There is No There There

copyright F. Bruce Abel 2008


There is still no person I know who can rationalize the nation's dangerous market. Men like Marty Zweig, John Templeton, circa 1987 crash.

By this I mean: WHAT THE HELL DO WE DO NOW???? [assuming one hasn't done anything with one's portfolio up until now]

Sell the dollar and buy commodities, especially gold, seems right, even though these markets are way, way overextended. But how does an individual with a portfolio of, say, $800,000, "sell the dollar?"

Get into a solar stock even though it seems very, very late. Probably. Think about it. The entire country must go solar.

James Rogers certainly nailed it on commodities. Cramer seems to be nailing it on the buy-side. Schaeffer, Cincinnati's own, who used to do the math for Carl Lindner, with brilliant calls in the 1980's and 1990's, remains, as far as I can tell, quiet, probably because his newsletter business now caters to all sorts of advertising all over the lot.

A subsidiary question: exactly how does one open an account in Tbilisi? In Manilla?

The world of ETF's -- takes a while to realize that ETF's have their own issues.

We seem to be hostage to worldwide cooperation from friends and foes alike, not "our guys" in New York, who have barfed all over themselves and have lost credibility to the world.

The undercurrent in the Ambac, etc. situation, the "issue de jure," is There is no There There. No way it can all be worked out. Nobody wants to say what the implications are.

The "old" technique of simply reallocating to more bonds vs stocks re-allocation doesn't promise the same safety because bonds are priced in U.S. dollars, which are problematic. Canadian bonds? European bonds? Brazillian bonds? How do these things?

S&P down 9% as of today (yr. to date).