| TRENDLESS MARKET November 4-5, 2000 Paris, France
By Addison Wiggin MARKET REVIEW: "Trendless" Market - Tough To Make Money Before The Election Not much to report on this fine pre-election weekend. Investors, cautious about any major stock market moves before Election Day, did little trading Friday. Consequently, the Dow posted a minor loss - down 62 - Friday but ended the week strongly higher for the week at 10,817... 227 points higher than Monday's opening. The tech-weary Nasdaq held off earnings worries and rose 22 to 3451 Friday... posting 173 positive points for the week. The S&P 500 barely moved Friday, closing off the week at 1426.69 for a overall gain of 47. "The mood of the market seems to be somewhat trendless. We're in a challenging climate in which it is tough to make money," an analyst was quoted as saying in a Reuter's report. "Few players are putting money to work today ahead of the election on Tuesday." The Labor Department released a report indicating the number of new jobs created last month slowed up a bit to 137,000 - making investors sigh again with soft-landing satisfaction. The new job numbers, however, were slightly offset by a hike in wages... revealing very little helpful information to the eternal list of Fed watchers. Overseas markets were fairly listless as well: Japan's Nikkei fell 0.23%. Germany's DAX index was up 0.56%, Britain's FT-SE 100 was down 0.10%, and France's CAC-40 fell 0.02%. The Russell 2000 507 up 28 for the week PRICES FOR THE WEEK... Gold: $265 down $1.50 Crude Oil: $32.71 up a penny Natural Gas: $4.93 up $.40 Platinum: $594 up $25 Palladium: $714 down $41 CRB Index: 223 up 4 points Dollar Index 116 The sad, sad Euro: $.85 up $.02 British Pound: $1.44 down a cent And...108 Japanese Yen will still buy you a crisp US dollar. * * * * * * * * * Advertisement * * * * * * * * * * * Dragon-sized Profits in China - 75% in less than two weeks! Get first-hand investor intelligence from an experienced speculator and score profits of 75%, 700%, even 4,000%. You'll join an exclusive circle of investors who are alerted to spectacular opportunities within 15 minutes of their discovery. To find out how you can cash in on three "special situation" bargains poised for mind-boggling profits: (http://www.agora-inc.com/reports/CASE/OverseasProfits) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * THIS WEEK in THE DAILY RECKONING By Bill Bonner 11/03/00 THE FALL OF KING DOLLAR "...with no direct experience nor any points of reference, investors are caught up in the latest collective thinking. The dollar is strong because of 'technology in America' or because the U.S. economy is 'more flexible,' 'dynamic' and so on. The fantasy du jour is that the euro must always go down and the dollar must always go up. And yet, all it would take would be a little hedging on the part of investors and dollar-holding foreigners to send the dollar plunging. '[T]he dollar's stability depends on the perseverance of capital inflows of preposterous magnitude,'..." (http://www.dailyreckoning.com/body_index3.cfm?id=369) 11/02/00 TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER
"...technology has been the stock market leader. Perhaps some investors are emotionally attached to it and disheartened by the setbacks it has received. More likely, most investors have their eyes on a different leader: the dream of getting rich in stocks. 'Technology' is merely a conveniently vague rationalization for why it is possible. Now that the Big Techs are getting under fire, investors are beginning to get nervous. But so far, I've seen no one question the fundamental belief that all New Era investors share: that you can get rich on stocks just by being 'in the market'..." (http://www.dailyreckoning.com/body_index3.cfm?id=368) 11/01/00 ALL SAINTS' DAY
"...Halloween is an example of what Philippe Muray calls "Festivus." Muray has noticed the way in which the genuine, dark, primeval, wild and dangerous currents and undercurrents in society have been tamed...and transformed into harmless celebrations. This applies not merely to the shift from All Saints' to Halloween, but also the political process, where genuinely revolutionary parties have been replaced by a token opposition and emasculated rebels. Is there any real opposition - of a sort that might be described as dangerous to the government? No, we celebrate the First Amendment now; we do not practice it..." (http://www.dailyreckoning.com/body_index3.cfm?id=367) 10/31/00 THE DESTRUCTION OF TECHNOLOGY "...Doug Casey likes to compare the Tech Stock Boom to the periodic booms in junior mining companies. He reminds us that almost every boom in the junior mining stocks was capped with the discovery of a huge fraud. "Net stocks," he says "lend themselves to this activity quite as well as mining stocks." Mark Twain described a gold mine as a hole in the ground with a liar standing next to it. Investors have no way of knowing what's in the hole. Nor do they have any way of knowing whether a new tech company is an Iridium or a Microsoft. So, fraud flourishes like worms in a manure pile..." (http://www.dailyreckoning.com/body_index3.cfm?id=366) 10/30/00 DERACINATION "...as the division of labor expands, fewer and fewer people have the time or inclination to hunt for their own mushrooms. We are all deracinated, cut off from direct knowledge of the things that really matter to us. We don't know what's in the food we eat...nor how it is prepared. We don't know who writes our software programs, nor do we have any idea how they actually do it. Mass investors don't know what the companies they buy actually do, and have way of measuring the value of the stocks, except for recent price trends..." (http://www.dailyreckoning.com/body_index3.cfm?id=365) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
HEADLINES, NEWS and INSIGHT: Kodak Up 20% Since Coverage Began - Last Week... Collusion In The Gold Market?... What Went Wrong On Wall Street?
It's A Kodak Moment - Snap It Up! by Lynn Carpenter You can hardly have $6 billion in assets and $14 billion in revenues - and do worse than Eastman Kodak has lately. I doubt there's anyone left to give the old venerable a pan. It's a "don't touch it with a 10-foot pole" stock. Naturally that piques our contrarian interest. (http://www.dailyreckoning.com/body_headline.cfm?id=690) Celestial Qualms by Eric J. Fry
Put the cork back into the champagne bottle. Celestica's whoop-de-do quarterly reception conveniently overlooks less pleasing inventory, accounts receivable and gross margin results. (http://www.dailyreckoning.com/body_headline.cfm?id=675) When Will Investors' Psychology Change? by Dr. Marc Faber
To many market observers, the continued bullish stance of investors - even after the sharp Nasdaq decline in March and April, the collapse of Internet companies, and recent earnings disappointments - has come as a surprise. Up to the end of August, US equity mutual funds attracted $255.5 billion, more than twice the comparable year-earlier total of $112 billion. When will the crowd change its mind. (http://www.dailyreckoning.com/body_headline.cfm?id=672) Collusion In The Gold Market? Impossible by Harry Schultz
Despite wide press coverage of the price fixing scandal at Sotheby's and Christie's, anti-trust charges levied at Visa and Mastercard, and the ubiquitous central bank euro intervention - the mainstream press won't even consider the possibility of meddling with gold prices. Yet, there hasn't been a free market in this precious metal for years. (http://www.dailyreckoning.com/body_headline.cfm?id=668) What Went Wrong With Wall Street by Daniel Denning
The capital markets have been generous; moving record sums of money into new businesses - profitable or otherwise. What's been forgotten in the liquidity surge is the actual cost of running a business - electricity needed to run a computer server farm, or the affect high oil prices has on transportation of goods. Earnings reports of late are reflecting these skyrocketing costs. And driving the market down... (http://www.dailyreckoning.com/body_headline.cfm?id=673) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * THE DAILY RECKONING FREE INVESTOR'S LIBRARY Did you know? After the BLACK THURSDAY crash in '29 the stock market briefly recovered... Following the carnage of October, stocks rose until April 1930 - up 20%. Everyone thought the "correction" was over. Then in late 1930, the stock market got hammered again. By mid-1932, it had lost 90% of value. THE LESSON: never assume the worst has already passed. In Today's FREE INVESTOR'S LIBRARY you'll find two solid recommendations for lowering your exposure to stock market risk... it's simple: getting out of stocks doesn't mean you have to stop making money. Your Free Report: (http://www.dailyreckoning.com/specialreports) * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * FLOTSAM AND JETSAM: The First Great Event of the 21st Century "A tremendous boom resounded through central Jerusalem as black plumes curled into the sky," began an article in Friday's International Herald Tribune. "The mangled remains of the car lay on the narrow one-way street where the explosion took place; in a nearby alley two sheets covered two bodies... `Barak should see this with his own two eyes.'" Another chapter in the long saga of Arab-Israeli conflict. And the chances for Mid-East peace? Called off by violence. Again. This latest instability is being blamed for high oil prices-as high as $36 a barrel in recent months. But is it true? We don't think so. While tension in the region will certainly give traders pause - and may temporarily interrupt supply chains-" high oil prices" are part of a much bigger trend... a trend so important and widespread it could make you one of the wealthiest investors in the next five years... Two Hidden Observations and One Gigantic Opportunity to Make Money Big Oil Trend #1: Oil Is CHEAP! Despite what you read every day in the popular press, oil is actually selling for less than half its 1980 high, in real terms. In 1980 it cost you 25 barrels of oil to buy a single share of the Dow. By 1985, when oil prices fell to $12 a barrel you needed 125 barrels to buy a single share... oil was getting cheaper relative to stocks. And today? At $32 a barrel you need 353 barrels to buy just one share of the Dow. For example, to reach its 1980 price in real terms, oil would have to trade at $70 a barrel-more than twice its current price. It's not just that stocks are overvalued. It's that in real terms, oil is astonishingly cheap. And today's cheap oil prices don't even include a virtually unheard of fact. Big Oil Trend #2: Domestic Supplies Have Already Peaked... In 1956, a geologist named M. King Hubbert predicted that oil production in the lower 48 U.S. states would rise for 13 more years, peak in approximately 1969, and then fall off. He was right. Oil production in the United States reached its peak in 1970. It's been falling steadily ever since. But that's only the beginning. When you apply Hubbert's techniques to world oil, you find out we're just a few years from peak production. The world has produced roughly 800 billion barrels of oil. There's about another 850 billion barrels in proven reserves, and an estimated 150 billion barrels yet to be discovered. We've already produced nearly half the world's supply of oil. Two facts. One: Oil is cheaper now by half than it was in 1980.
Two: Worldwide oil production has already peaked and can only decline.
Combine them and you can see there is immense opportunity for a price explosion to the upside.oil at $40, $50, even $60 a barrel?? Keep in mind, this does not include short-term volatility caused by Mid-East violence. It's just straight-up supply- and-demand analysis. Oil prices will rise, and those companies with the reserves and the know-how to bring it to market will make a fortune. The Best in the Business Recognizing the investment opportunity for readers, we'd like to introduce you to one of the most connected analysts and stock-pickers in the oil business. He'll bring you the companies and opportunities that will bring in large profits in the next 10 year oil rush. Let me introduce you to John Myers. John - the son of the great goldbug C.V. Myers - has spent over 20 years delivering outstanding investments in natural resources to both Canadian and U.S. investors. His experience, judgment, and advice are unmatched in the industry. By way of introduction, John has penned an exclusive report called The First Great Event of the 21st Century, where he outlines how these price trends are already underway... and how most investors and Wall Street have simply mis-read the signs. They've focused too heavily on politics and the big tech revolution. John has not. And his report details the specific nature of the investment opportunity in oil, and how ambitious investors can profit. I've included an express copy of the report with this e-mail, for your review. One company, for example-our favorite-has 8.8 years of proven and probable reserves - well above the industry average. If you give it a $8 per barrel valuation on oil reserves alone... they're sitting on nearly $74 million in assets - excluding $4 million in land and another $1.3 million in working capital. Yet the stock is only selling at $1.16, with a market cap of $54 million, which means you can pick this sure winner up at a 45% discount! Simply click here (http://www.agora- inc.com/reports/RASS/secretinvesting)to view your express copy of The First Great Event of the 21st Century. You'll also enjoy the opportunity to join John Myers and exploit the emerging energy trends of the 21st century for great personal gain. Hope you're having a great weekend, Addison Wiggin http://www.agora-inc.com/reports/RASS/secretinvesting * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * CONTRARIAN GLOSSARY: Festivus FESTIVUS - Festivus is the name given by Philippe Muray to the latest phase in European (including American) civilization. The gods are all dead. So are the politicians. Who would die for his religion today? Who would die for his politics? Or for matters of principle? Serious ideas, holidays, ideologies, virtues, religions, cultures and convictions have all been hollowed out. They are no longer honored. They are merely celebrated. For more Contrarian Glossary entries click here: (http://www.dailyreckoning.com/glossary.cfm) |