00 PM
From: yard_man	Respond to of 94695

I think its a very good point. It what has the "value in the books." Such assets could be a part of a bubble themselves.

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (14464)	2/28/1998 9:36:00 PM
From: Bonnie Bear	Respond to of 94695

book value may drop-- there's a lot of fairy dust put into the book value of a lot of these companies called "goodwill". Right. I think Boston Chicken dropped to half book value when the market started pulling the wings off the fairies. -g- The best indicator I have is Apple stock and how far it dropped before investors were willing to buy it. I bought at 14-15 - book value- and it dropped lower than that. Ditto with Aetna. Book value for most Asian stocks has dropped due to decline in property values. I feel fairly safe buying the brokerages with high book value has their holdings are mostly in bonds and skillfully hedged against everything imaginable. SPX seems to just march along the path of the zero-coupon bond and ignores reality, so best guess is that the pension-plan computers don't care and will continue to mix S&P stocks and bonds along some "what-it's-worth-thirty-years-in-the-future" algorithm. The problem with the pension plans is that they have mix called "small-cap 14% return" "mid-cap 12% return" "large-cap 10% return" and they buy in buckets. And the assumption is that, like kitchen slop thrown into the corner of the garden, a few of the seeds thrown there will sprout in the next thirty years and make up for the majority that die and rot. In an overpriced market where the slopbucket is especially foul, there's a potential for noxious disease in that pension-plan garden a few years down the road. But the managers don't care, after all, it's not their money. :-( I bought some BARRA stock so I can get their reports, they may have some interesting insights at their website. They are the folks that write the software for the pension-plan computers and do the portfolio analysis for Standard and Poors. You might want to browse there, there's a great set of links to other financial sites.

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (14464)	2/28/1998 9:54:00 PM
From: William H Huebl	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 94695

Haim, Here is my Barron's based forecast: Feb 28 1998 Weekly=Down Mon=d,Tu=d,W=d,Th=d VIX=800 points down VGY=Sell DJIA mom (377) =near peak Gut feeling - VGY broke above 480. it is off to the races! Volatility=retreating Overall-not up Evaluation:of last week's forecast: Weekly-Wrong Daily-80% right Gut feelings: right Last week was the 7th week in 9 with a bad forecast. BUT my gut feelings were right AGAIN Summary: For some reason, the weekly forecasts based on the Barron's information has reversed and now down is up and vice versa. Since the most actives are doing rather well in forecasting the daily ups and downs AND they are well under 50, my sense is the market is getting MUCH more speculative and it is, perhaps, the volatile blow-off that will get us to 9,600 soon. What REALLY bothers me is that usually reliable indicators seem now to be of no use what so ever. The 2 conditions I mentioned a month or so ago which was necessary for the bull to resume are in place... VIX under 20 AND a strong move up in A/D. I HAVE to assume, that although most of my usually reliable indicators are pointing down, that this will be another up week... perhaps wildly so as everyone throws caution to the winds and BUYS!!! Be careful! Bill