scambo1

T;

You are right, this europe thing doesn't end well. It is far from over. IMO the market is rising right now on dollar weakness alone. When the exuberance fades, and the dollar regains ground against the euro, we'll be back on the seesaw.

Initially, the whole europe "crisis" will seem to end when Greece gets kicked off the euro - Merkel's plan - Greek debt at 120% of GDP by 2020? That's a plan? Currently, they are at 180% of GDP.

Bailout funds invented out of thin air by 3X leveraging of the existing bailout fund...theoretically by issuing bonds? This sounds to me like a can kicked down the road using derivatives (all over again). European banks dont have to have funds to cover loans until next June. (Voluntary) Greek bond haircuts of 50%?

The euro was not invented as a print yourself out of debt currency. The EU will have to radically change their treaties if that is to happen.

Then comes Italy, belgium, spain, portugal and ireland.

May you live in interesting times.

capncrunch

Never mind, Ferd already answered it.

Mem9guy

On our old North temp system, if an ATL guy came to NY to temp, he would bid after all of the permanent NY'ers, so he could not do what you are fearing. It was generally the people that were on the bottom of their own category that tempted, as they were going to bid on the bottom regardless...

If you added temping to our current system where there is no seperate category for lineholder and reserve, it would essentially just be a mechanism for balancing out the reserve body count among bases.

Right now, what you say you fear, already happens within the categories when guys who normally hold a line, drop down to reserve to grab up a holiday off that they can't hold otherwise. One advantage to seperate categories was that if you were a "senior" reserve guy, you were always a "senior" reserve guy, even during the holidays. Even with that said, after working under both systems, I think that I prefer the combined lineholder and reserve that we have now, with room for improvement of course.

CVG767A

Looking at the Dow, NASDAQ, and the S&P500, they all bottomed on or about October 3rd, but they had pretty much gotten to the bottom already. Hardly a cliff. Anyone who went from equities into cash then, fearing a "cliff", has locked in their losses.

TNA has had a good run since then, but that kind of investing isn't for the faint of heart.

nwaf16dude

I've never made any money investing in T&A

maddogmax

Now that's funny! But True!

DAL 88 Driver

Not trying to argue with you. But can you do that consistently? Just sayin'...

CVG767A

It starts out looking like a good deal, but carrying costs are high, and the cost of selling is astronomical.

DAL 88 Driver

Exactly. The DOW dropped a little over 2% on October 3. I don't think that would be most people's definition of a "cliff."

Scambo, I'm not trying to pick on you... but when you're wrong, it's better to just fess up. This is what you wrote on October 2, 2011: "The market is going to fall off a cliff within the next 2 weeks... sooner rather than later." You didn't say, "I think the market is going to go down 2+%." You said, "the market is going to fall off a cliff." Big difference.

In any case, I'm glad you are doing well with your investments. And I think discussion on this topic is good from time to time. I'm not trying to criticize what you're doing. And I'm not trying to get into a **** measuring contest. I like what I'm doing. You don't. That's part of what makes a market, right?

Columbia

This. Might as well get free drinks in Vegas.