SUMMARY - "PIG":
The Contrarian's View is published 11 times per year on a mostly-irregular schedule, and the views expressed are those of the author and editor, Nick Chase. Because nobody can predict the future, results of past suggestions or recommendations are no guarantee of future results. Material in this publication may be freely quoted provided proper attribution is given to its source. Subscription rate: Free on the Internet through the World-Wide Web service at Assumption College. Using your favorite Web-browsing program, Open URL http://nick.assumption.edu. Mailed paper subscriptions, one year for $39 to The Contrarian's View, 132 Moreland Street, Worcester, Massachusetts 01609. There is a limit of 50 paid subscribers at one time; please check for availability before sending any money. Sorry, Visa and Mastercard are not available. Overseas subscription rate, U.S. $54. Unsolicited material sent to us by UPS or by courier other than the postal service is refused and returned to sender! Phone: (508) 757-2881
Unfortunately (for us), he is also our club auctioneer par excellence, and will be sorely missed at our meetings. No doubt part (maybe a major part) of the reason for this move was his brush with the law last summer for watering his seedlings. The town where he currently lives had a total outdoor watering ban during last summer's dry weather, and modern daylilies, especially seedlings, dry up and disappear if they're not watered regularly. Now for somebody planning to hybridize full-time, losing an entire year's worth of seedlings is not a cheery prospect. So, under the cover of darkness, he crept out into his yard, hose in hand, to deliver the necessary liquid to his precious seedlings.
That is, until a neighbor spotted him and reported him to the police. After spending a night in jail, my friend decided it's time to retire to Florida. He has selected the Ocala area (home of Silver Springs), which has some of the purest water in the country, and where you can get all you want just by sinking a well. No more visits from the water police.
Anyway, as he conducted his last auction, he commented that he is selling his home for a quarter million bucks. Now, I lived in the adjoining town when the development he lives in was being built (in the late 1960s and early 1970s), and I remember the prices those houses sold for - generally, between $17K and $24K. These are perfectly ordinary, though nice, homes - mostly ranches, and many without basements, unusual for New England.
He stated that he can duplicate the same setup (plus well) in Ocala for about $85,000. As he put it, "it's called, take the money and run".... he will be able to add over $150,000 to his retirement kitty, and avoid watering hassles, just with this judicious move.
Those of us who live near financial and high-tech centers (mainly on the East and West coasts) tend to forget how the financial bubble has put upward pressure on housing prices, because the rise is gradual and thus seems "normal". The expanding greater Boston metropolitan area, with its outrageous housing prices, finally reached him (he lives about 15 miles from the New Hampshire border). Even here in Worcester, the financial backwater of America, the selling prices of homes have jumped about 15% in the last year as people move further out from Boston, looking for cheaper housing.
Outrageous as the stock-market bubble may seem, we may tend to think of it as an isolated circumstance, while the rest of our lives proceed in an economy with "normal" prices. But ten years of an expanding economy, with no recession in sight, have led people to become overly optimistic about their prospects and to buy more house than they can really afford. In our area, the high-end real-estate market is really hot right now, as quarter-million dollar yuppie mansions alight, like alien spaceships, on plots newly carved out of the woods. (In the Boston area, these would be million-dollar yuppie mansions.)
Stock-market leverage is limited by the Federal Reserve's current 50% margin requirement (though people can, and do, get around this), and many people who are buying stocks at current grossly-overvalued levels are doing so in tax-deferred retirement accounts, which are not supposed to be leveraged at all. Not so in real estate, which is highly leveraged - generally 10% down, sometimes nothing down, then the banks (and the tax laws) entice you to take out home-equity loans for more than your house is worth, so there are folks who have negative equity in their (or should I say, the banks') homes.
When the next recession does arrive, there is no question that it will be preceded by declining stock-market prices - and those who lose their jobs in the recession (even if they find other jobs which pay less) may find themselves unable to afford the carrying costs of their homes. They can, of course, walk away and stick the bank with the house, but they're still on the hook for the mortgage and home equity loans, which they can pay down by cashing in those retirement plans (and paying income and penalty taxes).... or by declaring bankruptcy.
Why is it, people may wonder, that after a phenomenal bull market such as that of the
1920s or 1960s, or of the decade just ended, the bear market that follows is always so deep
and ugly? The answer, I think, is the unwinding of leverage, not just in the stock market,
but in other areas of the economy and particularly in real estate. If you were faced with the
choice of losing your home or sacrificing your retirement portfolio, which would it be?
Gotta keep the home, of course.... the stocks are liquidated to pay for the carrying costs of
the house. Sell them at any price, take what you can get.... the promises of a brighter
future are forgotten in the scramble for cash.
But what I found interesting about the article was that he used his own personal retirement portfolio.... which includes some TIAA-CREF.... as a comparison example. And this portfolio is, indeed, very conservatively invested.... stocks appear only as a small portion of his TIAA-CREF, and not at all in his rollover IRA. The bulk of his retirement appears to be in TIAA, corporate and Treasury inflation-indexed bonds, and in money-markets.
Now I can see why, when he was employed by the Federal Reserve, he would shy away from stocks, because he would have inside knowledge of the Fed's future actions on interest rates and this would be a conflict of interest. But he now works for the American Enterprise Institute, so conflict-of-interest is not an issue, he can put his retirement money wherever he wants. And I find it significant that a former Federal Reserve governor, at least in his investments that he reveals publicly, is gun-shy of stocks.
And inflation-indexed bonds? This investment is strictly dullsville.... even I have said so.
Does this man know something we don't know?
Just two months ago there was serious talk of the [NASDAQ] index hitting 6,000 and hardly anyone would have believed that the index would be threatening to fall back to where it began its historic run back in October.... If and when the Nasdaq does close below 3,000, it will be an ugly day on Wall Street. Not necessarily because of a big point decline, but it would prove all the crap that was spewed back in March was just that...crap. - Marc Sexton
Let there be no doubt that we are living in a truly ugly period in financial history, and the evidence is everywhere. On-line brokerages flood the airwaves with commercials to entice the unsuspecting and uninformed, while financial institutions aggressively push overborrowing. The "grandfatherly" Peter Lynch and the "grandmotherly" Abby Joseph Cohen repetitively condition investors to keep their savings at risk with their implication that there is no risk "over the long-term". And despite the undeniably high risk the present environment poses for investors, not a single "elf" on Wall Street Week will admit to being bearish. Clearly, "The Street" is working diligently to keep "Joe Six-pack" in the game. - David W. Tice
I personally believe that once the dust settles and the Nasdaq is trading below 1,000 again that investors only have themselves to blame. Unlike previous stock market periods such as in the 1920s or 1960s they have had access to tremendous amounts of information that should have allowed them to make sounder decisions. Sure, it was easy to get caught up in the mania, but even a casual review of the history of such manias should have given them some pause. But the lure of easy wealth was too tempting and common sense went out the window. Even now, investors have the opportunity to sell out now and rake in what is left of their profits. But for the most part they won't because the easy gains are still fresh in their minds.... The knowledge that they could have gotten out of the Nasdaq at 5,000 or 4,000, or even 3,000 is going to really hurt when the index is trading below 1,000. Investors won't say that they did poorly because they were greedy, they will say it was because the Fed raised interest rates. Or it will be because bears such as myself somehow talked the market down (yeah, right!). It will be CNBC that instigates the crash or the fact that their broker sold out their margin account just as their stocks were turning around. Just wait and see. - Marc Sexton
An investor who put $500 in this [Investment Indicators] fund in 1971 would now be holding about 39 shares of American Heritage Fund. While American Heritage was featured as THE top-performing fund of 1997, that original $500 investment today would be worth - drumroll, please! - $10.92 (or 28 cents/share)! - Jim Stack [Nick's comment: Many other top-performing funds of the go-go era of the late 1960s, such as Mates Investment, Enterprise, and IOS, met similar fates. I know, I was there, I remember. The mutual-fund industry buries these mistakes by absorbing the losers into value funds which don't suffer as much in the bear market, thus giving the overall mutual-funds track record a "survivor bias" that makes funds' performance look better than the market as a whole, in spite of the cut taken for "management" fees.]
Every financial mania in history has been followed by a collapse that takes prices to below where they were when the uptrend began, which in the current case is Dow is 777 in 1982. I do not know when it will bottom because we will be dealing with a major corrective process that could last a century. It will be a great fourth wave, balancing the second wave, a bear market that lasted from 1720 to 1784. The first major low should occur in 2003 2004.... The gunslingers who have ignored historic overvaluation to "make money" in the past decade will not get out for the down move. Their financial dreams will dissolve. Would you rather be that person, or the one who cashed out early and avoided getting caught up in the mania? - Robert Prechter
...I can never forget the powerful lesson from childhood [in Weimar Germany] about how the debasement of money and the credit structure can wreak havoc on the social and economic structure. All of this led me to conclude: Money matters, but credit matters more. This is especially true in our dynamic financial world, where the linkage between money and credit is looser than economic theory suggests. - Henry Kaufman
Over the years, however, memories [of the 1930s] have faded, while the revisionists have been amazingly successful in pinning responsibility for the Great Depression on the Federal Reserve; not for allowing, and even fostering the boom, but for not "printing enough money," after the fact, during the early 1930s. The true villain, the enormous and abusive credit and speculative excesses of the boom, is conveniently forgotten and virtually erased from economic history. This will prove a most costly distortion of the facts. Presently, the overwhelming faith in the Fed engenders unwavering confidence that such a monumental blunder could never be repeated. As such, the financial structures, regulations and oversight deemed so necessary during the Depression to ensure both future soundness of the financial system and the stability of the economy, are today viewed as outdated and unnecessary. - Doug Noland
In ages past, bankers fretted at the "inelasticity" of the money supply. It was, I suppose, much the same as the frustration felt by a theatre owner who had only four hundred seats for a performance that promised to be very popular. "Well, let's sell four hundred and fifty tickets," said the impresario, "and hope that fifty people don't show up." Of course, if even a few of them did, there would be a problem. Did it occur to the scheming ticket seller to decry the rigidity imposed by the "seat standard?" It should have: it worked beautifully for the bankers who issued notes for non-existent deposits, and then, when caught red-handed during a run on the bank, decried the "inelastic money supply," resulting from the gold standard. If anyone raised the question of an honesty standard, he wasn't heard or quoted. - Paul Hein
Seventy per cent of all Internet stocks are down seventy per cent or more, and many will never recover as more investors come to focus on the lack of viable business models in the sector. The IPO pipeline has closed shut, but the effects of this will not be seen for months, as many companies, investment bankers, etc., have only just been getting payment for the last set of public listings. Still, we are struck at the absence of negative sentiment or panic; the effects of these financial stresses have yet to manifest themselves more clearly, but very few investors have drawn any kind of troublesome long-term implications regarding the rapid collapse of companies which until very recently had market capitalizations in the hundreds of millions. Nor does it seem to bother market participants that these hitherto exciting "growth" companies have collapsed in a relatively benign environment of booming global economic activity. But the negative feedback loops are now in place, the last IPO cheques are being cashed, and the clock is ticking. - Marshall Auerback
Consider the example of America's leading online retailer, Amazon.com.... In the space of four years, the company has grown from virtually nothing to selling hundreds of millions of dollars of books a year. At its inception, the company claimed to be able to undercut its rivals in the traditional booksellers' market on the basis that there were no warehouses to be built or acquired, no marketing and distribution networks to be established, consequently limiting costly fixed investments and major start-up costs; all that Amazon needed to do was out-source to fulfillment houses that stored and distributed the books that the company sold. Four years on, how successful has this model been? For all of the hype, Amazon still cannot seem to turn a profit. Indeed positive cash flow seems more elusive than ever despite the company achieving annual sales in excess of a billion dollars, because losses have accelerated at three times that rate. Amazon faces mounting competition from traditional book retailers and publishers, such as Barnes and Noble and Bertelsmann, and price cuts have intensified as a consequence. Those independent contractors employed for warehousing and distributing books proved insufficiently reliable as sales grew; they also proved expensive, which has forced Amazon to purchase its own warehouses and distribution networks, in effect repudiating its business model and undercutting the whole rationale for pure e-tailing. The failure of Amazon's business model has been largely masked by the company's repeated ability to tap the equity market when its cash crunch has become acute. - Marshall Auerback
If I had to identify one thing that is the biggest threat to America continuing as a free society, I would have to say it's my colleagues and I -- the press. We are failing in our duty.... It is impossible for American citizens to form intelligent judgments of their elected officials without a steady flow of correct, unbiased, unsensationalized news of their governments at all levels. Most Americans simply do not get that from either newspapers or television.... Unfortunately, Americans are far more informed about the lives of essentially useless people in the entertainment industry than they are of the daily conduct of their elected officials.... The press has become the junkyard dog of the political establishment. You would think that someone who intended to sell his soul would want more than a bone and a pat on the head, but that's probably a fair price, considering the state of the souls in question. - Charley Reese
Not that long ago -- in my lifetime -- a 14-year-old kid could go to the corner store, buy a
gun and take it home. He could carry it to school with him and participate in target
shooting clubs -- even in New York City. When guns were more prevalent in our society --
before the hysteria and the taboos -- we were all a lot safer. That's a fact. - Joseph Farah
The Internal Revenue Service is auditing the Arkansas nursing home business of Juanita
Broaddrick Yep, that Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who detailed how the Attorney
General of Arkansas, one William Jefferson Clinton, brutally raped her in a Little Rock
hotel room 22 years ago.... The IRS claims the audit is not politically motivated, which is
bullshit. The agency has been one of the Clinton administration's primary tools of retribution.... Bill Clinton isn't the first President to use the IRS to punish his enemies. Richard
Nixon turned the tax boys loose on many on his bad boy list, but Nixon was forced to leave
office for his crimes. Clinton ignores the law openly, knowing that -- in all likelihood --
nobody will care enough to do anything about it.... Now he's using the IRS to rape
Broaddrick again. Given past history, he will also get away with it...again. - Doug Thompson
Then I think "electionitis" will cut in, even though this year's presidential election is about as exciting as watching paint dry. That means.... in a year when the Federal Reserve is still raising the short-term interest rates it controls.... that the stock averages will likely tread water until just before or just after the election. The most likely months for "crashettes" are July and late-September/October; but of course, no prediction from me as to whether any of these will turn into The Big One, as that is beyond my area of expertise.
Once the national elections are over, the political pressure to keep things afloat subsides....
a new administration typically takes its economic lumps in the first year and a half, so
things will be humming again by the next election.... and the politicians and the Fed will
be on the same wavelength, so 2001 may well be a really volatile year. (Read, big bad bear
market.) However, do not underestimate current risk, regardless of the politicians; not
only does current stock market risk remain extremely high, systemic risk in the financial
system is also high. At any time a financial accident could appear from nowhere (as in
1998) to take down both. I am earning 7-1/4%, virtually risk-free, in my supplemental
retirement account; why should I mess around with anything else when, statistically, the
odds would be so heavily stacked against me?
Original cost (adjusted): $ 4,998.21
Present value: $ 4,076.33
Increase: $ -921.88 [-18.44%]
The performance of this portfolio and its predecessors ("Hedger's Delight", "Present and Future Income", "Crapshooter's Folly") from January 1987 to the present is -7.52%, for a compound annual rate of return of -0.57%. COMMENT on "Phoenix": There is no change from the April issue.
B. "Professors' Investment Group (PIG)" - investment club portfolio.
SUMMARY - "PIG":
Original cost: $ 9,024.00
Present value: $13,467.25
Increase: $ 4,443.25 [+49.24%]
COMMENT on "PIG": There is no change from the last issue.
The PIGs' Web page is at http://www.assumption.edu/HTML/Faculty/Kantar/WPigs.html
C. Roth rollover IRA - real portfolio, includes commissions:
SUMMARY - IRA:
Original (1983-86) cost: $ 8,326.19
Present value: $10,213.06
Increase: $ 1,886.87 [+22.66]
The performance of this portfolio (including its predecessors)
from January 1, 1987 to the present is -6.88%, for a compound
annual rate of return of -0.51%.
D. CREF Pension plan; I switch between indexed stock/bond/money funds:
Date Sold Bought
13Mar1992 stock @ 56.65 MM @ 13.41
29Apr1992 MM @ 13.48 bond @ 31.19
19Jun1992 bond @ 32.14 MM @ 13.55
29Jun1992 MM @ 13.57 stock @ 56.74
24Jul1992 stock @ 56.76 MM @ 13.61
29Oct1992 MM @ 13.72 stock @ 58.61
23Dec1992 stock @ 61.48 MM @ 13.78
16Jan1995 MM @ 14.83 equity-index @ 26.44
20Jan1995 eq-index @ 26.19 MM @ 14.84
30Oct1997 MM@ 17.24 bond@47.56 (27.17%)
30Oct1997 MM@ 17.24 i-i bond@26.12 (27.17%)
11Feb1998 bond@ 48.84 MM@17.52 (27.17%)
11Feb1998 I-I bond@ 26.23 MM@17.52(27.17%)
16Jun1998 MM@ 17.84 TIAA Traditional (45.87%)
23Sep1999 MM@18.99 I-I bond@27.56 (53.32%)
17-18May2000 rate adjustment to 7.25% in SRA
Values, 31May2000: stock, 200.03; MM, 19.73; bond, 52.65; inflation-indexed bond, 29.09;
TIAA current yield in SRA, 7.25%
Gain, 1988: 18.91%; 1989: 14.48%; 1990: 8.28%; 1991: 27.93%; 1992: 10.20%; 1993: 3.08%; 1994: 4.07%; 1995: 4.80%; 1996: 5.28%; 1997: 5.38%; 1998: 5.72%; 1999: 5.12%
Gain, January 1 through March 31, 2000: 3.029% (12.68% annual rate of return)
Total gain since January 1, 1988 (12.25 years): 196.77%
Compound annual rate of return: 9.29% (My long-term target: in excess of 15%)
Gain shown excludes the impact of additional monthly cash contributions.
Buying CREF stock on January 1, 1988 and holding it gained
556.04%, for a compound annual rate of return of 16.60%.
You may notice the extra "rate adjustment" line I've added to the table above. (You
certainly will notice it now that I've mentioned it.) When I was calculating my annual
(1999) and quarterly yields for last month's issue, I noticed that in the SRA I was earning
what appeared to be a "blended" yield, something less than 7%, rather than the advertised
7.25%. By coincidence, the latest issue of TIAA-CREF's self-congratulatory quarterly
report for participants had just arrived, and I read it for a change, because it described five
new funds (though they're not yet available for retirement plans).
It also described how TIAA works, how - when you put in money - you buy a "vintage" which reflects interest rates then in effect. You then continue to earn interest at that "vintage" rate, regardless of whether rates go up or down thereafter..... only freshly-added money earns the current advertised rate. In the supplemental retirement annuity, where one can switch both into and out of TIAA, the mag stated that premiums and accumulations (that is, transfers) added after March 31, 2000 would earn 7.25% for at least the next year.
Well, I thought, most of my money is "stuck" at the June 1998 rate, 6.25%. If I switch into the money-market fund for a day, then switch back to TIAA, all of my money will earn the higher rate. (I can see the promotion for this now: EARN $1000 OR MORE PER YEAR WITH JUST A FEW CLICKS OF THE MOUSE!) But, just to be sure, I called TIAA-CREF and asked a rep, "Does this really work?" "Yes", she said, "it really works". Now is this dumb, or what? You would think that, in the SRA, TIAA-CREF would offer an annuity-style product that tracks current rates. But hey, this is an insurance company we're talking about, when they finally catch on and offer such a product , it will be obsolete.
So I did it. On May 17, I switched all of my SRA money into the CREF money-market fund. And on May 18, I switched it all back into TIAA, where it all now earns the 7.25% rate. Of course, there's no market risk involved (other than the possibility that the money market fund might "break the buck" the day I'm in it, so I had to make a judgment call that the financial system was not going to collapse on May 18). It really works.
You should recognize this as a really good deal. In the SRA, I can now follow the upward trend of short-term interest rates with my SRA money, but when rates head downward again I can just leave my money in TIAA (until a better investment opportunity appears), earning a relatively high rate of return for, perhaps, many years, as long as the underlying investments (bonds, mortgages) in the "vintage" continue to perform as expected.
COMMENT on NYSE "Timer's Trend": Yes, we're still on the July 20 (1999) SELL signal.
____________________________ NYSE TIMER'S TREND _______________________________ Mon 20 Mar 00 . & . |10680.24 |-. * Tue 21 Mar 00 . I #. |10907.34 |+. * Wed 22 Mar 00 . | #. |10866.70 |+. * Thu 23 Mar 00 . | .# |11119.86 |+. * Fri 24 Mar 00 . | #. |11112.72 | + * Mon 27 Mar 00 . |# . |11025.85 | + * Tue 28 Mar 00 . #I . |10936.11 |+. * Wed 29 Mar 00 . # . |11018.72 |+. * Thu 30 Mar 00 . |# . |10980.25 + . * Fri 31 Mar 00 . | #. |10921.92 + . * Mon 3 Apr 00 . | #. |11221.93 +~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tue 4 Apr 00 .# I . |11164.84 + . * Wed 5 Apr 00 .# | . |11033.92 + . * Thu 6 Apr 00 . | # |11114.27 + . * Fri 7 Apr 00 . |# . |11111.48 + . * Mon 10 Apr 00 . |# . |11186.56 + . * Tue 11 Apr 00 . # . |11287.08 + . * Wed 12 Apr 00 . |# . |11125.13 |+. * Thu 13 Apr 00 # | . |10923.55 + . * Fri 14 Apr 00 # . I . |10305.77 |~-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mon 17 Apr 00 # I . |10582.51 | .- * Tue 18 Apr 00 . & . |10767.42 | .- * Wed 19 Apr 00 . #I . |10674.96 | .- * Thu 20 Apr 00 . & . |10844.05 | .- * Mon 24 Apr 00 .# I . |10906.10 |~-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~* Tue 25 Apr 00 . | #. |11124.82 |-. * Wed 26 Apr 00 . # . |10945.50 |-. * Thu 27 Apr 00 . #I . |10888.10 |-. * Fri 28 Apr 00 . # . |10733.91 |-. * Mon 1 May 00 . | .# |10811.78 |+. * Tue 2 May 00 . #| . |10731.12 + . * Wed 3 May 00 # . I . |10480.13 |-.~~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thu 4 May 00 . #I . |10412.49 |-. * Fri 5 May 00 . I #. |10577.86 |-. * Mon 8 May 00 . I# . |10603.63 |-. * Tue 9 May 00 .# I . |10536.75 |-. * Wed 10 May 00 #. I . |10367.78 |-. * Thu 11 May 00 . I #. |10545.97 |-. * Fri 12 May 00 . I #. |10609.37 |-. * Mon 15 May 00 . I .# |10807.78 + . * Tue 16 May 00 . |# . |10934.57 |+. * Wed 17 May 00 # I . |10769.74 |+. * Thu 18 May 00 . #I . |10777.28 + . * Fri 19 May 00 # . I . |10626.85 |-. * Mon 22 May 00 #. I . |10542.55 | .- * Tue 23 May 00 # I . |10422.27 | . - * Wed 24 May 00 .# I . |10535.35 | . - * Thu 25 May 00 # I . |10323.92 | . - * Fri 26 May 00 .# I . |10299.24 | .- * Tue 30 May 00 . I #. |10527.13 | - * Wed 31 May 00 . I #. |10522.33 |-. * ========================================================================
COMMENT on NASDAQ "Timer's Trend": The trend continues down since I began tracking
this on February 28, 2000.
____________________________ NASDAQ TIMER'S TREND ____________________________ Mon 3 Apr 00 # . I . | 4223.68 |~*~~-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tue 4 Apr 00 # . I . | 4148.89 @| . - * Wed 5 Apr 00 #. I . | 4169.22 @| . - * Thu 6 Apr 00 . I# . | 4267.56 | . - * Fri 7 Apr 00 . I #. | 4446.45 | .- * Tue 11 Apr 00 # . I . | 4055.90 | .- * Wed 12 Apr 00 # . I . | 3769.63 |~.-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thu 13 Apr 00 # . I . | 3676.78 | . - * Fri 14 Apr 00 # . I . | 3321.29 @|~.~~~-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mon 17 Apr 00 #. I . | 3539.16 @| . - * Tue 18 Apr 00 . & . | 3793.57 @|~.~~~-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wed 19 Apr 00 #. I . | 3706.41 | . - * Thu 20 Apr 00 # . I . | 3643.88 | . - * Mon 24 Apr 00 # . I . | 3482.48 |~*~-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tue 25 Apr 00 . I #. | 3711.23 | .- * Wed 26 Apr 00 # I . | 3630.09 | . - * Thu 27 Apr 00 . #I . | 3774.03 | .- * Fri 28 Apr 00 . I# . | 3860.66 |~-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~* Mon 1 May 00 . I #. | 3958.08 + . * Tue 2 May 00 #. I . | 3785.45 |-. * Wed 3 May 00 # . I . | 3707.31 | - * Thu 4 May 00 .# I . | 3720.24 | - * Fri 5 May 00 . & . | 3816.82 | .- * Mon 8 May 00 #. I . | 3669.38 | . - * Tue 9 May 00 # . I . | 3585.01 |~.~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wed 10 May 00 # . I . | 3384.73 |~.~*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Thu 11 May 00 . #I . | 3499.58 | . - * Fri 12 May 00 . #I . | 3529.06 | . - * Mon 15 May 00 . & . | 3607.65 | .- * Tue 16 May 00 . I # | 3717.57 | - * Wed 17 May 00 # . I . | 3644.96 |-. * Thu 18 May 00 #. I . | 3538.71 | - * Fri 19 May 00 # . I . | 3390.40 | .- * Mon 22 May 00 # . I . | 3364.21 | . - * Tue 23 May 00 # . I . | 3164.55 @|~.*~~~-~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Wed 24 May 00 #. I . | 3270.61 @| . - * Thu 25 May 00 # . I . | 3205.35 @| . - * Fri 26 May 00 # . I . | 3205.11 @| . - * Tue 30 May 00 . I# . | 3459.48 | . - * Wed 31 May 00 # I . | 3400.91 | . - * ========================================================================"Timer's Trend" is based on 4% and 10% exponential moving averages of the New York Stock Exchange advance/decline line (that is, the ratio of advancing to declining stocks). There are many symbols shown above, but the ones that count are the braces: {, } = "Timer's Trend" (4% exponential confirmed by 10% exponential) SELL ({) or BUY(}) signal.
NEXT ISSUE - will appear about June 30. /Nick Chase