In Today's Daily Reckoning:
*** The Nasdaq is flying...
*** Amazon drifting down river
*** Gold is still breaking hearts
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*** Again, not much time, so chronically afflicted Daily
Reckoning readers get another day of relief.
*** I'm staying at Claridges on Brook Street. Nice hotel. I
usually stay at Berner's, which is nice, but not as
luxurious and not nearly as expensive. But events drew me
here yesterday...about which, more below.
*** I am socializing with stockbrokers, fund managers and
very rich people - so I'm getting different, probably more
mainstream, opinions about what is going on in the markets,
and what it means. The young, up-and-coming moneymen seem
pretty sure that the worst is behind us. The correction was
healthy, in their opinion, and now the market is ready for
another growth spurt.
*** Some of these young guys have made a lot of money in
the market's growth spurts. They cannot believe that the
proximate future will differ greatly from the recent past.
(http://www.dailyreckoning.com/body_headline.cfm?id=193)
*** "Stocks are pretty much trading on fundamentals," said
a portfolio manager with Unity Management, reported by
Reuters, "and the big rally in techs kind of shows that
tech earnings are going to be very strong."
*** Huh? What fundamentals? The Nasdaq rose 129 points -
bringing it within 2% of where it began the year. The
leaders were the big techs - Cisco, Intel, Oracle - which
are probably the worst investments you can make, for
reasons I've explained. But no will be charged with
mismanagement for buying these stocks. No one will be
disgraced for having them in his portfolio. They are stocks
you can lose money on respectably...and almost certainly.
*** Intel, for example, is selling at 54 times earnings.
During the dark phase...when the New Era sun ceases to
light up the occidental world...Intel's P/E will fall to
less than half that number.
*** Tech buyers seem to think that Greenspan is finished
his work. They are betting that there will be no rate hike
this month.
*** Amazon keeps drifting down river. The stock is at $45
and falling. While Amazon still has a long way to go, my
host here in London, whose company launched many of these
IPOS, thinks some of them are reaching bargain levels. Some
have been given up for dead by investors - even though they
still have cash and other assets. The assets of Boo.com,
for example, recently worth hundreds of millions were sold
for $1.5 million.
*** Honeywell has fallen a third in less than a month. When
these big blue-chips fall that much it shows that the
entire market is held up by a lot of very fickle, amateurs.
Buffett doesn't dump stock when an 'earnings warning' comes
out.
*** Gold, that heartbreaker, is back at $288...after
falling $3.20 yesterday. What happened to the bull market?
*** Oil fell...so did the euro - but I doubt that these are
developing trends.
*** The yen rose against the dollar on new hopes of a
Japanese recovery. This must be the recovery that I warned
you about 9 months ago. Better late than never.
*** We were momentum players as we dined last night -- at a
restaurant named 'Nobo,' where the waiters are all
stylishly dressed in black and the customers eat raw fish.
Typical of trendy London restaurants, the d‚cor is
minimalist, stark and cold. Sound echoes off marble and
metal surfaces so it can be hard to hear the person next to
you.
*** But after dinner, we became contrarians again. We
stopped by the very fashionable Annabel's for a drink.
Annabel's was the hottest club in London a few years
ago...but it was mostly empty last night.
*** A front page article in The Daily Telegraph tells, once
again, of the terrible pain and travails of an Anglican
clergyman. "The whole thing is full of agony," said the
poor vicar, whose feminine spirit has been trapped in a
man's body for 46 years. But at least he seems to have
gotten good service from it. He's been married and divorced
twice and sired a child once.
*** On page 3 we discover that a group of Brits is trying
to recreate the building of Stonehenge. They dug up a rock
of the sort used to build the monoliths (though rather
small in comparison to those at Stonehenge) and were
transporting it by raft. Alas, their raft-building skills
need some work. The $150,000 project suffered a setback,
possibly fatal, when the raft sunk.
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"God save our gracious Sovereign, and all the Companions,
living and departed, of the Most Honourable and Noble Order
of the Garter."
At the Garter Day service,
Chapel of Saint George
A single sunny day does not a summer make.
Maybe you've never heard that expression. It wouldn't
surprise me. I just minted it.
But here in England, like the rules of English grammar, it
may not apply. The English know that when the sun comes
out, you have to take advantage of it. A day or two of hot,
sunny weather may be all there is for an entire summer.
Yesterday was very hot in London. Everyone whom decency
permitted removed his shirt. Carpenters hammered their
nails, people read books or dozed in the parks, truck
drivers shifted their gears - all torso nu. I felt like
taking off my shirt too - but I was in polite society. My
host had advised me to "wear a smart suit." I was not sure
what he meant, so I put a silicon chip in my old grey suit
and hoped it got some sense before the event.
Among the people in our group was an extremely attractive
young woman of French origin. I was secretly hoping she
would remove her shirt too, perhaps in the spirit of gallic
contrariness. Alas, that wasn't on the menu.
The sun beat down on Windsor Castle at the occasion of
Garter Day...a procession whose roots date back to King
Edward III in 1348. There, only a short walk from
Runnymede, where King John Lackland signed the Magna Carta
on June 15, 1215, Edward assembled his military leaders.
One story, perhaps apocryphal, has it that one of his
mistresses lost a garter at a ball. Edward, gallantly
distracting attention from its owner, held it aloft and
proclaimed it as the emblem of his highest order of
knights. Thus, the order's motto: Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense
(shame on he who thinks evil).
The custom of choosing and assembling the knights mutated
over the years. Today, being a Knight of the Garter is one
of the highest honors the monarch can bestow. There are
only a handful of them. It cannot be bought with campaign
contributions, we were told.
While hundreds of people camped out on the lawn, enduring
the hot sun for hours for the privilege of viewing
celebrities close up, our small group of about a dozen
enjoyed an elegant lunch in a room almost directly over the
parade route. Looking out the window, we noticed a large
pink woman fall backwards onto the lawn. Several people
rushed to her administering aid. They fanned her and held
umbrellas to protect her from the sun. And after a while
she must have revived, because I saw her sitting upright
later on.
Finally, as were finishing our summer pudding, the
procession began.
"England is different from France," one of my companions
remarked. "Rather than chop their heads off, we've turned
our aristos into a tourist industry."
The household guards marched down the hill in bright red,
wool tunics, leather boots that reached their knees,
leather gloves up to their elbows and what looked like
burnished brass helmets with straw-colored plumes. There
were also a few soldiers in those huge beaver hats. They
took their places along the parade route to protect the
processioners, decoratively at least. A metal detector had
been set up at the entrance to the castle grounds. I saw no
one in the area with an IRA Forever tee-shirt.
After the guards were in place, there was a long wait. The
sun seemed to get even hotter and we began to notice that
one of the guards was starting to sway.
"I've got thirty pounds that says he goes down before the
show is over," said David, one of the small group.
It did look as though he would never make it. Others, too,
looked a little wobbly. And there, on the grass, another
large female had conked out. This one was loaded on a
stretcher and taken out. Another casualty.
But then, the band started up. And what a fine group they
were. Bedecked in heavy velvet, they carried their tubas
and clarinets and played everything from the Imperial March
to the St. Louis Blues.
They were followed by various groups, each one more
splendiferous than the last. There were the military
knights, the Officers of Arms, (with titles such as the
Rouge Dragon Pursuivant) and then the Knights of the Garter
themselves - walking at a pace so slow they threatened to
topple over with every step. The Knights of the Garter are
all men - with one exception, Lady Margaret Thather. And
they are all very old. Medics stood by with oxygen as they
tortured themselves down the hill.
Then came the nobles -- the Duke of Norfolk, the Viscount
Ridley, and the Black Rod, Sir Edward Jones, whatever or
whoever that is.
And finally, the Prince of Wales and his sister Anne, and
the Queen and her husband. All magnificent in huge velvet
robes. And all very much as advertised.
And when the last of the royals had vanished into the
church, I looked again at the crowd. Several more women
seemed to be down - sun struck, or maybe star struck.
Stretcher bearers attended them.
But the guard still stood.
Your sunstruck correspondent at Windsor Castle,
Bill Bonner
P.S. Today - we're off to the races. Ascot, that is.
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Last modified: April 02, 2001
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