Friday, March 28, 2008

But You Knew This...


Because Thursday March 6th, on this blog, I told you JC Penney was in trouble... because I shopped there and saw the merchandise stocked to the ceilings... and now the news media has just learned, because JCPenney finally had to tell them.

There is no point in reading anything for news except for blogs.


Tuesday, March 25, 2008

All Hail Free Market Natural Regulation

Earlier I mentioned we have no need of government regulation of markets since there are shortsellers, whose work is both necessary and sufficient to keep markets honest. I noted shortsellers bet their own money on their views. I forgot to mention if they pick wrong, they not only lose their own money, the stockholders of the company the shortsellers target also find a benefit in stock appreciation if the shortsellers are wrong. In fact, a targeted stockholder if confident the shortseller is wrong, is move his stock out of trading accounts to limit the amount of stock available in short-covering operations, ever more forcing the price up. Turnaround is fair game.

Regulators just come in after the fact and make things worse. All hail the heroic shortsellers!


Sell!

I've been reading Mish Shedlock, and agree with his analysis, and between Shedlock and Gary North I am tempted to take their advice and and close out my positions. Their arguments are strong. Except, I think there is a problem they are not considering.

There is no question, at least since 1987, there has been a "plunge protection team" designed to manipulate to the market ostensibly to keep it on a relatively even keel. Naturally over time, there would be "mission creep" and they would experiment with a wider and wider range of interventions. I was surprised a while back reading a discussion of something called "triple witching," a regular market event, and a fellow's comment on how this event was used by the FED to crush shortsellers. If so, that is some serious mission creep.

North and Shedlock advise an awful lot of people. They both have forgotten more about the markets than I will ever know. They both know gold trades high Jan Feb, and other market patterns "everyone knows" about. At the same time, Mish Shedlock and North write exposes on some very wicked maneuvers by the powers that be.

So my question is, if "they" will work the system to our disadvantage, don't "they" also use the information "everyone knows" to our disadvantage as well? So I did not take their advice. I think they will get taken, since they are obliged to act on their best knowledge. They will be held to account on their actions based on their best knowledge.

They obviously have no knowledge of any shenanigans at the fundamental market pattern level, so they cannot take any such thing into account as they give advice, and act on the advice they give. Being obliged to act on what what information they have rather constrains them, rather exposes them, no?

I've made no changes. For all of the market gyrations the last few days, and the gold market shocks, the Dow is still down about 2000 points from October and gold is down exactly 1.5 percent in the last 30 days (up over 40% in the last year).

I am betting the manipulation is far wider than believed. Happily my opinions do not matter, but as Rosa Parks said, "I ain't movin."






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Anthony Inquires After Museum Stores

Have you ever sold items to a Museum gift shop/market?

***Yes, they are great! Buy lots and pay their bills.***

Assume you are going to import items like this...



http://www.madeinmuseum.com/home.html

It's an Italian company.

They are taking already existing designs from museum
art, and creating gifts from them. Reminds me of your
gift card story. The ideas for design are already
there. There is really no innovation, or problem to
solve? Would I have to compete on price?

***well... the museums are nonprofit so have been obliged to limit their items to collection-related themes, so they do not have an advantage over other retailers and mail order catalogs... the thing is themes... etruscan-inspired fits the bill. So you would have your own designs, and thus notr compete on price. An alternative, which I have done, is get a license for owned images, and then again you are not competing on price.***


Or selling fossils to a Natural History museum gift
shop. No innovative thought, just rocks. Is this the
realm of conservator?


***some rocks are mass market, some are specialty...***

And, Museum gift shops are a finite in number. Could you
skip the step of finding the independent sales rep and
sell/market directly to the Museum Gift shops? I bet
with a little work, you could find every museum
related gift shop. And these are stable retailers.
Grade A customers.

Can you become your own sales rep in this case?

***there is a museum store show, a museum shops association, I think based in Denver, it's hard to get into, but I'd say get a rep. There is a finite number of every kind of store... I think for museums there are too many for you to handle... again, you make money coming up with products, not schlepping it...***

I saw the Roman Art from the Louvre exhibit at SAM.
Of course many things in the gift shop had a Roman
theme, and were supplied by...

http://www.madeinmuseum.com/home.html

SAM gift shop carried Roman busts, vases, coins,
jewelry etc... In general, they were reproductions
of the original items, or items that had Roman motifs.
For example, there were Hermes Scarves with a Roman
motif. The exhibition got me thinking....

***Yes, exactly how it is done...***